Australia

        The continent of Australia and [1a] the Great Barrier Reef harbor many animal species not found elsewhere, including [1b] the kangaroo, [1c] koala, platypus, dingo (wild dog), Tasmanian devil (racoon-like marsupial), wombat (bear-like marsupial), and barking and frilled lizard. The greatest threat facing [1d] wild koala populations today is the destruction and fragmentation of their habitat--tall eucalypt (gumtree) forests and low eucalypt woodlands. Since white settlement of Australia approximately 80% of the koala's habitat has been destroyed. Now only about 100,000 koalas remain.

        During the Pleistocene Ice Ages polar ice sheets covered great areas. Sea level was so low that Borneo, Java, and Sumatra were part of the Asian mainland. Thus in 42,000 BC Earth's first ocean explorers were within sailing distance of Greater Australia (New Guinea was part of the same land mass), which they proceeded to settle. They had the best stone tools and boats in the world. By 28,500 BC they had spread into the area that is now New Guinea.
        Then about 10,000 years ago the ice melted and the oceans rose--splitting New Guinea from Australia and Indonesia from rest of Asia. The people that remained in Southeast Asia were eventually replaced by other Asians coming out of China. Those in Australia, however, survived in their islolated environment. Agriculture was never able to develop, because of the dry, unpredictable climate. Large animals such as diprotodons, giant kangeroos, and giant wombats had already disappeared, perhaps because they were hunted to extinction. Dogs didn't arrive until around 1600 BC with the Austronesian expansion. Thus [3a] the Aborigines continued their primitive lifesytle as hunter-gatherers until the Europeans came. Without any large, dense populations complex culture and advanced technology did not emerge . Neither did epidemic diseases. For thousands of years this lifestyle and cultural practices based on their [3b] Dreamtime beliefs remained almost unchanged. They hunted with [3c] boomerangs, played music on [3d] the didjeridu (or didgeridoo), and created their own [3e] art.

        In 1606 sailors from the Dutch ship [4a b] Duyfken (Dove) out of Java landed at Cape Keerweer, and were driven off by natives after making the first landing by Europeans. The aborigine population is estimated to have been 300,000. Brief and sporadic encounters followed, including one in Tasmania in 1642. One close encounter in 1688 found its way into the notes of a passenger on a pirate ship. One year after [4c d] William Dampier [1652-1715] published accounts of ten years with pirates, New Voyage Round the World (1697), the British Navy sent him out in the old HMS Roebuck to explore New Holland (as Australia was then known) and look for a new continent (Terra Australis) that was supposed to be nearby (Muffley, n.d.). He started to explore the west coast of Australia, but found it disappointing. Although his ship sank, he made his way back to London safe and sound, only to be court-martialed, found guilty, deprived of his pay, and forbidden to serve in the navy again. He wrote a book, Voyage to New Holland, and went back to being a pirate (Engels, n.d.).
        [4e] James Cook [1728-1779] on the HMS Resolution explored the east coast in 1770 and named it New South Wales (NSW). Eighteen years later a shipload of 736 convicts and some government officials arrived in Botany Bay on January 26 (now celebrated as Australia Day). Within a year Aborigines were dying of smallpox, the flu, and other epidemic diseases from Europe. This penal colony expanded and moved to an area that became Sydney.

        When the ill-fated [5a b] The fourth governor, William Bligh [1754-1817]--recently returned from his mutiny on the Bounty--tried to stem the corruption of the NSW Corps, he was imprisoned by them in the infamous Rum Rebellion. However, the Rum Corps were to find out like the Bounty's crew, he was not a man to be toyed with. Forced once again to sail to Indonesia as he had after the mutiny on the Bounty, he alerted authorities in England to the situation. With the arrival of [5c d e] Governor Lachlan Macquarie [1762-1824] in 1810, accompanied by the 87th Regiment, the NSW Rum Corps were sent packing back to England. Macquarie was succeeded by Thomas Brisbane [1773-1860].

        By 1830, Britain had claimed the entire continent, and the immigration of free settlers began to accelerate. Europeans took the best land and drove the Aborigines into the dry areas, so that we now think of them as a desert people.
        In 1834 South Australia was founded by followers of British colonial theorist Edward Gibbon Wakefield [1796-1862] who obtained a charter August 2 with support from the duke of Wellington and historian George Grote [1794-1871]. The first settlers arrived in 1836 at Kangaroo Island.
        The Australian colony that is now called Victoria was settled for the first time by West Australia rancher Edward Henty [1810-1878] and his brothers at Portland Bay. They were joined a year later by John Batman [1801-1839] and his associates from Tasmania.

        In 1846 Irish emigration to Australia was spurred by the Great Irish Famine and repeal of the Corn Law. In 1851 more than 250,000 Irish emigrated.
        In 1850 Scottish explorer Edward John Eyre [1815-1901] (given up for dead) arrived at Albany in Western Australia July 7 after a year-long journey across the Nullarbor Plain with his aborigine companion Wylie. Eyre was the first white man to cross the dry plain.
        In 1851 a gold rush followed the discovery by sheep station manager Edward Hammond Hargreaves, 35, who found the yellow metal near Bathhurst in New South Wales. Four years later Victoria's colonial government responded to the influx of 33,000 Chinese immigrants when gold was discovered. A new law restricted immigration of Chinese and provided for a tax of $10 on each Chinese immigrant.
        In 1857 the British Parliament eased game laws after years of harsh penalties that made anyone caught poaching liable to transportation to Australia for 7 years. Poached game was a dietary mainstay for many families.

        In 1860 a prize of 2,000 pounds was offered to the first [8a] expedition to cross Australia from south to north. Two groups set out: the South Australia group led by John McDouall Stuart and the Victoria group under the leadership of Irish policeman Robert Burke [1821-1861]. Burke's expedition left Melbourne with 17 men, 26 camels, and 28 horses and reached the Gulf of Carpentaria a year later but Burke died of starvation on the return trip, as did his lieutenant English astronomer William Wills [1834-1861], and another man. Burke and Wills ran out of food in the desert north of Menindee, but were rescued three times by well-fed Aborigines who lived there. Then, Burke foolishly shot his pistol at one of them and they all left. Within a month Burke and Wills starved to death. (Diamond, 1999, 296)
        [8b] Uluru, the world's largest monolith, was spotted by Ernest Giles in October 1872. The next year surveyor William Gosse named it Ayers Rock for politician Henry Ayers. It is made of course-grained sandstone rich in feldspar. Depending on the time of day and the atmospheric conditions, the rock can dramatically change color.

        In 1877 Argentina challenged Australia as a source of meat for Europe by sending its first refrigerator ship to France with a cargo of meat. Imported meat accounted for 17 percent of British meat consumption. The figure included livestock and preserved meat, most of it salted, along with dried "Hamburg" beef and tinned, boiled mutton and beef from Australia, eaten in quantity despite its poor quality because it is half the price of fresh meat. Three years later the first totally successful shipment of frozen beef and mutton from Australia to England arrived in early February aboard the S.S. Strathleven.

        In 1885 Broken Hill Proprietary Co., Ltd., founded in Australia, developed a monopoly on the nation's iron and steel production. Mount Gipps sheep station manager George McCulloch, his hired hand Charles Rasp [1846-1907], and 12 other partners staked claims to a tin mine found by Rasp in 1883, the mine proved to be the world's largest silver-lead-zinc deposit, grossed more than $150 million before it closed in 1939, and paid dividends of nearly $16 million.

        The decline in the U.S. wheat crop in 1895 encouraged Australia to enter the export market and compete actively for European sales.

        In 1889 Helena Rubinstein [1870-1965] left her native Poland to seek a husband in Australia. She later moved to London, introduced medicated face creams and waterproof mascara, pioneered the sales strategy of sending saleswomen out on road tours to demonstrate the proper application of makeup, and built up a $60 million business.

        The commonwealth was proclaimed Jan. 1, 1901. Edmund Barton [1849-1920] became the first Prime Minister.

        In 1907 Norman Everard Brookes, 28, (Australia) became the first non-Briton to win the men's singles at Wimbledon.

        On 25 April 1915, the Anzacs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) landed at a difficult and desolate spot on the [16] Gallipoli peninsula and fought against the Turks, who were allies of the Germans during World War I. At great cost the Anzacs, British and French made small advances, but suffered heavy casualties. In August another offensive was made, but it too failed.
        The British Government ordered an evacuation. By day, the Anzacs kept up their attacks with more Anzacs observed to be landing--by night soldiers were withdrawn until 20 December 1915, when the Anzac retreat was complete. Turks continued to bombard the Anzacs' empty trenches for about three weeks.

        In November 1920 QANTAS (Queensland and Northern Territories Air Service) began service.
        In 1930 British aviator Amy Johnson [1903-1941] arrived in Australia May 24 after making the first solo flight by a woman from London (19.5 days).

        In 1922 Australia passed laws to protect koalas after fur trappers killed 8 million in less than 4 years and nearly wiped them out of existence.
        The native human population had also suffered, going from a high of 300,000 before Europeans arrived to a low of 60,000. The last large-scale massacre of Aborigines, 31 of them, occurred in Alice Springs.

        On January 22, 1943 Australian military forces helped take the southeastern tip of New Guinea from the Japanese, assuring the safety of their country from invasion. They lost 29,395 soldiers and sailors in World War II.

        In 1952 Australian cattleman-prospector Lang Hancock [1909-1992] discovered a mountain of solid iron ore in the Hammersley Range when his light plane was forced off course and he saw rust-colored outcroppings. Hancock kept the location secret for 10 years until a change in state mining laws permited him to stake his claim. The ore deposit earned Hancock an estimated $250 million, making him the richest man in Australia. In 1964 the largest iron-ore contract in history was signed to supply Japan's major steel firms with 65.5 million tons of ore for the next 16 years. The iron permited a major expansion of the Japanese steel industry thereby helping make Japan an industrial superpower.

        In 1965 Soviet Russia suffered a second crop failure, as it had in 1963, and was forced to pay gold for wheat from Australia and Canada.
        In 1967 Mao Zedong brought Chinese agriculture into the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, but the country was wracked by civil war. Peasants abandon collective grain fields to cultivate private gardens and sell the produce on the black market. Thus China continued to import 4 to 7 million tons of wheat, mostly from Australia and Canada, as she has done since 1962.

        On April 29, 1965 Australia decided to send troops to aid South Vietnam. It continued to fight there until withdrawing its forces in the fall of 1971.

        Racially discriminatory immigration policies were abandoned in 1973, after 3 million Europeans (half British) had entered since 1945. The 50,000 aborigines and 150,000 part-aborigines were mostly detribalized, but there were several preserves in the Northern Territory. They remained economically disadvantaged.

        The Sydney Opera House was completed in 1973.

        On Christmas Day 1974 a cyclone (typhoon in the Indian Ocean) destroyed Darwin forcing virtual abandonment of the city.

        Australia's agricultural success has made the country among the top exporters of beef, lamb, wool, and wheat. Major mineral deposits have been developed, largely for export.

        Prime Minister Paul Keating announced Sept. 19, 1993, a plan to make Australia a republic by 2001. Now John Howard is prime minister.

        Darren Hayes [1972-] and Daniel Jones [1973-] formed their band [17a] Savage Garden in 1994 and hit number 1 in Australia the next year with ''To The Moon & Black''.

        Australia now has a [18a] population of about 20.1 million people living in an [18b] area of about 7.7 million square kilometers, which gives it a very low population density and makes it one of the largest countries in the world.