ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how the land of Australia was formed, with the accounts of Indigenous peoples set against the geological story provided by scientists. For geologists, Australia has been a continent adrift, battered by ice ages, floods, droughts and changes in sea level. The first humans arrived around 65,000 years ago, spreading out in around 500 different population groups (like the Yolngu and Gunditjmara), trading with each other and with Asian peoples to their near north. They shaped the land by managing its vegetation and animals, generating distinctive ways of living. They explained their origins by recounting stories of ‘The Dreaming’, a long-ago time when ancestral beings shaped the land and the lore. Traders and explorers seeking the mythical Terra Australis had their own stories to tell, followed by British navigators bent on an imperial mission to find ‘the great south land’ and create a new chapter in the story of empire. When Captain James Cook visited Kamay (Botany Bay) in 1770, his interaction with Indigenous people was marked by spears thrown and muskets fired. Cook became a hero who ‘discovered’ Australia. Yet from Indigenous perspectives, Cook is less a hero and more a villain, someone who precipitated the invasion and colonisation of the continent.
