THE WHOLE HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
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Welcome to Countries Facts so Today I'm talking about the whole history of Australia you know it is a land shaped by a dynamic and incredible history a land which is a mix of that which is appreciably familiar to the rest of the world but also totally exotic with elements not seen anywhere else the culture indigenous to this land one of the oldest in the world developed in not total but very heavy isolation from the rest of the human race making it distinct from anything seen elsewhere in the 17th century however a new group arrived on the scene the Europeans initially they would disregard the island which is nearly the size of the whole continent until one group found opportunity in it the British they would embark on a period of settlement and conquest creating the modern nation-state with which we are familiar it would not be easy however and a huge number of challenges both internal and external awaited them there which would draw into question the country's ability to survive at all hello and welcome to fire of learning this is the fifth world the southern land or in Latin Terra Australis this is the full history of Australia ladies and gentlemen thank you for joining us as we now add Australia to the list of nations and peoples whose history we have fully covered in our documentary series there will be no part two to this video we will be doing it all in one sitting I'm proud to announce as well that this is our 10th history of nations and peoples nation 10 down and a whole world to go before we begin I would like to thank and as always I'll do my best with the names Alban pay or pays michelin desert gave david alloy chad prentice LD son Aram sebastian drew in or Sebastian drew a trevor young Evert Rosendahl odd Dracon crab face nick crouch william lingenfelter and mark trina for being our most recent supporters on patreon they join these supporters who make these videos possible if you enjoyed this video be sure to hit the like button and consider subscribing for more videos like this in the future now then let's get to it the term indigenous Australian refers to both Aboriginal Australians and the Torres Strait Islanders who are separate ethnic groups the Torres Strait Islanders have only a population of around 4,000 in the modern-day and inhabit the islands of the Torres Strait in between Australia and New Guinea Aboriginal Australians are the native inhabitants of mainland Australia and Tasmania to understand them we must briefly go quite far back in time researchers believe that the first humans made their way to Australia around 50 to 60,000 years ago perhaps even before this this was thousands of years before the first human set foot in Europe the Americas or northern Asia in this time sea levels were far lower by about 400 feet and a land bridge existed throughout much of Southeast Asia it did not directly connect Australia to the land but may the distances between the islands much smaller thus facilitating movement these peoples therefore are believed to have been assumed the first seafaring peoples it is unclear if the migration occurred and only a single wave or multiple and thus when this period of migration ended is unknown most Aboriginal Australians appear to have diverged from other groups such as the people of New Guinea around 36,000 years ago the sea levels rose to around current levels around 6,000 years ago it seems that within the past 6,000 years however there has been a degree of pre European contact primarily or perhaps exclusively in the north of Australia evidence suggests that there was contact and genetic influence from his recent as three to four thousand years ago from modern-day India some northern Aboriginal Australians and Indians share about 11% of their DNA other important clues such as the presence of foreign animals like the dingo and linguistic changes point to a recent contact with people such as the austronesians relatives of the original inhabitants of nearby places like New Zealand and Hawaii the Austronesian peoples come from an entirely separate line originating in East and Southeast Asia it appears as well for them or that fishermen and sailors of parts of Asia might have been aware of the territory but scarcely interacted with it most curiously coins from the medieval Islamic world specifically the Sultanate of Kilwa have been discovered in Australia perhaps dating to as recently as the 14th century though no one knows how they got there regardless of what the extent of the contact between the first Australians and outside groups was the Aboriginal Australian people remain as mentioned very distinct from any other group on the planet the people here would develop a large variety of cultural practices lifestyles and hundreds of languages religious ideas were diverse as well though clearly had a common origin many revolve around the concept of the dream time or the Dreaming the stories pertaining to these spirits and forces which created the earth they do not believe these events to be exclusively a thing of the past and have a concept of the every win meaning that these events pertain to the past present and future I was fortunate enough to have an Australian friend who asked an Aboriginal tribal elder himself about the concept of the everyone for me and his response was that they do not have a linear view of time like Europeans do they do not see time with beginnings and ends in the religion but see it more as cyclical indeed a cyclical perspective of time is shared by many non Abrahamic religions many Aboriginal religions hold that the earth began as a flat empty plain and that the landscape was created by the rainbow snake known by different names across the continent such as Gauri Allah which carved out a landscape as it slithered across it bringing the oceans and rivers into being as well by bringing water to the world it is often viewed as the creator of the universe but not necessarily a God in the sense with which many people from outside of Australia are familiar it is also not necessarily always a snake but the association with this being in water is very common some of their stories seem to have been passed down orally for thousands of years some of which fascinatingly researchers believe truly describe the ireland's now history such as stories of flooding and changes in the shoreline fascinating and complex of these cultures were and are they would remain largely semi-nomadic though not fully as they migrated around specific areas and seemed to have developed some forms of agriculture and very effective land management techniques they are classified due to the fact that they did not develop metalworking as persisting in the Stone Age until the arrival of the Europeans Australia supported a population of perhaps a million people before European arrival later European explorers would note that the natives appeared to be content and happy with their lives but that periods of hardship and war between tribes did erupt the Aboriginal peoples did not have the same ideas about land that the Europeans did either and therefore did not wage wars for the conquest of it but did fight to administer what they perceived as justice to take revenge to dominate other groups to kidnap women for childbearing and for reasons like these for millennia with only a handful of exceptions Australia was overwhelmingly isolated but one day this land would change forever when new comers arrived the educated people of the old world seem to have believed since at least the time of the ancients that there had to be a counterweight to the land in the northern hemisphere meaning that there must be land a roughly equal amount of it in the southern hemisphere to balance the planet keep in mind they had known since the ancient Greeks that the earth was most likely a globe they called this mysterious hypothetical land among many things Terra Australis incognita latin for the unknown southern land various claims were made about this land where exactly would be apart from you know South how to reach it and what it might even be like no Roman or Greek had ever set foot in Australia however much less Antarctica this was entirely a guess some believed that Africa might extend all the way south or that the land wrapped around the Indian Ocean entirely some felt that because from the perspective of old-world thinkers heat increases as you move south that land that far south would be in hospitably hot or at least that a region of inhospitable temperatures might divide the two hemispheres thus preventing contact the idea was revived hundreds of years later in the Renaissance when the end of Africa was discovered in the Age of Exploration of the 15th and 16th centuries many of these theories had to be revised but many people still held to the belief that such land probably existed even placing assumptions of what it would look like on early Maps though based on a faulty assumption about how the planet works this belief would indeed encourage discovery of a major southern land in the fifteen and 1600s Europeans specifically the Portuguese Spanish French English and Dutch began to compete for lands beyond their own including the lucrative islands of Southeast Asia of them it appears that it was the Dutch who first sighted Australia the Dutch propelled by the powerful veo se or vio see a Dutch abbreviation for the United India Company were heavily involved in the spice trade of the East Indies for these islands of Southeast Asia it was only a matter of time before their search for further wealth led them to new lands On February 26th 16:06 vilem Yuans own Dutch explorer and colonial governor became the first known European to land on Australia though it isn't clear if he was the actual first he may have been preceded by other Europeans or even the Chinese he left from here the island of Java and landed here sailing towards the unknown making landfall on the northern tip of Australia today Penney father River like Columbus in America however he and his men had no idea what exactly they were looking at we're standing on he charted around 200 miles of coastline but assumed the land was part of the island of New Guinea eventually he and his men ran into the natives for one reason or another this encounter eventually led to violence 10 Dutchman and an unknown handful of natives were killed in the first fight between people's separated for tens of thousands of years young sone had been sent by the V OC to find economic opportunities in the area however he soon left concluding that it was a swampy land full of savage cannibals and that there was little in the way of opportunity in this place over the next few decades other explorers were charged nearby lands and occasionally bump into Australia itself one of the most important explorers was a boat Osman who arrived in 1644 on his first voyage in the area in which he and his men nearly died he did not reach Australia itself but did discover the island of Tasmania which he called Vaughn demons land but which was of course 200 years later named after him as well as Fiji and New Zealand the latter of which he believed was the mainland of the Terra Australis incognita itself on his second voyage he did reach Australia extensively mapping its western coastline naming it after a region in his own country New Holland for the next century European explorers most of them Dutch would continue to both intentionally and unintentionally bump into Australia though in truth not a heavy amount of attend was paid to it viewing it as an inhospitable land they would not attempt to colonize it it was not until the end of the 18th century that the first Europeans would really try they would succeed in placing Australia on a new destiny towards the formation of its modern nationhood 1768 Britain has recently defeated its main rival France in these seven years war seeing success against them in North America where it is known as the French and Indian War Europe and in India it is a great victory but was not a total victory Britain's rivals primarily France remain powerful challengers and worse its relationship with its North American colonies appears increasingly tenuous to maintain its Empire and success as a nation Britain feels it must continue exploring colonizing and conquering it was in that year that in English lieutenant in the Royal Navy who was observing the transit of the planet Venus James Cook received orders from the British government to go off in search of the Terra Australis incognita and so the issue once and for all it would be very difficult for him to find primarily because it did not exist but he did explore the second closest thing to it in 1770 he reached New Zealand and then afterwards Australia he would explore much of the East Coast briefly coming into contact with the natives and finding them hostile because there was no agricultural development he felt that the territory could be claimed for Britain and so he claimed the eastern half of the whole island calling it New South Wales he then returned to Britain itself and informed the British government that he had come from a land down under where women glow and men plunder can't you hear can't you hear the thunder you better run you better take cover to which King George the third of course replied what cook then explained that it was from a song which would be written in about two hundred years George the third then replied giraffes this was because he was mad but his minister is understood the situation moving on while Cook was away the French had arrived in the scene and had claimed the western half of the island for France feeling pressured the British would send cook two more times to explore the South Pacific he and his expedition passed by Tasmania twice but did not land in Australia itself again in fact Cook would never see Australia again he was killed in 1779 on his third voyage well in Hawaii his discoveries would be of major importance to the British and would change the future of the island forever the search for Terra Australis incognita began to come to an end after it was concluded that such a land would likely be frozen and inhospitable if it did exist the focus in this regard was now on Australia and New Zealand events abroad would push Britain further towards Australia the American War of Independence ended officially in 1783 with the British facing defeat and being forced to recognize their nationhood thereby giving up some very profitable colonies the 13 colonies were many things to the British among them it was a place to put their prisoners the prisoners sent to America however were not necessarily really all just the dregs of society but rather many were thrown in prison for things such as accruing debts very minor crimes or in some circumstances notably Irish circumstances rebelling against Authority many of those chosen to go off to the new world had important skills which would be useful there which is why Britain invested so much and shipping them halfway around the world it was through an effort to help colonize and develop America that these individuals could pay their debts off a few years later in 1786 the British decided to direct these efforts towards the new land of Australia contrary to popular jokes and myths only a small fraction of the eventual settlers in Australia were prisoners although the penal colonies established on the island would be important to its development and for now they would be the majority the colonies Australia were more about strategic and economic importance than they were about simply having a place to dump their prisoners were these prisoners not useful to colonial efforts these far-off penal colonies would not have been worth it the French never followed through with their intentions to colonize Australia even if they had wanted to they were soon sidelined by guillotines and Corsican generals the Swedish also even considered forming a colony on the island near modern-day Perth but they too abandoned their plans for it the British were even concerned at one point that the United States might attempt to claim a part of the island it is interesting to consider what might have happened if Australia were a country which would have been divided between different powers but that ultimately was not the islands fate it was Britain who braved the challenges posed by the continent and Britain who would reap the rewards of its investment in 1788 Britain went forth to colonize Australia on January 26 of that year a fleet of 11 ships containing over a thousand people known as the first fleet led by Captain Arthur Philip landed in sydney cove near botany bay which was suggested by cook and his crew members themselves with the intention of establishing a settlement the majority of them were convicts and of the convicts about three-quarters were male january 26th is today accordingly commemorated as australia day the beginning of the modern nations development governor phillips orders were to establish a colony discipline the prisoner population and attempt to secure what were described as peaceful and harmonious relations with the natives the settlers quickly came into contact with natives and found that there was plenty of opportunity for misunderstanding in one incident even Philip was stabbed in the shoulder by a native tribesman over a misunderstanding but retained such self-discipline that he ordered his men not to retaliate threatening to hang anyone who killed the native ultimately however conflict would come life in the colony soon proved to be less than ideal developing and settling the land was difficult the prisoners sent to the island though they were worked intensely were too unskilled and unfamiliar with the land and its climate to build a successful colony Britain itself was half a world away and could not speedily assist them disease ravaged the populace they found some of the natives furthermore to be hostile towards their efforts there were no representative assemblies for the moment and the governor acted with supreme authority being harsh on the colonists to prevent the settlement from falling apart many be and to wonder the colonizing New Holland would even be possible let alone fruitful over the years however a few thousand more people many of them convicts continued to arrive to Sydney bringing supplies and enhancing the colonies odds of survival in these 1790s free settlers began to arrive in larger numbers and were joined by emancipated convicts in settling landscape settlements began to grow and spread as the British better explored and understood the world around them the British would soon realize that holding hundreds of convicts and former rebels all in the same area was bound to cause trouble in March of 1804 a group of Irish insurgents rebelled against British authority and planned to capture a handful of ships with which to sail back to Ireland they met the British Army at the Second Battle of vinegar Hill the first having taken place in Ireland itself and were crushed it would not be the last uprising with which the authorities would have to contend four years later in 1808 the Governor of New South Wales William Bligh was deposed by the military in the rom rebellion instigated by famous figures such as John MacArthur it was also in 1804 that the Navigator Matthew Flinders quite British Lee suggested that the name of New Holland be replaced and that the island should simply be called Australia after the old mythical land of the Ancients the name caught on over the next few decades and named New Holland quickly fell into the past by 1808 around 10,000 Europeans lived in Australia a decade later in 1818 the number had grown to 25,000 and in 1828 about 60,000 they moved to settlements along with Sydney like Newcastle Launceston and Tasmania Moreton Bay which became Brisbane and more in 1827 fearing European rivals the British claimed the whole of Australia calling the new territory West Australia and established the settlements of Albin II there Perth was founded in 1829 Melbourne in 1835 and Adelaide in 1836 quality of life improved for the colonists however this was not quite as much the case for the Aboriginal Australians there was a significant amount of cooperation and segregated coexistence between the Aboriginal tribes and settlers but further expansion into the region inevitably led to war the Australian frontier Wars as they're known referring to a number of separate disputes and conflicts would last throughout the 19th century and even into the 20th century overall over 2000 European colonists and a heavily debated number of Aboriginal Australians with estimates ranging from as low as 20,000 to well over a hundred thousand were killed in the fighting to make matters worse the Europeans unknowingly introduced diseases to the Aboriginal populations to which they had no resistance such as smallpox tuberculosis and influenza killing many many more fighting would be the most intense in the southeast of the continent as populations of both groups were the highest there the first major war would be the black war in Tasmania which lasted until 1832 though brave warriors Aboriginal Australians stood little chance against the British soldiers who had advanced training weapons and also had experience in combat eventually many would be placed on reservations or with Christian missions others would attempt to integrate into the European Australian society as farmhands or other laborers conditions began to relax somewhat in the colonies the government began to expand and allow the residents of the island more representation in their government one of the primary concerns of the citizens of Australia was an end to the convict ism of their country they found the importation of convicts disagreeable and felt that the forced labour too closely resembled slavery from the 1840s onward convict deportation to Australia began to slow with the final convict ship sent to Australia arriving in Tasmania in 1868 industries were founded such as the wool industry which though they struggled at first would empower Australia in the decades to come in 1851 gold was discovered this discovery would be of major importance to Australian history it the beginning of the aptly named Australian gold rushes which would last from 1851 to 1914 these gold rushes would be immensely successful and would lead to waves of non convict settlers from Europe including 2% of Britain and Arlen's population and as well as people from North America and even some from China hundreds of thousands would flood into Australia largely into Victoria where the rush began tension would quickly grow between the miners and government of Victoria which taxed and regulated their activity heavily eventually breaking into all-out conflict between them the miners organized the Eureka rebellion creating a flag based off of the constellation of the Southern Cross and pledging allegiance to it promising to fight to end the government's licence fee and for the vote for all men regardless of income as the vote at this time was contingent upon owning a thousand pounds worth of property the government was open to the latter but not the former the rebels fought government forces at the Battle of the Eureka Stockade on the 3rd of December 1854 the rebels were defeated by the army but having the support of the populace faced few repercussions in fact the government would even grant many of the rebels demands soon after that had been settled for the moment but there was still further crime and disorder the scene in Australia for a time was quite similar to the one of America's Wild West with Bush Rangers as they are known roaming the countryside robbing banks and travelers and engaging in all manner of illegal activity there was to be ethnic tension as well stemming from the populations of mining immigrants specifically with a concern over growing Chinese populations though faced with conflicts like these Australia overall began to prosper by 1860 Australia excluding the Aboriginal Australians had a population of over a million people mostly with ancestry from Britain and Ireland the states and territories which exist today in Australia were taking shape in the administrative borders of these separate colonies Western Australia the Northern Territory which at this time was governed by South Australia South Australia Queensland New South Wales Victoria and Tasmania New Zealand had become a separate colony in 1840 these were separate colonies with separate governments and responsibilities but members of course of the same country Britain Britain itself allowed the Australians a fair degree of autonomy but still managed them to a degree maintaining a military presence and overseeing their diplomatic relations despite its exotic location Australia itself was seen as an extension of Britain and its people and their culture language and beliefs as we've seen it was in many ways Britain's wild west in 1870 most of the British army withdrew from Australia thus making the colonies responsible for their own defense by 1880 the Australian population had grown to over two million and a decade later three million with Melbourne temporarily becoming the second largest city in the British Empire the world's largest empire after of course London itself and some argued that it was the richest city in the world the island and its economic booming attracted thousands and thousands of newcomers though Australia would soon gradually put into effect a number of policies to produce or even forbid non-european immigrants referred to by historians as the White Australia Policy these policies would extend towards the aboriginals in the 20th century leading to these Stolen Generations referring to a practice of mixed European and Aboriginal children being taken from their parents and brought up by Australian officials in an attempt to bring them up in a modernized society in the 1890s Australia faced a massive economic crash which caused grievances and ideas kept at bay by the stability to flare Australia had now been a British colony for a little over a century and its inhabitants now spoke more openly of political reform and even Federation or in other words unity and soft government Australia was quite liberal for the by 1896 all of the colonies had granted suffrage to men over the age of 21 and in some circumstances women and Aboriginal men however many Australians felt that these rights were not sufficient along with being encouraged to reform things by the economic conditions of the day there were nationalistic concerns as well French and German expansion into the South Pacific was concerning and encouraged this idea of unity further in 1883 despite Australian attempts to stop them which the British forbade Germany annexed modern-day Papua New Guinea this made the Australian people consider the prospect of forming a united Australian army but that would require a United Australian government furthermore by about 1880 for the first time the majority of Australians had been born in Australia leading to a much more developed national identity one of the most outspoken proponents of Federation was Sir Henry Parkes who saw too as he claimed build an Australian nation without breaking ties to the mother nation it was not so much britain who was hesitant about the idea however as they had already allowed the australians a good degree of self world but in fact other australians who had reservations certain colonies like New South Wales feared the potential dominance of others such as Victoria which would be disadvantageous to their interests there were other concerns as well such as his agreements over certain laws and economic policies there was a hope that Australia could one day be a nation comparable to what the United States was becoming an industrial powerhouse descended from the British Empire albeit having separated less peacefully home to millions and millions of people however there were also fears that it got it wrong Australia could like the United States faced a civil war in 1899 after years of campaigning constitutional conventions and negotiations in Australian Constitution was signed by most of the Member States and was joined by all of them in 1900 when West Australia joined New Zealand and feed did not participate and thus embarked on a path to become separate Nations the British approved and on the first day of the 20th century Australia became a new nation it still recognized the British monarch Queen Victoria as their head of state and remained proud members of the British Empire but had their own parliament Prime Minister and a large amount of Home Rule though the British government still had a say in some affairs their Australia's first prime minister was Edmund Barton who held the office from 1901 to 1903 the choice for the capital city was debated with some favoring Melbourne and others Sydney a compromise was reached however and the city in between the two Canberra was made and remains Australia's capital thus after over a century of work struggle and progress a nation was born Australia's greatest challenges however had yet to come in 1914 tension between the major powers of Europe erupted into the most major war seen not simply within the past relatively peaceful century but in all of human history to that date the first world war Britain France and Russia united against Germany the austro-hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as we've seen Australians do to their somewhat isolated position on the globe did not participate much in many of the conflicts fought by the British Empire this war however would be different as a true world war it would affect the whole world to some extent Australia included both abroad as the British mustered the strength from all their dominions and closer to home as territory in the Pacific became contested when Britain declared war Australia was automatically included Australia's entry into the war was known as their baptism of fire the Australian mindset and identity would never be the same again despite the origins of the conflict being half a world away Australians enthusiastically rallied to join the cause nearly half a million Australian men would volunteer between 1914 and 18 to defend the mother country possibly as much as half of the fighting age population at a time a remarkable number given Australia's avoidance of conscription together with New Zealand they formed the world-renowned Anzac the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps their first task was to seize German New Guinea and the surrounding islands displayed here within months Australia and New Zealand had seized many of the islands with the Empire of Japan seizing many of the others the German forces present in the Pacific surrendered and showed much less effort to maintain their holdings undoubtedly Australia's most famous contribution however would be the Gallipoli campaign as the war dragged on in Europe the world watched each side struggle to make significant progress against the other accordingly the Allied forces sought to open his second front and assist the Russians in their fight against the Ottomans in 1915 a plan was hatched to land forces here on the lovely peninsula not far from the Ottoman capital of Istanbul if this could be done it would quickly break Ottoman power in the region On February 17th of that year the Gallipoli campaign began it would last for eight months and be carried out on the Allied side by the ends acts along with anglo-indian median system the fighting here was famously brutal and due to strategic error and fierce Ottoman resistance would fail with over 8,000 australians among the over 30,000 allies who perished in the fighting Australian Imperial forces were subsequently withdrawn from the fighting and transported to other fronts namely France were they joining the other allies in their horrendous endless fight against the Germans such as in the upcoming Somme offensive and in the Middle East pursuing other activity against the Ottomans and Neeson I and Palestine campaign the war ended in 1918 with allied and therefore Australian victory over all around 60,000 Australians killed in the fighting and thousands more were severely scarred both mentally and physically for the rest of their lives Australian Prime Minister Billy Hughes would be active in the Treaty of Versailles the first international treaty signed by Australia he would side with Britain on punishing Germany and blaming them for the war aiming to secure territory from them in the Pacific indeed was granted to Australia in the League of Nations mandates in fact all German colonial territory was granted to the Allied powers however much of the German Pacific Territory was also given to another nation who is making its presence felt in the Pacific as mentioned Japan which Hughes did not agree with Britain had attempted to maintain cordial relations with the Japanese but the Australians neighboring this newly expanding Empire were reluctant to welcome them further into the Pacific for now peace had come but one day Japan would be a threat the interwar years in Australia would unfold much the same as they did in North America and Europe the roaring 20s was a decade of cultural changes technological development and relative prosperity which were succeeded by the hardships of the Great Depression in the 30s as Australia struggled to come out of the economic decline unemployment levels reached as high as almost 30 percent in 1932 it was also in 1932 that one of Australia's most famous historical events took place the EMU war or as my beloved Australian viewers will insist I pronounce it EMU war this war has been very heavily memed it was essentially a pest control operation emus wreaked havoc on Australian agriculture to the point at which the military was sent to handle the situation which ended in a failure I won't engage in the EMU war silliness because the EMU war was a proxy war it's an illusion you've all been lied to it distracts from the real threat posed by the monastic state of the Australian rabbit led by their immortal God Emperor who is known to the kids these days and school as people on reddit as well they are they call him big chunga's it was in the late 1930s that a new far greater threat appeared on the Australian horizon the prospect of a second Great War relations with walls Germany and Japan began to break down in the 30s as both sides overtly displayed their imperial ambitions as mentioned to the Australians Japan posed the most significant threat its ambitions of expanding throughout Asia including their secret intention to expel the European powers from the region would inevitably clash with the ambitions of the British Empire Japanese ambitions could spread quite far throughout the Pacific perhaps even to Australia itself in 1939 war did indeed come as Australia was tied to Britain's declaration the extent to which I can discuss this war is of course limited by YouTube's D monetization practices so I will unfortunately not be able to mention certain key events however the majority of those events were in Europe and as mentioned Australia was most threatened by pan japan's key focus was on the area of Indochina which included the territory of British Malaya modern Indonesia then controlled by the Dutch Papua New Guinea which was administered by Australia and possibly at some point the Philippines which was protected by the United States with the Japanese advancing rapidly into these areas the Australians were reluctant to deploy further troops to assist in the European and North African theater to assist against Germany but thousands already present in fighting in the Mediterranean the war quickly became quite serious eventually the British in their colonies stood alone against the Axis powers then Japan switched focus and attacked the United States a few months later in February of 42 British held Singapore partially defended by Australian forces fell to the Japanese Australian Prime Minister John Curtin feared that an invasion of Australia could be next in fact the Australian city of Darwin was bombed by Japanese aircraft that same month it was the first time Australia itself had been attacked by a foreign power the bombing would continue until late 43 abroad the Japanese would fight Australian forces ferociously and be exceedingly brutal towards Australian prisoners the Japanese never landed troops in Australia though and in fact never attempted to expand into Australia itself it was considered unfeasible as they strained to defend their empire from the Americans who were pressing further into the Pacific Territory their invasion of Australian territory was limited to New Guinea where they attempted to take Port Moresby their invasion was halted by American forces at sea and by Australian and American forces on the land in grueling jungle warfare with Britain having been badly defeated in the Pacific the Australians looks to coordinate their efforts more closely with the Americans which was the beginning of a closer positive relationship between the two nations in fact Australian forces were soon put under the command of American General Douglas MacArthur in forty-five the Germans and months later the Japanese surrendered to Allied forces overall about 40,000 Austria ian's had died in the war the majority of them having died in the Pacific it was the most brutal war that Australia and the world had ever seen but the nation once more came out standing following these events Australia began to enter the modern world where the lines between history and modernity are blurred it was after the war that the British Empire began to fall apart a process which would have a notable effect on Australia colonies and territories around the world were given more or total independence in 1975 Papua New Guinea gained its independence in 1986 in Australia herself British legal authority came to an end with the Australia Act 1986 Australia thus became a true fully independent country though it does remain a part of the British Commonwealth and the British monarch ceremonially remains the Australian head of state as we've seen Australia is quite a young nation in the grand scheme of things it was heavily isolated for most of history until just 240 years ago and the nation itself is only a bit over a hundred years old however in that time the nation has experienced a remarkable history and has made an undeniable impact on the world it's a complicated story with numerous examples of hardship and misfortune and suffering yet the Australian story is as well one of great success which speaks to the strength and determination of the Australian people traits which will doubtlessly continue to fuel the nation and grant it a bright future we will see you soon in the next Article have a great day Goodbye.
