Impact of European settlement

Portrait of the Aboriginal explorer and diplomat Bungaree in British dress at Sydney in 1826.
Main article: Australian frontier wars
The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon
in 1606. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the
17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland.[33] Macassan trepangers visited
Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier.[34][35] Other European explorers
followed until navigator Lieutenant James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia for
Britain in 1770, without conducting negotiations with the existing inhabitants.[36] He returned
with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay (now in Sydney), New South Wales.
The first governor, Arthur Phillip, was instructed explicitly to establish friendship and good
relations with the Aborigines and interactions between the early newcomers and the ancient
landowners varied considerably throughout the colonial periodfrom the curiosity displayed
by the early interlocutors Bennelong and Bungaree of Sydney, to the outright hostility of
Pemulwuy and Windradyne of the Sydney region,[37] and Yagan around Perth. Bennelong and
a companion became the first Australians to sail to Europe, where they met King George III.
Bungaree accompanied the explorer Matthew Flinders on the first circumnavigation of
Australia. Pemulwuy was accused of the first killing of a white settler in 1790, and
Windradyne resisted early British expansion beyond the Blue Mountains.[38]
Conflict and disease

Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing To Combat (1770), sketched by Cook's
illustrator Sydney Parkinson.
According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, in Australia during the colonial period: "In a
thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse,
smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to
another ... The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and its ally, demoralisation".
[39]

Conflict in the Hawkesbury Nepean river district near the settlement at Sydney continued
from 17951816.[citation needed] Pemulwuy's War (17951802), Tedbury's War (18081809) and
the Nepean War (18141816) as well as the interwar violence of the 18041805 Conflict. It
was fought using mostly guerrilla-warfare tactics; however, several conventional battles also
took place. The wars resulted in the defeat of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Indigenous clans
who were subsequently dispossessed of their lands.[citation needed]
Even before the arrival of European settlers in local districts beyond coastal New South
Wales, Eurasian disease often preceded them. A smallpox epidemic was recorded near
Sydney in 1789, which wiped out about half the Aborigines around Sydney. Opinion is
divided as to the source of the smallpox. Some researchers argue that the smallpox was
acquired through contact with Indonesian fishermen in the far north and then spread across
the continent, reaching the Sydney area in 1789.[40][41] Other research by Craig Mear,[42]
Michael Bennett,[43] and Christopher Warren[44] argues that, despite controversy, it is highly
likely that the 1789 outbreak of smallpox was a deliberate act by British marines when they
ran out of ammunition and needed to expand the settlement out to Parramatta.[45] Smallpox
then spread well beyond the then limits of European settlement, including much of
southeastern Australia, reappearing in 182930, killing 4060 percent of the Aboriginal
population.[46]
The impact of Europeans was profoundly disruptive to Aboriginal life and, though the extent
of violence is debated, there was considerable conflict on the frontier. At the same time, some
settlers were quite aware they were usurping the Aborigines place in Australia. In 1845,
settler Charles Griffiths sought to justify this, writing; "The question comes to this; which has
the better rightthe savage, born in a country, which he runs over but can scarcely be said to
occupy ... or the civilized man, who comes to introduce into this ... unproductive country, the
industry which supports life."[47]

From the 1960s, Australian writers began to re-assess European assumptions about
Aboriginal Australiawith works including Alan Moorehead's The Fatal Impact (1966) and
Geoffrey Blainey's landmark history Triumph of the Nomads (1975). In 1968, anthropologist
W.E.H. Stanner described the lack of historical accounts of relations between Europeans and
Aborigines as "the great Australian silence."[48][49] Historian Henry Reynolds argues that there
was a "historical neglect" of the Aborigines by historians until the late 1960s.[50] Early
commentaries often tended to describe Aborigines as doomed to extinction following the
arrival of Europeans. William Westgarth's 1864 book on the colony of Victoria observed; "the
case of the Aborigines of Victoria confirms ...it would seem almost an immutable law of
nature that such inferior dark races should disappear."[51] However, by the early 1970s
historians like Lyndall Ryan, Henry Reynolds and Raymond Evans were trying to document
and estimate the conflict and human toll on the frontier.

Proclamation issued in Van Diemen's Land in 1816 by Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, which

explains the precepts of British Justice in pictorial form for the Tasmanian Aboriginals.
Tasmania suffered a higher level of conflict than the other British colonies.[52]

Truganini, a Tasmanian Aboriginal who survived the outbreak of disease and conflicts which
followed the British colonisation of Van Diemen's Land.
Many events illustrate violence and resistance as Aborigines sought to protect their lands
from invasion and as settlers and pastoralists attempted to establish their presence. In May
1804, at Risdon Cove, Van Diemen's Land,[53] perhaps 60 Aborigines were killed when they

approached the town.[54] The British established a new outpost in Van Diemen's Land
(Tasmania) in 1803. Although Tasmanian history is amongst the most contested by modern
historians, conflict between colonists and Aborigines was referred to in some contemporary
accounts as the Black War.[55] The combined effects of disease, dispossession, intermarriage
and conflict saw a collapse of the Aboriginal population of Tasmania from a few thousand
people when the British arrived, to a few hundred by the 1830s. Estimates of how many
people were killed during the period begin at around 300, though verification of the true
figure is now impossible.[56][57] In 1830 Governor Sir George Arthur sent an armed party (the
Black Line) to push the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes out of the British settled districts.
The effort failed and George Augustus Robinson proposed to set out unarmed to mediate with
the remaining tribespeople in 1833.[58] With the assistance of Truganini as guide and
translator, Robinson convinced remaining tribesmen to surrender to an isolated new
settlement at Flinders Island, where most later died of disease.[59][60]
In 1838, at least twenty-eight Aborigines were murdered at the Myall Creek in New South
Wales, resulting in the unprecedented conviction and hanging of six white and one African
convict settlers by the colonial courts.[61] Aborigines also attacked white settlersin 1838
fourteen Europeans were killed at Broken River in Port Phillip District, by Aborigines of the
Ovens River, almost certainly in revenge for the illicit use of Aboriginal women.[62] Captain
Hutton of Port Phillip District once told Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus
Robinson that "if a member of a tribe offend, destroy the whole."[63] Queensland's Colonial
Secretary A.H. Palmer wrote in 1884 "the nature of the blacks was so treacherous that they
were only guided by fearin fact it was only possible to rule...the Australian Aboriginal...by
brute force".[64] The most recent massacre of Aborigines was at Coniston in the Northern
Territory in 1928. There are numerous other massacre sites in Australia, although supporting
documentation varies.
From the 1830s, colonial governments established the now controversial offices of the
Protector of Aborigines in an effort to avoid mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and conduct
government policy towards them. Christian churches in Australia sought to convert
Aborigines, and were often used by government to carry out welfare and assimilation
policies. Colonial churchmen such as Sydney's first Catholic archbishop, John Polding
strongly advocated for Aboriginal rights and dignity[65] and prominent Aboriginal activist
Noel Pearson (born 1965), who was raised at a Lutheran mission in Cape York, has written
that Christian missions throughout Australia's colonial history "provided a haven from the
hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation".[66]

Aboriginal farmers at Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford, Victoria in

1858.

Hermannsburg Mission in the Northern Territory.

The Caledon Bay crisis of 193234 saw one of the last incidents of violent interaction on the
'frontier' of indigenous and non-indigenous Australia, which began when the spearing of
Japanese poachers who had been molesting Yolngu women was followed by the killing of a
policeman. As the crisis unfolded, national opinion swung behind the Aboriginal people
involved, and the first appeal on behalf of an Indigenous Australian to the High Court of
Australia was launched. Following the crisis, the anthropologist Donald Thomson was
dispatched by the government to live among the Yolngu.[67] Elsewhere around this time,
activists like Sir Douglas Nicholls were commencing their campaigns for Aboriginal rights
within the established Australian political system and the age of frontier conflict closed.
Co-operation
Frontier encounters in Australia were not universally negative. Positive accounts of
Aboriginal customs and encounters are also recorded in the journals of early European
explorers, who often relied on Aboriginal guides and assistance: Charles Sturt employed
Aboriginal envoys to explore the Murray-Darling; the lone survivor of the Burke and Wills
expedition was nursed by local Aborigines, and the famous Aboriginal explorer Jackey
Jackey loyally accompanied his ill-fated friend Edmund Kennedy to Cape York.[68] Respectful
studies were conducted by such as Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in their
renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899); and by
Donald Thomson of Arnhem Land (c. 19351943). In inland Australia, the skills of
Aboriginal stockmen became highly regarded and in the 20th century, Aboriginal stockmen
like Vincent Lingiari became national figures in their campaigns for better pay and improved
working conditions.[69]
Removal of children
The removal of indigenous children, by which mixed-race children of Australian Aboriginal
and Torres Strait Islander descent were removed from their families by Australian Federal and
State government agencies and church missions, was a policy actively conducted in the
period between approximately 1905 and 1969. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity
Commission argued that these removals constituted attempted genocide[70] and had a major
impact on the Indigenous population.[71] Such interpretations of Aboriginal history are
disputed by a few historians such as Keith Windschuttle as being exaggerated or fabricated
for political or ideological reasons.[72] This debate is part of what is known within Australia as
the History Wars.