Australia i/əˈstreɪljə, ɒ-, -iə/,[10][11] officially the Commonwealth of Australia,[12] is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Indonesia, East Timor and Papua New Guinea to the north; the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Caledonia to the north-east; and New Zealand to the south-east.
For at least 40,000 years[13] before the first British settlement in the late 18th century,[14][15] Australia was inhabited by indigenous Australians,[16] who spoke languages grouped into roughly 250 language groups.[17][18] After the discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, Australia's eastern half was claimed by Great Britain in 1770 and settled through penal transportation to the colony of New South Wales from 26 January 1788. The population grew steadily in subsequent decades; the continent was explored and an additional five self-governing Crown Colonies were established.
On 1 January 1901, the six colonies federated, forming the Commonwealth of Australia. Since Federation, Australia has maintained a stable liberal democratic political system that functions as a federal parliamentary democracy and constitutional monarchy. The federation comprises six states and several territories. The population of 23.1 million[5] is highly urbanised and heavily concentrated in the eastern states.[19]
Australia is a developed country and one of the wealthiest in the world, with the world's 12th-largest economy. In 2012 Australia had the world's fifth-highest per capita income,[20] Australia's military expenditure is the world's 13th-largest. With the second-highest human development index globally, Australia ranks highly in many international comparisons of national performance, such as quality of life, health, education, economic freedom, and the protection of civil liberties and political rights.[21] Australia is a member of the United Nations, G20, Commonwealth of Nations, ANZUS, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), World Trade Organization, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation, and the Pacific Islands Forum.
Etymology
Pronounced [əˈstɹæɪljə, -liə] in Australian English,[22] the name Australia is derived from the Latin australis, meaning "southern". The country has been referred to colloquially as Oz since the early 20th century.[N 4] Aussie is a common colloquial term for "Australian". In neighbouring New Zealand, and sometimes in Australia itself, the term "Aussie" is sometimes applied as a noun to the nation as well as its residents.[27]
Legends of Terra Australis Incognita—an "unknown land of the South"—date back to Roman times and were commonplace in medieval geography, although not based on any documented knowledge of the continent. Following European discovery, names for the Australian landmass were often references to the famed Terra Australis.
The earliest recorded use of the word Australia in English was in 1625 in "A note of Australia del Espíritu Santo, written by Sir Richard Hakluyt", published by Samuel Purchas in Hakluytus Posthumus, a corruption of the original Spanish name "Tierra Austral del Espíritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit)[28] for an island in Vanuatu.[29] The Dutch adjectival form Australische was used in a Dutch book in Batavia (Jakarta) in 1638, to refer to the newly discovered lands to the south.[30] Australia was later used in a 1693 translation of Les Aventures de Jacques Sadeur dans la Découverte et le Voyage de la Terre Australe, a 1676 French novel by Gabriel de Foigny, under the pen-name Jacques Sadeur.[31] Referring to the entire South Pacific region, Alexander Dalrymple used it in An Historical Collection of Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean in 1771. By the end of the 18th century, the name was being used to refer specifically to Australia, with the botanists George Shaw and Sir James Smith writing of "the vast island, or rather continent, of Australia, Australasia or New Holland" in their 1793 Zoology and Botany of New Holland,[32] and James Wilson including it on a 1799 chart.[33]
The name Australia was popularised by the explorer Matthew Flinders, who pushed for it to be formally adopted as early as 1804. When preparing his manuscript and charts for his 1814 A Voyage to Terra Australis, he was persuaded by his patron, Sir Joseph Banks, to use the term Terra Australis as this was the name most familiar to the public. Flinders did so, and published the following rationale:
There is no probability, that any other detached body of land, of nearly equal extent, will ever be found in a more southern latitude; the name Terra Australis will, therefore, remain descriptive of the geographical importance of this country, and of its situation on the globe: it has antiquity to recommend it; and, having no reference to either of the two claiming nations, appears to be less objectionable than any other which could have been selected.*[34]
In the footnote Flinders wrote:
* Had I permitted myself any innovation on the original term, it would have been to convert it to AUSTRALIA; as being more agreeable to the ear, and an assimilation to the names of the other great portions of the earth.[35]
This is the only occurrence of the word Australia in that text; but in Appendix III, Robert Brown's General remarks, geographical and systematical, on the botany of Terra Australis, Brown makes use of the adjectival form Australian throughout,[36]—the first known use of that form.[37] Despite popular conception, the book was not instrumental in the adoption of the name: the name came gradually to be accepted over the following ten years.[38]
The first time that the name Australia appears to have been officially used was in a despatch to Lord Bathurst of 4 April 1817 in which Governor Lachlan Macquarie acknowledges the receipt of Capt. Flinders' charts of Australia.[39] On 12 December 1817, Macquarie recommended to the Colonial Office that it be formally adopted.[40] In 1824, the Admiralty agreed that the continent should be known officially as Australia.[41]
History
Main article: History of Australia
Exploration of what was then New Holland by Europeans until 1812
1606 Willem Janszoon
1606 Luis Váez de Torres
1616 Dirk Hartog
1619 Frederick de Houtman
1644 Abel Tasman
1696 Willem de Vlamingh
1699 William Dampier
1770 James Cook
1797–1799 George Bass
1801–1803 Matthew Flinders
Portrait of Captain James Cook, the first European to map the eastern coastline of Australia in 1770.
Human habitation of the Australian continent is estimated to have begun between 42,000 and 48,000 years ago,[42] possibly with the migration of people by land bridges and short sea-crossings from what is now South-East Asia. These first inhabitants may have been ancestors of modern Indigenous Australians.[43] At the time of European settlement in the late 18th century, most Indigenous Australians were hunter-gatherers, with a complex oral culture and spiritual values based on reverence for the land and a belief in the Dreamtime. The Torres Strait Islanders, ethnically Melanesian, were originally horticulturalists and hunter-gatherers.[44] The northern coasts and waters of Australia were visited sporadically by fishermen from Maritime Southeast Asia.[45]
The first recorded European sighting of the Australian mainland, and the first recorded European landfall on the Australian continent, are attributed to the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon. He sighted the coast of Cape York Peninsula in early 1606, and made landfall on 26 February at the Pennefather River near the modern town of Weipa on Cape York.[46] The Dutch charted the whole of the western and northern coastlines and named the island continent "New Holland" during the 17th century, but made no attempt at settlement.[46] William Dampier, an English explorer and privateer, landed on the north-west coast of New Holland in 1688 and again in 1699 on a return trip.[47] In 1770, James Cook sailed along and mapped the east coast, which he named New South Wales and claimed for Great Britain.[48] With the loss of its American colonies in 1780, the British Government sent a fleet of ships, the "First Fleet", under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, to establish a new penal colony in New South Wales. A camp was set up and the flag raised at Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, on 26 January 1788,[15] a date which became Australia's national day, Australia Day although the British Crown Colony of New South Wales was not formally promulgated until 7 February 1788. The first settlement led to the foundation of Sydney, the establishment of farming, industry and commerce; and the exploration and settlement of other regions.
A British settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, in 1803 and it became a separate colony in 1825.[49] The United Kingdom formally claimed the western part of Western Australia (the Swan River Colony) in 1828.[50] Separate colonies were carved from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859.[51] The Northern Territory was founded in 1911 when it was excised from South Australia.[52] South Australia was founded as a "free province"—it was never a penal colony.[53] Victoria and Western Australia were also founded "free", but later accepted transported convicts.[54][55] A campaign by the settlers of New South Wales led to the end of convict transportation to that colony; the last convict ship arrived in 1848.[56]
Port Arthur, Tasmania was Australia's largest prison for reoffending convicts.
The indigenous population, estimated to have been between 750,000 and 1,000,000 at the time European settlement began,[57] declined for 150 years following settlement, mainly due to infectious disease.[58] A government policy of "assimilation" beginning with the Aboriginal Protection Act 1869 resulted in the removal of many Aboriginal children from their families and communities—often referred to as the Stolen Generations—a practice which may also have contributed to the decline in the indigenous population.[59] The Federal government gained the power to make laws with respect to Aborigines following the 1967 referendum.[60] Traditional ownership of land—aboriginal title—was not recognised until 1992, when the High Court case Mabo v Queensland (No 2) overturned the legal doctrine that Australia had been terra nullius ("land belonging to no one") before the European occupation.[61]
A gold rush began in Australia in the early 1850s[62] and the Eureka Rebellion against mining licence fees in 1854 was an early expression of civil disobedience.[63] Between 1855 and 1890, the six colonies individually gained responsible government, managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire.[64] The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs,[65] defence,[66] and international shipping.
The Last Post is played at an Anzac Day ceremony in Port Melbourne, Victoria. Similar ceremonies are held in most suburbs and towns.
On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies was achieved after a decade of planning, consultation and voting.[67] The Commonwealth of Australia was established and it became a dominion of the British Empire in 1907. The Federal Capital Territory (later renamed the Australian Capital Territory) was formed in 1911 as the location for the future federal capital of Canberra. Melbourne was the temporary seat of government from 1901 to 1927 while Canberra was being constructed.[68] The Northern Territory was transferred from the control of the South Australian government to the federal parliament in 1911.[69] In 1914, Australia joined Britain in fighting World War I, with support from both the outgoing Commonwealth Liberal Party and the incoming Australian Labor Party.[70][71] Australians took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front.[72] Of about 416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded.[73] Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) at Gallipoli as the birth of the nation—its first major military action.[74][75] The Kokoda Track campaign is regarded by many as an analogous nation-defining event during World War II.[76]
Britain's Statute of Westminster 1931 formally ended most of the constitutional links between Australia and the UK. Australia adopted it in 1942,[77] but it was backdated to 1939 to confirm the validity of legislation passed by the Australian Parliament during World War II.[78][79] The shock of the United Kingdom's defeat in Asia in 1942 and the threat of Japanese invasion caused Australia to turn to the United States as a new ally and protector.[80] Since 1951, Australia has been a formal military ally of the US, under the ANZUS treaty.[81] After World War II Australia encouraged immigration from Europe. Since the 1970s and following the abolition of the White Australia policy, immigration from Asia and elsewhere was also promoted.[82] As a result, Australia's demography, culture, and self-image were transformed.[83] The final constitutional ties between Australia and the UK were severed with the passing of the Australia Act 1986, ending any British role in the government of the Australian States, and closing the option of judicial appeals to the Privy Council in London.[84] In a 1999 referendum, 55% of voters and a majority in every state rejected a proposal to become a republic with a president appointed by a two-thirds vote in both Houses of the Australian Parliament. Since the election of the Whitlam Government in 1972,[85] there has been an increasing focus in foreign policy on ties with other Pacific Rim nations, while maintaining close ties with Australia's traditional allies and trading partners.
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