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The Province of South Australia was established in 1836 as a privately financed settlement based on the theory of "systematic colonisation" developed by Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Convict labour was banned in the hope of making the colony more attractive to "respectable" families and promote an even balance between male and female settlers.
The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonisation of Australia in 1788, which marks the start of consistent written documentation of Australia. This period has been variously estimated, with most evidence suggesting that it goes back between 50,000 and 65,000 years.
First permanent Australian city. [1] Largest city in Australia, capital of New South Wales. 1788 Parramatta: New South Wales Second-oldest settlement in Australia. [2] Now a part of the Sydney urban area. 1788 Kingston: Norfolk Island: Island settled as part of the Colony of New South Wales. [3] It is now a separate territory of Australia. 1791 ...
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, [17] is a country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. [18] Australia has a total area of 7,688,287 km 2 (2,968,464 sq mi), making it the sixth-largest country in the world and the largest in Oceania .
The ancestors of Aboriginal Australians began arriving from south-east Asia 50,000 to 65,000 years ago, during the last glacial period. [1] [2] Arriving by sea, they settled the continent and had formed approximately 250 distinct language groups by the time of European settlement, maintaining some of the longest known continuing artistic and religious traditions in the world.
Most proponents of the theory of Portuguese discovery of Australia have supported McIntyre's hypothesis that it was Mendonça who sailed down the eastern Australian coast and provided charts which found their way onto the Dieppe maps, to be included as "Jave la Grande" in the 1540, 1550s and 1560s.
Following European settlement, the growth of the new colony of New South Wales led to an increasing demand for arable land. [7] Governor Lachlan Macquarie supported expeditions to open up new lands to the south of the capital Sydney, including one to find an overland route to Jervis Bay, [8] an area which would later be incorporated into the ACT as its only coastal possession.
Due to the Victorian gold rush, Melbourne was Australia's largest city and a potential place for the capital. However Sydney was Australia's oldest city, and so also had a justifiable claim to host the new nation's Federal polity. Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria, Melbourne's state of location —supported Melbourne.