The First Australians
The Aborigines Discovered Australia

The first human inhabitants of Australia were the Aborigines. They arrived here around 50,000 years ago over a route that took them out of Africa, through India, Malaysia, Borneo and Papua New Guinea. Since Australia was separated from other countries by an ocean at this time it is believed that they must have made their final journey here by raft or canoe.

They are a dark-skinned people belonging to the Australoid group who probably came from Asia. Nobody is quite sure how they came to Australia around 60,000 years ago. They may have walked and sailed here from Asia.

The Aborigines were nomadic hunter-gathers. They roamed from place to place. They hunted animals using spears and boomerangs. They also gathered fruits, nuts and yams which they ate.

There were around 300,000 aborigines in about 250 tribal groups before the first white settlers arrived in Australia in 1776. Each group had its own territory, traditions, beliefs and language. The Aborigines have one of the oldest civilizations in the world.<

They all believed in the Dreamtime which is the centrepiece of aboriginal culture.

First Encounter with White Settlers
The Spirits of Their Ancestors?

The aborigine people had never seen white people until Captain James Cook landed in Botany Bay in 1770. They were shocked to see these white people in their strange clothes.

When the aborigines first saw the ships of the "First Fleet" enter Botany Bay in 1778 with so many white skinned people they thought they were the spirits of their dead ancestors (after all they were so white). In actual fact these were the first European settlers led by Captain Arthur Phillip.

At first the Aborigines were friendly towards the visitors but were very confused at the way white foreigners behaved:

• Why did the foreigners walk on aborigine sacred sites and dig up aborigine graves?
• Why did they boss each other around and beat and hang people?
• Why did they chop down trees and take food without asking?
• Why were they mean and selfish towards each other and not sharing?

The First Misunderstanding
A Clash of Cultures

While exploring around the new settlement Captain Arthur Phillip befriended an old aborigine man. When he returned to camp he met the old man again and gave him some beads and a hatchet. Later that night Captain Phillip discovered the old man taking one of his shovels and slapped the man on his shoulder and pushed him away while pointing to the spade. The old man was very upset and could not understand why his friend was acting this way.

Aborigines share what they have with their friends and have very little concept of personal property.

Captain Phillip was very careful not to offend the aborigines but Aborigine and the Settlers cultures were so different! They didn't understand each other.

Conflict
The Massacre of the Innocents

When the aborigines realised that the white men were not the spirits of their dead ancestors and that the settlers were taking more and more of their land and destroying the trees and wild life they began to fight back.

The aborigines killed a number of the settlers and even wounded Captain Phillip in an attack. The settlers reacted by slaughtering and poisoning the aborigines and systematically destroying the land and wild animals they lived on.

Disease
The White Man's Curse

White settlers brought diseases the aborigines had never had before (diseases which were quite common in Europe at the time). Aborigines caught smallpox and even the common cold and died in large numbers. Within two years smallpox had killed almost half the aborigine population around Sydney.

Depravation
A Shameful Past

The British colonists declared that before their arrival all of the continent was terra nullius (uninhabited by humans). They used this as justification for taking whatever they wanted.

As more and more white settlers moved in and occupied the fertile lands the aborigines were pushed further and further away from their traditional lands and into the harsh arid interior. Their families were broken up, their children taken away from them and sent to be "civilised", their sacred sites destroyed and their wild animals hunted.

The killing and exploitation of aborigines by whites continued well into the twentieth century. The aboriginal population declined from the original 300,000 when the first white settlers arrived to only about 60,000 people (less than the number of people that can be seated at the MCG stadium!).

Aborigines were second class citizens in their own land. They only got the right to vote in 1967.

This is a shameful part of Australian history.

Reconciliation
An Attempt to Make Amends

Much progress has been made over recent years to try to right the wrongs of the past. Where possible the government has been returning land to their traditional owners and encouraging Aborigines to rebuild their culture and lives.

On the 13th February 2008 the Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, made a formal apology to the Indigenous Australians for their past mistreatments.

They are the single most disadvantaged group of people in Australia.

There is still a long way to go!

Some sites worth visiting:

Wikipedia

Australian Indigenous Culture

Civilization: Australia