Captain Phillip found that Botany Bay was flat and windy. There was not much fresh water. He went with two ships up the coast and sailed into a great harbor which he said was "the finest harbor in the world!" There were many small bays on the harbor so he decided on one which had a good stream of fresh water and some flat shore to land on. On 26 January 1788, the flag was raised and New South Wales was claimed in the name of King George III of England, and the new settlement was called Sydney.
For the first few years of the settlement, things were very difficult. No-one in the British Government had thought very hard about what sort of convicts should be sent to make a new colony. Nobody had chosen them carefully. There was only one man who was a farmer. There was no-one among the convicts who was a builder, a brick-maker or a blacksmith. No-one knew how to fix the tools when they broke. All of the cattle escaped. There were no cooking pots. All the plants were different so no-one knew which ones could be eaten. It was probable that everyone in the new colony would die of starvation.
Somehow, the little group of tents with a hut for the Governor, Arthur Phillip, and another hut for the supply of food, grew into a small town with streets, a bridge over the stream, a windmill for grinding grain and wharves for ships. By the 1820s there was a fine brick house for the Governor. There was also a hospital and a convict barracks and a beautiful church which are still standing today. Settlements had spread out from Sydney, firstly to Norfolk Island and to Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania), and also up the coast to Newcastle, where coal was discovered, and inland where the missing cattle were found to have grown to a large herd. Spanish Merino sheep had been brought to Sydney, and by 1820, farmers were raising fat lambs for meat and also sending fine wool back to the factories of England.
While the settlement was growing in New South Wales, it was also growing in Tasmania. The climate in Tasmania was more like that in England, and farmers found it easy to grow crops there.
Because Australia is such a very large land, it was easy to think that it might be able to hold a very large number of people. In the early days of the colony, a great number of explorers went out, searching for good land to settle on.
When the settlers looked west from Sydney, they saw a range of mountains which they called the Blue Mountains. They were not very high and did not look very rugged but for many years no-one could find their way through them. In 1813 Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and a 17-year-old called William Charles Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains and found land on the other side which was good for farming. A road was built and the governor, Lachlan Macquarie founded the town of Bathurst on the other side, 100 miles from Sydney.
Some people, like Captain Charles Sturt were sure that there must be a sea in the middle of Australia and set out to find it. Many of the explorers did not prepare very well, or else they went out to explore at the hottest time of year. Some died like Burke and Wills. Ludwig Leichhardt got lost twice. The second time, he was never seen again. Major Thomas Mitchell was one of the most successful explorers. He mapped the country as he went, and his maps remained in use for more than 100 years. He travelled all the way to what is now western Victoria, and to his surprise and annoyance found that he was not the first white person there. The Henty brothers had come from Tasmania, had built themselves a house, had a successful farm and fed the Major and his men on roast lamb and wine.
The gold rushes of New South Wales and Victoria started in 1851 leading to large numbers of people arriving to search for gold. The population grew across south east Australia and made great wealth and industry. By 1853 the gold rushes had made some poor people, very rich.
The transportation of convicts to Australia ended in the 1840s and 1850s and more changes came. The people in Australia wanted to run their own country, and not be told what to do from London. The first governments in the colonies were run by governors chosen by London. Soon the settlers wanted local government and more democracy. William Wentworth started the Australian Patriotic Association (Australia's first political party) in 1835 to demand democratic government. In 1840, the city councils started and some people could vote. New South Wales Legislative Council had its first elections in 1843, again with some limits on who could vote. In 1855, limited self-government was given by London to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. In 1855, the right to vote was given to all men over 21 in South Australia. The other colonies soon followed. Women were given the vote in the Parliament of South Australia in 1895 and they became the first women in the world allowed to stand in elections.
Australians had started parliamentary democracies all across the continent. But voices were getting louder for all of them to come together as one country with a national parliament.
Until 1901, Australia was not a nation, it was six separate colonies governed by Britain. They voted to join together to form one new country, called the Commonwealth of Australia, in 1901. Australia was still part of the British Empire, and at first wanted only British or Europeans to come to Australia. But soon it had its own money, and its own Army and Navy.
In Australia at this time, the trade unions were very strong, and they started a political party, the Australian Labor Party. Australia passed many laws to help the workers.
In 1914, the First World War started in Europe. Australia joined in on the side of Britain against Germany, Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire. Australian soldiers were sent to Gallipoli, in the Ottoman Empire. They fought bravely, but were beaten by the Turks. Today Australia remembers this battle every year on ANZAC Day. They also fought on the Western Front. More than 60,000 Australians were killed.
Australia had a really hard time in the Great Depression of the 1930s and joined Britain in a war against Nazi Germany when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939. But in 1941 lots of Australian soldiers were captured in the Fall of Singapore by Japan. Then Japan started attacking Australia and people worried about invasion. But with help from the United States Navy, the Japanese were stopped. After the war, Australia became a close friend of the United States.
When the war ended, Australia felt that it needed many more people to fill the country up and to work. So the government said it would take in people from Europe who had lost their homes in the war. It did things like building the Snowy Mountains Scheme. Over the next 25 years, millions of people came to Australia. They came especially from Italy and Greece, other countries in Europe. Later they also came from countries like Turkey and Lebanon. An important new party, the Liberal Party of Australia was made by Robert Menzies in 1944 and it won lots of elections from 1949 until in 1972, then Gough Whitlam won for the Labor Party. Whitlam made changes, but he made the Senate unhappy and the Governor-General sacked him and forced an election in 1975. Then Malcolm Fraser won a few elections for the Liberal Party.
In the 1960s many people began coming to Australia from China, Vietnam, Malaysia and other countries in Asia. Australia became more multicultural. In the 1950s and 1960s Australia became one of the richest countries in the world, helped by mining and wool. Australia started trading more with America, than Japan. Australia supported the United States in wars against dictatorships in Korea and Vietnam and later Iraq. Australian soldiers also helped the United Nations in countries like East Timor in 1999.