Australia's Pre-History

Early Knowledge of Australia

Humans entered the Australian continent from the south-East Asian area during the last glaciation at least 40,000 years ago, at a time when sea levels were much lower than they are today. Even so, these first migrations, would have involved a sea voyage of some 60 kilometres, making is possibly the world's earliest sea-borne migration. Settlement was well established 25,000 to 30,000 years ago and by 20,000 years ago almost the entire continent was inhabited.

The original Australians lived as hunter-gatherers, using tools of wood, bone, shell and stone. Archaeological evidence indicates that a simple pan-continental toolmaking tradition existed, characterised by stoneware tools; scrapers were used to fashion further tools out of wood. This continued until 5,000 to 6,000 years ago, at which time a range of more specialised small tools began to emerge. But, in Tasmania, isolated 12,000 years ago by the post-glacial rising seas, Aboriginals still maintained the culture of the late Pleistocene period, until subject to the influence of European settlement of the island.

Estimates by anthropologists of the Aboriginal population at the time of European settlement have varied greatly. In 1930, anthropologist Radcliffe-Browne postulated a minimum figure of 300,000, which was officially accepted by the Government. Recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained. They were divided into some 500 small groups and spoke a variety of languages and dialects. These groups or tribes were further divided into 'bands' or clusters of family groups and formed the basic self-sufficient economic unit. Labour was divided between the sexes: the men hunted while the women foraged for roots and seeds and caught small animals which also formed a basic part of their subsistence. Local groups would congregate when food or water supplies were abundant or when ceremonial obligations demanded. Exchanges at these ceremonial gatherings led to the wide dispersal of goods.

Religious and ceremonial activities relating to the land were a vital part of Aboriginal life. Evidence suggests they had developed the use of ochre as a ritual painting material as early as 25,000 years ago.

The physical barriers of distance and aridity within Australia itself caused, in part, cultural isolation and linguistic diversity of its people. European exploration and settlement was for most Aboriginal societies their first contact with an outside culture. The impact of this settlement in those areas where the colonists established themselves led rapidly to the disappearance of the traditional Aboriginal way of life.

Speculation on the Great South land

The Ancient Greeks, who are said to have believed the world was round, postulated the existence of a Great South Land. The Christian peoples of the Middle Ages Europe, for religious reasons however, no longer believed in a global world and saw the earth as flat and bounded by the fiery edges of the equator.

First reference to Australia came from the Greeks, the Arabs, the Chinese, the Malays and Indians but are thought to have been largely a product of imagination. To the Malays, for example, the Great South land though not uninhabited was the Land of the Dead. To the Hindu-Buddhists, who came from the first century AD to colonise Sumatra and Java, there were 'islands of gold' to the south of Java and to the south-east of Timor but, like the Middle Ages Christians before them, the beliefs shaped dangers too perilous to confront.

The Chinese recognised the fantasy of these and similar reports which they would certainly have heard of while trading in the area. Their maps show they knew of the Malay peninsula,Sumatra, Java, Bali, Lombok, Timor, the Moluccas, Celebes and Borneo. However, the distances involved were too great and the evidence too small and fanciful, and their primary aim was to maintain the freedom of their existing trade routes rather than embark on new explorations. By the time they might have felt any incentive to explore further, domestic political changes curtailed their outward growth.

The Portuguese and the Spanish

Theories that place the Portuguese here sometime in the 16th century have some support from inconclusive charts and documents but the assumptions rest largely on three points:

  • the extensive exploration undertaken by this highly civilised seafaring race elsewhere about the globe;
  • the Portuguese obsession with the quest for wealth, knowledge and conversion;
  • and the certainty that the Portuguese debated the issue of a 'terra australis incognita' (unknown southern land).

Yet hard, clinching evidence of contact is lacking.

Viceroys of Spain's American empire regularly sought new lands. One such expedition left Callao, Peru, in December 1605 under Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, a man of the Counter-Reformation who desired that Catholicism should prevail in the southland. De Quiros reached the New Hebrides and named the island group 'Australia del Espiritu Santo' and he and some later Catholic historians saw this as the discovery of Australia. But the more important voyage was probably that of the other ship of the expedition that continued after de Quiros himself was forced to return to the Americas. Under Luis Vaez de Torres, this other ship sailed through Torres Strait but almost certainly failed to sight Australia. Although both de Quiros and de Torres returned to Hispanic America with enthusiasm for further explorations, they both failed to persuade Spanish officialdom to this course.

Discoveries by the Dutch

A few weeks before de Torres, the Dutch vessel 'Duyfken', after coming along the south coast of New Guinea from the he west, swung over to the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in or about March 1606. Under the command of William Jansz, the 'Duyfken' traversed some 200 miles of the Australian coastline as far as Cape Keer-Weer (Turn Again) without actually discovering Torres Strait. Subsequent visits were made by other Dutch vessels sailing from the Cape of Good Hope to Java which were often carried too far east and hit Australia.

The first and most famous of these was Dirk Hartog's 'Eendracht', from which men landed and left a memorial at Shark Bay, Western Australia in October 1616. Hartog was followed by Houtman (1619), Carstensz (1623), Nuyts (1626-27), Thijssen (1627), Pelsaert (1629), Tasman (1642) and others.

 Most important of all was the work of Abel Tasman, who was such a well-respected seaman in the Dutch East Indies that the Governor-General of the Indies, Anthony van Diemen, commissioned him to undertake a southern exploration. In November 1642, having made a great circuit of the seas, Tasman sighted the west coast of what he called Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania).

He then explored New Zealand before returning to Batavia. A second expedition in 1644 contributed to the knowledge of Australia's northern coast, and established the name of 'New Holland' for the southern landmass.