6.8.1. The Europeans Reach Australia

The story of the interaction between the European settlers, the native peoples and the land in Australia has many points of similarity to the story of the Americas, though it began nearly 300 years later. Initial reports from Captain Cook and his crew about encounters with natives are enthusiastic about their friendliness. There was a sharp reversal of feeling on the part of the British when Cook was killed by a native – not in Australia, but in Hawaii. As often happened, a single incident of this nature was used by colonisers to justify subsequent acts of violence towards other people.

When European settlers arrived in Australia, their first interactions with the native peoples were generally positive. Captain Cook and his crew reported that the natives were friendly. However, this perception changed drastically after Cook's death, which he did not experience in Australia, but in Hawaii. The British settlers used this incident to justify more aggressive and violent actions against native peoples in Australia, claiming that they posed a threat.

Imagine a new family moving into a neighborhood and initially being welcomed by everyone. However, if a misunderstanding leads to an altercation with one neighbor, the new family may then view everyone in the neighborhood suspiciously. This negative shift can lead to conflict and hostility, much like what happened with the European settlers.

‘Aboriginal production had been dramatically disturbed by the British presence. The arrival of a thousand hungry mouths, followed by hundreds more, put unprecedented pressure on local food resources. So what would the Daruk people have thought of all this? To them such large-scale destruction of sacred places and strange, violent behaviour towards their land was inexplicable. The newcomers seemed to knock down trees without any reason, for they were not making canoes, gathering bush honey or catching animals. Stones were moved and stacked together, clay dug up, shaped and cooked, holes were made in the ground, large unwieldy structures built. At first they may have equated the clearing with the creation of a sacred ceremonial ground…Perhaps they thought a huge ritual gathering was to be held, dangerous business from which they should steer well clear. There is no doubt the Daruks subsequently avoided the settlement, for the only way to bring them back was by an official kidnapping.’

The arrival of European settlers significantly disrupted the traditional ways of life for Aboriginal peoples. The settlers brought with them a large number of people who required food, leading to overexploitation of local resources. The Daruk people, who lived in the Sydney area, found the settlers’ actions—such as clearing trees and moving earth—mysterious and alarming because these actions destroyed sacred areas without understanding their significance. Initially, the Daruk may have misunderstood the settlers' intentions, seeing their clearing of land as the preparation for some ritual, but eventually, they were pushed away from their land due to these drastic changes.

Think of a local community garden that provides food and a gathering place for the neighborhood. If a developer comes along and begins to clear the garden to build a new parking lot, the community members might not understand why this is happening. They may initially think that the developer is merely renovating but soon realize that their source of food and community was being destroyed. This reflects the devastating impact that settlers had on Aboriginal land.

They did not foresee that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries nearly 90 percent of them would die by exposure to germs, by the loss of their lands and resources, and in battles against the settlers. The experiment of settling Brazil with Portuguese convicts had been abandoned when their violent behaviour provoked angry reprisals from the natives. The British had adopted the same practice in the American colonies until they became independent. Then they continued it in Australia. Most of the early settlers were convicts who had been deported from England and, when their jail term ended, were allowed to live as free people in Australia on condition that they did not return to Britain. With no recourse but to make a life for themselves in this land so different from their own, they felt no hesitation about ejecting natives from land they took over for cultivation.

The impact of European colonization on Aboriginal populations was catastrophic. Diseases brought by the settlers led to a massive decline in the native population, compounded by violence and land dispossession. The settlers, many of whom were convicts seeking a fresh start in Australia, did not see the importance of the land to the indigenous peoples and felt justified in taking control of it. They viewed the land primarily as a resource for agricultural expansion, which disregarded the deep-rooted connections the Aboriginal people had with it.

Imagine a small town where the residents are suddenly faced with a new group of people who buy out all the shops and start developing the local park into a large shopping mall. The original townspeople might be forced to leave due to rising prices and loss of familiar places. This mirrors how Aboriginal Australians were forced off their lands during colonization.

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