AUSTRALIAN HISTORY: ANCIENT (PRE 1788)

Australia was not always in the location and shape it is recognisedtoday. Millions of years ago, it was part of the the great land mass called Gondwanaland. Later on, the continent of Australia began to drift away from this great land mass and around the Mesozoic era, dinosaurs roamed the land. After the death of dinosaurs, mammals began to dominate and the first signs of mankind can be traced back with the "First Australians", the Aboriginal people.

Gondwanaland - The continent of Australia was once part of the greater land mass called Gondwanaland, when todays seven cont

inents were connected to form two continents; the other being Laurasia.

Dinosaurs - During the dinosaur era, the Rhoetosaurus was known to live in Australia although no skeleton of a dinosaur has been found.

“This is our land. It goes back, a long way back, into the Dreamtime, into the land of our Dreaming. We made our camp here, and now all that is left of our presence are the ashes and the bones of the dead animals the young men had killed. Soon even our footprints will be carried away by the wind.”

Aboriginals were the real founders of Australia because they came to this land thousands of years before white people discovered it. In 1988 white Australians celebrated 200 years of white settlement in this country. But Aboriginals have been here for at least 40,000 years. When white people came to Australia, they came to a land that already belonged to the Aboriginals. No one knows exactly where the Aboriginals lived before they came to Australia. It is known that Aboriginals came from somewhere in South-East Asia and that they left their homes and traveled to Australia in canoes or on rafts. Australian aboriginal culture is the oldest living culture in the world – at least 40,000 years old.

There has existed over 250 Aboriginal languages in Australia with many dialects spoken.