few workers required to work each machine and each worker could produce more goods per hour
the hiring of children in factories for low wages
The earliest recorded European explorers of Australia - the Dutch - were not interested in Australia at all. The continent held no trade prospects as far as they could see, so they made no claim to the land. Even the first English explorer of Australia, William Dampier, thought the land was not worth bothering with, being dry and arid in the west. in 1688 he dismissed any prospects of the British claiming the land, and when he returned in 1699, his opinion had not changed. It was the French who showed the most interest in Australia, even making a formal (though not 'official') claim on the western coast two years after James Cook had explored and charted the eastern coast in 1770. The French had previously named many points along the coast, in the mid1700s. This was around the time when European interest in Australia really gathered momentum.