The major stages of the country's history at a glance
A few milestones to place the major stages in the building of the modern country — not an exhaustive summary of Australian history, which is already widely documented elsewhere.
Aboriginal settlement and British colonisation
The continent has been inhabited for some 50,000 to 65,000 years by Aboriginal peoples and, in the Torres Strait, by the Torres Strait Islanders, organised into hundreds of nations with distinct languages and cultures. After the British explorer James Cook claimed the east coast for Great Britain in 1770, the First Fleet, commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip, landed at Sydney Cove on January 26, 1788 and founded a penal colony: some 162,000 convicts would be transported there until 1868. Colonisation relied on the doctrine of "terra nullius" (land belonging to no one), which denied any pre-existing Aboriginal sovereignty and paved the way for the dispossession of land and lasting frontier violence against Indigenous peoples throughout the 19th century.
Milestones
January 26, 1788
Arrival of the First Fleet at Sydney Cove
Captain Arthur Phillip founds the penal colony of New South Wales, the first permanent British settlement on the continent.