After Dutch navigators charted the northern, western and southern coasts of Australia during the 17th Century this newly found continent became known as '
The British colony of New South Wales was established in 1788 as a penal colony.
Oceania is a region made up of thousands of islands throughout the Central and South Pacific Ocean. It includes Australia, the smallest continent in terms of total land area.
From Terra Australis to Australia.
Before 1900, there was no actual country called Australia, only the six colonies – New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland, and Western Australia. While these colonies were on the same continent, they were governed like six rival countries and there was little communication between them.
The islands were settled by different seafaring Melanesian cultures such as the Torres Strait Islanders over 2500 years ago, and cultural interactions continued via this route with the Aboriginal people of northeast Australia.
Aboriginal people are known to have occupied mainland Australia for at least 65,000 years. It is widely accepted that this predates the modern human settlement of Europe and the Americas.
The name Australia (pronounced /əˈstreɪliə/ in Australian English) is derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern", and specifically from the hypothetical Terra Australis postulated in pre-modern geography.
In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially by that name. The first official published use of the new name came with the publication in 1830 of The Australia Directory by the Hydrographic Office.
To put it simply, Antarctica used to be called Australia. Then, in 1824, today's Australia took the name, leaving the icy continent essentially without a 'proper' name until the 1890s.
There are also a number of terms for Australia, such as: Aussie, Oz, Lucky Country, and land of the long weekend.
Australian English can be described as a new dialect that developed as a result of contact between people who spoke different, mutually intelligible, varieties of English. The very early form of Australian English would have been first spoken by the children of the colonists born into the early colony in Sydney.
While Indigenous Australians have inhabited the continent for tens of thousands of years, and traded with nearby islanders, the first documented landing on Australia by a European was in 1606. The Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon landed on the western side of Cape York Peninsula and charted about 300 km of coastline.
A coastal town located on the east bank of the mouth of the Tamar River, George Town is Australia's third oldest European settlement and Australia's oldest town.
After many years of debate and drafting, it was passed by the British Parliament, and given royal assent (approval by the Queen), in July 1900. The passing of the Constitution enabled Australia's 6 British colonies to become one nation, the Commonwealth of Australia, on 1 January 1901.
Thousands of years before the arrival of the British, Australia was settled by the indigenous people of Australia called the Aborigines. This timeline begins when the Europeans first arrived. 1606 - The first European to land at Australia is Dutch explorer Captain Willem Janszoon.
Throughout the book he uses the name Australia to refer to the island continent. This book helped boost the popularity of the name Australia and until 1824 there was a mixed unofficial use of all three current names, Australia, Terra Australis and New Holland.
Eora is also commonly used for Sydney. For northern Sydney the term Guringai has been used, however, it was originally invented by a researcher in 1892 for this area and there is a Gringai clan in the Barrington River, Glouchester area who are requesting Sydneysiders to stop using their name.
The Dutch first sighted Australia in 1606 before Captain Cook colonised the land for Great Britain in 1770. The First Fleet of 11 boats arrived at Botany Bay in 1788 to establish New South Wales as a penal colony (receiving convicts until 1848).
Dutch discovery and exploration
The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, captained by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606.
In 1901, Australia became a nation, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. One year later, Australia became one of the first countries in the world to give women the right to vote. In 1945, Australia became a founding member of the United Nations.
It is generally held that Australian Aboriginal peoples originally came from Asia via insular Southeast Asia (now Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, and the Philippines) and have been in Australia for at least 45,000–50,000 years.
Aboriginal origins
Humans are thought to have migrated to Northern Australia from Asia using primitive boats. A current theory holds that those early migrants themselves came out of Africa about 70,000 years ago, which would make Aboriginal Australians the oldest population of humans living outside Africa.
Until the early 19th century, Australia was best known as “New Holland”, a name first applied by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman in 1644 (as Nieuw-Holland) and subsequently anglicized.
The oldest human remains in Australia were found at Lake Mungo in south-west New South Wales, part of the Willandra Lakes system. This site has been occupied by Aboriginal people from at least 47,000 years ago to the present.