*Humans probably arrived in Oceania around New Guinea about 60,000 years ago, coming by sea from Southeast Asia.  From there, about 40,000 BC some crossed either by land bridges or by boats to reach Australia.  In Australia the descendents of these peoples are now known as Aborigines.

*The islands father away were not colonised until much later.  It is though that the people who eventually settled most of Polynesia began spreading out from the East Indies about 1,600 BC, and did not fully colonise the Pacific until at least 1,000 AD (although some theories suggest they went much farther much earlier, perhaps even populating South America thousands of years ago).

*New Zealand was settled by the Maori people some time between 800 and 1300 AD (possibly in several waves during that period).  They probably came from what is now Indonesia or Southeast Asia (they speak an Austronesian language related to many other Polynesian languages).

*About 6000 years ago, the land bride connecting Australia to New Guinea was flooded, and a more settled culture began to evolve in Australia.  Farming and fishing were developed into important activities, and the Dingo was imported from Asia (probably between 3000 and 1000 BC).

*Europeans first arrived in the region in the early 1500s, when the Portuguese and the Spanish explored the region.  New Guinea was named at this time for the Guinea region in Africa, because the people of New Guinea were thought (by the Spanish) to resemble the Africans of the Guinea coast.  The region was also called Papua, from a Maori word meaning frizzy—this also referred to the appearance of the natives, who had frizzy hair.

*Australia was first sighted in 1606 by the Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, who landed on the Cape York Peninsula.  In time the continent came to be called ‘New Holland,’ but it was never settled.

*The Dutch were also the first people to find New Zealand, when Abel Tasman sketched the west coasts of South and North Islands.  He called it Staten Land, but it was later called New Zealand (Zealand, like Holland, being an important province in the Netherlands).

*The other islands of Oceania were explored by Europeans throughout the 1500s, 1600s, and 1700s, but were most famously charted by Captain James Cook of the Royal Navy on three major voyages between 1768 and 1779.

*Sailing in the Endeavour (for which the space shuttle is named), and later the Resolution, Cook explored much of Polynesia, claimed Australia for Britain, visited New Zealand, discovered the Sandwich Islands (named after the First Lord of the Admiralty and inventor of the sandwich) (George Vancouver, another British explorer (and one of Cook’s protégés), would later give their king a flag), Easter Island, the Friendly Islands (Tonga), South Georgia Island, and charted the coast of California.  He also was one of the first sailors to cross the Antarctic Circle, but he did not sight Antarctica, and claimed to have proven that no such place existed. 

*Cook’s first expedition brought Australian wildlife back to England for the first time, and was the time when the word kangaroo entered the English language.  All his expeditions brought back valuable scientific knowledge (including over 3,000 plant species) and drew important charts that allowed other explorers and merchants to follow him.

*Cook met his end on his third voyage.  After some Hawaiians stole some of his ship’s boats, he got in a fight with them and was clubbed and stabbed to death.

*Cook claimed Australia in 1770, and in 1788 the first English settlers arrived.  These were mostly criminals who in earlier decades would have been transported to America.  They were landed in New South Wales, the oldest state in Australia.

*Between 1803 and 1859 the colonies of Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria, and Queensland were created, each as a separate colony administered from Britain. 

*Most of Australia’s states were never penal colonies, although some took prisoners from New South Wales to serve as labourers.

*Australia also had a large native population, the Aborigines, but they were cruelly mistreated.  They suffered terribly from European diseases, but were also killed by settlers who wanted their land.  It is thought that about 90% of the Aboriginal population was killed between 1788 and 1900.  The Aborigines also killed white settlers, with the last known spearing in 1939.

*Australia had two major gold rushes, one in the 1850s and one in the 1890s.  During the first of these, miners who felt they were mistreated by a government that demanded huge fees for mining licenses revolted and demanded better treatment and recognition of their rights in 1854. 

*This revolt was known as the Eureka Stockade, after a stockade, or small fort, built by the miners.  Government soldiers surrounded the stockade on 3 December, a shot was fired, and a battle began.  It was short and bloody, and the miners lost.  However, it was seen as a moral victory, or at least a rallying point, and the embarrassed government afterwards granted the miners some of the reforms they wanted.  It was also seen as the beginning of Australian efforts at self-government.

*In the years that followed, the Australian colonies were given more and more local power, and in 1901 they were united as one dominion under a governor-general.

*In 1911, the Northern Territory was officially separated from South Australia as a home for the remaining Aborigines, and in 1913 construction of Canberra began in the Australian Capital Territory, a site chosen as a compromise between the major cities of Sydney and Melbourne.

*During WWI Australia sent men to fight with Britain, and her soldiers were famous for their brave attempts to storm Gallipoli in a disastrous attempt at invasion of the Ottoman Empire.

*During WWII Australia was under threat of invasion from Japan, and Japanese warplanes even bombed Darwin.  The turning point of the war in the Pacific is sometimes seen as the Battle of the Coral Sea just off the coast of Australia.

*Australians have always been afraid that their large, but sparsely-populated, country might be overrun by the over-populated nations near them.  After WWII Australia began to strongly encourage European and American immigration, while strongly discouraging non-white immigration.  This was known as the White Australia policy, and was popular from the time of federation in 1901 until the 1970s.  Today it is officially no longer in force, although it does remain in some unofficial ways, and immigration in general is fairly restricted.

*Between 1957 and 1965 Aborigines gained the right to vote in Australian state and federal elections.  Today relations between the races are fairly strained, although the courts have begun to show more tolerance towards the Aborigines, and many place-names are now bi-lingual (even putting the Aboriginal name first).

*Today, Australia is a constitutional monarchy, with Queen Elizabeth II, through her governor-general, serving as head of state for Australia, which also has a Prime Minister and Parliament to do daily business. 

*Once, a governor-general actually used his power as representative of the monarch.  In 1975 the Australian government was deadlocked:  the Senate refused to pass any laws until new elections were held (which the House of Representative could call at any time) but the House would not call elections until the Senate passed its budget bill (which it wouldn’t).  As things were going, the Australian government was about to run out of money and be unable to pay its bills.  Governor-General Sir John Robert Kerr saw that this would lead to a national crisis, so he dismissed the Prime Minister.  Elections were held, the party that opposed the old Prime Minister won in a landslide, and Kerr’s policy was justified, but Kerr himself was (unfairly) seen by many as a tyrant.

*Today (partly as a result of Kerr’s actions and other events in the 1970s), there is a growing republican movement in Australia, as many Australians would like to see their country be a republic (although perhaps still part of the Commonwealth).  In 1986, Australia cut all legal ties with the British Parliament so it cannot pass any laws for Australia any more.  A referendum on the republican movement failed in 1999, but one day it may happen.

*New Zealand was first settled between 1800 and 1810, and formally added to the British Empire in 1840 by the Treaty of Waitangi, made by the British and certain Maori chiefs. 

*As in Australia, the European immigrants made war on the Maori, but in 1867 also gave them the right to a certain number of reserved seats in the colonial parliament.

*In 1901 New Zealand was offered a chance to become part of the Dominion of Australia, but declined.  In 1907 however, it became a dominion of its own, equal with Canada, Australia, and (later) South Africa.

*New Zealanders fought in WWI and WWII.  In WWI, they and the Australians formed ANZAC, the Australia New Zealand Army Corps.

*Although New Zealand is still a constitutional monarchy with a governor-general, the British Parliament has no power over it.  In 1986 New Zealand cut all legal ties to the British Parliament, and ever since the 1970s it has become more closely tied to Asia economically than it is to Britain, although it still maintains a tight immigration policy meant to keep New Zealand’s demographics more or less the way they are.

*Today Australians call themselves Aussies and New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis, and they compete fiercely with each other despite their many similarities.

*The other major country in the region, Papua New Guinea, was also a colony; part of it first belonged to Germany, then all of it belonged to Australia.

*In 1883 Queensland claimed the south-eastern part of the island, naming it British New Guinea, and later Papua.

*In 1884 Germany claimed the north-eastern part of the island, calling it German New Guinea.  After WWI, however, the League of Nations gave it to Australia.

*During WWII the Japanese too the island from Australia, but in 1945 their colonies were returned to them, and in 1946 they were combined under one colonial government as the Territory of Papua and New Guinea.

*In 1972, the colony was given independence under the new name Papua New Guinea.  Since then it has existed as a constitutional monarchy like Australia and New Zealand, with the major difference that ethnically it is non-white, and does not really even have a majority ethnic group—there are over 700 Papuan languages spoken on the island, while English serves as the lingua franca and the language of government.  Tok Pisin, an English-Papuan Creole language, is also an important lingua franca and seems to be becoming the most important language in the country.

*Traditionally Papua New Guinea has been close friends with Australia, partly because Australia, as the former colonial power, has often sent them generous aid packages, but recently those have not been seen as generous enough.

*In general this is not a wealthy region of the world, and many of the island nations depend on foreign aid from the rest of the world, especially former colonial powers.  Most of the region, though, does enjoy some form of democracy, although a few monarchies still exist, notably in Tonga and Samoa.  Samoa’s monarchy is constrained by a constitution, while Tonga’s king can largely do as he pleases, and recently has reduced freedom of speech and other rights to protect his position.  The French colony of Wallis and Futuna has three chiefs or kings with certain powers over portions of the islands.