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Origins of the Aboriginal people
Some Aboriginal people maintaining, maintaining their traditional beliefs, believe that they have lived in Australia since the Dreamtime, the era of creation.
The Aranda people of Central Australia believe that sometime in the distant past, sleeping superhuman beings, who were at the one time human and animal, spontaneously broke throught he surface of a cold and lifeless earth. As they did so, the sun began to shine, the winds blew and the rains came. These great ancestors then freed the humans and breathed life into them and into the land around them. They performed marvels, great creative deeds and composed stories and ceremonies to aly down guide-lines of behaviour. Then, weary from their efforts, they returned to the rocks, trees and water-holes or to the sky. Similarly the people of Arnhem Land believed that their life began when the Djanggawul sisters and their brother came across the sea from the north bearing their sacred mat and dilly-bag from which all life was produced.
(R. Broome, Aboriginal Australians, George Allen & Unwin, 1982, p.9.)
Aboriginal stories such as these are preserved through oral tradition. Some of these stories include the arrival of ancestors by canoe from overseas.
Historians and archaeologists argue that Aborigines came to Australia from Southeast Asia many thousands of years ago, when the sea levels were much lower than they are today and when Papua New Guinea and Tasmania were both joined to the mainland. It is thought that they came by sea in canoes or rafts, perhaps surviving on cooked fish during the voyage.
The sea level of early Australia -
believed to have been the route of Aboriginal arrivalIn the map above the hatched sections around Cape York of Peninsula (the top of Qld - under PNG) represents the masses of land that may have been above sea level at the time that Aboriginals migrated to Australia. The arrows show the passages that they may have taken to arrive in Australia. It is believed the may have travelled as far as Burma. Another scenario suggests that they may have sailed to PNG or Timor then walked to Australia.
Archaeological discoveries have revealed that the continent was inhabited by humans at least 40 000 years ago. It is possible that there were several waves of settlers. The dingo was introduced to Australia only 8000 to 4000 years ago and it is thought that it was brought here by a later wave of settlers. There is little doubt that Aborigines were the first human inhabitants of the Australian continent.
The Dingo has believed to have arrived
with a later tribe of settlers
Modern Australian History
| The beginning of Immigration to Australia | Convicts in Australia | Letter from a convict |
Immigration
| immigration background | Attitudes towards European immigration | Postwar immigration | Extracts - Immigration Restriction Act 1901 | Refugee's story |
Chronology of key events from:
| 1848-1890 leading upto Gold | 1892-1945 | 1945-73 | 1973-92 |
