The Arrival of Europeans to Australia

by theworldismine in History, March 3, 2009

For anyone wanting to know about the arrival of Europeans to Australia.

During the first four years of the New South Wales Penal Colony, the community almost starved to death. At the same moment in time the Colony had to learn to cope with the isolation, pests, diseases, limited medical supplies, a harsh environment and climate. There was also a lack of proper shelter and transport facilities. Aggressive convicts and increasingly hostile Indigenous people also posed threats.

While everyone was trying to cope with that, three things confronted Phillip and other early governors; providing a sufficient supply of food, developing an internal economic system, and producing exports to pay for the colony’s imports from Great Britain.

Phillip established farms on the more fertile banks of the River Hawkesbury, a few kilometers north-west of Sydney. The Sandy Soil around Sydney was unsuitable for the farming. The land around River Hawkesbury was often flooded and also used by Aboriginals. The lack of cooperation with the Aborigines also meant the colonists were unable to discover any indigenous food sources beyond fish and kangaroo.

When the Aboriginal people first saw the white people they didn’t know what to think. The thought they might have been ghost or evil spirits. Some thought they might have been women as they had no beards and long hair.

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It became clear that the Europeans planned to stay. They were clearing land near sacred sites, fencing off properties which cut access to waterholes and hunting grounds, and fishing without permission of the indigenous elders. The Indigenous people were getting increasingly worried.

Many lives of Indigenous people were cut short in the years following European settlement. Introduced diseases (measles, smallpox, influenza, and whooping cough) accounted for many deaths. Others died lonely deaths poisoned by alcohol and many were slaughtered by the new colonists. Historians suggest that about 20,000 Indigenous people may have been killed during raids and frontier battles.

I think it was good that the English came to Australia because we have developed into our own independent nation. We wouldn’t have wanted the French here but it may have been better for the aboriginals. I don’t think there were many negatives for the Europeans. The Main Negative was that the Europeans killed off most of the Aboriginals. I believe the Indigenous Australians had most of the negatives; they lost most of their land and most of their culture and identity. It is only in the last 30 or so years that the Indigenous Australians are getting back some of what they lost. The Aborigines were here in Australia as far back as 50,000 BC and had kept the land looking untouched and we have been here since 1787 (Just 219 years) and there is almost no land that looks untouched by humans.