Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
History
Victoria's history is one of Australia's more picaresque tales. It begins with geological
upheaval and flourishing Indigenous cultures, but the unravelling of the latter, which
followed the European discovery of Australia in 1770, is a story of profound tragedy.
The fraught and stop-start settlement of the state finally took hold with the discovery
of gold in the mid-19th century - a find that thrust Victoria into the modern era, lay-
ing the foundation stones for the state's democracy, prosperity and multicultural
make-up.
Estimates suggest that before the Europeans arrived, Victoria's Aboriginal population was between 60,000
and 100,000; by the late 1840s it had dropped to 15,000. By 1860 scarcely 2000 Aboriginal people survived.
