Don Watson’s The Story of Australia is a modern history of our nation that integrates new understandings about Indigenous Australia and looks to the future, asking: where will we go from here?
Today, we’re featuring a short extract from this amazing book below. Read on to discover Australia’s ancient origins …
The Story of Australia: Ancient Australia
180 million years ago — Gondwanaland begins to break up.
66 million years ago — Dinosaurs die out.
30–40 million years ago — Australia separates from Antarctica. Animals, birds and plants start to develop Australian forms.
2 million years ago — Megafauna in Australia.
50,000–65,000 years ago — People arrive in Australia from South-East Asia.
46,000 years ago — Most megafauna die out.
15,000 years ago — Aboriginal toolkits include horse hoof cores, flaked tools and stone axe heads.
10,000 years ago — The last ice age ends, sea levels rise and Tasmania separates from the mainland.
5000 years ago — Dingoes arrive in Australia.
5000 years ago — Aboriginal toolkits include small finely worked blades of stone, bone and shell.
Continental Drift
Australia was once part of Gondwanaland, the southern hemisphere supercontinent. About 180 million years ago Gondwanaland began to break up and what we know as Africa, South America and India drifted ever so slowly away. On a map we can see how the shapes of the continents fit roughly together.
The last chunk to break away from Gondwanaland was Australia. About 30 million years ago, with New Guinea and Tasmania still attached, it separated from Antarctica. The dinosaurs had long gone, and marsupials had arrived – overland from South America.
Each year since separating, Australia has drifted 7 centimetres north. As it drifted, the climate became drier. The warm wet rainforests of Gondwanaland became the grasslands, woodlands and deserts of Australia. Eucalypts (gum trees) adapted to the drying climate and became the dominant species.
Animals that had lived in the wet forests had to compete for food in these changed environments. Those that could not adapt died out.
Substantial remnants of Gondwanaland remain in the rainforests of Australia’s Wet Tropics, in Tasmania and in secluded pockets on the mainland. Certain Gondwanan plant species, such as cycads and casuarinas, adapted to the drier conditions and flourished.
‘The world’s songbirds evolved in Australia about 30 million years ago.’
The isolation of the island continent is the main reason why Australian animals and birds evolved into the unusual creatures that intrigued the first Europeans to visit Australia and continue to charm modern tourists. While kangaroos, wombats and echidnas are unique in their habits and appearance, like all other creatures they are products of their environment, and of slow but massive changes occurring over millions of years.
Some species thrived. The world’s songbirds evolved in Australia about 30 million years ago. After 15 million years or so, they found their way to nearby islands north of Australia and spread across the Earth.
In the course of deep time, countless species of animals, birds and plants have come and gone. For about 2 million years ferocious marsupial lions stalked Australia’s forests. For much longer than that, another carnivorous marsupial, the thylacine, roamed the continent.
The lions died out about 35,000 years ago, when the climate became too dry for the forests to survive. Competition from dingoes might have driven thylacines to extinction on the mainland about 3000 years ago. But new evidence suggests that a steady increase in the human population and more intensive hunting and burning is the more likely explanation. The surviving thylacines in Tasmania were wiped out when Europeans arrived.
Ice ages reshaped the landscape and environment and caused mass extinctions. When the last ice age ended around 10,000 years ago, rising sea levels submerged about one-third of the continent. In the wake of these momentous events, plant and animal species either adapted or vanished from the Earth.
The survivors will go on adapting or disappearing. And the continent will go on drifting north, until it crashes into Asia about 200 million years from now.
—The Story of Australia by Don Watson (Black Inc. Books) is out now.
The Story of Australia
Don Watson's The Story of Australia is a modern history of our nation that integrates new understandings about Indigenous Australia and looks to the future, asking- where will we go from here?
In clear, succinct language that both children and adults will appreciate, Watson guides readers from the ancient lands of Gondwana, through human settlement, colonisation and waves of migration, to the challenges facing our diverse nation today...
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