A short history of Australia

 

Read the text and find out why the British first settled in Australia.

Australia’s first people were the Aborigines. The have occupied the continent for at least 50,000 years, and before the Europeans arrived in 1788 their population was probably between 3000,000 and 750,000. They occupied a lot of the northern territory.

Although Captain James Cook had sailed the length of the east coast in 1770 the British did not settle in Australia until 1788. The first ships arrived and brought 1,000 convicts from England. They called the area where they landed New South Wales.

Historians still argue today about why the British settled in Australia. Some say that Britain was trying to find new places to send convicts because British prisons were too crowded. Others say that the British wanted to use Australia’s natural resources or that they were attempting to stop other Europeans from claiming Australia.

Australia’s white population grew slowly after 1788. Most of the people were either convicts or former convicts who had finished their sentences.

In the 1830s, more migrants arrived in Australia from Britain looking for a new life. Sheep farming had already developed and many people found jobs on farms. New colonies appeared called Victoria, Western Australia, Tasmania and Queensland. They later became the States of the Commonwealth of Australia.

 

Match the paragraphs of the text with the topics below.

a. Why the British settled in Australia.

b. Growth of the white population.

c. Development of the States of the Commonwealth.

d. Australia’s first people.

e. The British settlement of Australia.

 

 

Complete the text below with the correct form of the verb in brackets (past simple, past continuous or past perfect).

The Aborigines were (be) the first Australians. There are fewer aborigines now than when the European settlers … (arrive) because a lot of Aborigines … (die) from diseases brought by the settlers. In 1921, there … (be) only 61,000 Aborigines in Australia. By 1991, this number … (increase) to 270,000 which is approximately 1.5% of the Australian population. After the European settlement in Australia in 1788, almost 5 million people from 200 different countries … (immigrate) to Australia. They … (look) for new lives away from problems in their own countries and they …(hope) to start new lives. They … (find) new lives in Australia and … (make) it their home. If the British … (not invade) Australia in 1788 it could have been very different.

 

 

The Friendly Games

What are the Commonwealth Games?

The Commonwealth is a voluntary organization of 54 independent countries who all share a common history as part of Britain's imperial past. The countries are as diverse as Canada, New Zealand, Pakistan, Barbados, Sri Lanka and Zambia, and Queen Elizabeth is head of the organization. Today the Commonwealth works to advance democracy, human rights and social and economic development, and organizes special programmes to help promote trade, science, health, young people and many other specific issues in its member countries.

The Olympic-style Commonwealth Games are held every four years in a different member country. Known as the Empire Games until 1950, the first event was held in Hamilton, Canada in 1930. There were only eleven participating countries, and the sports included athletics, boxing, bowls, rowing, swimming and wrestling.

England has only hosted the Games twice: in London in 1934 and in Manchester in 2002. They have only been held twice outside of Canada, Britain or Australia - in Jamaica in 1966 and in Malaysia in 1998. The number of countries participating in the Games has slowly grown to over 70, and thousands of athletes now participate. Without competition from the USA and the major European countries, Australia, Canada and the British countries (which compete separately) usually win the most medals.

As happens for the Olympics, host countries usually build special new facilities for the Games. Manchester spent 20 years preparing for the 2002 Games and built a new 48,000-seat stadium which cost over £100 million. Luckily, the Games attracted around 1 million visitors to the city and were a financial success.

The Commonwealth Games have their own version of the Olympic torch ceremony. On Commonwealth Day (May 11th) in a Games year, the Queen hands a baton containing a message to an athlete. This is then passed in relay style to other athletes. They run through different Commonwealth countries until they reach the host nation. The baton is opened and the Queen's message is read out at the opening ceremony of the Games.

 

Are these statements true or false?

 

I. The British monarch is head of the Commonwealth.

2. The Commonwealth Games take place every year.

3. The first Games were in 1950.

4. There are only eleven countries participating in the Games.

5. The Games are always held in Canada, Britain, Australia or New Zealand.

6. England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland compete as four

separate countries in the Games.

7. 48,000 people came to the Games in Manchester.

8. The stadium built in Manchester for the 2002 Games was a financial

success.

9. Commonwealth Day is in May.

10.Lots of different runners carry the Queen's message to the Games’ host country.

 

Make a list of all the Commonwealth member countries that are mentioned in The Friendly Games text.

Expand upon the Olympic Games of 2012.

A brief travel history

Travel as activities away from home began around 8000 BC (after the Agricultural Revolution) when human beings became settled farmers and built their permanent homes.

In the ancient world people traveled for various purposes, such as pleasure, trade, scientific exploration, and religious pilgrimage. The ancient Romans and Greeks were considered to be the most famous ancient pleasure seekers. Travel in Europe during Roman times was fast, easy, and safe, because Romans introduced a network of well-maintained stone-paved and metalled roads as well as secondary roads from the North Sea to the Sahara Desert, and from the Atlantic Ocean to Mesopotamia that facilitated leisure travel in the Roman Empire.

Commercial trading also made ancient people travel from one place to another. Ocean-going ships were in use by 4000 BC, about the same time that the wheel and cart came into use.

After the decline of the Roman Empire, Europe fell into the dark Ages when organized religion dominated everyday life. Travel became difficult and dangerous because of the deterioration of the roads and bandits’ attacks on travelers. Religious pilgrimage was the dominant travel motivation in the medieval Europe.

At the same time, travel was increasing in the eastern part of the world, particularly in China. The peak of Chinese civilization was the Tang Dynasty (AD 618 – 907). Changan, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, was the terminal point of the famous Silk Road, and merchants from many foreign countries traded there.

As Europe grew out of the Middle Ages in the epoch of Renaissance (14^th – 17^th centuries) art, literature, philosophy and scientific ideas became very important, people became increasingly curious about the outside world. The desires to explore, discover, and understand other places and peoples drove many European explorers and scientists to travel in many directions. The sailing of Christopher Columbus in 1492 is credited as the beginning of the great age of exploration, which also marked the advent of capitalism and modern scientific thought. This period was characterized as the opening of sea travel.

In the 17^th – 18^th centuries it was fashionable for the upper classes to visit the European cultural, artistic, musical, and government centers to increase knowledge of the world. This was the so-called Grand Tour of Europe. When Thomas Cook organized his first excursion from Leicester to Loughborough in 1841, he probably didn’t know that he was starting mass tourism.

Nowadays tourism is one of the biggest industries in the world.

 

 

Pilgrimage

The history of European tourism can perhaps be said to originate with the medieval pilgrimage (a long journey or search of great moral significance, sometimes, it is a journey to a sacred place or shrine of importance to a person’s beliefs and faith). Although undertaken primarily for religious reasons, the pilgrims in the Canterbury Tales quite clearly saw the experience as a kind of holiday (the term itself being derived from the ‘holy day’ and its associated leisure activities). Pilgrimages created a variety of tourist aspects that still exist – bringing back souvenirs, obtaining credit with foreign banks (in medieval times utilizing international networks established by Jews and Lombards), and making use of space available on existing forms of transport (such as the use of medieval English wine ships bound for Vigo by pilgrims to Santiago De Compostela). Pilgrimages are still important in modern tourism – such as to Lourdes or Knock in Ireland. But there are modern equivalents – Graceland and the grave of Jim Morrison in Père Lachaise Cemetery.

During the 17^th century, it became fashionable in England to undertake a Grand Tour. The sons of the nobility and gentry were sent upon an extended tour of Europe as an educational experience. The 18^th century was the golden age of the Grand Tour, and many of the fashionable visitors were painted at Rome by Pompeo Batoni. A modern equivalent of the Grand Tour is the phenomenon of the backpacker, although cultural holidays, such as those offered by Swann-Hellenic, are also important.

 

 

Famous travelers

Discuss with your partner:

- The reasons why people started traveling.

- Great travelers of different times and their discoveries.

People began traveling long ago. The first travelers were nomads and pilgrims, merchants and traders. They traveled along rivers, lakes and sea and used simple means of traveling: boats and ferries on water, horses on land and camels in deserts.

The most famous travelers were explorers: Marco Polo from Venice in the 13^th century; Afanasy Nikitin from Russia, Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama from Portugal in the 15^th century; Magellan from Spain, Amerigo Vespucci from Italy in the 16^th century; James Cook from England in the 18^th century and others from different countries of the world.

Travel grew and developed together with the development of transport. First trains and motor-cars appeared in the 19^th century. But at that time only rich people could afford themselves to travel, because they had enough money and free time for traveling. In the 19^th century tourists traveled by trains and steamships mainly to the mountain resorts in Switzerland or to the seaside in France.

In 1841 Thomas Cook from England opened the age of organized tourism. He arranged the first trip for 570 Englishmen by railway. The excursion was so successful that Cook organized other similar events.

Cook organized his first major continental tour in 1855 but it lost money. However, after that he managed to negotiate cheaper rates for crossing the English Channel. The cheaper rates were in return for a guarantee that he would bring large numbers – the essence of mass tourism. Tours to France and Switzerland became regular. The Swiss quickly recognized the need to build the things that the tourists wanted – hotels and other facilities – so a whole industry began to develop. After the Suez Canal was opened in 1869, Egypt also became a popular destination for Cook’s tours.

So in 30 years modern mass tourism was established.

Freddie Laker was one of the pioneers of modern passenger air travel. He was born in England in 1922. In the Second World War he was an aircraft engineer and also learnt to fly. After the war, in 1948, he bought and chartered planes to deliver food to people of Berlin while the city was blockaded by the Russians.

In the 1950s his business activity increased. He was one of those businessmen who expanded air travel rapidly due to the development of aircraft technology. In 1955, for example, he set up an air service carrying passengers and cars across the Channel between England and France.

It was in the 1960s and 1970s that the real growth in charter air travel happened, as more and more people wanted to go on package holidays. Laker founded and ran his first company ‘Laker Airways’ from1966 to 1982. His main achievement was that he set up companies independent of big state corporations and cheap flights for a great number of people.

 

A. Give the English equivalents to the following words and word-combinations:

кочівник, купець, переправлятися поромом, дозволити собі подорожувати, подорожувати поїздом або пароплавом, гірські курорти, вести переговори про нижчі ціни, в обмін на гарантію, суть масового туризму, зафрахтований літак, завдяки розвитку авіаційної технології, поїхати на організований відпочинок.

 

B. Put the proper word in the right sentence.