<P> It has been estimated that in 1788 there were approximately half a million Australian Aboriginal people, although other estimates have put the figure as high as a million or more . These populations formed hundreds of distinct cultural and language groups . Most were hunter - gatherers with rich oral histories and advanced land - management practices developed over thousands of years since the ecological destruction of the initial colonisation phase . </P> <P> In the most fertile and populous areas, they lived in semi-permanent settlements . In the fertile Murray Basin, the gathering and hunting economies to be found elsewhere on the continent had in large part given way to fish farming . Sturt's expedition along the Murray led to a belief that the Aboriginal groups there were practicing agriculture as a result of the presence of large haystacks, used as permanent grain stores . </P> <P> Little interest was shown by white settlers in the bulk of the Aboriginal people, and so little is known of their cultures and languages . Diseases decimated some indigenous populations just prior to the period where most Aborigines came into direct contact with Europeans . When Cook first claimed New South Wales for Britain in 1770, the native population may have consisted of as many as 600 distinct tribes speaking 200--250 distinct languages and over 600 distinct dialects and sub-dialects . </P> <P> Aboriginal people have no cultural memory of living anywhere outside Australia . Nevertheless, the people living along the northern coastline of Australia, in the Kimberley, Arnhem Land, Gulf of Carpentaria and Cape York had encounters with various visitors for many thousands of years . People and traded goods moved freely between Australia and New Guinea up to and even after the eventual flooding of the land bridge by rising sea levels, which was completed about 6,000 years ago . </P>

When did australia arrive at the location it is in today