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.
Aboriginal Tasmanians
Risdon Cove, the first Tasmanian settlement, was located in south-east country. There is eyewitness evidence that the South East nation may have consisted of up to ten clans, totalling around 500 people. However, only four groups totalling 160–200 people were officially recorded as the main source by Robinson, whose journals begin in 1829. By this time, Europeans had settled in most of the South East tribe's country, with the country dispossessed and food resources depleted. Their country contained the most important silcrete, chert and quartzite mines in Tasmania.
The South East people had a hostile relationship with the Oyster Bay people whom they frequently raided, often to kidnap women.
Truganini was a Nuenonne from Bruny Island, which they called "Lunawanna-Alonnah". The first two European towns built on the island were named Lunawanna and Alonnah, and most of the island's landmarks are named after Nuenonne people. The island was the source of the sandstone used to build many of Melbourne's buildings, such as the Post Office and Parliament House.
Tasmanian aboriginal culture is one of the world's most enduring. Aboriginal culture was disrupted severely in the 19th century after dispossession of land and incarceration of aboriginal people on Wybalenna and Oyster Cove. Much traditional knowledge has irrevocably disappeared and what remains has been nurtured over several generations starting with the aboriginal wives of sealers on the Furneaux Islands.