By sixth class pupils

The history of Australia refers to the history of the area and people of the common wealth of Australia and its preceding indigenous and colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians are believed to have arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between and years ago. The artistic musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history.

Australia is an Oceanian country comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and numerous smaller islands. It is the world’s sixth largest country by total area. Neighbouring countries include Papua New Guinea, Indonesia and East Timor to the north, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu to the northeast and New Zealand to the southeast. Australia has a population of roughly 24 million (six times the population of Ireland!). Australia is a constitutional monarchy with a federal division of powers. It uses a parliamentary system of government with Queen Elizabeth II at its apex as the Queen of Australia, a role that is distinct from her position as monarch of the other Commonwealth realms.

The Queen resides in the United Kingdom, and she is represented by her viceroys in Australia. The Parliament House in the capital city of Canberra was opened in Australia has six states-New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, South Australia and Tasmania and two territories- Northern Territory and Australian Capital Territory. The climate of Australia is very diverse with temperate in the south, tropical in the north, grassland more inland and desert in the centre. Ireland’s climate is mostly temperate.

 The oldest surviving cultural traditions in Australia—and some of the oldest surviving cultural traditions on earth—are those of Australia's Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Their ancestors have inhabited Australia for between 40,000 and 60,000 years, living a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. In 2006, the Indigenous population was estimated at 517,000 people, or 2.5 per cent of the total population. Conflict and reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians has been a source of much art and literature in Australia, and ancient Aboriginal artistic styles and iconic inventions such as the boomerang, the didgeridoo and Indigenous Australian music have become symbols of modern Austrailia.

 Harper, Henry Kendall and Adam Lindsay Gordon won fame in the mid-19th century for their lyric nature poems and patriotic verse. Gordon drew on Australian colloMarcus Clarke's known for the terms of his natural life, Charles quy and idiom; Clarke assessed his work as "the beginnings of a national school of Australian poetry". First published in serial form in 1882, Rolf Boldrewood's Robbery Under Arms is regarded as the classic bush ranging novel.

Sydney Opera House (foreground) and Sydney Harbour Bridge Victorian era buildings in Collins Street, Melbourne

Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney Convict architecture at Port Arthur, Tasmania Interior of St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney

 1) Aboriginal art is part of the oldest continuous living culture in world history, with Australian Aborigines having settled on the Australian continent somewhere between 60,000 and 80,000 years ago. Evidence of Aboriginal culture is found in the rock art, which so far has been dated back at least 20,000 years, while archaeology has dated ancient campsites back to 40,000 to 60,000 years.  2) Contemporary aboriginal art is considered to start at the desert community of Papunya in 1971, when senior desert men began to paint their cultural stories using modern materials. This was prompted by school teacher Geoffrey Bardon requesting that school children paint their own stories, leading the senior men to open up their deeply held cultural knowledge to outside observers. The Papunya Tula desert art movement then influenced other communities to join the art movement through the following decades. For more details read our article on Contemporary Aboriginal Art.Contemporary Aboriginal Art  3) Aboriginal art is based on story- telling, using symbols as an alternate method of writing down stories of cultural importance, as well as transmitting knowledge on matters of survival and land management. The tradition of drawing in the sand as a teaching method reflects the powerful use of symbols as a recognised conveyor of meaning, even across vastly different language groups. Story-telling and symbols provided the starting point for contemporary Aboriginal art.  4) Aboriginal artists inherit rights to paint certain cultural stories. Artists need authority and permission to paint traditional stories, and this authority is vested in the custodians of the knowledge of these stories. Ownership of stories is transmitted down generational lines, held within certain skin groups or moieties. Therefore stories are often managed within family groups.