The word "aboriginal" means 'from the beginning', and the aborigines were indeed the original inhabitants of Australia. They themselves were once immigrants, originally from Africa, and first settled in Australia over 42,000 years ago. The first ship to land Europeans on Australian soil, the Eendracht, was Dutch, and arrived there in 1616. In 1642 another Dutch explorer, Abel Tasman, discovered the island we now call Tasmania. However, the Dutch did not think that the land they called New Holland was worth formally occupying, and it wasn’t until 1770 that it was officially claimed for Britain by Captain James Cook.

Britain formally colonised the area in 1786, calling it New South Wales. The British were mainly interested in this seemingly inhospitable land because it was an ideal place to start a new prison settlement. Britain was suffering from overcrowded prisons at home, having lost their prison colonies in the United States after the War of Independence. In 1788, the first fleet of 11 ships and 1,350 people (the majority of them convicts) arrived in Australia at Sydney Cove. From about 1815 the colony began to grow. Although the journey from Europe took over a year and was very difficult, people began to hear that Australia wasn’t just a prison colony, but also a fine place for anyone to make a fresh start in life, and that some people were making a fortune there from the free land they could use for sheep farming. In 1850 the discovery of gold attracted many more Europeans – two per cent of the population of Britain and Ireland moved to Australia during the following Gold Rush. Inevitably there was increased conflict with the Aborigines, who were brutally hunted and poisoned by the settlers.