Australia Day History

Australia Day  Jan 26

Australia Day celebrates the anniversary of Captain Arthur Phillip unfurling the British flag at Sydney Cove and proclaiming British sovereignty over the eastern seaboard of Australia on 26 January 1788.

Captain Arthur Phillip and the First Fleet, comprising 11 ships and around 1,350 people, arrived at Botany Bay between 18 and 20 January 1788. It was decided the first settlement would be at Botany Bay, and a second settlement would be established at Norfolk Island to provide wood for ships and masts. However, on arrival at Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, Captain Phillip decided the site was not suitable and resolved to look for another. He decided upon Port Jackson, the site of modern day Sydney, and the people of the First Fleet established Australia's first settlement on 26 January 1788.

Until the American War of Independence, Britain had sent convicts to America. American independence ended the practice and the British prisons and prison hulks were full to overflowing. The island continent at the end of the world seemed a perfect place to send them. The Fleet consisted mainly of convicts with officers to guard them. There were many more men than women around four men for every woman and this caused problems in the settlement for many years.

Few people in the Fleet had any experience of cultivating the land and this, combined with poor soil in the area, lead to the development of farms around Parramatta, but, more seriously, to near starvation in the first years of settlement. Food shortages were severe and the fledgling colony eagerly awaited on the arrival of the Second Fleet in 1790. The Second Fleet did provide badly needed food and supplies, but created other problems for the new colony. 48 people had died on the voyage of the First Fleet, this had risen to 278 on the Second Fleet voyage. Sickness and disease were so rife, most of those who survived were barely able to walk, the Fleet has come to be known as the 'Death Fleet'. In spite of the problems, however, the settlement grew, and is now the site of Australia's largest city, Sydney.

The name 'Australia' was first suggested by Matthew Flinders and supported by Governor Macquarie (1810-1821). At a meeting in 1899, the Premiers of the other Colonies agreed to locate the new federal capital of Australia in New South Wales, and added this section to the Australian Constitution. In 1909, the State of New South Wales surrended a portion of this territory to the Commonwealth of Australia, the site of present day Canberra. 26 January is the Day on which Australians commemorate the founding of the modern Australian nation.

For many Indigenous Australians, however, 26 January is not a day of celebration but one of mourning and protest. For indigenous Australians, the founding of the modern Australian nation led to the disruption of their traditional way of life, to death, disease and dispossession. In 1988, the year of the bicentenary of European settlement, Aboriginals marked the year with a massive march for 'Freedom, Justice and Hope', named it a Year of Mourning, but also celebrated their survival. In 1999 the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, an Aboriginal sacred site, and now part of the National Estate, was the focus of indigenous activity on Australia Day with a Corroboree for Aboriginal Sovereignty.