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.
Bank of Van Diemen's Land
The Bank of Van Diemen's Land (nicknamed 'the old bank') was Tasmania's first commercial financial institution. Founded in 1823 prior to the use of the name Tasmania, it lasted for 68 years before becoming the first major bank failure of the 1890s depression in Australia. Although it had a reputation for reliability, during the 1880s the bank lent heavily to Tasmanians who invested heavily in silver mining ventures until mineral prices crashed in the 1890s leading to defaults on loan repayments that the bank was unable to survive. The bank closed its doors in August 1891, and offered up its banking premises as a £1 lottery ticket. Following the bank's demise, a Royal Commission was established to investigate allegations of fraudulent activities.