The Aborigines were the original inhabitants of Australia. There is no record of how or when they came to the island continent. The first European to see Australia was Dutch navigator William Jansz, who sighted Cape York in 1606. In 1642, another Dutch navigator, Abel Tasman, discovered the island of Tasmania off the southeastern coast. In 1770, Captain James Cook, in his ship the Endeavour, discovered Botany Bay on the east coast. Cook claimed the land for England and named it New South Wales.
The first colonists were prisoners, who were deported to relieve overcrowding in England's jails, as well as the soldiers who guarded the prisoners and the soldiers' families. Captain Arthur Phillip, the first governor, set up a penal colony at Port Jackson (now known as Sydney) on January 26, 1788. Over the course of the next 80 years, about 160,000 prisoners were brought to Australia.
During the 19th century, explorers ventured into the interior. In 1829, Charles Sturt followed the Murray River for thousands of miles to its mouth near Adelaide. In 1841, Edward John Eyre crossed the continent from east to west. Not all expeditions were successful. Robert Burke and William Wills died in the attempt to cross the continent from south to north.
The discovery of gold by Edward Hargraves in May 1851 in Bathurst, New South Wales, led to a gold rush. Gold miners came from all over the world, hoping to make their fortunes. A few succeeded, but many could not make enough to afford their passage home and settled in Australia as farmers. Because of the gold rush, the population tripled within a decade. In 1868, Great Britain stopped sending prisoners to Australia.
In 1901, the country became the Commonwealth of Australia. Australia fought alongside Britain in the First World War. About 400,000 Australians served in the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC). During the 1930s, Australia suffered from the worldwide economic depression. In 1939, at the outbreak of the Second World War, Australian troops were sent to Europe and North Africa. The Japanese, who entered the war in 1941, bombed Darwin in 1942, and it was feared that they would invade Australia. In the Battle of the Coral Sea, Australians and Americans together forced the Japanese to retreat.
After the war, the government accepted more than two million immigrants, mainly from Europe, including many Italians and Greeks. After the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, many Southeast Asians immigrated to Australia. During this period, the government also granted increased political rights to the Aborigines. Aborigines received the right to vote in the 1960s.
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