Inhabited for more than 50,000 years by Aborigines, Australia is thought to have broken away from Antarctica 96 million years ago and some 44 million years after the super-continent Gondwana began to break up.
Australia continues to move away from Antarctica, albeit at the rate of only a couple of centimetres each year, and is now the sixth largest country in the world with a land area of just over 7.6 million square kilometres.
The island, which lies in the smallest continent, is located to the south of Indonesia – from where people are first believed to have crossed over around 70,000 years ago – and between the Pacific and Indian Oceans.
Today Australia is made up of six states – New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Tasmania – and two territories: Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory. The country has a total population of roughly 20 million people.
It was not until the 16th Century that European explorers from countries such as Portugal, the Netherlands and England were attracted to the undiscovered land, although at that time it was considered by them to be a barren area not ripe for settlement.
This was to change however in 1770, when Captain James Cook famously discovered more fertile land aboard his ship Endeavour along the east coast and, having stopped at Botany Bay to the south of modern Sydney, claimed it for Britain under the name New South Wales.
In 1779 Joseph Banks, a naturalist on Endeavour, proposed New South Wales as a solution to the problem of overcrowding in British prisons, the problem having worsened since America’s War of Independence had ended the practice of sending British convicts there.
Eight years later the first fleet of 11 ships with more than 700 convicts set sail. Men and women packed the ships, along with two years food supply, which set off for Botany Bay under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip. Phillip would later become the colony’s first governer.
The ships arrived in Botany Bay on 26 January 1788, but soon moved on to Sydney Cove with more than 150,000 convicts following the same route over the subsequent years before the practice came to an end in 1852. Many of them chose to stay in Australia after their sentences.
This date – 26 January – is now known as Australia Day with celebrations marking the birth of modern Australia, although it is less than a decade since the six states and two territories began to celebrate this on the same day.
Free settlers had first started arriving in the country from 1793, lured by promises of cheap land and convict labour, but it was the discovery of gold in the 1850s that resulted in a mass influx of people keen to seek fortune.
One consequence of this was that the native Aborigines, who are believed to represent the world’s oldest civilisation, were ejected from their tribal lands by settlers seeking farming and mining lands.
By the mid-point of the 19th Century explorers had also mapped the whole island and uncovered a way through the Blue Mountains. This in turn enabled the full discovery of the inland areas.
Australia achieved its status as a nation on 1 January 1901 when the different colonies of settlers formed a federation. The country did however retain its links with Britain, which would see the Australian forces fight side by side with their British counterparts in both of the World Wars.
The end of these wars saw more migrants arrive in Australia, all of them contributing to the creation of today’s multicultural country, which is said to have around 200 different nationalities residing within its shores.