NATURE OF EARLY BRITISH CONTACT Isaac and Vincent

Early Visitors Admiral Arthur Phillip RN (11 October 1738 – 31 August 1814) was the first Governor of New South Wales, and founder of the settlement which became Sydney. After much experience at sea, including command of a ship that was saved in a storm by convicts, Phillip sailed with the First Fleet, as Governor-designate of the proposed British penal colony of New South Wales. In February 1788, he selected its location to be Port Jackson (now Sydney Harbour).

Early Visitors SHIP Captain/Master Tonnage Type HMS Sirius Captain Arthur Phillip 520 Sixth Rate Warship HMS Supply Lieutenant H. L. Ball 170 Armed Tender Alexander Duncan Sinclair 452 Convict Transport Lady Penrhyn William C. Sever 333 Charlotte Thomas Gilbert 335 Scarborough John Marshall 430 Friendship Walton 274 Prince of Wales John Mason 350 Fishburn R. Brown 378 Storeship Golden Grove Sharp 375 Borrowdale R. Hobson 275

English Exploration The first European explorers of the interior played an important role in Australia’s early economic history, and an even more important one in the formation of the national psyche. It was their exploits, rather than those of the sailors who had mapped the continent’s coasts and first made it known to the wider world, which caught the Australian imagination. In the process, they laid down a rich deposit of myth and legend which has stimulated successive generations of Australian poets, painters, and writers.

English Exploration The pioneering work of Blaxland and Wentworth across the Blue Mountains was followed up by George William Evans, who retraced their route to Bathurst (founded 1815). In the 1820s, John Oxley further mapped the inland plains and rivers, especially the Lachlan and Macquarie. Oxley also explored the southern coasts of the future Queensland; in 1827 Alan Cunningham pioneered European exploration of the interior of that state. Possibly the most famous of this group of explorers was Captain Charles Sturt who, in 1828-1830, traced the chief arteries of the Murray-Darling Basin, now the agricultural heartland of Australia. Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell confirmed Sturt’s work, and opened the route from New South Wales to the rich land of western Victoria (1836).

English Exploration Images of Explorers and there mapping skills.

Concept of Terra Nullius British colonisation policies and subsequent land laws were framed in the belief that the colony was being acquired by occupation (or settlement) of a terra nullius (land without owners). The colonisers acknowledged the presence of Indigenous people but justified their land acquisition policies by saying the Aborigines were too primitive to be actual owners and sovereigns and that they had no readily identifiable hierarchy or political order which the British Government could recognise or negotiate with.

Concept of Terra Nullius The High Court's Mabo judgment in 1992 overturned the terra nullius fiction. In the same judgment, however, the High Court accepted the British assertion of sovereignty in 1788, and held that from that time there was only one sovereign power and one system of law in Australia.

Concept of Terra Nullius This picture may give you a better understanding:

Concept of Native Title Native title describes the rights which Aboriginal people have to land and waters according to their customary laws, but viewed from and recognised by, the Australian legal system. You can think of native title as a bridge between customary Aboriginal laws, which have existed for many thousands of years, and white Australian laws defined and observed by the invading British people. Native title is tightly linked with a court case the Australian High Court had to deal with in 1982, called the Mabo case.

Concept of Native Title Native title and land rights are often used synonymously. While native title is an entitlement to land it does not cover the rights to that land.