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.
Geology of Tasmania
The earliest geological history is recorded in rocks from over . Older rocks from western Tasmania and King Island were strongly folded and metamorphosed into rocks such as quartzite. After this there are many signs of glaciation from the Cryogenian, as well as the global warming that occurred at the start of the Ediacaran period. An orogeny folded the older Precambrian rocks. In the Cambrian time the Tyennan block forming the south west and central Tasmania, was pushed up and slightly over the land of north west Tasmania, the Tyennan Orogeny. Then there were volcanic action and sediments from the Cambrian and Ordovician. The large ore deposits were formed on the West Coast. The north east of Tasmania began to form as part of the Lachlan Orogen with turbidity flows of mud and sand on to the ocean floor. In the Devonian the Tabberabberan Orogeny caused more folding, and intrusion of granite on the west and east coasts, and probably joined the east of Tasmania to the west.