The first ancestors of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander, and Melanesian people, arrive in Australia when New Guinea, mainland Australia, and Tasmania were joined as a mega-
continent referred to as
Sahul.
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| Sahul was a paleocontinent that encompassed the modern-day landmasses of mainland Australia, Tasmania, New Guinea, and the Aru Islands. |
Modern Humans reached Asia by 70,000 years ago before moving down through South-east Asia and into Australia. Homo erectus had lived in Asia for at least 1.5 million years. And it is possible that these two species may have coexisted.
When Aboriginal people arrived in Australia, megafauna lived here. Giant flightless, now-extinct, birds (
Dromornis planei), nicknamed the "Demon Duck of Doom", lay Melon-size eggs that were eaten by the Aboriginal people.
In some areas of Australia, such as the Central Highlands of Tasmania, Aboriginal people tapped the
Eucalyptus gunnii trees so that the sap would collect in hollows in the bark or at the base of the tree. Yeasts that are floating in the air all around us all the time, would then ferment the sap into an alcoholic, cider-like beverage, that the
local Aboriginal people called Way-a-linah.
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| Eucalyptus gunnii' or "Cider Gum" alludes to the fact that this tree has been tapped to produce a drinkable cider from the sap by Aboriginal people. |
Captain Cook’s ship had a form of electricity aboard when it arrived in 1770. Joseph Banks used Leyden jars, which were primitive batteries, making a weak electric current across the salt-water-soaked canvas floor of the cabin.
The Nepean River in New South Wales, near Penrith, is named after Sir Evan Nepean, 1st Baronet. Descendants of Nepean include actors Hugh Grant (born 1960) and Thomas Brodie-Sangster (born 1990), who by chance, both appeared in the same film, "Love Actually".
John Black Caesar (c.1763-1796), convict and bushranger of African descent, was living in England when he was convicted for stealing 240 shillings and transported to Australia as part of the First Fleet. Caesar became a bushranger and robbed settlers' gardens, and stole from local Aboriginals, who speared him on 30 January 1790. Caesar also gained notoriety after he cracked the skull of Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy, after being attacked.
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| "Pimbloy: Native of New Holland in a canoe of that country", engraving, on sheet, 20.8 x 26.0 cm. Samuel John Neele (1758-1824) - State Library of Victoria |
Astronomers say Aboriginal astronomy stories and myths about the "seven sisters" stars may go back 100,000 years. Many other cultures around the world refer to the Pleiades as “seven sisters”. In Greek mythology, the Pleiades were the seven daughters of the Titan, Atlas. In many Australian Aboriginal groups, the Pleiades are young girls, who are
associated with sacred womens' ceremonies and stories. However, Aboriginal Australians had almost no contact with the rest of humanity for at least 50,000 years, so it is possible that these stories originate with ancestors who lived in Africa long before the long migrations long ago.
Watkin Tench, a British marine officer, wrote one of the earliest published accounts of the First Fleet voyage and the early settlement of Australia. "Not to have read Watkin Tench," wrote Robert Hughes, "is not to know early Australia".
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| Portrait of Captain Watkin Tench (he retired as a lieutenant-general) from a contemporary miniature. |
The Gweagal people first encountered Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook in 1770, during his voyage on the
Endeavour, sailing on a ship a thousand times the size of the Natives' canoes. According to Dr Shayne Williams, Senior Knowledge Holder (Gweagal Clan of the Dharawal Nation), the Aboriginal people saw sailors actually going up and down the masts and thought they were guruwara’s (possums). See
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| The Gweagal people first encountered Lieutenant (later Captain) James Cook in 1770 |
Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney, who was responsible for devising a plan to settle convicts in Australia, and after whom the city of Sydney is named, chose the name Sydney for his barony in memory of his distant uncle Algernon Sidney, who was beheaded in 1683, for writing: "the people of England…may change or take away kings".
The First Fleet, consisting of 11 vessels, was the largest single contingent of ships to sail into the Pacific Ocean, carrying over 1500 men, women and children. Only a few of the First Fleet convicts were dangerous criminals; most had committed petty crimes.
Ellen Kelly, the mother of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly, died in 1923 at the age of 91, long enough to see planes flying in the sky and motor cars driving along what would become the Hume Highway, the main road between Melbourne and Sydney.
Convict clerk, James Hardy Vaux, compiled a dictionary of slang and other terms used by convicts in 1819 when he was an inmate at Newcastle‘s Penal Station. The dictionary became necessary reading for magistrates trying to understand the “flash” language of the convicts.
Mary Ann Bugg was born to an Aboriginal mother (Worimi) and convict father near Gloucester on the mid-north coast of NSW. She became the wife and wily accomplice of bushranger Frederick Ward, aka Captain Thunderbolt, spying for him, dressed as a man; his lover and the mother of his children.
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| Mary Ann Bugg, born on 7 May 1834 in the Gloucester area of New South Wales to a convict named James Bugg and an Indigenous Worimi woman named Charlotte |
The father of Captain Arthur Phillip, the first Governor of the colony of New South Wales, was Jacob Phillip, a German Jew born in Frankfurt, Germany. His mother was Elizabeth Breach, an English woman.
A convict ancestor of the former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, named Mary Reibey (nee Haydock), was a convicted horse thief, sentenced to transportation to New South Wales for seven years, after being arrested, age of 13, dressed as a boy and calling herself James Burrow. Mary married Thomas Reibey, at the age of 17. Before Thomas died, he left Mary a vast pastoral, shipping and sealing business. Mary extended the operations and prospered and was said to be worth £20,000 in 1816. She became a friend of Governor Macquarie and assisted him in creating the first Bank of New South Wales. Her face has been on Australian twenty-dollar notes since 1994.
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| Mary Reibey née Haydock (12 May 1777 – 30 May 1855) was an English-born merchant, shipowner and trader who was transported to Australia as a convict. She gained her freedom, and became a much respected and successful businesswoman |
Matthew Flinders was the
first to circumnavigate Australia in 1803. At Encounter Bay on 8 April 1802, Matthew Flinders met Nicolas Baudin, captain of a Napoleon-sponsored French expedition. On his maps, Baudin referred to the land as
Terre Napoléon. Flinders referred to the continent as
Australia. Napoleon was obsessed with Australia and Captain Cook's journal and established a zoo with kangaroos, emus and a black swan. Baudin is said to have been shunned by Napoleon for failing to claim South Australia for France before Matthew Flinders did.
In 2019 the remains of the Royal Navy explorer Captain Matthew Flinders were found in an abandoned burial ground under Euston Station in London.
