Could the Australian Aborigines have defeat. the British

It depends on the kind of crops you have. The most used crops in the region (south east Asia and Oceania) were not suitable for agriculture in the temperate south east of Australia. At least that is my (admitted very limited) understanding of the situation.

I live there man, and sometimes it can be as dry as the Sahara and as cold as Scandinavia. In some places (Tasmania, the very thin nice climate coast, etc) you could support some hardy crops but they'd have to be able to stand the cold/heat and the somewhat common thing called a drought. The aboriginals were too "skilled" in their hunter gatherer lifestyle to abandon it anyway.
 
.....
gunpowder and mounted troops aren't something that can be conceptualized.

Englishman: "We use soot-things...like the ones on your face!...as weapons! They...um...catch fire and become like lightening and thunder! We also use animals, like kangaroos but larger and on four legs, to ride on and fight!"
*wild hand gestures, starts crawling on fours to imitate horse*

Aborigine, to his friend: "what the hell is this man talking about?"
the friend: "I don't know, I lost it when he said soot can be used as lightening."

:D
 
Wouldn't south eastern australia be a good area for agricultural growth?

I think the fact that the Maori currently make up 15% of NZ's populaton vs the 1.5-4% that the indigenous populations make up in countries like the US, Canada and Australia is evidence for the differences in how they withstood the impact of colonization for a variety of reasons.

The Maori were lucky for a few reasons. They were able to bring some crops with them, which even though not ideal for NZ, helped them keep farming as a skill. NZ also has various geographic advantages - smaller, lots of rivers/estuaries, so easier to travel about the most habitable zones using Maori canoe technology. So for those reasons and others, they were able to build up a reasonably solid population by the time of the British contact, settlement/invasions.

They also had a slightly later settlement - in depth NZ settlement didn't really take place till the 1840s and even then, mainly in the 1850s-70s, after the British had a lot of experience with colonising. That didn't save them, but it perhaps meant that the Imperial government and many settlers were not so sympathetic to those people who wanted to properly wipe out the Maori (e.g. Atkinson?).
 
You'd probably need a POD a thousand years earlier at least. Have Indonesians or Chinese or whoever make a tentative attempt to settle Australia, spreading some domesticated animals as they go.
Maybe the natives eventually kick the new comers out/they get integrated into a new, majority native Australian society.
Even here the aborigines are never going to beat the British in a straight up fight. However if they prove to be enough of a pain then it is possible the British will decide it just isn't worth the trouble of colonising, the land isn't quite terra nullis afterall, and seek to make them a protectorate instead.
 
Top