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Australia's aboriginal people probably came from South East Asia, and migrated to their new country by boat, during the last Ice Age, at least 50,000 years ago.
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Despite many european explorers had already sailed the australian coast before, real issues only started to appear in 1770, when the Captain James Cook unfairly claimed the country's east coast for Britain.
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Britain's colonised territory in Australia started to be used as an outdoor prison for british convicts. In fact, the First Fleet of eleven ships carrying 1,500 people (half of them being convicts) arrived in Sidney Harbour on 26 January 1788.
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Gold was discovered in New South Wales and central Victoria in 1851. This event caused a numerous amount of consequences during the most part of the second half of the 19th century. Many outsiders, from China for instance, joined the race after gold. The British authorities lost control, and their few attempts of imposing policies and order lead to bloody conflicts.
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In 1868, the last ships of convicts arrived in Australia, but it doesn't mean problems would then disappear. In fact, 160,000 convicts had already come and started destroy the country.
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The six states forming Australia became a united nation, under a single constitution, on 1 January 1901.
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In 1929, social and economic divisions widened as the so called Great Depression, indirectly caused by the first world war, hits Australia.
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After the second world war ended in 1945, loads of migrants from Europe and the Middle East arrived in the country. This obviously immensely boosted Australia's economy the following years/decades.
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In 1972, the party lead by Gough Whitlam won the elections, ending the post-war domination of the Liberal and Country Party coalition. The new winning party promoted acceptance and multiculturalism, and equality.
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Since Gough Whitlam's historical election in 1972, the government has obviously changed numerous times, and many reforms have seen the light of day. In 2007, the Labor Party came back to power, with Kevin Rudd as leader. His challenge was to reform Australia's industrial relation systems, climate change policies and health and education sectors.
