A Short History of Australia

Australia was created 13.7 billion years ago on an otherwise uneventful Wednesday afternoon. 

The Big Bang was crucial to the creation of Australia. It was a pyrotechnic display that left last New Year’s Eve cracker night in Sydney in the shade. Energy levels were produced that would have crushed a lesser universe. Afterwards the universe expanded and cooled while going through various chemical transitions which created matter – the building block of Australia. 

No one from Stephen Hawking down can tell you what was going on before the Big Bang. There’s a general muttering from all astrophysicists about gravitational singularity. They do think it was dark. Probably. 

No one is quite sure why it went off when it did either. There are some God-botherers among the folk in white coats who talk about a higher power lighting the wick on the thing while others babble about general relativity. 

At first Australia started out as part of Africa, South America and the Middle East. Everyone seemed to get on pretty well but fearing a stink was inevitable, Australia politely severed all ties with its neighbours about 500 million years ago, shrugged off Antarctica and headed north where there was a lot of space and some very nice beaches. 

The first Australians showed up about 50,000 or so years ago. Back then people used to walk a lot more than they do now. And so it seems they wandered over from South-East Asia. They may have even walked all the way from Africa. Or they could have arrived in taxis. No one is quite sure. 

However they managed it, at some point the first Australians caught a glimpse of the jewel in the sea and thought to themselves, “Yes, this’ll do nicely.” 

The first Australians eschewed farming after failed attempts to herd wombats but they learned to get a feed out of the place even in the most desolate deserts on earth. 

They set fire to a lot of Australia. No one knows whether they did so in sadness or anger. They brought their dogs with them. They may have invented footy. 

For the next 40,000 years Australia remained a mystery to all but our indigenous brothers and sisters. It was ignored by cartographers and clod-footed explorers appeared to go out of their way to avoid it.  

That all changed in 1606, when Dutchman, Willem Janszoon, sailed south of Papua New Guinea aboard the ship Duyfken, lobbing on Cape York Peninsula. 

Clearly no judge of prime real estate, Janszoon looked about and declared, “What a bloody terrible place for a country”, promptly pulled up anchor and sailed off. 

In what may have been the greatest real estate debacle of all time, another Dutchman, Abel Tasman, circumnavigated Australia without actually seeing any of it – with the exception of a bit of southern Tasmania, which he mistook for something else. Exhausted and with his teeth falling out from scurvy, he returned to his master, Anthony Van Diemen, the governor-general of the Dutch East Indies.  Collapsing at Van Diemen’s feet, Tasman reported, “If Australia’s out there, I’m buggered if I can find it.”

Always quick to leap on an opportunity, the British figured they’d sail up and down the southern oceans looking for Australia until they banged into something that seemed to fit the general description. 

When someone did bang into it, that someone was James Cook and that something turned out to be Botany Bay. Cook (he was then a lieutenant and was promoted to captain upon his return to Britain so the rhyming slang would roll off the tongue more easily) liked the look of the place so much he bunged a flag in to the beach and declared:  “I hereby proclaim this country in the name of whatever demented, syphilitic madman has assumed the throne since I left the place in what seems a lifetime ago.”

Keeping a look out, the locals replied, “Oh a country? Is that what it is? And here’s us thinking we were living in an existential vortex.” The British, who don’t handle sarcasm well, started shooting. 

The Brits were awestruck by the beauty of the landscape and so immediately set Australia up as a prison. Convicts were dispatched to Australia to build the Cahilll Expressway, assemble breweries and place gigantic fibreglass fruits along the eastern seaboard. 

Since then Australian history has been a doddle to grasp. Walter Lindrum, Phar Lap and the Don. That’s all you’ll ever need to know about modern Australian history and everyone knows what happened there. The Don got a blob in his last knock, Phar Lap got a hot shot and Walter Lindrum was hounded out of his sport by the rule makers of an arcane parlour game, too up themselves to realise greatness when they saw it. 

The important thing to note is that right from the Big Bang, all that fuss was just a lead up to this one moment in time and this particular spot in the universe: Australia in 2014. 

If you’re eyes are getting weepy and your knees are trembling now, well that’s only fit and proper. All the work’s been done. Australia has been served up on plate. So go ahead, stick your face in and suck the succulent morsals right up through your nostrils.