ShmoopTube

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here's your Shmoop du jour brought to you by Australia a friendly and [Sydney harbor]

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beautiful country it also happens to be the scariest place on earth here's your

00:12

question Australia was colonized by the British for what? and here are your

00:17

potential answers... all right while gold was good reason for the

00:23

British to set up shop well that's not why they wanted Australia when it came

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to gold the Brits had their eye on West Africa or as they like to call it, the gold [Gold bricks spinning]

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coast.. oh yeah maybe their PR person should work on changing it and though

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the British Empire kept the silver standard for most of its reign that is

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until the gold standard was over it's also not our answer at least it's used to [gold, bronze and silver standard on a podium]

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second and we can rule out ivory considering we know the majority of

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ivory comes from an elephant and while Australia is the host to a variety of wild

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animals and whatever the heck this thing is it's a bit low on elephants [An elephant resting it's trunk]

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that leaves us with D space..no, no not that kind of space, space as in land as in

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room to send their convicts that's right the jails in Britain; a comparably tiny

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islands were getting pretty crowded by the 18 to 19th century they wanted [Olden prison building]

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Australia as a penal colony and whatever

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Britain wants Britain gets when you think about it though it's not a bad

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idea what criminal in their right mind would want to be sent here [Criminal in prison and spider appears]

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