The big book of Australian history

621 Pages·2013·41.9 MB·English

by  Macinnis

Published by the National Library of Australia Canberra ACT 2600
© National Library of Australia 2013
Text © Peter Macinnis
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objectives to interpret and highlight the Library’s collections and to support the
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Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander communities should be aware that this book contains images and
names of people who are now deceased.
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the purpose of research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be
reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Author: Macinnis, P. (Peter), author.
Title: The big book of Australian history / Peter Macinnis.
ISBN: 9780642278524 (ePub)
Target Audience: For upper primary school age.
Subjects: Australia—History—Juvenile literature.
Australia--Social conditions—Juvenile literature.
Australia--Discovery and exploration—Juvenile literature.
Other Authors/Contributors: National Library of Australia, issuing body
Dewey Number:
994
Commissioning Publisher: Susan Hall Editors: Stephanie Owen Reeder and Joanna
Karmel Designer: Susanne Geppert Image coordinators: Jemma Posch and Kathryn
Ross Production coordinator: Melissa Bush Indexer: Joanna McLachlan Find out
more about National Library Publishing at http://publishing.nla.gov.au.
The National Library of Australia would like to thank Debra Dank of the
Indigenous Literacy Project, Fred Ford, Michael McKernan, George Nichols, Glen
Rose, Roslyn Russell and Mary Webb for their help with this book.
Preface
This book provides a broad overview of the history of Australia from its earliest
geological formations to the present day. The framework that underpins the
narrative was developed in consultation with teacher-librarians and specialists in
specific subject areas. The lively and engaging text by award-winning writer
Peter Macinnis and illustrations from the National Library of Australia
collections make the historical narratives in The Big Book of Australian History
accessible to young readers.
The diversity of the Australian experience—from the culture of the Indigenous
people to the contributions made by waves of settlers from countries around the
globe— is captured in the book. There are no lists of colonial governors or prime
ministers, but there are many stirring stories about well-known (and not so well-
known) people, all of whom have contributed to our national story.
There are also stories about how Australians have dealt with the challenges of
living in this country in times of drought, flood, bushfire and other disasters. As
the centenary of the World War I approaches, the impact on the national
consciousness of Australia’s involvement in foreign wars is an essential
component of the book.
No history of Australia could fail to mention our sporting achievements and the
centrality of sport in the nation’s life. The book also examines Australian
contributions in science and the arts, from our Nobel Prize winners to singers,
dancers, actors, filmmakers and visual artists who have created imagery that
conveys the distinctive qualities of Australian life, both Indigenous and non-
Indigenous.
Rosyln Russell, Consultant Historian

Ancient Australia
Australia is an ancient land. Some Australian fossils
are around 3.5 billion years old. Some of its surface
rocks are about two billion years old, while one
Australian plant, the Wollemi pine, belongs to a
family that has been growing on the continent for
about 200 million years. And the history of modern
humans inhabiting Australia goes back tens of
thousands of years.
Australia has unique animals and plants, including the platypus and the waratah.
A rainforest in ancient Australia would have looked much
like this.
Creating an island continent
Inside planet Earth, everything is so hot that even the rocks melt. The heat comes
from radioactive atoms breaking down, and it makes the liquid rock move
around like boiling water in a saucepan. Luckily, melted rock moves much more
slowly than boiling water.
The Earth’s crust, the solid rock we live on, floats on this hot liquid rock.
Sometimes the molten rock breaks through, making a volcano, but mostly it
spreads out sideways under the Earth’s surface. Then the molten rock gets cooler
and sinks again.
A hundred years ago, some people noticed that, on maps, South America and
Africa looked like they fitted together, just like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
That made them think that the seven continents—Europe, Africa, Asia,
Australia, Antarctica, North America and South America—must have moved
around. And so they came up with the idea of ‘continental drift’.
They could also see patterns in the way certain animals had lived in certain
places—especially monkeys, camels, horses and birds. These patterns made
sense only if the continents had moved. The problem was that nobody could
explain what made them move.

Two members of the protea family: an Australian waratah and a South African Protea
A platypus that bites!
There is an opal in the Australian
Museum in Sydney that, around 110
million years ago, was the jaw of an
animal like a platypus. This little
animal had teeth, but adult platypuses
do not have teeth now. The jaw was found
at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales.
It came from a relative of Australia’s
modern monotremes—echidnas and
platypuses.
About 50 years ago, scientists realised that the pieces of the Earth’s crust, called
plates, can move. They get pushed along by currents in the molten rock below
them. That gave rise to the term ‘plate tectonics’.
Today, the big plate that includes all of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea
moves north at about 67 millimetres a year.
The plates are huge, but so are the forces moving them. These forces can cause
earthquakes, and they can also rip plates apart. Luckily, Australia is in the
middle of a stable, single plate, and so it does not have many earthquakes.
These maps show how scientists believe the present-day continents formed over time.
The supercontinents divide
We now know that once, very long ago, there was just one large area of land
called Pangaea. The plants and animals on Pangaea could live anywhere around
the land, and so they either evolved, by slowly changing to suit their
surroundings, or they died out.
Pangaea then split into the supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, and
different groups of plants and animals evolved separately on each one. Then,
when Gondwana split into separate continents, including Australia, lots of
evidence was left behind.
For example, while Australian plants from the family Proteaceae—which
includes banksias, waratahs and grevilleas—were found all over Gondwana,
they are also related to other members of the family in southern Africa and in
South America.
Today, the big plate that includes all of
Australia, New Zealand and New
Guinea moves north at about 67
millimetres a year.
Similarly, most people think marsupials like kangaroos, possums, koalas, bilbies
and Tasmanian devils are found only in Australia, but the American opossum
evolved from the same animals found on Gondwana that became Australia’s
marsupials.
Flightless birds, called ratites—like the emu, the cassowary, the African ostrich,
the South American rhea and the now extinct New Zealand moa—were also
found on Gondwana.
Around 220 million years ago, in what is called the Late Triassic period, the
supercontinents began to separate. Gondwana later broke up, and the Australian
continent drifted south. As the plates moved, the animals and plants that lived on
them were carried along with them. Fossils were formed in the rocks, and by
studying them we can work out what once lived there.
People who study fossils and the rocks in which they are found are called
palaeontologists. They are like detectives searching for clues. By examining
minerals called zircons in New Zealand rocks, they can actually detect that those
rocks formed from sediments that came from rocks in New South Wales and
Queensland over 150 million years ago!
Australia and its animal and plant life are the way they are because of how our
continent formed and changed.