‘The Old Privy Council decision in Cooper V Stuart [1889] was based on the factual error that Australia was peacefully settled and that Aborigines were never in possession of the land. That case was also inconsistent with the common law decisions of the United States, Canada and New Zealand. In short, it was wrongly decided’. Professor Bruce Kercher, An Unruly Child, A History of Law in Australia, Allen & Unwin, 1994
1785 – August, Brest: ‘In 1785 Louis XVI quietly sent the Comte de la Perouse with two ships La Boussole & L’Astrolabe to survey likely spots for French settlements. Aboard were copper plates engraved with the royal arms to be used as permanent notification of French ownership’. Australian Discovery and Exploration, Michael Cannon, 1987
June 1790: ‘In which long time no supplies [from England] had reached us. From the intelligence of our friends and connections we had been entirely cut off, no communication whatever having passed with our native country since the 13th May, 1787, the day of our departure from Portsmouth’. Marine Captain Watkin Tench, Sydney’s First Four Years, ed. F.L. Fitzhardinge, Angus and Robertson,1961.
1790 – 3 June, Sydney: When on 3 June 1790 Lady Juliana with ‘London on her stern’ sailed into Sydney Harbour three (3) years had passed since a large convoy of eleven (11) English ships, known in Britain and Australia as the ‘First Fleet’, sailed from Portsmouth, England bound for Botany Bay, New Holland.