![]() ![]() The wool industry and the gold rushes of the 1850s provided an impetus for free settlers to come to Australia. The convicts were joined by free immigrants from the early 1790s. In all, about 160 000 men and women were brought to Australia as convicts from 1788 until penal transportation ended in 1868. The fleet arrived in Sydney Harbour on 26 January 1788, and it is on this day every year that Australia Day is celebrated. It was not until 1770 that another Englishman, Captain James Cook, aboard the Endeavour, extended a scientific voyage to the South Pacific in order to further chart the east coast of Australia and claim it for the British Crown.īritain decided to use its new outpost as a penal colony the First Fleet of 11 ships carried about 1500 people-half of them convicts. In 1688, William Dampier became the first British explorer to land on the Australian coast. Over the next two centuries, European explorers and traders continued to chart the coastline of Australia, then known as New Holland. Later that year, the Spanish explorer Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through the strait separating Australia and Papua New Guinea. The first recorded European contact with Australia was in March 1606, when Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon (c.1570 – 1630) charted the west coast of Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. ![]()
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