In the summer of 1786, a decision was made in London that would forever change the history of the country we now know as Australia.
The British government resolved it would send a fleet of 11 ships to Botany Bay, beginning its colonisation of the southern continent.
Centuries later, this decision has been both celebrated and mourned, with many pinpointing it as the start of a British invasion and widespread dispossession of Indigenous land.
But there has been far less discussion around why the decision was made.
In her new book, Beating France to Botany Bay: The Race to Found Australia, author Margaret Cameron-Ash argues that contrary to popular belief, Britain was not simply looking for a place to dump its convicts.
For Ms Cameron-Ash, Britain's colonisation of Australia was much more about the fierce international rivalries of the era.
And, she contends, the outcome could have been very different.
Expensive and complex
On his 1768–1771 voyage, James Cook sailed up the east coast of Australia and, despite the presence and history of Indigenous people stretching back millennia, claimed it for Britain.
After Cook's voyage, the colonisation of Australia was recommended at two British parliamentary inquiries in 1779 and 1785. But these efforts failed.
"There were two perennial reasons. One was cost, and the other was the veto of the East India Company — they had exclusive trading rights through the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Australia was right in the middle of that. They didn't want any competition," Ms Cameron-Ash tells ABC RN's Between the Lines.
She says by the mid-1780s, the idea of colonising Australia was mostly a non-starter in Britain, dismissed as too expensive and too complex.
Then in the summer of 1786, everything changed.
"This was because of a bombshell … in the form of a letter," Ms Cameron-Ash says.
US intelligence
France had recently been defeated by Britain in the Seven Years' War and lost a number of its colonies.
"[But] they were going to come back by starting a new French empire in the southern hemisphere," Ms Cameron-Ash says.
The newly formed United States of America was wary of France's colonial ambitions around the Pacific region and had gathered intelligence on its plans to establish colonies in Australia.
Two French frigates commanded by Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse, had set sail for the Pacific, and these were full of agricultural supplies and other necessities for starting colonies in a climate like New South Wales.
The US intelligence was laid out in a letter, which a sympathetic American leaked to the British.
"This as a prospect overrode any British worries about cost or the East India Company," Ms Cameron-Ash says.
From Britain's perspective, it was "vital" that France should not be allowed to set up colonies in "such a strategic site," she says.
Ms Cameron-Ash says after a period of "complete silence about Botany Bay," British Prime Minister William Pitt immediately "leapt into action" and decided to send an occupation force there as soon as possible.
She goes as far as saying the letter "launched the First Fleet" and convict transportation was mostly a cover for Britain's geostrategic aims.
And a few months later, Captain Arthur Phillip and his First Fleet of around 1,400 people on 11 ships set off from Portsmouth for Botany Bay.
'A red herring'
When France learned of Britain's plans to send ships to Botany Bay, it also sprang into action.
The French government sent a letter to La Pérouse, who was in the northern Pacific with his two frigates at this time.
"The letter told him that the English were going to Botany Bay and he must go there straight away," Ms Cameron-Ash says.
Although La Pérouse cancelled the rest of his plans in that part of the Pacific, he made one detour, hoping to find a collection of "treasure islands."
The only problem was the treasure islands didn't exist.
La Pérouse was using a map published by the British Admiralty which had intentionally included several non-existent islands.
"The Admiralty knew the islands weren't there. They'd been dismissed a century before. But by leaving them there, it provided a red herring for anyone who came after Cook. So [La Pérouse] wasted three or four weeks."
La Pérouse eventually sailed south and came into Botany Bay in January 1788.
But he arrived to find Britain's First Fleet had beaten him there by just a matter of days.
A brief visit
In the early months of 1788, first the British, then the French, encroached on the land of the Dharawal and Eora people, the traditional Indigenous owners in the Sydney area.
After landing at Botany Bay, Phillip and his 11 ships headed north to Port Jackson, where they established the penal colony.
Having being "beaten" by the British, La Pérouse only stayed for around six weeks, surveying the landscape as far as what is today's Sydney suburb of Liverpool.
"They met [the British]. La Pérouse was invited over for two days," Ms Cameron-Ash says.
The two French ships then sailed off, but were never seen or heard from again.
About 40 years later, wreckage of the ships was found on Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands.
Could history have been different?
So what would have happened if La Pérouse arrived at Botany Bay before the First Fleet?
"Although we can argue that the British had 11 ships and the French had only two, don't forget half the people on these ships were convicts and totally unarmed …. So I don't think Phillip would have stood much chance."
The decisions made half a world away in the late 1700s forever altered Australia, for no-one more than its Indigenous population.
Despite their resistance, ship after ship continued to arrive in the years that followed, leading to disease, violence, oppression and dispossession of land at a massive scale.
In just one catastrophic example, an outbreak in 1789 is thought to have killed at least half of the Indigenous people living in the Sydney region.
The British had started a new chapter of the continent — one that has only recently started to receive national debate.
And had it not been for a small series of events, France could have played a very different role in this history.
RN in your inbox
Get more stories that go beyond the news cycle with our weekly newsletter.
