[masklinn]

> I am unsure why there wasn't earlier immigration from Australia, possibly technological or cultural.

Indigenous Australians were not mariners, they reached australia by island hopping, and at a time when the sea levels were even lowers and thus the distances between islands were lower (Tasmania was a peninsula at the time).

While NZ is close to Australia by air, the Tasman sea is 1700km of open unforgiving ocean. This is not a distance you can reasonably cross as a people with little history of navigation, or even a lot of it. Scandinavia to Iceland is 2/3rds that distance and Iceland was only colonised in the 9th century, by a reasonably maritime culture (mid-era norse).

Indigenous Australians never reached New Caledonia either even though it’s much closer to Australia (~1200km), as far as I know the earliest arrivals were circa 1500~1000BCE at the earliest and from the other side (the Lapita reached New Caledonia from through).

[dieselgate]

Regarding sailing the Tasman Sea the 1998 Sydney-Hobart race is notable:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Sydney_to_Hobart_Yacht_...

[masklinn]

“From through” should be “from Vanuatu” or “through Vanuatu”, sorry about that.