Australia
The Land Down Under
People have been calling The Land Down Under, The Wide Brown Land, The Sunburnt Country, or just simply OZ home for 65,000 years. At that time you could simply walk here from Southeast Asia. The Aboriginal Cultures of Australia are amongst the oldest continual cultures on Earth.
They were visited in 1606 by Willem Janszoon and the rest of the crew of the Dutch ship Duyfken. The Dutch continued exploring and mapping what they called New Holland but there was no explicit attempts at colonization. In 1628 the Batavia, a Dutch ship, was wrecked off the Western coast of Australia as part of a bungled attempt to mutiny and commandeer the ship. Seven of the mutineers were executed, the first Europeans to suffer such a fate in the new land. Two other mutineers were marooned on the mainland, becoming the first European inhabitants.
English privateers (pirates) started becoming interested in the area as early as 1688, likely due to the 250,000 Guilders (very approximately 25 million Canadian dollars) to be found in the holds of Dutch trading vessels. But it wasn't until 1770 that James Cook started mapping the East coast of Australia, naming it New South Wales and claiming it for Great Britain.
In 1783, after the British lost their New England colonies, they became interested in Australia. They sent a fleet to Sydney Cove, Port Jackson, to start a penal colony. "Penal Colony" was code for "Slave Colony", as the convicts, generally guilty of petty crimes back home, were made labourers or servants upon arrival. Once they had served their time they were free to join society and most did, although there were many rebellions which were brutally squashed. Only one, the so-called Rum Rebellion of 1808, gained any traction.
A series of expansions in the 1800s, fuelled by Gold, saw Great Britain seize control of the entire continent, as well as Tasmania, numerous islands and, in 1920, the Territory of New Guinea as well.
In stages, by 1986, present day Australia took shape. New Guinea was given its independence and constitutional ties were severed with the U.K., although a 1999 referendum rejected a proposal to become a Republic, so Australia remains a Constitutional Monarchy, just like Canada.
So too right, we're off to the GAFA.