绘制澳大利亚 从永恒的原住民大陆成为英国囚犯流放地，后来又发展成一个现代化的多元文化国家的历程。
原住民梦想一个永恒的大陆
澳大利亚的原住民已在澳大利亚独特且富有挑战性的自然环境中生活和
繁衍了五万多年。 他们据信是在最后一次冰河纪（Ice Age）期间，从东南亚乘船来到这里的。
到欧洲人踏上这片土地时，有多达一百万的原住民生活在这片大陆的 300 个国邦或部落里，讲 250 种语言和 700 种方言。
那时，原住民靠打猎和采集生活，他们也会旅行进行贸易、寻找水和季节性土产，以及进行宗教仪式和图腾集会。
那时和现在一样，每个部落都与某一片特定的土地有着精神联系。
尽管他们的家乡不同（从内陆的沙漠、热带雨林到冰雪覆盖的山脉），但是所有的原住民都对永恒而神奇的梦幻时期有着共同的信仰。
根据澳大利亚原住民神话，图腾神灵祖先创造了生活的方方面面。
这些神灵祖先通过原住民文化的每一个方面，继续将大地、自然现象、部落领地、远古、现在和未来联系到一起。
英国带来大批囚犯
“南方大陆”（Terra
Australis）是欧洲探险家发现的最后一块大陆。
当时，这片土地充满神秘色彩，为人所津津乐道，再加上自然资源丰富，吸引了探险家们航海涌入这块未知的土地。 直到 1770
年库克•詹姆斯船长（Captain James Cook）登陆波坦尼湾（Botany Bay），欧洲人才正式宣称对这块南部大陆拥有主权。
为了解决英国境内监狱过度拥挤的问题和美国革命对英国造成的破坏，探险家兼植物学家约瑟夫•班克斯（Joseph
Banks）建议将新南威尔斯（New South Wales）作为新的囚犯殖民地。
1788年1月26日，由11艘船只组成的“第一舰队”（First Fleet）运载着1500人（其中一半是囚犯）抵达悉尼港（Sydney
Harbour）。 流放囚犯的政策直到1868年才结束，至此共有16万名男女囚犯来到澳大利亚。
从18世纪90年代早期起，自由移民就开始涌入，但囚犯的生活十分艰苦。 妇女随时面临性剥削的威胁，男人则可能会因为像偷盗这样的小罪行被判绞刑。 对于原住民来说，土地被剥夺、以及外来病毒引起的疾病与死亡，破坏了传统的生活方式与习惯。
抢占土地的人在大陆上推进
到19世纪20年代，许多士兵、军官及释放犯已将从政府那里获得的土地逐渐
转变为农场，经营得十分兴旺。 澳大利亚有廉价土地与大量工作机会的消息不胫而走，吸引了越来越多的船只，满载着来自英国的富于冒险精神的移民。
移民们或抢占土地的人开始更加深入原住民的领地（常常带着枪），为他们的牲畜搜寻牧草与水。
1825年，由士兵和囚犯组成的一群人定居到靠近现代布里斯本的尤格拉人（Yuggera）的领地里。
英国绅士于1829年定居柏斯；1835年，一个圈占土地的人航行至菲力浦港湾（Port Phillip Bay），并选择了目前墨尔本的所在地。
与此同时，一家以与囚犯无任何瓜葛而自豪的英国私人公司，在南澳大利亚设立了阿得莱德殖民地。
淘金热带来财富、移民及叛乱
1851年，新南威尔斯与维多利亚中部发现金矿，这吸引了来自殖民地的数
千名年轻男子与一些敢于冒险的年轻女子。 同时前来的还有成船的中国矿工、以及来自世界各地的各路艺人、酒馆老板、妓女和骗子。
在维多利亚州，英国统治者试图强制建立秩序 - 推行月许可证并派遣铁腕军队 - 致使在1854年爆发了反独裁主义的尤里卡叛乱。
尽管在金矿区充满暴力，但黄金与羊毛所带来的财富吸引了大量投资纷纷涌入墨尔本与悉尼，到19世纪80年代，它们已成为了充满时尚气息的现代城市。
澳大利亚建国
1901 年1月1日，澳大利亚六个殖民地联合起来，组成了联邦国家。 如今，澳大利亚由六个州和两个领地组成，每个州和领地都有自己的议会、旗帜和标志花卉。 妇女于1902年获得了投票权，1907 年设定了最低工资。
澳大利亚人参战
第一次世界大战给澳大利亚带来了灾难性的影响。
1914年，澳大利亚男性人口不足300万，而其中有近40万人自愿参战。 估计有6万人阵亡，数万人受伤。
为了克服悲伤，20世纪20年代掀起了一阵潮流，带来了新型轿车、电影院、美国爵士乐和电影、以及对大英帝国的热衷。
1929年经济大萧条（Great Depression）来临时，社会与经济分化进一步扩大，许多澳大利亚金融机构纷纷倒闭。
体育运动使国人暂时忘却了困境，赛马法雅纳（Pharlap）与板球运动员唐纳德•布莱德曼（Donald
Bradman）这样的体育英雄，获得了近乎神话般的地位。
第二次世界大战期间，澳大利亚军队在欧洲、亚洲及太平洋地区联军取得的胜利中做出了巨大贡献。 经历了二战的那代澳大利亚人由此为祖国的能力而深感自豪。
澳大利亚新移民适逢战后繁荣
1945年战争结束之后，无数来自欧洲与中东的移民来到澳大利亚，许多人在欣欣向荣的制造行业找到了工作。 很多在男人们参军作战期间到工厂做工的妇女在和平时期仍然继续工作。
20世纪50年代，随着堪培拉附近山区的大雪山水利工程（Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric
Scheme）等多个重大国家建设项目的实施，澳大利亚的经济日益增长。
澳大利亚主要出口产品（金属、羊毛、肉类及小麦）的国际需求不断增长，澳大利亚的市郊也繁荣起来。
住宅拥有率显著上升，从1947年的仅为40%上升到20世纪60年代的70％以上。
澳大利亚政策放宽
像其它许多国家一样，澳大利亚接受了20世纪60年代的社会变革氛围的洗礼。
澳大利亚新的种族多元化、逐渐独立于英国的统治以及对越南战争的普遍抵制，共同营造了有利于政治、经济及社会变革的氛围。
1967年，澳大利亚全民公决以压倒多数的赞成票同意联邦政府代表澳大利亚原住民制定法律，并在未来人口调查中将原住民包括在内。
结果，由原住民与澳大利亚白人发起的猛烈的改革运动达到了顶峰。
1972年，由律师出身的理想主义领袖高夫•惠特拉姆（Gough Whitlam）领导的澳大利亚工党（Australian Labor
Party）当选执政，结束了战后自由党和乡村党联盟（Liberal and Country Party
coalition）一统天下的局面。 此后三年间，由他领导的新政府结束了兵役制、废除大学学费，并引入免费的全民医疗保健，
同时，还废除了“白澳政策”、拥护多元文化主义、提出无过错离婚原则以及男女同工同酬。
然而，1975年，澳大利亚总督以通货膨胀和丑闻为由解散了该政府。 在随后的大选中，工党遭遇大败，自由党–国家党联盟由此执政至1983年。
自20世纪70年代以来
1983至1996年间，霍克–基廷工党（Hawke–Keating
Labor）政府实施了一系列的经济改革，如解除对银行系统的管制、澳元实行浮动汇率制。 1996年，由约翰•霍华德（John
Howard）领导的联盟政府在大选中获胜，并分别在1998、2001及2004年重新当选。
自由党–国家党联盟政府颁布了多项改革措施，包括税收与劳资关系制度中的变革。 2007年，由陆克文（Kevin
Rudd）领导的工党当选执政，提出了改革澳大利亚的劳资关系制度、气候变化政策以及医疗保健与教育部门的议程。
Aboriginal people dream on a timeless continent
Australia’s
Aboriginal people were thought to have arrived here by boat from South
East Asia during the last Ice Age, at least 50,000 years ago. At the
time of European discovery and settlement, up to one million
Aboriginal people lived across the continent as hunters and gatherers.
They were scattered in 300 clans and spoke 250 languages and 700
dialects. Each clan had a spiritual connection with a specific piece of
land. However, they also travelled widely to trade, find water and
seasonal produce and for ritual and totemic gatherings.
Despite the diversity of their homelands - from outback
deserts and tropical rainforests to snow-capped mountains – all
Aboriginal people share a belief in the timeless, magical realm of the
Dreamtime. According to Aboriginal myth, totemic spirit ancestors
forged all aspects of life during the Dreamtime of the world’s
creation. These spirit ancestors continue to connect natural phenomena,
as well as past, present and future through every aspect of Aboriginal
culture.
Britain arrives and brings its convicts
A
number of European explorers sailed the coast of Australia, then known
as New Holland, in the 17th century. However it wasn’t until 1770 that
Captain James Cook chartered the east coast and claimed it for Britain.
The new outpost was put to use as a penal colony and on 26 January
1788, the First Fleet of 11 ships carrying 1,500 people – half of them
convicts – arrived in Sydney Harbour. Until penal transportation ended
in 1868, 160,000 men and women came to Australia as convicts.
While free settlers began to flow in from the early 1790s, life for
prisoners was harsh. Women were outnumbered five to one and lived under
constant threat of sexual exploitation. Male re-offenders were brutally
flogged and could be hung for crimes as petty as stealing. The
Aboriginal people displaced by the new settlement suffered even more.
The dispossession of land and illness and death from introduced
diseases disrupted traditional lifestyles and practices.
Squatters push across the continent
By the
1820s, many soldiers, officers and emancipated convicts had turned land
they received from the government into flourishing farms. News of
Australia’s cheap land and bountiful work was bringing more and more
boatloads of adventurous migrants from Britain. Settlers or ‘squatters’
began to move deeper into Aboriginal territories – often with a gun -
in search of pasture and water for their stock.
In 1825, a party of soldiers and convicts settled in the territory
of the Yuggera people, close to modern-day Brisbane. Perth was settled
by English gentlemen in 1829, and 1835 a squatter sailed to Port
Phillip Bay and chose the location for Melbourne. At the same time a
private British company, proud to have no convict links, settled
Adelaide in South Australia.
Gold fever brings wealth, migrants and rebellion
Gold
was discovered in New South Wales and central Victoria in 1851, luring
thousands of young men and some adventurous young women from the
colonies. They were joined by boat loads of prospectors from China and
a chaotic carnival of entertainers, publicans, illicit liquor-sellers,
prostitutes and quacks from across the world. In Victoria, the British
governor’s attempts to impose order - a monthly licence and
heavy-handed troopers - led to the bloody anti-authoritarian struggle
of the Eureka stockade in 1854. Despite the violence on the goldfields,
the wealth from gold and wool brought immense investment to Melbourne
and Sydney and by the 1880s they were stylish modern cities.
Australia becomes a nation
Australia’s six
states became a nation under a single constitution on 1 January 1901.
Today Australia is home to people from more than 200 countries.
Australians go to war
The First World War had a
devastating effect on Australia. There were less than 3 million men in
1914, yet almost 400,000 of them volunteered to fight in the war. An
estimated 60,000 died and tens of thousands were wounded. In reaction
to the grief, the 1920s was a whirlwind of new cars and cinemas,
American jazz and movies and fervour for the British Empire. When the
Great Depression hit in 1929, social and economic divisions widened and
many Australian financial institutions failed. Sport was the national
distraction and sporting heroes such as the racehorse Phar Lap and
cricketer Donald Bradman gained near-mythical status.
During the Second World War, Australian forces made a significant
contribution to the Allied victory in Europe, Asia and the Pacific. The
generation that fought in the war and survived came out of it with a
sense of pride in Australia’s capabilities.
New Australians arrive to a post-war boom
After
the war ended in 1945, hundreds of thousands of migrants from across
Europe and the Middle East arrived in Australia, many finding jobs in
the booming manufacturing sector. Many of the women who took factory
jobs while the men were at war continued to work during peacetime.
Australia’s economy grew throughout the 1950s with major
nation-building projects such as the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric
Scheme in the mountains near Canberra. International demand grew for
Australia’s major exports of metals, wools, meat and wheat and suburban
Australia also prospered. The rate of home ownership rose dramatically
from barely 40 per cent in 1947 to more than 70 per cent by the 1960s.
Australia loosens up
Like many other countries,
Australia was swept up in the revolutionary atmosphere of the 1960s.
Australia’s new ethnic diversity, increasing independence from Britain
and popular resistance to the Vietnam War all contributed to an
atmosphere of political, economic and social change. In 1967,
Australians voted overwhelmingly ‘yes’ in a national referendum to let
the federal government make laws on behalf of Aboriginal Australians
and include them in future censuses. The result was the culmination of
a strong reform campaign by both Aboriginal and white Australians.
In 1972, the Australian Labor Party under the idealistic leadership
of lawyer Gough Whitlam was elected to power, ending the post-war
domination of the Liberal and Country Party coalition. Over the next
three years, his new government ended conscription, abolished
university fees and introduced free universal health care. It abandoned
the White Australia policy, embraced multiculturalism and introduced
no-fault divorce and equal pay for women. However by 1975, inflation
and scandal led to the Governor-General dismissing the government. In
the subsequent general election, the Labor Party suffered a major
defeat and the Liberal–National Coalition ruled until 1983.
Since the 1970s
Between 1983 and 1996, the
Hawke–Keating Labor governments introduced a number of economic
reforms, such as deregulating the banking system and floating the
Australian dollar. In 1996 a Coalition Government led by John Howard
won the general election and was re-elected in 1998, 2001 and 2004. The
Liberal–National Coalition Government enacted several reforms,
including changes in the taxation and industrial relations systems. In
2007 the Labor Party led by Kevin Rudd was elected with an agenda to
reform Australia’s industrial relations system, climate change
policies, and health and education sectors.
