Overview
Australia is a nation that occupies an entire continent in the Southern Hemisphere, and its history begins with its First Peoples. Humans were present at least 65,000 years ago, and hundreds of language groups adapted to environments ranging from the arid interior to the tropical north and the temperate south-east.
The major eras
Dutch navigators reached the west coast in the 17th century, and in 1770 Britain’s James Cook charted the east coast and claimed it. A penal colony founded the first settlement at Sydney in 1788; the gold rushes of the 1850s swelled the population, and in 1901 six colonies federated into the Commonwealth of Australia. Two world wars, large-scale post-war immigration, and a long reckoning over Indigenous rights shaped the modern multicultural nation.