![]() ![]() As was the prevailing thinking at the time, "what better place to dump our unwanted riff-raff than the opposite end of the world?" And so Commodore Arthur Phillip departed England on the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships (two naval escorts, six convict transports and three cargo ships) bound for New South Wales. When the newly formed nation of America refused to accept boatloads of English prisoners originally slated for a penal colony, English authorities reconsidered their plans. Captain Cook wasn’t the first to bump into Australia-the Dutchman Willem Janszoon and Englishman William Dampier had done so far earlier-but he was the first to see opportunity in a remote and dangerous land. There these hunter-gatherers prospered in isolation, with a rich oral and spiritual culture, until 1770 AD when James Cook sailed along the coast and claimed the whole place for Great Britain. Settled in turn by Aboriginals, convicts, paupers, prospectors, and bushrangers, the land “down under” was first occupied by people around 45 thousand years ago when some managed to migrate through the Indonesian islands and reach the northern shore of the continent.
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