As a “hole in the iron curtain”, Berlin was to become a focal point for the Cold War in Europe. Discuss the validity of the above statement for the period 1948-1961

THE COLONISATION OF AUSTRALIA
•Indigenous people of Australia (Aborigines) had been in Australia for
70 000 years.
• The word Aborigine comes from Latin – ab =from and originem =
origin. The Aborigines were recognized as having been in Australia
‘from the beginning.’
• They were hunters gatherers with a close spiritual link to the
landscape, which they believed had been created by their ancestors.

EARLY EUROPEAN EXPLORATION AROUND AUSTRALIA
• European exploration of Australia first began in February 1606, when
Dutch navigator Janszoon landed in the Cape York Peninsula.
•In October of the same year Spanish explorer de Torres sailed
through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands.
• Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and
southern coasts in the 17th century, and called the continent ‘New
Holland’.
Captain James Cook
• Cook’s career as an explorer began in August 1768, when he left England on Endeavour
with nearly 100 crewmen in tow. Their journey was ostensibly a scientific
expedition—they were charged with sailing to Tahiti to observe the transit of Venus
across the face of the sun—but it also had a hidden military agenda.
• Cook carried sealed orders instructing him to seek out the “Great Southern Continent,” an
undiscovered landmass that was believed to be somewhere near the bottom of the globe.
The explorer followed orders and sailed south to the 40th parallel, but found no evidence
of the fabled continent. He then turned west and circled New Zealand, proving it was a
pair of islands and not connected to a larger landmass.
• On his way back from New Zealand, Cook sailed along the length of Australia’s eastern
coast, which had never before been seen by Europeans. Cook claimed it for Britain and
named it New South Wales. Cook and his crew then returned home, arriving in July 1771.
• Cook was to undertake two more voyages in search of the Great Southern Continent and
came very close to Antarctica. On his third voyage he called in at Hawaii, where he was
stabbed and killed.

The arrival of Lt James Cook in 1770 marked the beginning of the end for the
aboriginal ancient way of life.
Cook’s voyage of exploration had sailed under instructions to take possession of
the Southern Continent if it was uninhabited, or with the consent of the natives
if it was occupied. Either way, it was to be taken.
Upon his arrival, Lt Cook declared the land he called New South Wales to be the
property of Britain’s King George III, and ignored the inconvenient fact that the
land was already well populated.
His failure to even attempt to gain the consent of the natives began the legal
fiction that Australia was a wasteland which was unoccupied.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE BRITISH
• The first fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay (Sydney) in
January 1788 to establish a penal colony, the first on the mainland.
•In the century that followed, the British established other penal
colonies in Australia and European explorers began to venture into
the interior.
•Indigenous Australians were greatly weakened and their numbers
diminished by introduced diseases and conflict with the colonists
during this period.
THE ARRIVAL OF THE BRITISH
•In 1788 the British set up a penal colony in the area which became
modern day Sydney.
• The Industrial Revolution in Britain had caused huge social changes
which found people needing to steal or poach in order to survive.
• Britain also wanted to prevent Australia from being colonized by the
French.
•Other penal colonies were established in Tasmania (van Diemen’s
Land) and Perth on the Swan River.
•Other colonies were established in S Australia (Adelaide), Victoria and
Queensland (Brisbane).

The early Europeans took a dim view of the Aboriginal way of life when first they
encountered it.
This excerpt is taken from the diary of Watkin Tench, an officer in the First Fleet:
It does not appear that these poor creatures have any fixed Habitation; sometimes sleeping in a
Cavern of Rock, which they make as warm as a Oven by lighting a Fire in the middle of it, they will
take up their abode here, for one Night perhaps, then in another the next Night. At other times (and
we believe mostly in Summer) they take up their lodgings for a Day or two in a Miserable Wigwam,
which they made from Bark of a Tree.
There are dispersed about the woods near the water, 2, 3, 4 together; some Oyster, Cockle and
Muscle (sic) Shells lie about the Entrance of them, but not in any Quantity to indicate they make
these huts their constant Habitation. We met with some that seemed entirely deserted indeed it
seems pretty evident that their Habitation, whether Caverns or Wigwams, are common to all, and
Alternatively inhabited by different Tribes.
For Aboriginal people and, in this instance,
the clans living on the northern shores of
Sydney, nothing could have been further
from the truth. What the early colonists never
understood, and perhaps what many
Australians are only now beginning to grasp,
was that the Aboriginal lifestyle was based on
total kinship with the natural environment.
Wisdom and skills obtained over the millennia
enabled them to use their environment to the
maximum. For the Aboriginal people, acts
such as killing animals for food or building a
shelter were steeped in ritual and spirituality,
and carried out in perfect balance with their
surroundings.

IMPACT OF EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
• Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture and various other
purposes in the first 100 years of European settlement.
• In addition to the obvious impacts this early clearing of land, it
severely affected indigenous Australians, by reducing the resources
they relied on for food, shelter and other essentials.
• This forced them into smaller areas and reduced their numbers as the
majority died of newly introduced diseases and lack of resources.
• Resistance against the settlers was widespread, and prolonged
fighting between 1788 and the 1920s led to the deaths of at least
20,000 indigenous people and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.
IMPACT OF EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
Disease struck a fatal and extensive blow to the Aboriginal people, who until that
point had been isolated for thousands of years from the diseases that had raged
through Europe and Asia.
They had no resistance to the deadly viruses carried by the sailors and convicts
such as smallpox, syphilis and influenza. In less than a year, over half the
indigenous population living in the Sydney Basin had died from smallpox. The
region, once alive with a vibrant mix of Aboriginal clans, now fell silent.
Every boat that went down the harbour found them lying dead on the beaches and in the
caverns of the rocks… They were generally found with the remains of a small fire on each side
of them and some water left within their reach.
Lieutenant Fowell, 1789