Australia
Aborigines -indigenous people *maybe land bridges from SE Asia hunting and gathering
Possessions– boomerangs, spears, tools of wood and stone for digging, cutting and carrying things
Art of aborigines – rock painting symbolic of spiritual ancestors
Dutch Exploration
Captain James Cook – Great Britain; *made way through coral reefs to reach mainland; penal colony
Convicts-debtors shipped to Australia from Britain to work out their sentence
First Fleet of prisoners to arrive in Australia 1852, over 150,000 convicts
Convicts building roads
Early settlements – difficult because soil was poor *people didn’t like the native plants for food
Effects on aborigines – lands were taken away by settlers *weakened by western diseases and breakdown of tribal ties
Language and Religion English official language Christianity introduced 1788 Irish convicts mostly Roman Catholic Others Anglican and Methodist Mostly Christian; Roman Catholic and Anglican Church
Australian Gold Rush – gold was discovered in the interior of Australia and caused the west to grow