HISTORY LESSON
ARNHEM Land was first discovered by Europeans when Commander Jan Carstensz noted its shores from his ship the Aernem, in 1623. Dutch ships visited Melville Island in 1705, well before English seafarer Lt. James Cook ‘discovered’ Australia in 1770. This was a time when Macassans from Sulawesi had already established Australia’s first export industry: trepang. Others came: King, Wickham and Stokes were sea-land explorers searching for the great mythical inland river that was supposed to extend right into the very bowels of the continent.
The Macassans had spent more than 100 years of trepang fishing on our coasts by the time the British established a military settlement at Fort Dundas on Melville Island in 1824-29. It was followed by Raffles Bay in 1827-29 and Victoria on Port Essington during 1838-49. All failed. The British military presence on our northern coast was to prevent French or Dutch claims to it. The settlements brought the British in contact with the natives and the trepangers, with whom they enjoyed a little trade. The Brits imported animals – buffalo, pigs, Timor ponies, banteng cattle, dogs and cats – into the settlements, which brought vast changes to this fragile country when the British abandoned the north and left the animals to their own resources.
Victoria was moderately successful had it not been for its utter isolation and diseases, as well as the deadly attacks by pirates on supply ships from Singapore and India. One notable event was when a ragged party of explorers arrived from overland in 1846: the Dr. Ludwig Leichhardt expedition. It had left the Darling Downs, west of Brisbane, 18 months earlier, a rare feat that went largely unrecognised by the NSW Government Surveyor-general Mitchell at the time, because Leichhardt was a Prussian and had undertaken the trip without his permission – or, as some sources report, Mitchell had plans to do it himself.
South Australia annexed the Northern Territory and chose Escape Cliffs on the Adelaide River for the first civilian settlement, but it was abandoned and Palmerston in 1869 (later Darwin) became the first successful settlement in the tropics.