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Alas no physical evidence of the Mahogany ship exists, and not for want of trying. A reward of $250,000 was offered for physical evidence to no avail. A list of some 40 sighting reports has been compiled, here's a link to an 1876 letter to a Melbourne newspaper typical of these reports. http://www.swtafe.vic.edu.au/lrc/collections/mahoganyship/1876apr01.htm
A problem I have with these sorts of things is that they bring up non-British histroy of Australia as if it's significant when it clearly isn't. My favourite is the Chinese in the goldfields, true that they were a significant presence at the time but they left no lasting mark. There is no Chinese population in Ararat today, nor any Chinese buildings, yet there is a bloody great Chinese museum in Ararat. Similarly we talk up Portuguese, Dutch and French exploration and Maccasan contact and Aboriginie fish farming villiages. But when all's said and done this strikes me as an attempt to put some spice onto white bread. While we have a handful of non British place names the USA has entire Spanish and French cities.
From my understanding of it, and most of you will probably agree, Australia's history has been fairly bland.

The aboriginals dwelt here but did very little for 20000 years or so... then the British came, fended of some meager French competion, settled Australia. They persecuted some natives, who offered little to no resistance. The gold rush occured, and their were sparks of ethnic conflict between Chinese immigrants and whites, but these quickly settled down and most Chinese left. We saw the sparks of revolution in the Eureka rebellion, but it fizzled. Australia was federated into a single state-WA had a go at seceding, but was basically told to shut up and stay in the federation by the Brits- and it complied. A few bombs fell on us at the hands of Japan... then we went 60 years of basically mimicking America.

YAWN.

But need it have been so? Their seems to have been many potential post-colonial POD's that could have made the livened up the history of Australia:

-French settling some part or other of Australia, and sending a reasonable number of colonists there. This would likely be snapped up by Britain in the revolutionary/Napoleonic wars, but at least we'd have Quebec-esque region of Australia and avoid the Anglo monotony.
-An actual organized/semi-organized attempt by Aboriginals to resist the colonisation. Not sure how likely this is given their culture, but it ought to have been possible- though not pretty.
-A sizable number of those Chinese Gold Rush migrants actually staying- the main reason they didn’t was the lack of immigration by Chinese females. So, bar that, we would probably see a really significant Chinese presence in Australia today- in excess of 10% is plausible(barring genocide or ethnic cleansing). The effects of this on the national psyche will be interesting-I can see an even more racist attitude being possessed by the Australians towards other races in general- perhaps an Apartheid-esque situation being sustained for a while after the White Australia policy ended in our timeline?
-The Eureka rebellion(or equivalent) turning into an Australia-wide revolution?

Anyway, these are just some ideas of the top of my head, not entirely thought out. Anybody got any alternative ideas- or comments on those above?
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