Australia

Aborigines -indigenous people*maybe land bridges from SE Asiahunting 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 andReligion• 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