History of Australia

Rare card · No. 45447

The Commonwealth of Australia was proclaimed on 1 January 1901 as a federation of six self-governing former British colonies. The human history of Australia, however, commences with the arrival of the first ancestors of Aboriginal Australians from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years ago, and continues to the present multicultural democracy. Aboriginal Australians settled throughout continental Australia and many nearby islands. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving in human history. The ancestors of today's ethnically and culturally distinct Torres Strait Islanders arrived from what is now Papua New Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled the islands on the northern tip of the Australian landmass. Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and named the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts from around 1720, and possibly earlier. In...

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