history of the Australian Capital Territory

The history of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) as an administrative division of Australia began after the Federation of Australia in 1901, when it was created in law as the site for Canberra, Australia's capital city. The region has a long prior history of human habitation before the Territory's creation, with evidence of  Indigenous Australian settlement dating back at least 21,000 years. The area formed the traditional lands associated with the Ngambri People and several other linguistic groups, an association known through both early European settler accounts and the oral histories of the peoples themselves.