Backbencher

Lecture 4 dealt with the colonization of the lands of Austrailia and New Zeland. Originally Australia was settled by convicts that Britain sent there in sort of a national cleansing of Britain. The original area settled by these convicts was Bottany Bay which still is known by this name today. Although this was the main area of settlement to begin with other parts of Australia were settled such as Van Dieman's Land, New South Wales, and Western Australia. However even those these were originally prison colonies other economic opportunities tended to bring in other people as well in search of prosperity, over time leading to the British Commonwealth coming into power throughout the region. New Zeland was actually founed as a law abiding colony for the British colonoists, the land from NZ was actually sold to farmers and ranchers to cultivate and manage the land as a agricultural asset for the main land of Britain, but with the discovery of Gold there, those plans tended to be changed as people from many nations began to come in as part of the gold rush, many of these immigrants just happened to be chinese people which in contrast is very similar to the US gold rush in California as that particular gold rush also brought in a load of chinese immigrants. Overall I did think this lecture was quite interesting especially in learing about how the 2 countires were settled its fascinating to see that even those these 2 countries are so close geograpically and settled by the same country that they were settled in such different ways.

Matt Liese