In April 1789, Sydney, Australia, experienced one of its most violent outbreaks of smallpox when the disease swept through Aboriginal and colonial Australians on the coast. [1] [2] The outbreak began in early March with the first cases appearing in tribes living near Port Jackson. [3] Aboriginal communities had no preexisting immunity to smallpox, and suffered mortality rates of around 70%. [4]
Aboriginal tribes on Arnhem Land first contracted smallpox when they made infectious contact with fishermen from southeast Asia. [5] [6] Governor Arthur Philip estimated that around half of the Aboriginal population around Sydney harbor died in the outbreak. [6]
Woollarawarre Bennelong, also spelt Baneelon, was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal Australian people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia in 1788. Bennelong served as an interlocutor between the Eora and the British, both in the colony of New South Wales and in the United Kingdom.
The First Fleet was a fleet of 11 British ships that took the first British colonists and convicts to Australia. It comprised two Royal Navy vessels, three store ships and six convict transports. On 13 May 1787 the fleet under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, with over 1,400 people, left from Portsmouth, England and took a journey of over 24,000 kilometres (15,000 mi) and over 250 days to eventually arrive in Botany Bay, New South Wales, where a penal colony would become the first British settlement in Australia from 20 January 1788.
The Wangal people are a clan of the Dharug Aboriginal people whose heirs are custodians of the lands and waters of what is now the Inner West of Sydney, New South Wales, centred around the Municipality of Strathfield, Municipality of Burwood, City of Canada Bay and former Ashfield Council and extending west into the City of Parramatta.
The Eora are an Aboriginal Australian people of New South Wales. Eora is the name given by the earliest European settlers to a group of Aboriginal people belonging to the clans along the coastal area of what is now known as the Sydney basin, in New South Wales, Australia. The Eora share a language with the Darug people, whose traditional lands lie further inland, to the west of the Eora.
The Boonwurrung, also spelt Bunurong or Bun wurrung, are an Aboriginal people of the Kulin nation, who are the traditional owners of the land from the Werribee River to Wilsons Promontory in the Australian state of Victoria. Their territory includes part of what is now the city and suburbs of Melbourne. They were called the Western Port or Port Philip tribe by the early settlers, and were in alliance with other tribes in the Kulin nation, having particularly strong ties to the Wurundjeri people.
The history wars is a term used in Australia to describe the public debate about the interpretation of the history of the European colonisation of Australia and the development of contemporary Australian society, particularly with regard to their impact on Aboriginal Australian and Torres Strait Islander peoples. The term "history wars" emerged in the late 1990s during the term of the Howard government, and despite efforts by some of Howard's successors, the debate is ongoing, notably reignited in 2016 and 2020.
The following lists events that happened during 1789 in Australia.
The Gadigal, also spelled as Cadigal and Caddiegal, are a group of Aboriginal people whose traditional lands are located in Gadi, on Eora country, the location of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
The Dharug language, also spelt Darug, Dharuk, and other variants, and also known as the Sydney language, Gadigal language, is an Australian Aboriginal language of the Yuin–Kuric group that was traditionally spoken in the region of Sydney, New South Wales, until it became extinct due to effects of colonisation. It is the traditional language of the Dharug people. The Dharug population has greatly diminished since the onset of colonisation. Eora language has sometimes been used to distinguish a coastal dialect from hinterland dialects, but there is no evidence that Aboriginal peoples ever used this term, which simply means "people". Some effort has been put into reviving a reconstructed form of the language.
The Bidjigal people are an Aboriginal Australian people whose traditional lands are modern-day western, north-western, south-eastern, and southern Sydney, in New South Wales, Australia. The land includes the Bidjigal Reserve, Salt Pan Creek and the Georges River. They are part of the Dharug language group, and there is debate as to whether the clan is part of the Dharug or Eora people.
Peter Dixon Hiscock is an Australian archaeologist. Born in Melbourne, he obtained a PhD from the University of Queensland. Between 2013 and 2021, he was the inaugural Tom Austen Brown Professor of Australian Archaeology at the University of Sydney, having previously held a position in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Australian National University.
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with different symptoms. Only a few written reports dating from about 500 AD to 1000 AD are considered reliable historical descriptions of smallpox, so understanding of the disease prior to that has relied on genetics and archaeology. However, during the 2nd millennium AD, especially starting in the 16th century, reliable written reports become more common. The earliest physical evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3,000 years ago. Smallpox has had a major impact on world history, not least because indigenous populations of regions where smallpox was non-native, such as the Americas and Australia, were rapidly and greatly reduced by smallpox during periods of initial foreign contact, which helped pave the way for conquest and colonization. During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
Before the 20th century, the use of biological agents took three major forms:
Arabanoo was an Aboriginal Australian man of the Eora forcibly abducted on New Year's Eve 1788 by British colonists who arrived with the First Fleet at Port Jackson. His capture was organised to force communication and relations between the Aboriginal people and the British. Arabanoo was the first Aboriginal Australian to live among Europeans.
The Woiwurrung, also spelt Woi-wurrung, Woi Wurrung, Woiwurrong, Woiworung, Wuywurung, are an Aboriginal Australian people of the Woiwurrung language group, in the Kulin alliance.
Valerie Attenbrow is principal research scientist in the Anthropology Research Section of the Australian Museum, a position she has held since 1989.
The Daii or Dhay'yi are an indigenous Australian people of the Northern Territory.
Boorong, also known as Booron or Abaroo, was a Burramattagal woman who was the first female Indigenous Australian to establish significant relations with the British colonists of Australia. She was also the first Indigenous Australian to be instructed in Christianity. As a child, she learnt English and became an important interpreter between the Eora people of Port Jackson and the British in the early years of colonisation. In adulthood, Boorong was the third wife of Bennelong and is buried with him near Kissing Point, New South Wales.
The European colonisation of Australia, was accompanied by epidemic diseases to which the original inhabitants had little resistance. Colds, influenzas, tuberculosis (TB), and measles were major killers. Such diseases devastated Aboriginal populations, weakened their cultures, and often left them in no position to resist the newcomers. Within perhaps as little as six months of the arrival of the First Fleet, venereal disease was already a serious problem for local Aboriginal peoples; but the first disease to produce a major fall in the Aboriginal population around Sydney was the 1789 outbreak, some 16 months after the Fleet arrived, of what Governor Phillip and others referred to as “smallpox”. Watkin Tench, a captain in the Marines, wrote that, "Pustules, similar to those occasioned in the smallpox, were thickly spread on the bodies; but how a disease to which our former observations had led us to suppose them strangers could at once have introduced itself, and spread so widely, seemed inexplicable."
Gringerry Kibba Colebee also spelt Colebe, Coleby or Colbee, was an eighteenth-century Gadigal man, an Aboriginal Australian people from present-day Sydney, New South Wales.
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