It's entirely possible the Polynesians did end up on Australia, but for agricultural reasons it would have been useless to them.
The Polynesian "agricultural package" was chickens, dogs, pigs, and several crops (mainly taro and palm). The group who reached New Zealand lost access to chickens and pigs, and thus had no domesticated animals besides dogs.
Worse, all their plant crops were tropical in origin. You can see how this affected things in New Zealand. the North Island was suitable for tropical crops (being fairly warm) and had dense populations. The northern part of the south island was marginal, and the centre and south was useless for tropical crops. The people here reverted to hunter-gatherer societies for this reason.
If the Maori landed in New South Wales, they would find a climate ill suited to any of their crops. They'd quickly revert to hunter-gathers. They did have more advanced fishing tools than the Aborigines, so they might form a seperate coastal culture that would spread to the north and south. But that's about it...they aren't going to develop an advanced culture.
On the other hand, if you could get them to land in Queensland, within a few hundred years you'd probably have a settled population of hundreds of thousands to the low millions and a culture as advanced, if not moreso, than the Maori. It would be even better if they somehow traveled from Tahiti or one of the other island groups and brought pigs and chickens along. They could get pigs again from New Guinea if they had some form of oceanbound trading though.
Here's a map of Australia's climate. Polynesian crops could grow in the tropical and sub-tropical areas, but not the temperate.
I doubt they'd make it to West Australia though. The crops wouldn't work there for another reason anyway; the climate iis medeteranian (sp?) and the rains come at the wrong time of the year.
You could potentially have a polynesian society develop over much of northern and northeastern Australia though. There just wouldn't be enouh time to discover metalworking or anything, but it would be too large a population to be displaced by white settlers.
Actually, it would be quite similar to South Africa. There the original Koisan population was pushed to the Cape and the deserts because black african population came in with tropical crops that worked, but couldn't cross the Fish river. Here you'd have the Aborigines pushed out of the North by Polynesians, who'd leave the temperate lands alone as worthless to their agriculture, and then Europeans would come and displace the Aboriginies out of NSW, Victoria, and the Perth area. Make for an interesting divided nation.
The Polynesian "agricultural package" was chickens, dogs, pigs, and several crops (mainly taro and palm). The group who reached New Zealand lost access to chickens and pigs, and thus had no domesticated animals besides dogs.
Worse, all their plant crops were tropical in origin. You can see how this affected things in New Zealand. the North Island was suitable for tropical crops (being fairly warm) and had dense populations. The northern part of the south island was marginal, and the centre and south was useless for tropical crops. The people here reverted to hunter-gatherer societies for this reason.
If the Maori landed in New South Wales, they would find a climate ill suited to any of their crops. They'd quickly revert to hunter-gathers. They did have more advanced fishing tools than the Aborigines, so they might form a seperate coastal culture that would spread to the north and south. But that's about it...they aren't going to develop an advanced culture.
On the other hand, if you could get them to land in Queensland, within a few hundred years you'd probably have a settled population of hundreds of thousands to the low millions and a culture as advanced, if not moreso, than the Maori. It would be even better if they somehow traveled from Tahiti or one of the other island groups and brought pigs and chickens along. They could get pigs again from New Guinea if they had some form of oceanbound trading though.
Here's a map of Australia's climate. Polynesian crops could grow in the tropical and sub-tropical areas, but not the temperate.
I doubt they'd make it to West Australia though. The crops wouldn't work there for another reason anyway; the climate iis medeteranian (sp?) and the rains come at the wrong time of the year.
You could potentially have a polynesian society develop over much of northern and northeastern Australia though. There just wouldn't be enouh time to discover metalworking or anything, but it would be too large a population to be displaced by white settlers.
Actually, it would be quite similar to South Africa. There the original Koisan population was pushed to the Cape and the deserts because black african population came in with tropical crops that worked, but couldn't cross the Fish river. Here you'd have the Aborigines pushed out of the North by Polynesians, who'd leave the temperate lands alone as worthless to their agriculture, and then Europeans would come and displace the Aboriginies out of NSW, Victoria, and the Perth area. Make for an interesting divided nation.