Polynesian Settlement of Australia?

Well, I remember reading an ASB timeline where Polynesians from Zealandia (OTL New Zealand, but geographically larger) settled the eastern coast of Australia.
 
(Assuming you mean Polynesians, not the older Lapita culture)

With aborigines? Not likely. The coast of Queensland might support Polynesian agriculture, but the Polynesians would probably not consider it worth it to sail hundreds of miles to get a spear in the spleen. Especially when there are perfectly fine uninhabited islands in the same sailing distance.

Assuming there is no human settlement in Australia before the Austronesian expansion (this was the migration from mainland Asia which eventually became the Polynesians), the Polynesians are butterflied away. Pre-Ice Age non-settlement of Australia means non-settlement of New Guinea too-that means that post-Ice Age Austronesians find virgin land in New Guinea, and probably settle there en masse instead of mixing with native New Guineans to spark the Lapita culture.

Without the Lapita culture, there is no settlement of Micronesia (where the Polynesian culture began) and no settlement of Melanesia beyond New Guinea.

These *New Guinean natives may stumble eventually on the Solomon islands and Australia, but I think they would lose a lot of their seafaring traditions on the large island of New Guinea, where they can respond to events like mass fish deaths by retreating inland for food instead of sailing outward. They colonize these near lands, with dense agricultural settlements in coastal Queensland, and hunter-gatherer bands spreading outside of this agricultural area. As per OTL, a lot of megafauna goes extinct in Australia-possibly more than OTL, as feral pigs from Asia take over the land. Unlike the Aborigines of OTL, the *Australians keep bows and arrows to hunt these pigs.

As for European colonization, it may be partially diverted to virgin land such as New Zealand in this scenario.
 
(Assuming you mean Polynesians, not the older Lapita culture)

With aborigines? Not likely. The coast of Queensland might support Polynesian agriculture, but the Polynesians would probably not consider it worth it to sail hundreds of miles to get a spear in the spleen. Especially when there are perfectly fine uninhabited islands in the same sailing distance.

Assuming there is no human settlement in Australia before the Austronesian expansion (this was the migration from mainland Asia which eventually became the Polynesians), the Polynesians are butterflied away. Pre-Ice Age non-settlement of Australia means non-settlement of New Guinea too-that means that post-Ice Age Austronesians find virgin land in New Guinea, and probably settle there en masse instead of mixing with native New Guineans to spark the Lapita culture.

Without the Lapita culture, there is no settlement of Micronesia (where the Polynesian culture began) and no settlement of Melanesia beyond New Guinea.

These *New Guinean natives may stumble eventually on the Solomon islands and Australia, but I think they would lose a lot of their seafaring traditions on the large island of New Guinea, where they can respond to events like mass fish deaths by retreating inland for food instead of sailing outward. They colonize these near lands, with dense agricultural settlements in coastal Queensland, and hunter-gatherer bands spreading outside of this agricultural area. As per OTL, a lot of megafauna goes extinct in Australia-possibly more than OTL, as feral pigs from Asia take over the land. Unlike the Aborigines of OTL, the *Australians keep bows and arrows to hunt these pigs.

As for European colonization, it may be partially diverted to virgin land such as New Zealand in this scenario.

Actually, I think it is a good thing for pigs and chickens to be introduced early in Australia. They breed much faster than marsupials and are more suited towards domestication. And the Aboriginals would definitely adapt towards bows and arrows. Who knows? Maybe they'll have a much larger population than in original timeline.
 
Actually, I think it is a good thing for pigs and chickens to be introduced early in Australia. They breed much faster

See, breed much faster=ecological collapse caused by invasive species. Now in the long run they might create butterflies that create cultures that are better able to resist colonialism, but that's not a given, and on the way to those cultures you'd get a lot of misery as the hunter-gatherer peoples struggle to adapt to an environment in flux.
 
Possibly. They probably visited Australia at least once, we just have no evidence of it. Since it was so far away from their nearest settlements (New Zealand), had mediocre at best farmland, and was already inhabited by its own natives in sizable numbers, they never returned. Or maybe they got assimilated into Aboriginal culture, and the bloodline that would've left genetic evidence died out during colonisation--similar to the Polynesians in South America. We just can't say if this ever happened because of lack of evidence, since said evidence either hasn't been found or will never be found because it's physically gone.

The best way to get the Polynesians to settle in Australia is have New Zealand get settled earlier, centuries earlier at least. Which in turn would probably require other islands in the Pacific to get more overpopulated earlier. Also, introduce pigs and other Polynesian animals to New Zealand as soon as possible to cause earlier extinctions of the moa as well as larger population density. Maybe then some Polynesians/Maori might find it interesting to visit Australia and settle there.

See, breed much faster=ecological collapse caused by invasive species. Now in the long run they might create butterflies that create cultures that are better able to resist colonialism, but that's not a given, and on the way to those cultures you'd get a lot of misery as the hunter-gatherer peoples struggle to adapt to an environment in flux.

Didn't something like that already happen (but nowhere near as bad) in Australia when the dingo was introduced? Or whatever caused the Pama-Nyungan languages to spread across the majority of the continent?

It would definitely be better for the Aboriginals in the long-run, since there would be more of them due to easier hunting (pigs, chickens) and possibly rudimentary farming (taro). The social organisation of Polynesians might be able to spread amongst them (possibly by mixed-marriages or other means--I believe I read once that some Aboriginal groups regularly married outside their tribe) and maybe it will force the British (or whoever tries to colonise Australia) to make treaties with them, which could help their case in the colonial age.
 
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