History

===HOME HISTORY POPULATION & LAND DIET CULTURE ===

Since British Settlement
British colonisation of Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay in 1788.

The most immediate consequence of British settlement was a wave of European epidemic diseases such as measles and tuberculosis. In addition, smallpox has sometimes been attributed to European settlers. However, Macassan fishermen from South Sulawesi and nearby islands may have introduced smallpox to Australia prior to European settlement. A smallpox epidemic, which is believed to have been introduced by the Macassans is estimated to have killed up to 90% of the local Darug people in 1789 and has often been attributed to be inadvertently caused by white settlers. In the 19th century, smallpox was the principal cause of Aboriginal deaths.

A consequence of British settlement was appropriation of land and water resources, which continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries as rural lands were converted for sheep and cattle grazing.

In 1834 there occurred the first recorded use of Aboriginal trackers, who proved very adept at navigating their way through the Australian landscape and finding people.

During the 1860s, Tasmanian Aboriginal skulls were particularly sought internationally for studies into craniofacial anthropometry. Truganini, the last Tasmanian Aborigine, had her skeleton exhumed within two years of her death in 1876 by the Royal Society of Tasmania, and was later placed on display. Campaigns continue to have Aboriginal body parts returned to Australia for burial.

In 1868, a group of mostly Aboriginal cricketers toured England, becoming the first Australian cricketers to travel overseas.



By 1900 the recorded Indigenous population of Australia had declined to approximately 93,000 although this was only a partial count as both mainstream and tribal Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islanders were poorly covered with desert Aboriginal peoples not counted at all until the 1930s. During the first half of the 20th century, many Indigenous Australians worked as stockmen on sheep stations and cattle stations.
 * 20th and 21st centuries**

Although, as British subjects, all Indigenous Australians were nominally entitled to vote, generally only those who "merged" into mainstream society did so. Only Western Australia and Queensland specifically excluded Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders from the electoral rolls. Despite the Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 that excluded "Aboriginal natives of Australia, Asia, Africa and Pacific Islands except New Zealand" from voting unless they were on the roll before 1901, South Australia insisted that all voters enfranchised within its borders would remain eligible to vote in the Commonwealth and Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders continued to be added to their rolls albeit haphazardly.

Despite efforts to bar their enlistment, around 500 Indigenous Australians fought for Australia in the First World War.

1934 saw the first appeal to the High Court by an Aboriginal Australian and it succeeded. Dhakiyarr was found to have been wrongly convicted of the murder of a white policeman, for which he had been sentenced to death; the case focused national attention on Aboriginal rights issues. Dhakiyarr disappeared upon release. In 1938, the 150th anniversary of the arrival of British First Fleet was marked as a Day of Mourning and Protest at an Aboriginal meeting in Sydney.

Hundreds of Indigenous Australians served in the Australian armed forces during World War Two – including with the Torres Strait Light Infantry Battalion and The Northern Territory Special Reconnaissance Unit, which were established to guard Australia's North against the threat of Japanese invasion.

The 1960s was a pivotal decade in the assertion of Aboriginal rights. In 1962, Commonwealth legislation specifically gave Aboriginal people the right to vote in Commonwealth elections. In 1966, Vincent Lingiari led a famous walk-off of Indigenous employees of Wavehill Station, in protest against poor pay and conditions (later the subject of a Paul Kelly song).[citation needed] The landmark 1967 referendum called by Prime Minister Harold Holt allowed the Commonwealth to make laws with respect to Aboriginal people, and for Aboriginal people to be included when the country does a count to determine electoral representation. The referendum passed with 90.77% voter support.

In the controversial 1971 Gove land rights case, Justice Blackburn ruled that Australia had been terra nullius before British settlement, and that no concept of native title existed in Australian law. In 1971, Neville Bonner joined the Australian Senate as a Senator for Queensland for the Liberal Party, becoming the first Indigenous Australian in the Federal Parliament. A year later, the Aboriginal Tent Embassy was established on the steps of Parliament House in Canberra. In 1976, Sir Douglas Nicholls was appointed as the 28th Governor of South Australia, the first Aboriginal person appointed to vice-regal office.

In sport Evonne Goolagong Cawley became the world number-one ranked tennis player in 1971 and won 14 Grand Slam titles during her career. In 1973 Arthur Beetson became the first Indigenous Australian to captain his country in any sport when he first led the Australian National Rugby League team, the Kangaroos. In 1982, Mark Ella became Captain of the Australian National Rugby Union Team, the Wallabies. In 1984, a group of Pintupi people who were living a traditional hunter-gatherer desert-dwelling life were tracked down in the Gibson Desert in Western Australia and brought in to a settlement. They are believed to be the last uncontacted tribe in Australia. In 1985, the Australian government returned ownership of Uluru (formerly known as Ayers Rock) to the local Pitjantjatjara Aboriginal people.