Question: When did the European nation that used Australia as a penal colony take control of the location where most fossils of australopithecus have been found?

the bank of australia was a failed financial institution of early colonial new south wales formed in 1826 by a producers' and merchants' group as a rival to the bank of new south wales. it was dubbed the "pure merino" bank because its share register included the plutocracy of the colony but excluded the ex-convicts who had been associated with the bank of new south wales. when investors responded to the depression of the late 1830s by the abrupt withdrawal of capital leading to a chain of insolvencies, a number of colonial banks found that their unrestricted lending had sent prices land soaring as speculators borrowed to invest especially in urban areas. when the banks called in these loans further insolvencies occurred and a number of banks, including the bank of australia, failed in 1843. a number of leading colonial figures lost their fortunes with many taking advantage of the "insolvent debtors act" 1841. <SEP> the federation of australia was the process by which the six separate british self - governing colonies of queensland, new south wales, victoria, tasmania, south australia, and western australia agreed to unite and form the commonwealth of australia, establishing a system of federalism in australia. fiji and new zealand were originally part of this process, but they decided not to join the federation. following federation, the six colonies that united to form the commonwealth of australia as states kept the systems of government (and the bicameral legislatures) that they had developed as separate colonies, but they also agreed to have a federal government that was responsible for matters concerning the whole nation. when the constitution of australia came into force, on 1 january 1901, the colonies collectively became states of the commonwealth of australia. <SEP> The country became a self - governing nation state within the British Empire, in 1934 following enactment of the Status of the Union Act. The dominion came to an end on 31 May 1961 as the consequence of a 1960 referendum, which legitimised the country becoming a sovereign state named Republic of South Africa. Following the defeat of the Boers in the Anglo - Boer or South African War (1899 -- 1902), the Union of South Africa was created as a dominion of the British Empire in terms of the South Africa Act 1909, which amalgamated the four previously separate British colonies: Cape Colony, Natal Colony, Transvaal Colony, and Orange River Colony. A republican constitution was adopted. <SEP> Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. The British government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 17th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. Victoria and South Australia remained free colonies. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade. The last convict ship arrived in Western Australia on 10 January 1868. <SEP> It is now called ``Little Foot ''and it is probably around three million years old. It was named Australopithecus prometheus which has since been placed within A. africanus. Other fossil remains found in the same cave in 2008 were named Australopithecus sediba, which lived 1.9 million years ago. A. africanus probably evolved into A. sediba, which some scientists think may have evolved into H. erectus, though this is heavily disputed. Then, in 1997, an almost complete Australopithecus skeleton with skull was found in the Sterkfontein caves of Gauteng, South Africa.