World Travel Guide Blog

Australia is a land of contrasts - topographical, cultural, physical, meterological and visual. About 40,000 years ago, the Aborigines were the first to settle. They lived as hunters and gatherers for this entire time, living with a close link to nature, although backburning and other poor agricultural techniques have since been realised to have caused significant deforestation, salinification of the soil and elimination of much of the natural diversity of the landscape. Such a poor ability to interact with nature, despite it being so important, helps explain why much of Australia is now unsuitable for sustaining life. Interestingly, this provides one of the few examples of where the native population damaged the land more than later waves of settlers. Their way of living developed into a complex culture based on oral tradition and intricate social bounds, which was almost destroyed by the second wave of settlers, who were able to populate the land with much more success.

In the 15th century, explorers from the Netherlands and possibly from parts of the Arabic world and other European countries are believed to have landed in the far North and West of the country. However, due to the severity of the climate, the poor soil and the complete absence of conditions required for living, gave up and went somewhere better. In 1770, Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay, which today is part of Sydney. (in fact Sydney Airport juts out into Botany Bay) This commenced with the landing of the First Fleet in Sydney Cove (now Sydney Harbour, near Circular Quay railway station) on 26th January 1788. The British government decided to use convicts to tame the newly discovered continent and did not care a lot for the people that were already there (for example, the land where Melbourne now stands was sold by the aborigines for a handful of beads). Deportation to Australia lasted for about eighty years. After this all immigrants went more or less voluntarily.

Australia became an independent nation on 1 January 1901. The British Parliament passed legislation allowing the six Australian colonies to govern in their own right as part of the Commonwealth of Australia. In 1986 history was made again when parliament passed legislation that ended the power for the Britsh Partliament to legislate for Australia.

Today a growing proportion of Australians were born overseas. Their combined cultural heritage makes the Australian culture a real global one. However, most cultural groups tend to live in enclaves with little interaction and real multiculturalism such as in London, New York or other major cities does not exist. Australia has also discovered the value of the Aboriginal culture and uses it to sell trinkets to a strong tourist market.

While Australia is a nation in its own right, it is also a technically a continent, with large differences between regions. It has a reputation as a land of leisure, with sun, sea and an enviable 'Crocodile Dundee' outdoor lifestyle, but this is just a very narrow conception of a continent. The reality however, is that most people work all day, and then spend the weekend running around trying to pack life into the 2 days on the weekend. Only the homeless and tourists have time to sit around on the beach, or laze away days watching sport on TV.