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Before the dreaming, the Australian continent was a flat featureless place, devoid of life.

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Then giant beings came down from the sky,

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came from across the sea and emerged from within the Earth.

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With their arrival, the dreaming began and life was born.

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In the north of Australia, the Junkawa Sisters gave birth to humanity.

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In central Australia, Itakawara broke the marriage laws

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and as punishment, was turned into stone forever, entombed in the landscape.

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On the east coast, Baiame shaped the landscape

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and when his work was complete,

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he stepped on to a mountain and back into the sky.

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As they moved across the land,

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their giant bodies shaped the Earth,

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creating rivers and mountain ranges.

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In everything they touched, they left their essence

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making the landscape sacred to those who honour the dreaming.

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The first Australians.

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If you think about the ancient civilizations that Europeans look to

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such as the dynasties of the Pharoahs in Egypt,

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then even they are young compared to the period when humans were coming to Australia.

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The first Australians numbered more than 250 tribes,

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each with their own language, laws and territorial boundaries.

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A civilization encompassing the entire continent.

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We've had this debate about Australia was a terra nullius

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and it was a wasted landscape,

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and people hadn't used it and hadn't farmed it.

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They have discovered that in fact, it's probably supported about 1.6 billion lives

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and that's how productive Aboriginal people were able to make this part of the Earth

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which has the most irregular and unreliable rainfall

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and the driest continent on Earth.

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80,000 years, 100,000 years,

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it doesn't matter whether it's 60,000 years, it's an incredible length of time.

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It's the longest living civilization Earth

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and if you can't learn something from a people that successful,

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then you're really defying your own intelligence.

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Just over 200 years ago, without warning, strangers arrive.

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They appear on the east coast at a place called Warang.

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The strangers name it Sydney.

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They're about to come face-to-face with the first Australians.

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Bennelong, a young American,

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who spends his days on the beach, will become the toast of English society.

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Pemulroy will reject diplomacy and will declare the first war on Australian soil

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Believing that he cannot be killed by firearms,

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Windradyne will also become a wanted man

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when his family is murdered over a handful of potatoes.

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This is the story of the first Australians

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and the events that shape the nation when the strangers came to stay.

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It's impossible not to have hoped that there'd be some sort

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of evolution of a society which was tolerant of difference,

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but which sustained everyone.

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It is a summer's night on the 25th January, 1788.

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Eleven giant ships enter the harbour.

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On board are over 1300 people.

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More than half are convicts, the rest are soldiers.

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The people on board are ordered to remain there until dawn.

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They've traveled for nearly 8 months from England to this unknown land.

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Around the harbour, the first Australians light fires

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and they yell from their canoes for these apparitions to go away.

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They thought they was the Devil when they landed first.

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They did not know what to make of them.

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When they saw them going up the masts,

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they thought they was possums, Marut.

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Gamadelpivo

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At first light, the order is given for the convict men and women to disembark.

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For Aboroginal people, can you imagine, suddenly there are 11 ships,

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with these strange people wearing clothes.

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Funny hats, they have guns.

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What are these people up to? Why are they here?

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How long are they going to stay?

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Why did they come to my country? Why don't they go somewhere else?

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Are they spirits? Very strange.

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There's this very curious and very touching attempt to come together and to comprehend.

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So you have extraordinary scenes within two or three days of landing of Britishers and Aborogines dancing together.

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29 January, 1788

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They pointed with their sticks to the boat landing place

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and met us in the most cheerful manner.

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Shouting and dancing, these people mixed with ours and all hands danced together.

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William Bradley, first lieutenant.

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And all we've got to go on are the paintings done

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by a young naval lieutenant called Bradley.

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And he has these enchanting paintings of redcoats

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and aboriginal men, indeed, dancing together.

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They're hand in hand,they seem to be dancing.

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A sort of playground encounter, if you like,

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when you're trying to check each other out.

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The first Australians can't work out these first visitors are men or women

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as their clothing covers them like a strange skin.

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Finally, an officer is challenged to submit to the country's very first immigration procedure.

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He has a wig, he has leotards on.

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THey ask him to take his pants off,

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which he declined and made a sailor do it.

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Arthur Philip, captain of the first fleet, leads the newcomers ashore.

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After an unremarkable career of 30 years in the navy,

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he is dragged from retirement and appointed goverenor of a place nearly sixty times the size of England.

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Governor Philip was in a rather unique situation when he came to Sydney,

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because he had one of his front teeth missing

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and it was the same tooth that was knocked out during the male initiation ceremony.

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On my showing them that I lacked a front tooth,

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it occasioned a general clamour, and I thought it gave me some little merit in their opinion.

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Arthur Philip, Governor.

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The local people would have thought here is...