The European Settlement of Australia: The History and Legacy of Early Expeditions and British Settlements on the Australian Continent

*Includes pictures *Includes contemporary accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading “It is quite time that our children were taught a little more about their country, for shame’s sake.” – Henry Lawson, Australian poet A land of almost 3 million square miles has lain since time immemorial on the southern flank of the planet, so isolated that it remained entirely outside of European knowledge until 1770. However, the first human footprints on this vast territory were felt 70,000 years earlier, as people began to cross the periodic land bridges and the short sea crossings from Southeast Asia. The history of the indigenous inhabitants of Australia, known in contemporary anthropology as the “Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia,” is a complex and continually evolving field of study, and it has been colored by politics. For generations after the arrival of whites in Australia, the Aboriginal people were disregarded and marginalized, large