Despite being one of the most diverse countries on earth today, the Australian continent has been isolated from the rest of the world for most of its history. How did this relatively young nation come into being, and how did people from all over the world end up on this gigantic island in the middle of the ocean? In Europe, people could only speculate about what might or might not exist in the far south of the Earth, but they suspected that there might be a “hidden” continent. Some have created hypothetical maps of this mythical ‘Southern Land’, or ‘Terra Australis’ as it is called in Latin.
It turns out they were right, except for the undiscovered part. Anthropologists believe that Aborigines were the first, if not the first, to leave Africa for Asia and what is now Indonesia about 70,000 years ago, before exploring small islands by boat. When they arrived in New Guinea, they supposedly crossed into Australia over a land bridge, which was later flooded when sea levels began to rise. Ancient cave paintings on the continent also depict giant kangaroos and birds that went extinct about 40,000 years ago, suggesting that Australian Aborigines arrived early enough to witness the Pleistocene megafauna. suggests. Dingo he was only introduced to this country 4,000 years ago, so he must have been in contact with the outside world, albeit more or less isolated.
British imprisonment
The first major contact of the Australian Aborigines with the outside world came in 1606 when the Dutch navigator Willem and his Janszoon landed on the coast and explored it. As the European continent became known, many explorers visited it, but it wasn’t until British Lieutenant James Cook decided that Australia was the perfect place to find some colonies that no one was there. No one ever set foot inland. By this time Britain was suffering from overpopulation, widespread poverty, and the crime that went with it, and had already sent many prisoners of war to penal colonies in North America, but the newly independent America was a shiploaded British No longer interested in the prisoners being dumped there. coast.
Australia (then known as New South Wales) seemed the perfect solution for Cook, and the first penal colony was established in his early 1788. The first fleet landed at Botany Bay with over 700 prisoners and several hundred crew members. Members as well as new settlers found the area inhospitable, so they moved to another port and began settling around present-day Sydney. On 26 January, Captain Arthur Phillips raised the British flag, established an imperial claim to the land, and began construction of the settlement. The first few years were very difficult due to the constant threat of starvation, but most of the settlers managed to survive long enough.
Australia becomes
In the years that followed, the British sent thousands of prisoners, and Australia’s native Aborigines suffered heavy losses from diseases such as smallpox, killing about 70% of the population. As resources were depleted by the introduction of so many foreigners, violence broke out between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans, leading to the Pemulwi and Nepean Wars.
The first free settlers arrived in Verona in 1793, ushering in the era of British open settlement. After the discovery of gold in the 1850s, over 500,000 new immigrants arrived on the continent. Some made money, but most were left with nothing, but the Gold Rush completely changed Australia, and between 1850 and 1870 the population swelled to over a million people. Under this ever-growing nation, a national identity and an entire economy, including agriculture and industry, began to take shape, and the population became more diverse.
England finally abandoned shipping prisoners in 1868, resisting the constant influx of prisoners as the free people settled. In 1900, the various regions voted to form a Commonwealth known as the Commonwealth of Australia, and on 1 January the following year, Australia gained full autonomy. Political and cultural ties with Great Britain remain strong, and Australia was allied with Great Britain during both world wars, but when Australia was forced to fight its most feared and despicable enemy, the emus, Britain returned the favor. Rejected.
EMU WARS
In 1932, Australia’s emu population was spiraling out of control, and Australian farmers were bewildered by 1.5-meter-long raptors that constantly destroyed crops and property. Due to the Great Depression and other factors, they were already waiting for their pods, so they turned to Secretary of Defense George Pierce for help. Asking the government to kill its national bird was a strange proposition, but Pierce agreed to a somewhat unpatriotic task.
A unit of the Royal Australian Artillery, armed with light machine guns, marched into Campion’s camp to clear out the beetle plague, but the task proved to be much more difficult than expected. . Birds were incredibly fast and their weapons were not designed for long range. They decide to ambush to get closer to the birds, but miraculously both machine guns jam after shooting down only 12 emus. To make matters worse, the emus seemed to learn evasive tactics. One commander said, “Now it seems like each group has its own leader…” They then attempted to shoot the emus from the truck, but were unable to reduce their numbers as the emus escaped despite being hit by several shots. before being fatally injured.