The history of Australia is the history of the land and peoples which comprise the

Commonwealth of Australia. The modern nation came into existence on 1 January 1901
as a federation of former British colonies. The human history of Australia,
however, commences with the arrival of the first ancestors of Aboriginal
Australians by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 50,000 and 65,000 years
ago, and continues to the present day multicultural democracy.

Aboriginal Australians settled throughout continental Australia and many nearby

islands. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among
the longest surviving in human history.[1] The ancestors of today's ethnically and
culturally distinct Torres Strait Islanders arrived from what is now Papua New
Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled the islands on the northern tip of the
Australian landmass.

Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and
named the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern
coasts from around 1720, and possibly earlier. In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook
charted the east coast of Australia and claimed it for Great Britain. He returned
to London with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay (now in Sydney). The
First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788 to establish a
penal colony. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies
on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior. This period
saw a decline in the Aboriginal population and the disruption of their cultures due
to introduced diseases, violent conflict and dispossession of their traditional
lands. From 1871, the Torres Strait Islanders welcomed Christian Missionaries, and
the islands were later annexed by Queensland, choosing to remain a part of
Australia when Papua New Guinea gained independence from Australia a century later.

Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity. Transportation of

British convicts to Australia was phased out from 1840 to 1868. Autonomous
parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British
colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a
federation in 1901, and modern Australia came into being. Australia fought as part
of British Empire and later Commonwealth in the two world wars and was to become a
long-standing ally of the United States through the Cold War to the present. Trade
with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received more than 7 million
migrants from every continent. Supported by immigration of people from almost every
country in the world since the end of World War II, the population increased to
more than 25.5 million by 2021, with 30 per cent of the population born overseas.

Indigenous prehistory
Main article: History of Indigenous Australians
See also: Prehistory of Australia and Aboriginal history of Western Australia

Rock painting at Ubirr in Kakadu National Park. Evidence of Aboriginal art in

Australia can be traced back some 30,000 years.
The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians moved into what is now the Australian
continent about 50,000 to 65,000 years ago,[2][3][4][5] during the last glacial
period, arriving by land bridges and short sea crossings from what is now Southeast
Asia.[6]

The Madjedbebe rock shelter in Arnhem Land, in the north of the continent, is
perhaps the oldest site of human occupation in Australia.[2][7] From the north, the
population spread into a range of very different environments. Devil's Lair in the
extreme south-west of the continent was occupied around 47,000 years ago and
Tasmania by 39,000 years ago.[8] The oldest human remains found are at Lake Mungo
in New South Wales, which have been dated to around 41,000 years ago. The site
suggests one of the world's oldest known cremations, indicating early evidence for
religious ritual among humans.[9]
The spread of the population also altered the environment. From 46,000 years ago,
firestick farming was used in many parts of Australia to clear vegetation, make
travel easier, and create open grasslands rich in animal and vegetable food
sources.[10]

Kolaia man wearing a headdress worn in a fire ceremony, Forrest River, Western
Australia. Aboriginal Australian religious practices associated with the Dreamtime
have been practised for tens of thousands of years.
The Aboriginal population faced significant changes in the climate and environment.
About 30,000 years ago, sea levels began to fall, temperatures in the south-east of
the continent dropped by as much as 9 degrees Celsius, and the interior of
Australia became more arid. About 20,000 years ago, New Guinea and Tasmania were
connected to the Australian continent, which was more than a quarter larger than
today.[11]

About 19,000 years ago temperatures and sea levels began to rise. Tasmania became
separated from the mainland some 14,000 years ago, and between 8,000 and 6,000
years ago thousands of islands in the Torres Strait and around the coast of
Australia were formed.[11]

The warmer climate was associated with new technologies. Small back-bladed stone
tools appeared 15–19 thousand years ago. Wooden javelins and boomerangs have been
found dating from 10,000 years ago. Stone points for spears have been found dating
from 5–7 thousand years ago. Spear throwers were probably developed more recently
than 6,500 years ago.[12]

Aboriginal Tasmanians were isolated from the mainland from about 14,000 years ago.
As a result, they only possessed one quarter of the tools and equipment of the
adjacent mainland. Coastal Tasmanians switched from fish to abalone and crayfish
and more Tasmanians moved to the interior.[13]

Around 4,000 years ago the first phase of occupation of the Torres Strait Islands
began. By 2,500 years ago more of the islands were occupied and a distinctive
Torres Strait Islander maritime culture emerged. Agriculture also developed on some
islands and by 700 years ago villages appeared.[14]

Aboriginal society consisted of family groups organised into bands and clans
averaging about 25 people, each with a defined territory for foraging. Clans were
attached to tribes or nations, associated with particular languages and country. At
the time of European contact there were about 600 tribes or nations and 250
distinct languages with various dialects.[15][16] Estimates of the Aboriginal
population at this time range from 300,000 to one million.[17][18][19]

A Luritja man demonstrating his method of attack with a large curved boomerang
under cover of a thin shield (1920)
Aboriginal society was egalitarian with no formal government or chiefs. Authority
rested with elders and group decisions were generally made through the consensus of
elders. The traditional economy was cooperative, with males generally hunting large
game while females gathered local staples such as small animals, shellfish,
vegetables, fruits, seeds and nuts. Food was shared within groups and exchanged
across groups.[20] Some Aboriginal groups engaged in fire-stick farming,[21] fish
farming,[22] and built semi-permanent shelters.[23][24] The extent to which some
groups engaged in agriculture is controversial.[25][26][27] Some Anthropologists
describe traditional Aboriginal Australia as a "complex hunter-gatherer" society.
[24][28]
Aboriginal groups were semi-nomadic, generally ranging over a specific territory
defined by natural features. Members of a group would enter the territory of
another group through rights established by marriage and kinship or by invitation
for specific purposes such as ceremonies and sharing abundant seasonal foods. As
all natural features of the land were created by ancestral beings, a group's
particular country provided physical and spiritual nourishment.[29][16]

Aboriginal Australians developed a unique artistic and spiritual culture. The

earliest Aboriginal rock art consists of hand-prints, hand-stencils, and engravings
of circles, tracks, lines and cupules, and has been dated to 35,000 years ago.
Around 20,000 year ago Aboriginal artists were depicting humans and animals.[30]
According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework, the
Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The
Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the
ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land.[31]

Early European exploration

Main article: European maritime exploration of Australia
See also: Terra incognita and Terra Australis
Dutch discovery and exploration

Exploration by Europeans until 1812:

1606 Willem Janszoon
1606 Luis Vaez de Torres
1616 Dirk Hartog
1619 Frederick de Houtman
1644 Abel Tasman
1696 Willem de Vlamingh
1699 William Dampier
1770 James Cook
1797–99 George Bass
1801–03 Matthew Flinders

Abel Tasman, the first European to discover Van Diemen's Land, now known as
Tasmania
The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, captained by Willem Janszoon, made the
first documented European landing in Australia in 1606.[32] Later that year, Luís
Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New
Guinea's southern coast.[33]

In 1616, Dirk Hartog, sailing off course, en route from the Cape of Good Hope to
Batavia, landed on an island off Shark Bay, Western Australia.[34] In 1622–23 the
ship Leeuwin made the first recorded rounding of the southwest corner of the
continent.[35]

In 1627, the south coast of Australia was discovered by François Thijssen and named
after Pieter Nuyts.[36] In 1628, a squadron of Dutch ships explored the northern
coast particularly in the Gulf of Carpentaria.[35]

Abel Tasman's voyage of 1642 was the first known European expedition to reach Van
Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) and New Zealand, and to sight Fiji. On his second
voyage of 1644, he also contributed significantly to the mapping of the Australian
mainland (which he called New Holland), making observations on the land and people
of the north coast below New Guinea.[37]

Following Tasman's voyages, the Dutch were able to make almost complete maps of
Australia's northern and western coasts and much of its southern and south-eastern
Tasmanian coasts.[38]
British and French exploration

Lieutenant James Cook, the first European to map the eastern coastline of Australia
in 1770
William Dampier, an English buccaneer and explorer, landed on the north-west coast
of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699, and published influential descriptions of
the Aboriginal people.[39]

In 1769, Lieutenant James Cook in command of HMS Endeavour, travelled to Tahiti to

observe and record the transit of Venus. Cook also carried secret Admiralty
instructions to locate the supposed Southern Continent.[40] Unable to find this
continent, Cook decided to survey the east coast of New Holland, the only major
part of that continent that had not been charted by Dutch navigators.[41]

On 19 April 1770, the Endeavour reached the east coast of New Holland and ten days
later anchored at Botany Bay. Cook charted the coast to its northern extent and
formally took possession of the east coast of New Holland on 21/22 August 1770 when
on Possession Island off the west coast of Cape York Peninsula.[42]

He noted in his journal that he could "land no more upon this Eastern coast of New
Holland, and on the Western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which
belongs to the Dutch Navigators and as such they may lay Claim to it as their
property [italicised words crossed out in the original] but the Eastern Coast from
the Latitude of 38 South down to this place I am confident was never seen or
viseted by any European before us and therefore by the same Rule belongs to great
Brittan" [italicised words crossed out in the original].[43][44]

In March 1772 Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, in command of two French ships, reached
Van Diemen's land on his way to Tahiti and the South Seas. His party became the
first recorded Europeans to encounter the Indigenous Tasmanians and to kill one of
them.[45]

In the same year, a French expedition led by Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn, became the
first Europeans to formally claim sovereignty over the west coast of Australia, but
no attempt was made to follow this with colonisation.[46]

Colonisation
Plans for colonisation before 1788
Main article: European exploration of Australia

Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing To Combat (1784), lithograph based on
1770 sketch by Cook's illustrator Sydney Parkinson

A General Chart of New Holland including New South Wales & Botany Bay with The
Adjacent Countries and New Discovered Lands, published in An Historical Narrative
of the Discovery of New Holland and New South Wales, London, Fielding and
Stockdale, November 1786
Although various proposals for the colonisation of Australia were made prior to
1788, none were attempted. In 1717, Jean-Pierre Purry sent a plan to the Dutch East
India Company for the colonisation of an area in modern South Australia. The
company rejected the plan with the comment that, "There is no prospect of use or
benefit to the Company in it, but rather very certain and heavy costs".[47]

In contrast, Emanuel Bowen, in 1747, promoted the benefits of exploring and

colonising the country, writing:[48]

It is impossible to conceive a Country that promises fairer from its Situation than
this of TERRA AUSTRALIS, no longer incognita, as this Map demonstrates, but the
Southern Continent Discovered. It lies precisely in the richest climates of the
World... and therefore whoever perfectly discovers and settles it will become
infalliably possessed of Territories as Rich, as fruitful, and as capable of
Improvement, as any that have hitherto been found out, either in the East Indies or
the West.

John Harris, in his Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or Voyages and

Travels (1744–1748, 1764) recommended exploration of the east coast of New Holland,
with a view to a British colonisation.[49] John Callander put forward a proposal in
1766 for Britain to found a colony of banished convicts in the South Sea or in
Terra Australis.[50] Sweden's King Gustav III had ambitions to establish a colony
for his country at the Swan River in 1786 but the plan was stillborn.[51]

The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) saw Britain lose most of its North
American colonies and consider establishing replacement territories. Britain had
transported about 50,000 convicts to the New World from 1718 to 1775 and was now
searching for an alternative. The temporary solution of floating prison hulks had
reached capacity and was a public health hazard, while the option of building more
jails and workhouses was deemed too expensive.[52][53]

In 1779, Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent scientist who had accompanied James Cook on
his 1770 voyage, recommended Botany Bay as a suitable site for a penal settlement.
Banks's plan was to send 200 to 300 convicts to Botany Bay where they could be left
to their own devices and not be a burden on the British taxpayer.[54]

Landing of Lieutenant James Cook at Botany Bay, 29 April 1770

Under Banks's guidance, the American Loyalist James Matra, who had also travelled
with Cook, produced a new plan for colonising New South Wales in 1783.[55] Matra
argued that the country was suitable for plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco;
New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities; it could form
a base for Pacific trade; and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced
American Loyalists.[56] Following an interview with Secretary of State Lord Sydney
in 1784, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering
that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the
Individual".[57]

The major alternative to Botany Bay was sending convicts to Africa. From 1775
convicts had been sent to garrison British forts in west Africa, but the experiment
had proved unsuccessful. In 1783, the Pitt government considered exiling convicts
to a small river island in Gambia where they could form a self-governing community,
a "colony of thieves", at no expense to the government.[58]

In 1785, a parliamentary select committee chaired by Lord Beauchamp recommended

against the Gambia plan, but failed to endorse the alternative of Botany Bay. In a
second report, Beauchamp recommended a penal settlement at Das Voltas Bay in modern
Namibia. The plan was dropped, however, when an investigation of the site in 1786
found it to be unsuitable. Two weeks later, in August 1786, the Pitt government
announced its intention to send convicts to Botany Bay.[59] The Government
incorporated the settlement of Norfolk Island into their plan, with its attractions
of timber and flax, proposed by Banks's Royal Society colleagues, Sir John Call and
Sir George Young.[60]

There has been a longstanding debate over whether the key consideration in the
decision to establish a penal colony at Botany Bay was the pressing need to find a
solution to the penal management problem, or whether broader imperial goals — such
as trade, securing new supplies of timber and flax for the navy, and the
desirability of strategic ports in the region — were paramount.[61] Christopher and
Maxwell-Stewart argue that whatever the government's original motives were in
establishing the colony, by the 1790s it had at least achieved the imperial
objective of providing a harbour where vessels could be careened and resupplied.
[62]

The colony of New South Wales

Main article: History of Australia (1788–1850)
Establishment of the colony: 1788 to 1792

The perilous situation of The Guardian Frigate as she appeared striking on the
rocks of ice (c. 1790) – Robert Dighton; depicting the Second Fleet
The colony of New South Wales was established with the arrival of the First Fleet
of 11 vessels under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip in January 1788. It
consisted of more than a thousand settlers, including 778 convicts (192 women and
586 men).[63] A few days after arrival at Botany Bay the fleet moved to the more
suitable Port Jackson where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove on 26
January 1788.[64] This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day.
The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at
Sydney. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Phillip
described as being, 'with out exception the finest Harbour in the World [...] Here
a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security'.[65]

The territory of New South Wales claimed by Britain included all of Australia
eastward of the meridian of 135° East. This included more than half of mainland
Australia.[66] The claim also included "all the Islands adjacent in the Pacific"
between the latitudes of Cape York and the southern tip of Van Diemen's Land
(Tasmania).[67] In 1817, the British government withdrew the extensive territorial
claim over the South Pacific, passing an act specifying that Tahiti, New Zealand
and other islands of the South Pacific were not within His Majesty's dominions.[66]
However, it is unclear whether the claim ever extended to the current islands of
New Zealand.[68]

Arthur Phillip, first Governor of New South Wales

Founding of the settlement of Port Jackson at Botany Bay in New South Wales in 1788
– Thomas Gosse
Governor Phillip was vested with complete authority over the inhabitants of the
colony. His intention was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal
people and try to reform as well as discipline the convicts of the colony. Early
efforts at agriculture were fraught and supplies from overseas were scarce. Between
1788 and 1792 about 3546 male and 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney. Many
new arrivals were sick or unfit for work and the condition of healthy convicts also
deteriorated due to the hard labour and poor food. The food situation reached
crisis point in 1790 and the Second Fleet which finally arrived in June 1790 had
lost a quarter of its passengers through sickness, while the condition of the
convicts of the Third Fleet appalled Phillip. From 1791, however, the more regular
arrival of ships and the beginnings of trade lessened the feeling of isolation and
improved supplies.[69]

In 1788, Phillip established a subsidiary settlement on Norfolk Island in the South

Pacific where he hoped to obtain timber and flax for the navy. The island, however,
had no safe harbour, which led the settlement to be abandoned and the settlers
evacuated to Tasmania in 1807.[70] The island was subsequently re-established as a
site for secondary transportation in 1825.[71]

Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils, fixed on the

Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion, and moved many of the convicts
from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the
colony's economic life. This left Sydney Cove only as an important port and focus
of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper
the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a
building program, assisted by convict labour, advanced steadily. Between 1788 and
1792, convicts and their gaolers made up the majority of the population; however, a
free population soon began to grow, consisting of emancipated convicts, locally
born children, soldiers whose military service had expired and, finally, free
settlers from Britain. Governor Phillip departed the colony for England on 11
December 1792, with the new settlement having survived near starvation and immense
isolation for four years.[69]

Consolidation: 1793 to 1821

Governor William Bligh

After the departure of Phillip, the colony's military officers began acquiring land
and importing consumer goods obtained from visiting ships. Former convicts also
farmed land granted to them and engaged in trade. Farms spread to the more fertile
lands surrounding Paramatta, Windsor, Richmond and Camden, and by 1803 the colony
was self-sufficient in grain. Boat building developed in order to make travel
easier and exploit the marine resources of the coastal settlements. Sealing and
whaling became important industries.[72]

View of Sydney Cove (Aboriginal: Warrane) by Thomas Watling, 1794–1796

The New South Wales Corps was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment of
the British Army to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet.
Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade
in the colony. Governor William Bligh (1806 – 1808) tried to suppress the rum trade
and the illegal use of Crown Land, resulting in the Rum Rebellion of 1808. The
Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur,
staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history,
deposing Bligh and instigating a brief period of military rule prior to the arrival
from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810.[73][74]

Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to
1821, and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South
Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony to a budding civil society. He
established a bank, a currency and a hospital. He employed a planner to design the
street layout of Sydney and commissioned the construction of roads, wharves,
churches, and public buildings. He sent explorers out from Sydney and, in 1815, a
road across the Blue Mountains was completed, opening the way for large scale
farming and grazing in the lightly wooded pastures west of the Great Dividing
Range.[75][76]

Central to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists, whom he

considered should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. He
appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway as
colonial architect and William Redfern as a magistrate. His policy on emancipists
was opposed by many influential free settlers, officers and officials, and London
became concerned at the cost of his public works. In 1819, London appointed J. T.
Bigge to conduct an inquiry into the colony, and Macquarie resigned shortly before
the report of the inquiry was published.[77][78]

Expansion: 1821 to 1850

Map of the south eastern portion of Australia, 1850

In 1820, British settlement was largely confined to a 100 kilometre radius around
Sydney and to the central plain of Van Diemen's land. The settler population was
26,000 on the mainland and 6,000 in Van Diemen's Land. Following the end of the
Napoleonic Wars in 1815 the transportation of convicts increased rapidly and the
number of free settlers grew steadily.[79] From 1821 to 1840, 55,000 convicts
arrived in New South Wales and 60,000 in Van Diemen's Land. However, by 1830, free
settlers and the locally born exceeded the convict population of New South Wales.
[80]

From the 1820s squatters increasingly established unauthorised cattle and sheep
runs beyond the official limits of the settled colony. In 1836, a system of annual
licences authorising grazing on Crown Land was introduced in an attempt to control
the pastoral industry, but booming wool prices and the high cost of land in the
settled areas encouraged further squatting. By 1844 wool accounted for half of the
colony's exports and by 1850 most of the eastern third of New South Wales was
controlled by fewer than 2,000 pastoralists.[81][82]

In 1825, the western boundary of New South Wales was extended to longitude 129°
East, which is the current boundary of Western Australia. As a result, the
territory of New South Wales reached its greatest extent, covering the area of the
modern state as well as modern Queensland, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and
the Northern Territory.[83][68]

By 1850 the settler population of New South Wales had grown to 180,000, not
including the 70–75 thousand living in the area which became the separate colony of
Victoria in 1851.[84]

Establishment of further colonies

Main articles: History of Tasmania, History of Victoria, and History of Western
Australia
Main articles: History of South Australia and History of Queensland
After hosting Nicholas Baudin's French naval expedition in Sydney in 1802, Governor
Phillip Gidley King decided to establish a settlement in Van Diemen's Land (modern
Tasmania) in 1803, partly to forestall a possible French settlement. The British
settlement of the island soon centred on Launceston in the north and Hobart in the
south.[85][86] From the 1820s free settlers were encouraged by the offer of land
grants in proportion to the capital the settlers would bring.[87][88] Van Diemen's
Land became a separate colony from New South Wales in December 1825 and continued
to expand through the 1830s, supported by farming, sheep grazing and whaling.
Following the suspension of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840, Van
Diemen's land became the main destination for convicts. Transportation to Van
Diemen's Land ended in 1853 and in 1856 the colony officially changed its name to
Tasmania.[89]

Melbourne Landing, 1840; watercolor by W. Liardet (1840)

Pastoralists from Van Diemen's land began squatting in the Port Phillip hinterland
on the mainland in 1834, attracted by its rich grasslands. In 1835, John Batman and
others negotiated the transfer of 100,000 acres of land from the Kulin people.
However, the treaty was annulled the same year when the British Colonial Office
issued the Proclamation of Governor Bourke. The proclamation meant that from then,
all people found occupying land without the authority of the government would be
considered illegal trespassers.[90] In 1836, Port Phillip was officially recognised
as a district of New South Wales and opened for settlement. The main settlement of
Melbourne was established in 1837 as a planned town on the instructions of Governor
Bourke. Squatters and settlers from Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales soon
arrived in large numbers. In 1851, the Port Phillip District separated from New
South Wales as the colony of Victoria.[91][92]

The Foundation of Perth 1829 by George Pitt Morison

In 1826, the governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, sent a military garrison
to King George Sound to deter the French from establishing a settlement in Western
Australia. In 1827, the head of the expedition, Major Edmund Lockyer, formally
annexed the western third of the continent as a British colony.[93] In 1829, the
Swan River colony was established at the sites of modern Fremantle and Perth,
becoming the first convict-free and privatised colony in Australia. However, by
1850 there were a little more than 5,000 settlers. The colony accepted convicts
from that year because of the acute shortage of labour.[94][95]

Adelaide in 1839. South Australia was founded as a free-colony, without convicts.

The Province of South Australia was established in 1836 as a privately financed
settlement based on the theory of "systematic colonisation" developed by Edward
Gibbon Wakefield. Convict labour was banned in the hope of making the colony more
attractive to "respectable" families and promote an even balance between male and
female settlers. The city of Adelaide was to be planned with a generous provision
of churches, parks and schools. Land was to be sold at a uniform price and the
proceeds used to secure an adequate supply of labour through selective assisted
migration.[96][97][98] Various religious, personal and commercial freedoms were
guaranteed, and the Letters Patent enabling the South Australia Act 1834 included a
guarantee of Aboriginal land rights.[99] The colony, however, was badly hit by the
depression of 1841–44. Conflict with Indigenous traditional landowners also reduced
the protections they had been promised. In 1842, the settlement became a Crown
colony administered by the governor and an appointed Legislative Council. The
economy recovered and by 1850 the settler population had grown to 60,000. In 1851,
the colony achieved limited self-government with a partially elected Legislative
Council.[96][97][100]

Brisbane (Moreton Bay Settlement), 1835; watercolour by H. Bowerman

In 1824, the Moreton Bay penal settlement was established on the site of present-
day Brisbane. In 1842, the penal colony was closed and the area was opened for free
settlement. By 1850 the population of Brisbane had reached 8,000 and increasing
numbers of pastoralists were grazing cattle and sheep in the Darling Downs west of
the town. Frontier violence between settlers and the Indigenous population became
severe as pastoralism expanded north of the Tweed River. A series of disputes
between northern pastoralists and the government in Sydney led to increasing
demands from the northern settlers for separation from New South Wales. In 1857,
the British government agreed to the separation and in 1859 the colony of
Queensland was proclaimed.[101][102][103]