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First Fleet
They sailed from Portsmouth in, England. There were eleven ships in the First Fleet: two naval ships, six convict ships and three store ships so they could store supplies to survive the big trip. Captain Arthur Phillip was in charge of the fleet. On the ships there were about 1500 people including 722 convicts, 17 child convicts, the soldiers who were to guard the people so they couldn’t escape, the soldiers' wives and the sailors -
Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders was born on the 16th of March 1774 in England. He was a cartographer and a navigator. He was the first ever person to sail around Australia, proving that van Diemen’s land was a separate island from Australia. He started sailing around Australia from the 18th of July 1801 and finished in June 1803. He died on the 19th of July in England. Matthew also travelled with George Bass and Captain Hunter and he went exploring in a boat called Tom Thumb. -
Burke and Wills
William John Wills was born in Totnes, Devon in England on 5th January. Robert O’Hara Burke was born in Ireland, at St Clerans, Country Galway in 1821. The reason Burke came to Australia is because of the Gold rush. The reason Wills came to Australia is because he wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps. The reason Burke and Wills explored Australia is because of the Australian expedition (which they travelled from South to North).What Burke and Wills tried to do was to win a challenge. -
Gold Rush
In 1851 from the American gold mines, Edward Hargraves discovered a tiny grain of gold in the waterhole near Bathurst, New South Wales. Then there were men crowding the area looking for gold. The men spread south and north searching all the creeks and met the other men going (and they were all looking for some gold soon the mines of Ballarat and Bendigo were found by gold hunters. Some men found gold easily one dug 5 feet deep (152.4 Centimetres) and there they found Gold! -
Federation
There were 6 colonies in Australia in 1860 and they were all British. The British Parliament made most of the laws. A lot of colonies had very little to do with each other. In 1872, a telegraph line linked the colonies with each other. This was a sign of the start of the federation. The telegraph line was used to transmit songs and poems. The president of NSW which was Henry Parkes persuaded to talk about the Federation in 1890.
