Once upon a time, more than 100 million years ago, Australia was part of one of two continents on Earth. Then, breaking away and moving to the equator, it became an independent continent. The indigenous people of Papua New Guinea migrated to the Australian continent about 60 thousand years ago and established settlements in various parts of it. The number of Aboriginal people before the arrival of Europeans in Australia was somewhere between 300 thousand and a million people, there were 500 different cultural groups, speaking 250 different languages.

In the 17th century, Dutch explorers landed on the north and east coast of Australia and discovered the island of Tasmania. William Dampier was the first British to land in the northwestern part of the Australian continent in 1688.

The history of New Zealand, according to various sources, began about seven hundred years ago. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman became the first European to visit New Zealand. Captain James Cook, who reached the shores of a distant country in October 1769, became the first European to travel around the country and map it. Explorers, sailors, missionaries, merchants and adventurers have regularly arrived in the country since the end of the 18th century. In 1840, the Waitangi Agreement was concluded between Britain and the Maori, under which the latter was granted the same civil rights as the British. The rest of the century is spent in the colonization of New Zealand. Subsequently, the introduction of the European economic and legal systems lead to the impoverishment of the indigenous population (Maori) and the transfer of power to the Pakeha (Europeans).

Read books on Australia and New Zealand history from Trieste Publishing.