The Aborigines have inhabited Australia for about 60,000 years. Since 1788, British settlers attacked Aborigines to take their land. European diseases, such as smallpox and influenza, wiped out much of the Aborigine population.

In 1781 Britain lost its American colonies, its previous destination for deporting convicts. Australia became the new penal colony. In its first 60 years of colonization, around 160,000 convicts are shipped to penal colonies along the coast.