There are almost 300,000 Aborigines in Australia. About 34,500 live in Sydney.There is debate about when Aborigines migrated to Australia from Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian archipelago. There is evidence of occupation about 50,000 to 60,000 years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence of Aboriginal occupation of the Sydney area is 15,000 years ago at Emu Plains in Sydney's west.Captain Cook guessed that the population of Aborigines for all of Australia would have been about 150,000. Recent estimates are that the Aboriginal population was about 750,000 in 1788. Governor Phillip guessed that there were no more that 1500 Aborigines living in the Sydney area. The first official census of Aborigines did not take place until 1971. Aboriginal people throughout the Sydney area identified themselves more strongly as members of smaller clans or bands. There were an estimated 29 different bands liming in the Sydney area, and between seven and eleven based near the shares of Sydney Harbour and the nearby coast. Each band had approximately fifty members.The general collection of beliefs is known as the Dreaming. The Dreaming not only explains the past and how the present came to be, but also prescribes codes of conduct for important events.When Arthur Phillip was given his instructions from the British government before the First Fleet sailed, he was not instructed to negotiate or enter into treaties with the Aborigines for the use of purchase of land. To Europeans, possession or title to land depended on working or cultivating it. Cook had observed on his journey on the Endeavour that Aborigines did not work or improve the land, so that it was terra nullius, and therefore able to be claimed by the British government. The official instructions from the King, however, ordered Phillip to treat the Aborigines in a conciliatory fashion and that any wrongdoing towards them was to be punished.The critical difference between European and Aborig...
