and 

Cammeraygal peoples, and noted violent domestic altercations between his

friend Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo.[31] Settlers of the 19th century like Edward Curr observed
that Aborigines "suffered less and enjoyed life more than the majority of civilized men".
[32]
 Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that the material standard of living for Aborigines was generally
high, higher than that of many Europeans living at the time of the Dutch discovery of Australia.[33]
By 1788, the population existed as 250 individual nations, many of which were in alliance with one
another, and within each nation there existed several clans, from as few as five or six to as many as
30 or 40. Each nation had its own language and a few had multiple, thus over 250 languages
existed, around 200 of which are now extinct. "Intricate kinship rules ordered the social relations of
the people and diplomatic messengers and meeting rituals smoothed relations between groups",
keeping group fighting, sorcery and domestic disputes to a minimum.[34]
Permanent European settlers arrived at Sydney in 1788 and came to control most of the continent
by end of the 19th century. Bastions of largely unaltered Aboriginal societies survived, particularly in
Northern and Western Australia into the 20th century, until finally, a group of Pintupi people of
the Gibson Desert became the last people to be contacted by outsider ways in 1984.[35] While much
knowledge was lost, Aboriginal art, music and culture, often scorned by Europeans during the initial
phases of contact, survived and in time came to be celebrated by the wider Australian community.

Impact of European settlement

Main article: Australian frontier wars

Portrait of the Aboriginal explorer and diplomat Bungaree in British dress at Sydney in 1826, by Augustus
Earle.
The Australian native police was a British unit of Aboriginal troopers that was largely responsible for the
'dispersal' of Aboriginal tribes in eastern Australia, but particularly in New South Wales and Queensland

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606.
Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century,
and dubbed the continent New Holland.[36] Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts
after 1720, possibly earlier.[37][38] Other European explorers followed and, in due course, navigator
Lieutenant James Cook wrote that he claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain when
on Possession Island in 1770, without conducting negotiations with the existing inhabitants,[39] though
before his departure, the President of the Royal Society, one of the voyage's sponsors, wrote that
the people of any lands he might discover were
'the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the