Australonesia

Flag of Australonesia
Motto: God Save the Queen
No Map Available
Region	Asia Pacific Allied Sphere
Capital	Canberra
Official Language(s)	English (Official), Bahasa Indonesia, Te Reo Maori, Australian Aboriginal Languages, Afrikaans
Leader	Monarch: Queen Elizabeth II Governor General: Lord Sir Allen Smith Prime Minister: Joseph Stephens
Population	7 million
Currency	Australonesian Dollar
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History

The island-continent of Australia was first settled somewhere between 40,000 and 32,000 BC, by hunter-gatheres with spiritual values that acknowledged the sanctity of the Earth, as well as a developed oral culture. These people were the ancestors of the modern day Aboriginal peoples.

Colonization

In 1606, the Dutch explorer, Willem Janszoon, became the first European to sight the Australian continent. Later during that Century, the Dutch incorporated Northwestern Australia into their Empire, as New Holland. However, they made no attempts to settle upon the area. In 1770, James Cook, a famed British navigator, mapped the eastern coasts of Australia and established the colony of New South Wales. The establishment of the colony lead to the creation of the first European settlement on the continent, Port Jackson.

The British continued to expand their claims throughout the continent, facing no resistance from other European powers and very little from the native people of the continent. Originally, many of the colonies established by Great Britain were penal colonies. As the British expanded, they came into more and more contact with the Aboriginal people. As the British population of the continent increased with new immigrants and prisoners, the Aboriginal population declined because of contact with European diseases, forced resettlement, and physical mistreatment by a portion of the European settlers.

World Wars and Transition

On the 1st of July, 1901, almost two-hundred thirty years after the original colonization of the continent by Britain, the seperate colonies were federated to create the Commonwealth of Australia, a dominion within the British Empire. By the time World War I erupted, Australia and a nearby dominion of similar standing within the British Empire, New Zealand, voluntarily formed the ANZACs (Australia and New Zealand Army Corps), to aid the Triple Entente throughout the War. Its battle in Gallipoli is considered by many to be a nation-defining moment for Australia. In 1931, the Statute of Westminster seperated Australia further from the British Empire, though still in its sphere of influence.

During World War II, Britain's shocking losses in Asia caused Australia to turn to the United States as its main ally. Australia, the United States, and New Zealand jointly formed a formal military alliance in 195, with the ANZUS Treaty. Australia has since participated, as a US ally, in the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, and the War in Afghanistan. The Australia Act in the United Kingdom, during the 1980s ended the entirety of Britain's role in the governance of Australia, though the monarch of the United Kingdom is also the monarch of Australia.

Rise as a Pacific Power

In late 2007, a major political crisis occurred in Australia's northern neighbor, Indonesia. Eventually the crisis turned into an ethnic conflict, with massive scales of genocide all over the Indonesian archipelago. Under the auspices of the United Nations, Australia sent in a peacekeeping force to restore order and temporarily govern Indonesia while trying to form a coalition Indonesian government. After two years of being unable to get the various factions of the conflict to come to an agreement, the UN held a referendum in Indonesia, which revealed that an impressive 87 percent of the nation preferred the Australian governance to being controlled by either of the Indonesian factions. Indonesia and Australia were summarily merged in order to form the Commonwealth of Australonesia. Later that year, the New Zealand government opted to sign a Treaty of Free Association with Australonesia, making New Zealand an Australonesian territory, with a distinct cultural identity and limited self-autonomy. In 2011, Australonesia founded the Asia Pacific Allied Sphere, an economic, military, and political alliance under Australonesia's auspices.