Indigenous Australians
British colonisation of Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet in Botany Bay, New South Wales, in 1788. Settlements were subsequently established in Tasmania (1803), Victoria (1803), Queensland (1824), the Northern Territory (1824), Western Australia (1826), and South Australia (1836). Australia was the exception to British imperial colonization practices, in that no treaty was drawn up setting out terms of agreement between the settlers and native proprietors, as was the case in North America, and New Zealand. Many of the men on the First Fleet had had military experience among Indian tribes in North America, and tended to attribute to the aborigines alien and misleading systems or concepts like chieftainship and tribe with which they had become acquainted in the northern hemisphere.
Colony of Tasmania
Religion played an important part in the lives of European Tasmanians in the colonial era. This is evidenced by the large number of isolated churches that survive from that period. Following the Castle Hill convict rebellion in 1804, Catholicism had been outlawed in the Australian colonies out of fear of further Irish Catholic uprisings. This had permitted Protestant religions, particularly Anglicanism to gain a strong foothold in Van Diemen's Land. The Colony's first Preacher, Robert Knopwood, had vigorously pushed the Church of England's cause for much of his time in the colony. Although always in a small minority, Judaism also existed in the colony since its foundation. The indigenous Tasmanians had attempted to maintain their traditional religion, but had been forcibly converted to Anglicanism.