The history of New South Wales refers to the history of the Australian State of New South Wales and its preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies. The Mungo Lake remains indicate occupation of New South Wales by Aboriginal Australians for at least 40,000 years. The English navigator James Cook became the first European to map the coast in 1770 and a First Fleet of British convicts followed to establish a penal colony at Sydney in 1788. The colony established an autonomous Parliamentary democracy from the 1840s and became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 following a vote to Federate with the other British colonies of Australia. Through the 20th century, the state was a major destination for an increasingly diverse collection of migrants from many nations. In the 21st century, the state is the most populous in Australia, and its capital, Sydney is a major financial capital and host to international cultural and economic events.
Read more about History Of New South Wales: Ancient History, Post World War Two
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, south and/or wales:
“Universal history is the history of a few metaphors.”
—Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“We have heard all of our lives how, after the Civil War was over, the South went back to straighten itself out and make a living again. It was for many years a voiceless part of the government. The balance of power moved away from it—to the north and the east. The problems of the north and the east became the big problem of the country and nobody paid much attention to the economic unbalance the South had left as its only choice.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“I just come and talk to the plants, really—very important to talk to them, they respond I find.”
—Charles, Prince Of Wales (b. 1948)