65,000 years of Australia, one scroll at a time
Travel from the first footsteps on an ancient continent to the High Court and beyond. Drag the sea level, sail the First Fleet, pan for gold, build a nation, and earn XP as you go.
Deep Time
Long before any map called it Australia, people walked here across a land that looked very different. Scroll to move through time, or grab the slider and control the Ice Age yourself.
The first footsteps
Stone tools and ochre dug up at Madjedbebe, a rock shelter in Arnhem Land, show people were living here at least 65,000 years ago. That makes Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures the oldest continuous living cultures on Earth.
Sea levels were much lower, so the first arrivals crossed shorter stretches of open water from the islands to the north.
Lake Mungo
On the shores of Lake Mungo in New South Wales, archaeologists found the remains of a woman who was ceremonially cremated, now known as Mungo Lady. It is one of the oldest known cremations anywhere in the world.
In 2017 her ancestor, Mungo Man, was returned to Country by the Paakantyi, Ngiyampaa and Mutthi Mutthi peoples.
Ice Age peak: welcome to Sahul
So much water was locked up in ice sheets that the sea dropped around 120 metres. Australia, New Guinea and Tasmania formed one giant continent that scientists call Sahul. Watch the green shelf appear on the map.
Tasmania becomes an island
As the ice melted, rising seas flooded the land bridge that is now Bass Strait. The Palawa, the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, carried on their cultures in isolation for thousands of years.
The Torres Strait floods
The last link to New Guinea disappears under the sea. The islands left behind became home to Torres Strait Islander peoples, who have their own distinct cultures, languages and seafaring traditions.
A continent of nations
Before 1788 there were more than 250 distinct language groups, each with its own Country, laws and stories. People shaped the land with skills like cultural burning, using cool fires to manage plants and animals.
Map is simplified. Real sea levels rose and fell many times.
Ships on the Horizon
European ships began appearing off the coast in the 1600s. Then, in 1787, eleven ships left England carrying convicts to the other side of the world. Scroll to sail the First Fleet.
The Duyfken
Dutch sailor Willem Janszoon charts part of Cape York in the Duyfken. It is the first recorded European landing. The meeting with the Wik people turns violent, and Janszoon sails away calling the land useless.
Cook at Kamay
James Cook's ship Endeavour anchors at Kamay, which he names Botany Bay. Gweagal men try to stop the strangers landing. Months later Cook claims the whole east coast for Britain, without the consent of the people who lived there.
The First Fleet sets sail
Britain's prisons are overflowing, and it can no longer send convicts to America. Eleven ships under Captain Arthur Phillip leave Portsmouth with about 1,400 people, more than 700 of them convicts. The youngest convict is about 9 years old.
First stop: the Canary Islands
The fleet takes on fresh water, vegetables and wine. Below deck, convicts are crammed into dark, damp spaces with little air.
Across the Atlantic
The ships swing west to Brazil to catch the trade winds. In Rio the fleet loads oranges, rum and seeds, and stays a month.
Last port before the unknown
At the Cape of Good Hope the ships turn into a floating farm, loading cattle, sheep, pigs, chickens and plants. Next comes the longest leg: two months across the stormy Southern Ocean.
Sydney Cove, Eora Country
Botany Bay has poor soil and little fresh water, so Phillip moves to Warrane, which he names Sydney Cove, and raises the British flag. This was the land of the Eora people. Today 26 January is Australia Day; many First Nations people mark it as Survival Day or Invasion Day.
The Frontier
Britain treated the continent as terra nullius, "land belonging to no one". It wasn't. As settlers spread out, First Nations peoples resisted the loss of their land for more than a century.
Pause point. This level talks about violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. It is a hard part of the story, and an important one.
1789: Disease arrives first. A smallpox epidemic tore through Sydney's Aboriginal communities about a year after the First Fleet landed. It killed a large share of the Eora and neighbouring peoples, who had no immunity.
The Frontier Wars. As sheep and cattle stations pushed inland, Aboriginal groups fought back with raids and ambushes. Settlers, police and soldiers responded with force, including massacres. Historians have mapped hundreds of massacre sites across the continent.
1838: Myall Creek. Stockmen murdered at least 28 Wirrayaraay people, mostly women, children and old men. Seven of the killers were hanged, the first time colonists were executed for massacring Aboriginal people. Most other massacres went unpunished.
Fighting continued in some regions into the 1920s. Across all of it, First Nations peoples kept their languages, laws and connections to Country alive.
Pemulwuy
Led a 12-year resistance around Sydney. He survived being shot many times, and many believed he could not be killed.
Windradyne
Led resistance near Bathurst when settlers flooded over the Blue Mountains. Martial law was declared to stop him.
Yagan
Resisted the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. His remains were returned from England in 1997 and buried on Country in 2010.
Tarenorerer
A Tasmanian woman who trained her people to use muskets during the Black War against colonists in Van Diemen's Land.
Gold!
In 1851 gold was found near Bathurst, then at Ballarat and Bendigo. Hundreds of thousands of people rushed to the diggings. Victoria's population jumped from about 77,000 to more than 500,000 in ten years.
Mini-game: Pan for gold
Ballarat, 1854Drag in circles over the pan, or hold Swirl. Light sand washes over the edge. Heavy gold sinks to the middle.
Licence hunt!
Mounted troopers ride into camp demanding to see every digger's licence. You left yours in the tent. What do you do?
Why diggers got angry. Every miner had to buy a licence, found gold or not. Police ran "licence hunts", chaining up diggers who couldn't show one. Miners also had no vote, because voting depended on owning property.
11 November 1854. About 10,000 diggers met at Bakery Hill in Ballarat and demanded the vote and an end to the licence. They burned their licences and swore an oath under a new blue-and-white flag, the Southern Cross.
3 December 1854: Eureka Stockade. Before dawn, soldiers and police attacked the rebels' timber stockade. The fight lasted around 15 minutes, and more than 20 people were killed, most of them diggers.
What changed. Juries refused to convict the rebel leaders. Within a year the licence was replaced by a cheaper miner's right, and miners won the vote. Peter Lalor, the rebel leader, was elected to parliament.
Thousands of Chinese miners came too, and faced special taxes and violent attacks, like the Lambing Flat riots of 1860–61. That racism later shaped national laws.
Build a Nation
By the 1890s there were six separate British colonies, each with its own government, army, stamps and even railway gauges. Voters agreed to join together. Click each colony to bring it into the Commonwealth.
Six colonies, one question
Should we become one country? Between 1898 and 1900, voters in each colony had their say in referendums. Pick a colony on the map to see how it joined.
The Commonwealth of Australia
On 1 January 1901, crowds gathered in Sydney's Centennial Park as Edmund Barton was sworn in as the first Prime Minister. One of the new parliament's first laws was the Immigration Restriction Act, the start of the White Australia policy, which kept out most non-European migrants until it was dismantled between the 1950s and 1973.
Growing Up
The new nation fought wars, built icons and changed who counted as Australian. Tap each card to flip it and add it to your collection.
Rights and Recognition
First Nations activists spent decades fighting for equal pay, land rights and recognition. Step into the polling booth in 1967, then watch the sun rise on Mer island.
Should the Constitution be changed so Aboriginal people are counted in the national census, and the federal government can make laws for them?
The 1967 referendum did not give Aboriginal people the vote or citizenship. Aboriginal people already had citizenship, and full federal voting rights came in 1962. The referendum removed two lines from the Constitution that treated Aboriginal people differently.
To change Australia's Constitution, a referendum needs a majority of voters nationally and a majority in at least four of the six states. Most referendums fail. Only 8 of 45 have ever passed, and 1967 won the biggest Yes vote of all.
The Wave Hill Walk-Off
Vincent Lingiari led about 200 Gurindji stockmen and their families off a British-owned cattle station, protesting terrible pay and conditions. The strike turned into a fight for their land and lasted nine years.
In 1975 Prime Minister Gough Whitlam poured a handful of soil into Lingiari's hand to mark the return of Gurindji land.
Mabo goes to court
Eddie Koiki Mabo and four other Meriam people from Mer island took the Queensland Government to the High Court. They argued their families had owned their land long before Britain arrived, and still did.
Terra nullius overturned
After ten years, the High Court ruled in favour of the Meriam people. It rejected terra nullius and recognised native title. Eddie Mabo never heard the verdict. He had died five months earlier.
The Native Title Act
Parliament passed a law setting out how First Nations groups can claim native title. Today native title is recognised over a large share of the continent.
The Apology
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd apologised in Parliament to the Stolen Generations, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children taken from their families by governments and churches from the late 1800s to the 1970s.
The story keeps going
In October 2023, Australians voted in a referendum on creating an Indigenous Voice to Parliament. About 60% voted No, so the Constitution did not change. Debates about treaty, truth-telling and recognition continue.
History isn't finished. You're living in the next chapter.
Boss Level
Six questions stand between you and Legend status. Each right answer is worth 40 XP.