There's heaps of misconceptions going around on this thread. 1....

There's heaps of misconceptions going around on this thread.
1. Terra Nullius isn't to be taken literally as 'no man's land.' The international legal concept refers to there being no sovereign state presiding, not that there's literally no people there. International law recognised sovereign states, not groups of people. Sovereignty in 1788 was a very westernised concept of the level of development required to be recognised as sovereign (e.g. you needed complex agricultural processes that would allow you to stay in one spot and defend a defined territory). There's lots of examples of Terra Nullius being used to claim land (the whole West of the U.S.A, Greenland, Siberia, almost all of Africa and lots of islands around the World).

2. If Australia was conquered, not occupied, then native property rights would definitely have always existed. Acquiring sovereignty through conquering absolutely recognised that existing property titles and laws would remain, until they were expressly changed by the sovereign. The British especially recognised this.