1. How much do you know about Australia’s early history?

What was the name of the massive supercontinent that Australia was once part of?
1. Terra Incognita
2. Gondwanaland
3. Rodinia
4. Gunditjmara
Archaeological evidence indicates that Aboriginal people lived in the Illawarra for how many years before the arrival of the Europeans?
1. A few hundred years
2. About 2,500 years
3. About 15,000 years
4. At least 30,000 years
Before the arrival of European settlers, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples inhabited most areas of the Australian continent. How many separate languages were spoken at this time?
1. One throughout the Australian continent
2. One main language and a number of dialects
3. About 20
4. At least 200
What term describes the central belief system of the Australian Aboriginal people?
1. Songlines
2. Christianity
3. Dreaming
4. Aboriginal culture
Who had contact with Australian Indigenous peoples for thousands of years before the European expansion into the eastern hemisphere, and formed substantial relationships with communities in northern Australia?
1. Asian and Oceanic people
2. British people
3. Maoris
4. Nobody
Early contact in the 15th and 16th century with Australian Aboriginal people was made by which people from Melanesia?
1. Macassans
2. Papuans
3. Chinese
4. Dutch
In 1606, which explorer sailed through the strait that separates Australia and Papua New Guinea?
1. Spanish explorer Luis Vaez de Torres
2. Dutch explorer Willem Jantszoon
3. British explorer William Dampier
4. British explorer Captain James Cook
Who was the captain of the Dutch ship Dwyflken which made the earliest recorded contact between Europeans and Aboriginal people on the western coast of Cape York Peninsula in 1606?
1. Abel Tasman
2. Willem Jansz
3. Frederik de Houtman
4. Jan Steyns
What evidence did Dirk Hartog leave of his crew's landing on an island off the west coast of Australia in 1616?
1. A Dutch flag
2. A pewter plate nailed to a post
3. A proclamation claiming the island for Holland
4. A thriving population of the species carried by Hartog on his boat, the rabbit
What was the original name given to Tasmania by Abel Tasman, the Dutch navigator who discovered it in 1642?
1. Demons’ Land
2. New Holland
3. New Batavia
4. Van Diemen’s Land
Which explorer charted the coast of Australia from Cape York to the Ashburton?
1. Dirk Hartog
2. Abel Tasman
3. Luis Vaez de Torres
4. William Dampier
How did the term 'terra nullius' originate?
1. When Australians did not have separate citizenship from Britain, they thought of themselves as having 'terra nullius'
2. Captain Cook decided the land on the east coast of Australia was uninhabited and he could therefore claim ownership of it for Britain
3. When the High Court of Australia rejected the notion of uninhabited and unowned land in 1992, with the Mabo decision
4. It was used to describe the practice of making grants to early settlers who had no land
Why is 26 January 1788 a significant date in Australian history?
1. Pemulwuy began his campaign of resistance to British settlers on the land of the Dharug people
2. The first case of smallpox in an Aboriginal person was reported, beginning the devastation of the Aboriginal population in the Sydney area and subsequently in other areas
3. Aboriginal resistance to British settlement flared up in Parramatta
4. The First Fleet landed in Sydney Cove and established the first permanent European settlement
In 1792, when Arthur Phillip returned to England, he took two Aborigines with him. One was Yemmerrawanie. Who was the other?
1. Manly
2. Bennelong
3. Pemulwuy
4. Yagan

1. How much do you know about Australia’s early history?

Multiple Choice Quiz