The history of Australia is the history of the area and people of the Commonwealth of Australia with its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history .

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, Torres Strait islands.[1] Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland. Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier. Other European explorers followed until, in 1770, Lieutenant James Cook charted the east coast of Australia for Great Britain and returned with accounts favouring colonisation at Botany Bay (now in Sydney), New South Wales.

A First Fleet of British ships arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788[2] to establish a penal colony, the first colony on the Australian mainland. In the century that followed, the British established other colonies on the continent, and European explorers ventured into its interior. Indigenous Australians were greatly weakened and their numbers diminished by introduced diseases and conflict with the colonists during this period.

Gold rushes and agricultural industries brought prosperity. Autonomous parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the six British colonies from the mid-19th century. The colonies voted by referendum to unite in a federation in 1901, and modern Australia came into being. Australia fought on the side of Britain in the two world wars and became a long-standing ally of the United States when threatened by Imperial Japan during World War II. Trade with Asia increased and a post-war immigration program received more than 6.5 million migrants from every continent. Supported by immigration of people from more than 200 countries since the end of World War II, the population increased to more than 23 million by 2014, and sustains the world's 12th largest national economy.[3]

Aboriginal Australia [ edit ]

Early Indigenous prehistory [ edit ]

The ancestors of Indigenous Australians are believed to have arrived in Australia 40,000 to 60,000 years ago, and possibly as early as 70,000 years ago.[4][5][6] They developed a hunter-gatherer lifestyle, established enduring spiritual and artistic traditions and used stone technologies. At the time of first European contact, it has been estimated the existing population was at least 350,000,[7][8] while recent archaeological finds suggest that a population of 750,000 could have been sustained.[9][10]

There is considerable archaeological discussion as to the route taken by the first colonisers. People appear to have arrived by sea during a period of glaciation, when New Guinea and Tasmania were joined to the continent. The journey still required sea travel however, making them amongst the world's earlier mariners.[11] Scott Cane wrote in 2013 that the first wave may have been prompted by the eruption of Mount Toba. If they arrived around 70,000 years ago, they could have crossed the water from Timor, when the sea level was low; but if they came later, around 50,000 years ago, a more likely route would be through the Moluccas to New Guinea. Given that the likely landfall regions have been under around 50 metres of water for the last 15,000 years, it is unlikely that the timing will ever be established with certainty.[12]

Kolaia man wearing a headdress worn in a fire ceremony, Forrest River, Western Australia. Aboriginal Australian religious practices associated with the Dreamtime have been practised for tens of thousands of years.

The earliest known human remains were found at Lake Mungo, a dry lake in the southwest of New South Wales.[13] Remains found at Mungo suggest one of the world's oldest known cremations, thus indicating early evidence for religious ritual among humans.[14] According to Australian Aboriginal mythology and the animist framework developed in Aboriginal Australia, the Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral totemic spirit beings formed The Creation. The Dreaming established the laws and structures of society and the ceremonies performed to ensure continuity of life and land. It remains a prominent feature of Australian Aboriginal art. Aboriginal art is believed to be the oldest continuing tradition of art in the world.[15] Evidence of Aboriginal art can be traced back at least 30,000 years and is found throughout Australia (notably at Uluru and Kakadu National Park in the Northern Territory, and also at Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park in Sydney).[16][17][18] In terms of age and abundance, cave art in Australia is comparable to that of Lascaux and Altamira in Europe.[19][20]

Manning Clark wrote that the ancestors of the Aborigines were slow to reach Tasmania, probably owing to an ice barrier existing across the South East of the continent. The Aborigines, he noted, did not develop agriculture, probably owing to a lack of seed bearing plants and animals suitable for domestication. Thus, the population remained low. Clark considered that the three potential pre-European colonising powers and traders of East Asia—the Hindu-Buddhists of southern India, the Muslims of Northern India and the Chinese—each petered out in their southward advance and did not attempt a settlement across the straits separating Indonesia from Australia. But trepang fisherman did reach the north coast, which they called "Marege" or "land of the trepang".[21] For centuries, Makassan trade flourished with Aborigines on Australia's north coast, particularly with the Yolngu people of northeast Arnhem Land.

A Luritja man demonstrating method of attack with boomerang under cover of shield (1920)

The greatest population density for Aborigines developed in the southern and eastern regions, the River Murray valley in particular. Aborigines lived and used resources on the continent sustainably, agreeing to cease hunting and gathering at particular times to give populations and resources the chance to replenish.[citation needed] The arrival of Australia's first people nevertheless affected the continent significantly, and, along with climate change, may have contributed to the extinction of Australia's megafauna.[22] The practice of firestick farming amongst northern Aborigines to increase the abundance of plants that attracted animals, transformed dry rainforest into savanna.[23] The introduction of the dingo by Aboriginal people around 3,000–4,000 years ago may, along with human hunting, have contributed to the extinction of the thylacine, Tasmanian devil, and Tasmanian native-hen from mainland Australia.[24][25]

One genetic study in 2012 by Irina Pugach and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology has suggested that about 4,000 years before the First Fleet landed, some Indian explorers settled in Australia and assimilated into the local population in roughly 2217 BC.[26]

Despite considerable cultural continuity, life was not without significant changes. Some 10–12,000 years ago, Tasmania became isolated from the mainland, and some stone technologies failed to reach the Tasmanian people (such as the hafting of stone tools and the use of the Boomerang).[27] The land was not always kind; Aboriginal people of southeastern Australia endured "more than a dozen volcanic eruptions...(including) Mount Gambier, a mere 1,400 years ago".[28] In southeastern Australia, near present-day Lake Condah, semi-permanent villages of beehive shaped shelters of stone developed, near bountiful food supplies.[29]

The early wave of European observers like William Dampier described the hunter-gatherer lifestyle of the Aborigines of the West Coast as arduous and "miserable". Lieutenant James Cook on the other hand, speculated in his journal that the "Natives of New Holland" (the East Coast Aborigines whom he encountered) might in fact be far happier than Europeans.[30] Watkin Tench, of the First Fleet, wrote of an admiration for the Aborigines of Botany Bay (Sydney) as good-natured and good-humoured people, though he also reported violent hostility between the Eora and Cammeraygal peoples, and noted violent domestic altercations between his friend Bennelong and his wife Barangaroo.[31] Settlers of the 19th century like Edward Curr observed that Aborigines "suffered less and enjoyed life more than the majority of civilized men".[32] Historian Geoffrey Blainey wrote that the material standard of living for Aborigines was generally high, higher than that of many Europeans living at the time of the Dutch discovery of Australia.[33]

By 1788, the population existed as 250 individual nations, many of which were in alliance with one another, and within each nation there existed several clans, from as few as five or six to as many as 30 or 40. Each nation had its own language and a few had multiple, thus over 250 languages existed, around 200 of which are now extinct. "Intricate kinship rules ordered the social relations of the people and diplomatic messengers and meeting rituals smoothed relations between groups", keeping group fighting, sorcery and domestic disputes to a minimum.[34]

Permanent European settlers arrived at Sydney in 1788 and came to control most of the continent by end of the 19th century. Bastions of largely unaltered Aboriginal societies survived, particularly in Northern and Western Australia into the 20th century, until finally, a group of Pintupi people of the Gibson Desert became the last people to be contacted by outsider ways in 1984.[35] While much knowledge was lost, Aboriginal art, music and culture, often scorned by Europeans during the initial phases of contact, survived and in time came to be celebrated by the wider Australian community.

Impact of European settlement [ edit ]

Portrait of the Aboriginal explorer and diplomat Bungaree in British dress at Sydney in 1826

The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon in 1606. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century, and dubbed the continent New Holland.[36] Macassan trepangers visited Australia's northern coasts after 1720, possibly earlier.[37][38] Other European explorers followed and, in due course, navigator Lieutenant James Cook wrote that he claimed the east coast of Australia for Britain when on Possession Island in 1770, without conducting negotiations with the existing inhabitants,[39] though before his departure, the President of the Royal Society, one of the voyage's sponsors, wrote that the people of any lands he might discover were

'the natural, and in the strictest sense of the word, the legal possessors of the several Regions they inhabit. No European Nation has a right to occupy any part of their country, or settle among them without their voluntary consent. Conquest over such people can give no just title: because they could never be the aggressors.'[40]

The first governor, Arthur Phillip, was instructed explicitly to establish friendship and good relations with the Aborigines, and interactions between the early newcomers and the ancient landowners varied considerably throughout the colonial period—from the curiosity displayed by the early interlocutors Bennelong and Bungaree of Sydney to the outright hostility of Pemulwuy and Windradyne of the Sydney region[41] and Yagan around Perth. Bennelong and a companion became the first Australians to sail to Europe, where they met King George III. Bungaree accompanied the explorer Matthew Flinders on the first circumnavigation of Australia. Pemulwuy was accused of the first killing of a white settler in 1790, and Windradyne resisted early British expansion beyond the Blue Mountains.[42]

Conflict and disease [ edit ]

The Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars (1790–1816) were largely fought in the Greater Western Sydney region and was considered to be the first conflict between settlers and the indigenous.

According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey, in Australia during the colonial period: "In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to another ... The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and its ally, demoralisation".[44]

Conflict in the Hawkesbury Nepean river district near the settlement at Sydney continued from 1795–1816,[citation needed] including Pemulwuy's War (1795–1802), Tedbury's War (1808–1809) and the Nepean War (1814–1816), as well as the interwar violence of the 1804–1805 Conflict. It was fought using mostly guerrilla-warfare tactics; however, several conventional battles also took place. The wars resulted in the defeat of the Hawkesbury and Nepean Indigenous clans who were subsequently dispossessed of their lands.[citation needed]

Even before the arrival of European settlers in local districts beyond coastal New South Wales, Eurasian disease often preceded them. A smallpox epidemic was recorded near Sydney in 1789, which wiped out about half the Aborigines around Sydney. Opinion is divided as to the source of the smallpox. Some researchers argue that the smallpox was acquired through contact with Indonesian fishermen in the far north and then spread across the continent, reaching the Sydney area in 1789.[45][46] Other research by Craig Mear,[47] Michael Bennett,[48] and Christopher Warren[49] argues that, despite controversy, it is highly likely that the 1789 outbreak of smallpox was a deliberate act by British marines when they ran out of ammunition and needed to expand the settlement out to Parramatta.[50] Smallpox then spread well beyond the then limits of European settlement, including much of southeastern Australia, reappearing in 1829–30, killing 40–60 percent of the Aboriginal population.[51]

The impact of Europeans was profoundly disruptive to Aboriginal life and, though the extent of violence is debated, there was considerable conflict on the frontier. At the same time, some settlers were quite aware they were usurping the Aborigines place in Australia. In 1845, settler Charles Griffiths sought to justify this, writing; "The question comes to this; which has the better right—the savage, born in a country, which he runs over but can scarcely be said to occupy ... or the civilized man, who comes to introduce into this ... unproductive country, the industry which supports life."[53]

From the 1960s, Australian writers began to re-assess European assumptions about Aboriginal Australia—with works including Alan Moorehead's The Fatal Impact (1966) and Geoffrey Blainey's landmark history Triumph of the Nomads (1975). In 1968, anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner described the lack of historical accounts of relations between Europeans and Aborigines as "the great Australian silence".[54][55] Historian Henry Reynolds argues that there was a "historical neglect" of the Aborigines by historians until the late 1960s.[56] Early commentaries often tended to describe Aborigines as doomed to extinction following the arrival of Europeans. William Westgarth's 1864 book on the colony of Victoria observed: "the case of the Aborigines of Victoria confirms ...it would seem almost an immutable law of nature that such inferior dark races should disappear."[57] However, by the early 1970s historians like Lyndall Ryan, Henry Reynolds and Raymond Evans were trying to document and estimate the conflict and human toll on the frontier.

Many events illustrate violence and resistance as Aborigines sought to protect their lands from settlers and pastoralists who attempted to establish their presence. In May 1804, at Risdon Cove, Van Diemen's Land,[58] perhaps 60 Aborigines were killed when they approached the town.[59] The British established a new outpost in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803. Although Tasmanian history is amongst the most contested by modern historians, conflict between colonists and Aborigines was referred to in some contemporary accounts as the Black War.[60] The combined effects of disease, dispossession, intermarriage and conflict saw a collapse of the Aboriginal population of Tasmania from a few thousand people when the British arrived, to a few hundred by the 1830s. Estimates of how many people were killed during the period begin at around 300, though verification of the true figure is now impossible.[61][62] In 1830 Governor Sir George Arthur sent an armed party (the Black Line) to push the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes out of the British settled districts. The effort failed and George Augustus Robinson proposed to set out unarmed to mediate with the remaining tribespeople in 1833.[63] With the assistance of Truganini as guide and translator, Robinson convinced remaining tribesmen to surrender to an isolated new settlement at Flinders Island, where most later died of disease.[64][65]

In 1838, at least twenty-eight Aborigines were murdered at the Myall Creek in New South Wales, resulting in the unprecedented conviction and hanging of six white and one African convict settlers by the colonial courts.[66] Aborigines also attacked white settlers—in 1838 fourteen Europeans were killed at Broken River in Port Phillip District, by Aborigines of the Ovens River, almost certainly in revenge for the illicit use of Aboriginal women.[67] Captain Hutton of Port Phillip District once told Chief Protector of Aborigines George Augustus Robinson that "if a member of a tribe offend, destroy the whole".[68] Queensland's Colonial Secretary A.H. Palmer wrote in 1884 "the nature of the blacks was so treacherous that they were only guided by fear—in fact it was only possible to rule...the Australian Aboriginal...by brute force".[69] The most recent massacre of Aborigines was at Coniston in the Northern Territory in 1928. There are numerous other massacre sites in Australia, although supporting documentation varies.

Aboriginal farmers at Loddon Aboriginal Protectorate Station at Franklinford, Victoria in 1858

From the 1830s, colonial governments established the now controversial offices of the Protector of Aborigines in an effort to avoid mistreatment of Indigenous peoples and conduct government policy towards them. Christian churches in Australia sought to convert Aborigines, and were often used by government to carry out welfare and assimilation policies. Colonial churchmen such as Sydney's first Catholic archbishop, John Polding strongly advocated for Aboriginal rights and dignity[70] and prominent Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson (born 1965), who was raised at a Lutheran mission in Cape York, has written that Christian missions throughout Australia's colonial history "provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation".[71]

The Caledon Bay crisis of 1932–34 was one of the last incidents of violent interaction on the 'frontier' of indigenous and non-indigenous Australia, which began when the spearing of Japanese poachers who had been molesting Yolngu women was followed by the killing of a policeman. As the crisis unfolded, national opinion swung behind the Aboriginal people involved, and the first appeal on behalf of an Indigenous Australian to the High Court of Australia was launched. Following the crisis, the anthropologist Donald Thomson was dispatched by the government to live among the Yolngu.[72] Elsewhere around this time, activists like Sir Douglas Nicholls were commencing their campaigns for Aboriginal rights within the established Australian political system and the age of frontier conflict closed.

Frontier encounters in Australia were not universally negative. Positive accounts of Aboriginal customs and encounters are also recorded in the journals of early European explorers, who often relied on Aboriginal guides and assistance: Charles Sturt employed Aboriginal envoys to explore the Murray-Darling; the lone survivor of the Burke and Wills expedition was nursed by local Aborigines, and the famous Aboriginal explorer Jackey Jackey loyally accompanied his ill-fated friend Edmund Kennedy to Cape York.[73] Respectful studies were conducted by such as Walter Baldwin Spencer and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899); and by Donald Thomson of Arnhem Land (c. 1935–1943). In inland Australia, the skills of Aboriginal stockmen became highly regarded and in the 20th century, Aboriginal stockmen like Vincent Lingiari became national figures in their campaigns for better pay and improved working conditions.[74]

Removal of children [ edit ]

The removal of indigenous children, by which mixed-race children of Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander descent were removed from their families by Australian Federal and State government agencies and church missions, was a policy actively conducted in the period between approximately 1905 and 1969. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission argued that these removals constituted attempted genocide[75] and had a major impact on the Indigenous population.[76] Such interpretations of Aboriginal history are disputed by a few historians such as Keith Windschuttle as being exaggerated or fabricated for political or ideological reasons.[77] This debate is part of what is known within Australia as the History Wars.

Early European exploration [ edit ]

Dutch exploration and discovery [ edit ]

Although a theory of Portuguese discovery in the 1520s exists, it lacks definitive evidence.[78][79][80][81] The Dutch East India Company ship, Duyfken, led by Willem Janszoon, made the first documented European landing in Australia in 1606.[82] That same year, a Spanish expedition sailing in nearby waters and led by Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernandes de Queirós had landed in the New Hebrides and, believing them to be the fabled southern continent, named the land "Austrialia del Espiritu Santo" (Southern Land of the Holy Spirit), in honour of his queen Margaret of Austria, the wife of Philip III of Spain.[83][84][85] Later that year, Queirós' deputy Luís Vaz de Torres sailed to the north of Australia through Torres Strait, along New Guinea's southern coast.[86]

abrolhos being a Portuguese word meaning 'look out'. This warning however did not prevent the loss of several ships, most notably the Batavia in 1629. Dutch explorer Frederick de Houtman discovered extensive coral reefs off the coast of Western Australia in 1619, naming them Houtman Abrolhos being a Portuguese word meaning 'look out'. This warning however did not prevent the loss of several ships, most notably thein 1629.

The Dutch, following shipping routes to the Dutch East Indies, or in search of gold, spices or Christian converts, proceeded to contribute a great deal to Europe's knowledge of Australia's coast.[87] In 1616, Dirk Hartog, sailing off course, en route from the Cape of Good Hope to Batavia, landed on an island off Shark Bay, West Australia.[87] In 1622–23 the Leeuwin made the first recorded rounding of the south west corner of the continent, and gave her name to Cape Leeuwin.[88]

In 1627 the south coast of Australia was accidentally discovered by François Thijssen and named 't Land van Pieter Nuyts, in honour of the highest ranking passenger, Pieter Nuyts, extraordinary Councillor of India.[89] In 1628 a squadron of Dutch ships was sent by the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies Pieter de Carpentier to explore the northern coast. These ships made extensive examinations, particularly in the Gulf of Carpentaria, named in honour of de Carpentier.[88]

Abel Tasman's voyage of 1642 was the first known European expedition to reach Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania) and New Zealand, and to sight Fiji. On his second voyage of 1644, he also contributed significantly to the mapping of Australia proper, making observations on the land and people of the north coast below New Guinea.[90]

A map of the world inlaid into the floor of the Burgerzaal ("Burger's Hall") of the new Amsterdam Stadhuis ("Town Hall") in 1655 revealed the extent of Dutch charts of much of Australia's coast.[91] Based on the 1648 map by Joan Blaeu, Nova et Accuratissima Terrarum Orbis Tabula, it incorporated Tasman's discoveries, subsequently reproduced in the map, Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus published in the Kurfürsten Atlas (Atlas of the Great Elector).[92]

In 1664 the French geographer, Melchisédech Thévenot, published a map of New Holland in Relations de Divers Voyages Curieux.[93] Thévenot divided the continent in two, between Nova Hollandia to the west and Terre Australe to the east.[94] Emanuel Bowen reproduced Thevenot's map in his Complete System of Geography (London, 1747), re-titling it A Complete Map of the Southern Continent and adding three inscriptions promoting the benefits of exploring and colonising the country. One inscription said:

It is impossible to conceive a Country that promises fairer from its Situation than this of TERRA AUSTRALIS , no longer incognita, as this Map demonstrates, but the Southern Continent Discovered. It lies precisely in the richest climates of the World... and therefore whoever perfectly discovers and settles it will become infalliably possessed of Territories as Rich, as fruitful, and as capable of Improvement, as any that have hitherto been found out, either in the East Indies or the West.

Bowen's map was re-published in John Campbell's editions of John Harris' Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or Voyages and Travels (1744–1748, 1764).[95] This book recommended exploration of the east coast of New Holland, with a view to a British colonisation, by way of Abel Tasman's route to Van Diemen's Land.[96]

Although various proposals for colonisation were made, notably by Pierre Purry from 1717 to 1744, none was officially attempted.[97] Indigenous Australians were less able to trade with Europeans than were the peoples of India, the East Indies, China, and Japan. The Dutch East India Company concluded that there was "no good to be done there". They turned down Purry's scheme with the comment that, "There is no prospect of use or benefit to the Company in it, but rather very certain and heavy costs".

Others [ edit ]

Batavia, housed in the Stern and archway of the, housed in the Western Australian Maritime Museum . In 1629, the ship struck a reef near Beacon Island off the Western Australian coast. A subsequent mutiny and massacre took place among the survivors.

With the exception of further Dutch visits to the west, however, Australia remained largely unvisited by Europeans until the first British explorations. John Callander put forward a proposal in 1766 for Britain to found a colony of banished convicts in the South Sea or in Terra Australis to enable the mother country to exploit the riches of those regions. He said: "this world must present us with many things entirely new, as hitherto we have had little more knowledge of it, than if it had lain in another planet".[98]

In 1769, Lieutenant James Cook in command of HMS Endeavour, travelled to Tahiti to observe and record the transit of Venus. Cook also carried secret Admiralty instructions to locate the supposed Southern Continent: "There is reason to imagine that a continent, or land of great extent, may be found to the southward of the track of former navigators."[99] This continent was not found, a disappointment to Alexander Dalrymple and his fellow members of the Royal Society who had urged the Admiralty to undertake this mission.[100] Cook decided to survey the east coast of New Holland, the only major part of that continent that had not been charted by Dutch navigators.[101]

On 19 April 1770 the Endeavour sighted the east coast of Australia and ten days later landed at Botany Bay. Cook charted the coast to its northern extent and, along with the ship's naturalist, Joseph Banks, who subsequently reported favourably on the possibilities of establishing a colony at Botany Bay. Cook wrote that he formally took possession of the east coast of New Holland on 21/22 August 1770 when on Possession Island off the west coast of Cape York Peninsula.[102] He noted in his journal that he could "land no more upon this Eastern coast of New Holland, and on the Western side I can make no new discovery the honour of which belongs to the Dutch Navigators and as such they may lay Claim to it as their property [italicised words crossed out in the original] but the Eastern Coast from the Latitude of 38 South down to this place I am confident was never seen or viseted by any European before us and therefore by the same Rule belongs to great Brittan [italicised words crossed out in the original].[103][104]

In 1772, a French expedition led by Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn, became the first Europeans to formally claim sovereignty over the west coast of Australia, but no attempt was made to follow this with colonisation.[105] The ambition of Sweden's King Gustav III to establish a colony for his country at the Swan River in 1786 remained stillborn.[106] It was not until 1788 that economic, technological and political conditions in Great Britain made it possible and worthwhile for that country to make the large effort of sending the First Fleet to New South Wales.[107]

Colonisation [ edit ]

Plans for colonisation [ edit ]

Two of the Natives of New Holland, Advancing To Combat (1770), sketched by Cook's illustrator (1770), sketched by Cook's illustrator Sydney Parkinson

Seventeen years after Cook's landfall on the east coast of Australia, the British government decided to establish a colony at Botany Bay. The American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) saw Britain lose most of its North American colonies and consider establishing replacement territories. In 1779 Sir Joseph Banks, the eminent scientist who had accompanied James Cook on his 1770 voyage, recommended Botany Bay as a suitable site for settlement, saying that "it was not to be doubted that a Tract of Land such as New Holland, which was larger than the whole of Europe, would furnish Matter of advantageous Return".[108] Under Banks' guidance, the American Loyalist James Matra, who had also travelled with Cook, produced "A Proposal for Establishing a Settlement in New South Wales" (23 August 1783), proposing the establishment of a colony composed of American Loyalists, Chinese and South Sea Islanders (but not convicts).[109]

Matra reasoned that the country was suitable for plantations of sugar, cotton and tobacco; New Zealand timber and hemp or flax could prove valuable commodities; it could form a base for Pacific trade; and it could be a suitable compensation for displaced American Loyalists.[110] Following an interview with Secretary of State Lord Sydney in 1784, Matra amended his proposal to include convicts as settlers, considering that this would benefit both "Economy to the Publick, & Humanity to the Individual".[111]

Lieutenant James Cook was the first European to achieve contact with the eastern coastline of Australia in 1770.

Matra's plan provided the original blueprint for settlement.[112] Records show the government was considering it in 1784.[113] The London newspapers announced in November 1784 that: "A plan has been presented to the [Prime] Minister, and is now before the Cabinet, for instituting a new colony in New Holland. In this vast tract of land....every sort of produce and improvement of which the various soils of the earth are capable, may be expected".[114] The Government also incorporated the settlement of Norfolk Island into their plan, with its attractions of timber and flax, proposed by Banks' Royal Society colleagues, Sir John Call and Sir George Young.[115]

At the same time, humanitarians and reformers were campaigning in Britain against the appalling conditions in British prisons and hulks. In 1777 prison reformer John Howard wrote The State of Prisons in England and Wales, exposing the harsh conditions of the prison system to "genteel society".[116] Penal transportation was already well-established as a central plank of English criminal law and until the American Revolution about a thousand criminals per year were sent to Maryland and Virginia.[117] It served as a powerful deterrent to law-breaking. According to historian David Hill, "Europeans knew little about the geography of the globe" and to "convicts in England, transportation to Botany Bay was a frightening prospect". Echoing John Callander, he said Australia "might as well have been another planet".[118]

[ citation needed ] An engraving from "Australia: the first hundred years", by Andrew Garran, 1886 showing natives of the Gweagal tribe opposing the arrival of Lieutenant James Cook in 1770

In 1933, Sir Ernest Scott, stated the traditional view of the reasons for colonisation: "It is clear that the only consideration which weighed seriously with the Pitt Government was the immediately pressing and practical one of finding a suitable place for a convict settlement".[119] In the early 1960s, historian Geoffrey Blainey questioned the traditional view of foundation purely as a convict dumping ground. His book The Tyranny of Distance[120] suggested ensuring supplies of flax and timber after the loss of the American colonies may have also been motivations, and Norfolk Island was the key to the British decision. A number of historians responded and debate brought to light a large amount of additional source material on the reasons for settlement.[121] This has most recently been set out and discussed by Professor Alan Frost.[122]

The decision to settle was taken when it seemed the outbreak of civil war in the Netherlands might precipitate a war in which Britain would be again confronted with the alliance of the three naval Powers, France, Holland and Spain, which had brought her to defeat in 1783. Under these circumstances, the strategic advantages of a colony in New South Wales described in James Matra's proposal were attractive.[123] Matra wrote that such a settlement could facilitate attacks upon the Spanish in South America and the Philippines, and against the Dutch East Indies.[124] In 1790, during the Nootka Crisis, plans were made for naval expeditions against Spain's possessions in the Americas and the Philippines, in which New South Wales was assigned the role of a base for "refreshment, communication and retreat". On subsequent occasions into the early 19th century when war threatened or broke out between Britain and Spain, these plans were revived and only the short length of the period of hostilities in each case prevented them from being put into effect.[125]

Georg Forster, who had sailed under Lieutenant James Cook in the voyage of the Resolution (1772–1775), wrote in 1786 on the future prospects of the British colony: "New Holland, an island of enormous extent or it might be said, a third continent, is the future homeland of a new civilized society which, however mean its beginning may seem to be, nevertheless promises within a short time to become very important."[126] And the merchant adventurer and would-be coloniser of southwestern Australia under the Swedish flag, William Bolts, said to the Swedish Ambassador in Paris, Erik von Staël in December 1789, that the British had founded at Botany Bay, "a settlement which in time will become of the greatest importance to the Commerce of the Globe".[127]

Establishment of British colonies [ edit ]

The territory claimed by Britain included all of Australia eastward of the meridian of 135° East and all the islands in the Pacific Ocean between the latitudes of Cape York and the southern tip of Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania). The western limit of 135° East was set at the meridian dividing New Holland from Terra Australis shown on Emanuel Bowen's Complete Map of the Southern Continent,[128] published in John Campbell's editions of John Harris' Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or Voyages and Travels (1744–1748, and 1764).[129] It was a vast claim which elicited excitement at the time: the Dutch translator of First Fleet officer and author Watkin Tench's A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay wrote: "a single province which, beyond all doubt, is the largest on the whole surface of the earth. From their definition it covers, in its greatest extent from East to West, virtually a fourth of the whole circumference of the Globe."[130] Spanish naval commander Alessandro Malaspina, who visited Sydney in March–April 1793 reported to his government that: "The transportation of the convicts constituted the means and not the object of the enterprise. The extension of dominion, mercantile speculations and the discovery of mines were the real object."[131] Frenchman François Péron, of the Baudin expedition visited Sydney in 1802 and reported to the French Government: "How can it be conceived that such a monstrous invasion was accomplished, with no complaint in Europe to protest against it? How can it be conceived that Spain, who had previously raised so many objections opposing the occupation of the Malouines (Falkland Islands), meekly allowed a formidable empire to arise to facing her richest possessions, an empire which must either invade or liberate them?"[132]

The colony included the current islands of New Zealand. In 1817, the British government withdrew the extensive territorial claim over the South Pacific. In practice, the governors' writ had been shown not to run in the islands of the South Pacific.[133] The Church Missionary Society had concerns over atrocities committed against the natives of the South Sea Islands, and the ineffectiveness of the New South Wales government to deal with the lawlessness. As a result, on 27 June 1817, Parliament passed an Act for the more effectual Punishment of Murders and Manslaughters committed in Places not within His Majesty's Dominions, which described Tahiti, New Zealand and other islands of the South Pacific as being not within His Majesty's dominions.[134]

1788: New South Wales [ edit ]

A General Chart of New Holland including New South Wales & Botany Bay with The Adjacent Countries and New Discovered Lands, published in An Historical Narrative of the Discovery of New Holland and New South Wales, London, Fielding and Stockdale, November 1786 , published in, London, Fielding and Stockdale, November 1786

The British colony of New South Wales was established with the arrival of the First Fleet of 11 vessels under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip in January 1788. It consisted of over a thousand settlers, including 778 convicts (192 women and 586 men).[135] A few days after arrival at Botany Bay the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove on 26 January 1788.[136] This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day. The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at Sydney. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Philip described as being, 'with out exception the finest Harbour in the World [...] Here a Thousand Sail of the Line may ride in the most perfect Security'.[137]

Governor Phillip was vested with complete authority over the inhabitants of the colony. Enlightened for his Age, Phillip's personal intent was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people and try to reform as well as discipline the convicts of the colony. Phillip and several of his officers—most notably Watkin Tench—left behind journals and accounts of which tell of immense hardships during the first years of settlement. Often Phillip's officers despaired for the future of New South Wales. Early efforts at agriculture were fraught and supplies from overseas were scarce. Between 1788 and 1792 about 3546 male and 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney—many "professional criminals" with few of the skills required for the establishment of a colony. Many new arrivals were also sick or unfit for work and the conditions of healthy convicts only deteriorated with hard labour and poor sustenance in the settlement. The food situation reached crisis point in 1790 and the Second Fleet which finally arrived in June 1790 had lost a quarter of its 'passengers' through sickness, while the condition of the convicts of the Third Fleet appalled Phillip. From 1791 however, the more regular arrival of ships and the beginnings of trade lessened the feeling of isolation and improved supplies.[138]

Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils, fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion, and moved many of the convicts from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life. This left Sydney Cove only as an important port and focus of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a building program, assisted by convict labour, advanced steadily. Between 1788 and 1792, convicts and their gaolers made up the majority of the population—but after this, a population of emancipated convicts began to grow who could be granted land and these people pioneered a non-government private sector economy and were later joined by soldiers whose military service had expired—and finally, free settlers who began arriving from Britain. Governor Phillip departed the colony for England on 11 December 1792, with the new settlement having survived near starvation and immense isolation for four years.[138] On 16 February 1793 the first free settlers arrived. The settlers: Thomas Rose, with his wife and four children, Edward Powell, Thomas Webb, Joseph Webb, and Frederick Meredith.[139]

Establishment of further colonies [ edit ]

After the founding of the colony of New South Wales in 1788, Australia was divided into an eastern half, named New South Wales, under the administration of the colonial government in Sydney, and a western half named New Holland. The western boundary of 135° East of Greenwich was based on the Complete Map of the Southern Continent, published in Emanuel Bowen's Complete System of Geography (London 1747), and reproduced in John Campbell's editions of John Harris' Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca, or Voyages and Travels (1744–48, and 1764). Bowen's map was based on one by Melchisédech Thévenot and published in Relations des Divers Voyages (1663), which apparently divided New Holland in the west from Terra Australis in the east by a latitude staff situated at 135° East. This division, reproduced in Bowen's map, provided a convenient western boundary for the British claim because, as Watkin Tench subsequently commented in A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay, "By this partition, it may be fairly presumed, that every source of future litigation between the Dutch and us, will be for ever cut off, as the discoveries of English navigators only are comprized in this territory".[140] Thévenot said he copied his map from the one engraved in the floor of the Amsterdam Town Hall, but in that map there was no dividing line between New Holland and Terra Australis. Thévenot's map was actually copied from Joan Blaeu's map, Archipelagus Orientalis sive Asiaticus, published in 1659 in the Kurfürsten Atlas (Atlas of the Great Elector); this map was a part of Blaeu's world map of 1648, Nova et Accuratissima Terrarum Orbis Tabula, which first showed the land revealed by Abel Tasman's 1642 voyage as Hollandia Nova and which served as the basis for the Amsterdam Town Hall pavement map.[141] Longitude 135° East reflected the line of division between the claims of Spain and Portugal established in the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, which had formed the basis of many subsequent claims to colonial territory. An Historical Narrative of the Discovery of New Holland and New South Wales, published in November 1786, contained "A General Chart of New Holland, including New South Wales & Botany Bay, with The Adjacent Countries, and New Discovered Islands", which showed all the territory claimed under the jurisdiction of the Governor of New South Wales.[142]

Street scene of Klemzig which was the first settlement of German emigrants to Australia in 1837

Romantic descriptions of the beauty, mild climate, and fertile soil of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific led the British government to establish a subsidiary settlement of the New South Wales colony there in 1788. It was hoped that the giant Norfolk Island pine trees and flax plants growing wild on the island might provide the basis for a local industry which, particularly in the case of flax, would provide an alternative source of supply to Russia for an article which was essential for making cordage and sails for the ships of the British navy. However, the island had no safe harbour, which led the colony to be abandoned and the settlers evacuated to Tasmania in 1807.[143] The island was subsequently re-settled as a penal settlement in 1824.

In 1798, George Bass and Matthew Flinders circumnavigated Van Diemen's Land, proving that it was an island. In 1802, Flinders successfully circumnavigated Australia for the first time.

Van Diemen's Land, now known as Tasmania, was settled in 1803, following a failed attempt to settle at Sullivan Bay in what is now Victoria. Other British settlements followed, at various points around the continent, many of them unsuccessful. The East India Trade Committee recommended in 1823 that a settlement be established on the coast of northern Australia to forestall the Dutch, and Captain J.J.G. Bremer, RN, was commissioned to form a settlement between Bathurst Island and the Cobourg Peninsula. Bremer fixed the site of his settlement at Fort Dundas on Melville Island in 1824 and, because this was well to the west of the boundary proclaimed in 1788, proclaimed British sovereignty over all the territory as far west as longitude 129° East.[144]

The new boundary included Melville and Bathurst Islands, and the adjacent mainland. In 1826, the British claim was extended to the whole Australian continent when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (the basis of the later town of Albany), but the eastern border of Western Australia remained unchanged at longitude 129° East. In 1824, a penal colony was established near the mouth of the Brisbane River (the basis of the later colony of Queensland). In 1829, the Swan River Colony and its capital of Perth were founded on the west coast proper and also assumed control of King George Sound. Initially a free colony, Western Australia later accepted British convicts, because of an acute labour shortage.

The colony of South Australia was settled in 1836, with its western and eastern boundaries set at 132° and 141° East of Greenwich, and to the north at latitude 26° South.[145] The western and eastern boundary points were chosen as they marked the extent of coastline first surveyed by Matthew Flinders in 1802 (Nicolas Baudin's priority being ignored). The northern boundary was set at the parallel of latitude 26° South by the British Parliament because that was considered to be the limit of effective control of territory that could be exercised by a settlement founded on the shores of Gulf St Vincent; the South Australian Company had proposed the parallel of 20° South, later reduced to the Tropic of Capricorn (the parallel of latitude 23° 37′ South).[146]

Convicts and colonial society [ edit ]

Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 161,700 convicts (of whom 25,000 were women) were transported to the Australian colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen's land and Western Australia.[147] Historian Lloyd Robson has estimated that perhaps two-thirds were thieves from working class towns, particularly from the Midlands and north of England. The majority were repeat offenders.[148] Whether transportation managed to achieve its goal of reforming or not, some convicts were able to leave the prison system in Australia; after 1801 they could gain "tickets of leave" for good behaviour and be assigned to work for free men for wages. A few went on to have successful lives as emancipists, having been pardoned at the end of their sentence. Female convicts had fewer opportunities.

Black-eyed Sue and Sweet Poll of Plymouth, England mourning their lovers who are soon to be transported to Botany Bay (published in London in 1792) (published in London in 1792)

Some convicts, particularly Irish convicts, had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion, so authorities were consequently suspicious of the Irish and restricted the practice of Catholicism in Australia. The Irish led Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 served to increase suspicions and repression.[149] Church of England clergy meanwhile worked closely with the governors and Richard Johnson, chaplain to the First Fleet was charged by Governor Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony and was also heavily involved in health and education.[150] The Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765–1838) had magisterial duties, and so was equated with the authorities by the convicts, becoming known as the 'flogging parson' for the severity of his punishments.[151]

The New South Wales Corps was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet. Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade in the colony. In the Rum Rebellion of 1808, the Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur, staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, deposing Governor William Bligh and instigating a brief period of military rule in the colony prior to the arrival from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810.[152]

Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank, churches, and charitable institutions and sought good relations with the Aborigines. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior.[153] Central, however to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists, whom he decreed should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. Against opposition, he appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway as colonial architect and William Redfern as a magistrate. London judged his public works to be too expensive and society was scandalised by his treatment of emancipists.[154] Egalitarianism would come to be considered a central virtue among Australians.

The first five Governors of New South Wales realised the urgent need to encourage free settlers, but the British government remained largely indifferent. As early as 1790, Governor Arthur Phillip wrote: "Your lordship will see by my...letters the little progress we have been able to make in cultivating the lands ... At present this settlement only affords one person that I can employ in cultivating the lands..."[155] It was not until the 1820s that numbers of free settlers began to arrive and government schemes began to be introduced to encourage free settlers. Philanthropists Caroline Chisholm and John Dunmore Lang developed their own migration schemes. Land grants of crown land were made by Governors, and settlement schemes such as those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield carried some weight in encouraging migrants to make the long voyage to Australia, as opposed to the United States or Canada.[156]

Early colonial administrations were anxious to address the gender imbalance in the population brought about by the importation of large numbers of convict men. Between 1788 and 1792, around 3546 male to 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney.[157] Women came to play an important role in education and welfare during colonial times. Governor Macquarie's wife, Elizabeth Macquarie took an interest in convict women's welfare.[158] Her contemporary Elizabeth Macarthur was noted for her 'feminine strength' in assisting the establishment of the Australian merino wool industry during her husband John Macarthur's enforced absence from the colony following the Rum Rebellion.[159] The Catholic Sisters of Charity arrived in 1838 and set about pastoral care in a women's prison, visiting hospitals and schools and establishing employment for convict women.[160] The sisters went on to establish hospitals in four of the eastern states, beginning with St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney in 1857 as a free hospital for all people, but especially for the poor.[161] Caroline Chisholm (1808–1877) established a migrant women's shelter and worked for women's welfare in the colonies in the 1840s. Her humanitarian efforts later won her fame in England and great influence in achieving support for families in the colony.[162] Sydney's first Catholic Bishop, John Bede Polding founded an Australian order of nuns—the Sisters of the Good Samaritan—in 1857 to work in education and social work.[163] The Sisters of St Joseph, were founded in South Australia by Saint Mary MacKillop and Fr Julian Tenison Woods in 1867.[164][165][166] MacKillop travelled throughout Australasia and established schools, convents and charitable institutions. She was canonised by Benedict XVI in 2010, becoming the first Australian to be so honoured by the Catholic Church.[167]

The humanitarian Caroline Chisholm was a leading advocate for women's issues and family friendly colonial policy.

From the 1820s, increasing numbers of squatters[168] occupied land beyond the fringes of European settlement. Often running sheep on large stations with relatively few overheads, squatters could make considerable profits. By 1834, nearly 2 million kilograms of wool were being exported to Britain from Australia.[169] By 1850, barely 2,000 squatters had gained 30 million hectares of land, and they formed a powerful and "respectable" interest group in several colonies.[170]

In 1835, the British Colonial Office issued the Proclamation of Governor Bourke reinforcing the notion that the land belonged to no one prior to the British Crown taking possession of it and quashing any likelihood of treaties with Aboriginal peoples, including that signed by John Batman. Its publication meant that from then, all people found occupying land without the authority of the government would be considered illegal trespassers.[171]

Separate settlements and later, colonies, were created from parts of New South Wales: South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1840, Port Phillip District in 1834, later becoming the colony of Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. The Northern Territory was founded in 1863 as part of South Australia. The transportation of convicts to Australia was phased out between 1840 and 1868.

Massive areas of land were cleared for agriculture and various other purposes in the first 100 years of European settlement. In addition to the obvious impacts this early clearing of land and importation of hard-hoofed animals had on the ecology of particular regions, it severely affected indigenous Australians, by reducing the resources they relied on for food, shelter and other essentials. This progressively forced them into smaller areas and reduced their numbers as the majority died of newly introduced diseases and lack of resources. Indigenous resistance against the settlers was widespread, and prolonged fighting between 1788 and the 1920s led to the deaths of at least 20,000 indigenous people and between 2,000 and 2,500 Europeans.[172] During the mid-late 19th century, many indigenous Australians in south eastern Australia were relocated, often forcibly, to reserves and missions. The nature of many of these institutions enabled disease to spread quickly and many were closed as their populations fell.

Free colony at South Australia [ edit ]

1835 advertisement

A group in Britain led by Edward Gibbon Wakefield sought to start a colony based on free settlement rather than convict labour. In 1831 the South Australian Land Company was formed amid a campaign for a royal charter which would provide for the establishment of a privately financed "free" colony in Australia–giving the city of Adelaide an air of prosperity and class not afforded to the other settlements, which had been smeared with the undesirable convict stain.[173] Adelaide, located centrally between the eastern and western coasts, is located in an inlet consisting of various peninsulas.

While New South Wales, Tasmania and (although not initially) Western Australia were established as convict settlements, the founders of South Australia had a vision of a colony with political and religious freedoms, together with opportunities for wealth through business and pastoral investments. The South Australia Act 1834, passed by the British Government to establish the colony, reflected these desires and included a promise of representative government when the population reached 50,000 people. South Australia thus became the only colony authorised by an Act of Parliament, and which was intended to be developed at no cost to the British government. Transportation of convicts was forbidden, and 'poor Emigrants', assisted by an Emigration Fund, were required to bring their families with them.[173] Significantly, the Letters Patent enabling the South Australia Act 1834 included a guarantee of the rights of 'any Aboriginal Natives' and their descendants to lands they 'now actually occupied or enjoyed'.[174]

Adelaide in 1839. South Australia was founded as a free-colony, without convicts.

In 1836, two ships of the South Australia Land Company left to establish the first settlement on Kangaroo Island. The foundation of South Australia is now generally commemorated as Governor John Hindmarsh's Proclamation of the new Province at Glenelg, on the mainland, on 28 December 1836.[175] From 1843 to 1851, the Governor ruled with the assistance of an appointed Executive Council of paid officials. Land development and settlement was the basis of the Wakefield vision, so land law and regulations governing it were fundamental to the foundation of the Province and allowed for land to be bought at a uniform price per acre (regardless of quality), with auctions for land desired by more than one buyer, and leases made available on unused land. Proceeds from land were to fund the Emigration Fund to assist poor settlers to come as tradesmen and labourers.[176] Agitation for representative government quickly emerged.[177] Most other colonies had been founded by Governors with near total authority, but in South Australia, power was initially divided between the Governor and the Resident Commissioner, so that government could not interfere with the business affairs or freedom of religion of the settlers. By 1851 the colony was experimenting with a partially elected council.[178]

Exploration of the continent [ edit ]

In 1798–99 George Bass and Matthew Flinders set out from Sydney in a sloop and circumnavigated Tasmania, thus proving it to be an island.[179] In 1801–02 Matthew Flinders in HMS Investigator led the first circumnavigation of Australia. Aboard ship was the Aboriginal explorer Bungaree, of the Sydney district, who became the first person born on the Australian continent to circumnavigate the Australian continent.[179] Previously, the famous Bennelong and a companion had become the first people born in the area of New South Wales to sail for Europe, when, in 1792 they accompanied Governor Phillip to England and were presented to King George III.[179]

In 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth succeeded in crossing the formidable barrier of forested gulleys and sheer cliffs presented by the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. At Mount Blaxland they looked out over "enough grass to support the stock of the colony for thirty years", and expansion of the British settlement into the interior could begin.[180]

In 1824 the Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane, commissioned Hamilton Hume and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell to lead an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the mystery of where New South Wales' western rivers flowed. Over 16 weeks in 1824–25, Hume and Hovell journeyed to Port Phillip and back. They made many important discoveries including the Murray River (which they named the Hume), many of its tributaries, and good agricultural and grazing lands between Gunning, New South Wales and Corio Bay, Port Phillip.[181]

Charles Sturt led an expedition along the Macquarie River in 1828 and discovered the Darling River. A theory had developed that the inland rivers of New South Wales were draining into an inland sea. Leading a second expedition in 1829, Sturt followed the Murrumbidgee River into a 'broad and noble river', the Murray River, which he named after Sir George Murray, secretary of state for the colonies. His party then followed this river to its junction with the Darling River, facing two threatening encounters with local Aboriginal people along the way. Sturt continued down river on to Lake Alexandrina, where the Murray meets the sea in South Australia. Suffering greatly, the party had to row hundreds of kilometres back upstream for the return journey.[182]

Surveyor General Sir Thomas Mitchell conducted a series of expeditions from the 1830s to 'fill in the gaps' left by these previous expeditions. He was meticulous in seeking to record the original Aboriginal place names around the colony, for which reason the majority of place names to this day retain their Aboriginal titles.[183]

The Polish scientist/explorer Count Paul Edmund Strzelecki conducted surveying work in the Australian Alps in 1839 and became the first European to ascend Australia's highest peak, which he named Mount Kosciuszko in honour of the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kościuszko.[184]

European explorers made their last great, often arduous and sometimes tragic expeditions into the interior of Australia during the second half of the 19th century—some with the official sponsorship of the colonial authorities and others commissioned by private investors. By 1850, large areas of the inland were still unknown to Europeans. Trailblazers like Edmund Kennedy and the Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt, had met tragic ends attempting to fill in the gaps during the 1840s, but explorers remained ambitious to discover new lands for agriculture or answer scientific enquiries. Surveyors also acted as explorers and the colonies sent out expeditions to discover the best routes for lines of communication. The size of expeditions varied considerably from small parties of just two or three to large, well-equipped teams led by gentlemen explorers assisted by smiths, carpenters, labourers and Aboriginal guides accompanied by horses, camels or bullocks.[185]

In 1860, the ill-fated Burke and Wills led the first north-south crossing of the continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria. Lacking bushcraft and unwilling to learn from the local Aboriginal people, Burke and Wills died in 1861, having returned from the Gulf to their rendezvous point at Coopers Creek only to discover the rest of their party had departed the location only a matter of hours previously. Though an impressive feat of navigation, the expedition was an organisational disaster which continues to fascinate the Australian public.

In 1862, John McDouall Stuart succeeded in traversing Central Australia from south to north. His expedition mapped out the route which was later followed by the Australian Overland Telegraph Line.[73]

Uluru and Kata Tjuta were first mapped by Europeans in 1872 during the expeditionary period made possible by the construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line. In separate expeditions, Ernest Giles and William Gosse were the first European explorers to this area. While exploring the area in 1872, Giles sighted Kata Tjuta from a location near Kings Canyon and called it Mount Olga, while the following year Gosse observed Uluru and named it Ayers Rock, in honour of the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. These barren desert lands of Central Australia disappointed the Europeans as unpromising for pastoral expansion, but would later come to be appreciated as emblematic of Australia.

From autonomy to federation [ edit ]

Colonial self-government and the gold rushes [ edit ]

A gold nugget from Hill End , unearthed in 1872

The discovery of gold in Australia is traditionally attributed to Edward Hammond Hargraves, near Bathurst, New South Wales, in February 1851.[186] Traces of gold had nevertheless been found in Australia as early as 1823 by surveyor James McBrien. As by English law all minerals belonged to the Crown, there was at first, "little to stimulate a search for really rich goldfields in a colony prospering under a pastoral economy".[187] Richard Broome also argues that the California Gold Rush at first overawed the Australian finds, until "the news of Mount Alexander reached England in May 1852, followed shortly by six ships carrying eight tons of gold".[188]

The gold rushes brought many immigrants to Australia from the British Isles, continental Europe, North America and China. The Colony of Victoria's population grew rapidly, from 76,000 in 1850 to 530,000 by 1859.[189] Discontent arose amongst diggers almost immediately, particularly on the crowded Victorian fields. The causes of this were the colonial government's administration of the diggings and the gold licence system. Following a number of protests and petitions for reform, violence erupted at Ballarat in late 1854.

Early on the morning of Sunday 3 December 1854, British soldiers and Police attacked a stockade built on the Eureka lead holding some of the aggrieved diggers. In a short fight, at least 30 miners were killed and an unknown number wounded.[190] O'Brien lists 5 soldiers of the 12th and 40th Regiments killed and 12 wounded.[191] Blinded by his fear of agitation with democratic overtones, local Commissioner Robert Rede had felt "it was absolutely necessary that a blow should be struck" against the miners.[192]

But a few months later, a Royal commission made sweeping changes to the administration of Victoria's goldfields. Its recommendations included the abolition of the licence, reforms to the police force and voting rights for miners holding a Miner's Right.[193] The Eureka Flag that was used to represent the Ballarat miners has been seriously considered by some as an alternative to the Australian flag, because of its controversial association with democratic developments.

In the 1890s, visiting author Mark Twain characterised the battle at Eureka as "The finest thing in Australasian history. It was a revolution-small in size, but great politically; it was a strike for liberty, a struggle for principle, a stand against injustice and oppression...it is another instance of a victory won by a lost battle."[194]

Alternatively, in 1999, the Premier of New South Wales, Bob Carr, dismissed the Eureka Stockade as a "protest without consequence".[195] During the 2004 Australian federal election, Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson stated his view that "I think people have tried to make too much of the Eureka Stockade...trying to give it a credibility and standing that it probably doesn't enjoy."[196]

Melbourne Trades Hall was opened in 1859 with Trades and Labour Councils and Trades Halls opening in all cities and most regional towns in the following forty years. During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearers, miners, and stevedores (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all blue-collar jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day and other benefits unheard of in Europe.

Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise". Some employers tried to undercut the unions by importing Chinese labour. This produced a reaction which led to all the colonies restricting Chinese and other Asian immigration. This led to the enactment of the White Australia Policy.[197] The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to continue for many years before gradually dissolving in the second half of the 20th century.

New South Wales in 1855 was the first colony to gain responsible government, managing most of its own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia followed in 1856; Queensland, from its foundation in 1859; and Western Australia, in 1890. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs, defence and international shipping.

The gold era led to a long period of prosperity, sometimes called "the long boom".[198] This was fed by British investment and the continued growth of the pastoral and mining industries, in addition to the growth of efficient transport by rail, river and sea. By 1891, the sheep population of Australia was estimated at 100 million. Gold production had declined since the 1850s, but in the same year was still worth £5.2 million.[199] Eventually the economic expansion ended; the 1890s were a period of economic depression, felt most strongly in Victoria, and its capital Melbourne.

During the boom, Melbourne had reputedly become the richest city in the world,[200]

The late 19th century had however, seen a great growth in the cities of south eastern Australia. Australia's population (not including Aborigines, who were excluded from census calculations) in 1900 was 3.7 million, almost 1 million of whom lived in Melbourne and Sydney.[201] More than two-thirds of the population overall lived in cities and towns by the close of the century, making "Australia one of the most urbanised societies in the western world".[202]

Bushrangers [ edit ]

Bushrangers, originally referred to runaway convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities. The term "bushranger" then evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base.[203] These bushrangers were roughly analogous to British "highwaymen" and American "Old West outlaws", and their crimes often included robbing small-town banks or coach services.

More than 2,000 bushrangers are believed to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and ending after Ned Kelly's last stand at Glenrowan.[204]

Bold Jack Donahue is recorded as the last convict bushranger.[204] He was reported in newspapers around 1827 as being responsible for an outbreak of bushranging on the road between Sydney and Windsor. Throughout the 1820s he was regarded as the most notorious bushranger in the colony.[205] Leading a band of escaped convicts, Donahue became central to Australian folklore as the Wild Colonial Boy.[204]

Bushranging was common on the mainland, but Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) produced the most violent and serious outbreaks of convict bushrangers.[204] Hundreds of convicts were at large in the bush, farms were abandoned and martial law was proclaimed. Indigenous outlaw Musquito defied colonial law and led attacks on settlers.

The bushrangers' heyday was the Gold Rush years of the 1850s and 1860s.

There was much bushranging activity in the Lachlan Valley, around Forbes, Yass and Cowra in New South Wales.[204] Frank Gardiner, John Gilbert and Ben Hall led the most notorious gangs of the period. Other active bushrangers included Dan Morgan, based in the Murray River, and Captain Thunderbolt, killed outside Uralla.[204]

The increasing push of settlement, increased police efficiency, improvements in rail transport and communications technology, such as telegraphy, made it increasingly difficult for bushrangers to evade capture.

Among the last bushrangers were the Kelly Gang, led by Ned Kelly, who were captured at Glenrowan in 1880, two years after they were outlawed. Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish convict father, and as a young man he clashed with the Victoria Police. Following an incident at his home in 1878, police parties searched for him in the bush. After he killed three policemen, the colony proclaimed Kelly and his gang wanted outlaws.

A final violent confrontation with police took place at Glenrowan on 28 June 1880. Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour and helmet, was captured and sent to jail. He was hanged for murder at Old Melbourne Gaol in November 1880. His daring and notoriety made him an iconic figure in Australian history, folklore, literature, art and film.

Some bushrangers, most notably Ned Kelly in his Jerilderie Letter, and in his final raid on Glenrowan, explicitly represented themselves as political rebels. Attitudes to Kelly, by far the most well-known bushranger, exemplify the ambivalent views of Australians regarding bushranging.

Development of Australian democracy [ edit ]

Traditional Aboriginal society had been governed by councils of elders and a corporate decision making process, but the first European-style governments established after 1788 were autocratic and run by appointed governors—although English law was transplanted into the Australian colonies by virtue of the doctrine of reception, thus notions of the rights and processes established by the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights 1689 were brought from Britain by the colonists. Agitation for representative government began soon after the settlement of the colonies.[206]

South Australian suffragette Catherine Helen Spence (1825–1910). In 1895 women in South Australia were among the first in the world to attain the vote and were the first to be able to stand for parliament.

The oldest legislative body in Australia, the New South Wales Legislative Council, was created in 1825 as an appointed body to advise the Governor of New South Wales. William Wentworth established the Australian Patriotic Association (Australia's first political party) in 1835 to demand democratic government for New South Wales. The reformist attorney general, John Plunkett, sought to apply Enlightenment principles to governance in the colony, pursuing the establishment of equality before the law, first by extending jury rights to emancipists, then by extending legal protections to convicts, assigned servants and Aborigines. Plunkett twice charged the colonist perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre of Aborigines with murder, resulting in a conviction and his landmark Church Act of 1836 disestablished the Church of England and established legal equality between Anglicans, Catholics, Presbyterians and later Methodists.[207]

In 1840, the Adelaide City Council and the Sydney City Council were established. Men who possessed 1,000 pounds worth of property were able to stand for election and wealthy landowners were permitted up to four votes each in elections. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the New South Wales Legislative Council in 1843, again with voting rights (for males only) tied to property ownership or financial capacity. Voter rights were extended further in New South Wales in 1850 and elections for legislative councils were held in the colonies of Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania.[208]

By the mid-19th century, there was a strong desire for representative and responsible government in the colonies of Australia, fed by the democratic spirit of the goldfields evident at the Eureka Stockade and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping Europe, the United States and the British Empire. The end of convict transportation accelerated reform in the 1840s and 1850s. The Australian Colonies Government Act [1850] was a landmark development which granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments—though the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established constitutional monarchies with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.[209]

In 1855, limited self-government was granted by London to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. An innovative secret ballot was introduced in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia in 1856, in which the government supplied voting paper containing the names of candidates and voters could select in private. This system was adopted around the world, becoming known as the "Australian Ballot". 1855 also saw the granting of the right to vote to all male British subjects 21 years or over in South Australia. This right was extended to Victoria in 1857 and New South Wales the following year. The other colonies followed until, in 1896, Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal male suffrage.[208]

Propertied women in the colony of South Australia were granted the vote in local elections (but not parliamentary elections) in 1861. Henrietta Dugdale formed the first Australian women's suffrage society in Melbourne in 1884.[210] Women became eligible to vote for the Parliament of South Australia in 1895. This was the first legislation in the world permitting women also to stand for election to political office and, in 1897, Catherine Helen Spence became the first female political candidate for political office, unsuccessfully standing for election as a delegate to the Federal Convention on Australian Federation. Western Australia granted voting rights to women in 1899.[211][212]

Legally, indigenous Australian males generally gained the right to vote during this period when Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia gave voting rights to all male British subjects over 21. Only Queensland and Western Australia barred Aboriginal people from voting. Thus, Aboriginal men and women voted in some jurisdictions for the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901. Early federal parliamentary reform and judicial interpretation however sought to limit Aboriginal voting in practice—a situation which endured until rights activists began campaigning in the 1940s.[213]

Though the various parliaments of Australia have been constantly evolving, the key foundations for elected parliamentary government have maintained an historical continuity in Australia from the 1850s into the 21st century.

The Garden Palace was one of the grandest buildings of Australia, built for the 1879 Sydney Exhibition , after which it held important records and artefacts all of which were destroyed by fire in 1882

Growth of nationalism [ edit ]

Golden Summer, Eaglemont (1889) by (1889) by Arthur Streeton of the Heidelberg School of art. The origins of a distinctly Australian style of painting are often associated with this art movement of the 1880s and 90s.

By the late 1880s, a majority of people living in the Australian colonies were native born, although over 90 per cent were of British and Irish heritage.[214] Historian Don Gibb suggests that bushranger Ned Kelly represented one dimension of the emerging attitudes of the native born population. Identifying strongly with family and mates, Kelly was opposed to what he regarded as oppression by Police and powerful Squatters. Almost mirroring the Australian stereotype later defined by historian Russel Ward, Kelly became "a skilled bushman, adept with guns, horses and fists and winning admiration from his peers in the district".[215] Journalist Vance Palmer suggested although Kelly came to typify "the rebellious persona of the country for later generations, (he really) belonged...to another period".[216]

The Australian Native (1888) by (1888) by Tom Roberts of the Heidelberg School of art

The origins of distinctly Australian painting is often associated with this period and the Heidelberg School of the 1880s–1890s.[217] Artists such as Arthur Streeton, Frederick McCubbin and Tom Roberts applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers.[218]

Australian literature was equally developing a distinct voice. The classic Australian writers Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Miles Franklin, Norman Lindsay, Steele Rudd, Mary Gilmore, C J Dennis and Dorothea Mackellar were all forged by—and indeed helped to forge—this period of growing national identity. Views of Australia at times conflicted—Lawson and Paterson contributed a series of verses to The Bulletin magazine in which they engaged in a literary debate about the nature of life in Australia: Lawson (a republican socialist) derided Paterson as a romantic, while Paterson (a country born city lawyer) thought Lawson full of doom and gloom. Paterson wrote the lyrics of the much-loved folksong Waltzing Matilda in 1895.[219] The song has often been suggested as Australia's national anthem and Advance Australia Fair, the Australian national anthem since the late 1970s, itself was written in 1887. Dennis wrote of laconic heroes in the Australian vernacular, while McKellar rejected a love of England's pleasant pastures in favour of what she termed a "Sunburnt Country" in her iconic poem: My Country (1903).[220]

A common theme throughout the nationalist art, music and writing of the late 19th century was the romantic rural or bush myth, ironically produced by one of the most urbanised societies in the world.[221] Paterson's well known poem Clancy of the Overflow, written in 1889, evokes the romantic myth. While bush ballads evidenced distinctively Australian popular medium of music and of literature, Australian artists of a more classical mould—such as the opera singer Dame Nellie Melba, and painters John Peter Russell and Rupert Bunny—prefigured the 20th-century expatriate Australians who knew little of 'stockyard and rails' but would travel abroad to influence Western art and culture.[222]

Federation movement [ edit ]

Despite suspicion from some sections of the colonial community (especially in smaller colonies) about the value of nationhood, improvements in inter-colonial transport and communication, including the linking of Perth to the south eastern cities by telegraph in 1877,[223] helped break down inter-colonial rivalries.

Amid calls from London for the establishment of an intercolonial Australian army, and with the various colonies independently constructing railway lines, New South Wales Premier Henry Parkes addressed a rural audience in his 1889 Tenterfield Oration, stating that the time had come to form a national executive government: "Australia [now has] a population of three and a half millions, and the American people numbered only between three and four millions when they formed the great commonwealth of the United States. The numbers were about the same, and surely what the Americans had done by war, the Australians could bring about in peace, without breaking the ties that held them to the mother country."[224]

Though Parkes would not live to see it, his vision would be achieved within a little over a decade, and he is remembered as the "father of federation". Increasing nationalism, a growing sense of national identity, improvements in transport and communications, as well as fears about immigration and defence all combined to encourage the movement, spurred on by organisations like the Australian Natives' Association. Despite the growing calls for unification, loyalties to the British Empire remained strong. At a Federation Conference banquet in 1890, Henry Parkes spoke of blood-kinship linking the colonies to Britain and a "race" for whom "the purpose of settling new countries has never had its equal on the face of the earth"[225]

Sir Henry Parkes delivering the first resolution at the federation conference in Melbourne, 1 March 1890

In 1890, representatives of the six colonies and New Zealand had met in Melbourne and called for the union of the colonies and for the colonial legislatures to nominate representatives to attend a constitutional convention. The following year, the 1891 National Australasian Convention was held in Sydney, with all the future states and New Zealand represented. A draft Constitutional Bill was produced by the Constitution Committee, chiefly drafted by Samuel Griffith, with Inglis Clark and Charles Kingston, as well as the assistance of Edmund Barton. The delegates returned to their parliaments with the Bill, but progress was slow, as Australia faced its 1890s economic Depression. Nevertheless, by 1895 five of the colonies elected representatives for a second Convention, which was conducted in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne over the space of a year, allowing time for consultation. The Constitution Committee this time appointed Barton, Richard O'Connor and John Downer to draft a Bill and after much debate, New South Wales, South Australia and Tasmania adopted the Bill to be put to their voters. Queensland and Western Australia later moved to do the same, though New Zealand did not participate in the Convention.[226]

In July 1898, the Bill was put to a series of referenda in four colonies, but New South Wales rejected the proposal. In 1899, a second referendum put an amended Bill to the voters of the four colonies and Queensland, and the Bill was endorsed.[226]

In March 1900, delegates were dispatched to London, where approval for the Bill was sought from the Imperial Parliament. The Bill was put to the House of Commons and passed on 5 July 1900 and, soon after, was signed into law by Queen Victoria. Lord Hopetoun was dispatched from London, tasked with appointing an interim Cabinet to oversee the foundation of the Commonwealth and conduct of the first elections.[226]

There was a more radical vision for a separate Australia by some colonists, including writer Henry Lawson, trade unionist William Lane and as found in the pages of the Sydney Bulletin. But by the end of 1899, and after much colonial debate, the citizens of five of the six Australian colonies had voted in referendums in favour of a constitution to form a Federation. Western Australia voted to join in July 1900. The Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act was passed by the British parliament on 5 July 1900 and given Royal Assent by Queen Victoria on 9 July 1900.[227]

Federation [ edit ]

The Commonwealth of Australia came into being when the Federal Constitution was proclaimed by the Governor-General, Lord Hopetoun, on 1 January 1901. From that point a system of federalism in Australia came into operation, entailing the establishment of an entirely new national government (the Commonwealth government) and an ongoing division of powers between that government and the States. The first Federal elections were held in March 1901 and resulted in a narrow plurality for the Protectionist Party over the Free Trade Party with the Australian Labor Party (ALP) polling third. Labor declared it would offer support to the party which offered concessions and Edmund Barton's Protectionists formed a government, with Alfred Deakin as Attorney-General.[228]

Barton promised to "create a high court, ...and an efficient federal public service... He proposed to extend conciliation and arbitration, create a uniform railway gauge between the eastern capitals,[229] to introduce female federal franchise, to establish a...system of old age pensions."[230] He also promised to introduce legislation to safeguard "White Australia" from any influx of Asian or Pacific Island labour.

The Labor Party (the spelling "Labour" was dropped in 1912) had been established in the 1890s, after the failure of the Maritime and Shearer's strikes. Its strength was in the Australian Trade Union movement "which grew from a membership of just under 100,000 in 1901 to more than half a million in 1914".[231] The platform of the ALP was democratic socialist. As noted by the historian Ross McMullin, "In the national sphere Labor had taken the Protectionists as far in the direction of progressive legislation as possible." In New South Wales, Frank McDonnell dominated the agitation for the early closing of shops, which was achieved with the passage of the Factories and Shops Act of 1900, while also securing the extension of the grammar school scholarship system. In Western Australia, Forrest introduced a conciliation and arbitration bill in 1900 which brought trade unions into the state's social fabric for the first time. In addition, WA Labor scored another victory with the passage of legislation which extended workers' compensation. Under the premierships of Storey and Dooley in New South Wales, various reforms were carried out such as the establishment of the Rural Bank and the elimination of high school fees.[232]

The Labor Party's rising support at elections, together with its formation of federal government in 1904 under Chris Watson, and again in 1908, helped to unify competing conservative, free market and liberal anti-socialists into the Commonwealth Liberal Party in 1909. Although this party dissolved in 1916, a successor to its version of "liberalism" in Australia which in some respects comprises an alliance of Millsian liberals and Burkian conservatives united in support for individualism and opposition to socialism can be found in the modern Liberal Party.[233] To represent rural interests, the Country Party (today's National Party) was founded in 1913 in Western Australia, and nationally in 1920, from a number of state-based farmer's parties.[234]

Crowds gather to hear the Governor read the Queen's proclamation on Federation in Brisbane , 1901.

The Immigration Restriction Act 1901 was one of the first laws passed by the new Australian parliament. This centrepiece of the 'White Australia Policy' aimed to restrict immigration from Asia (especially China), where the population was vastly greater and the standard of living vastly lower and was similar to measures taken in other settler societies such as the United States, Canada and New Zealand.[235] It found strong support in the national parliament, arguments ranging from economic protection to simple racism.[236] The law permitted a dictation test in any European language to be used to in effect exclude non-"white" immigrants. While the law allowed for the use of any European language, the English version was standardised and became known as the "Stewart" test after the Federal MP Stewart Parnaby who originally penned the exam.[237] The Labor Party wanted to protect "white" jobs and pushed for clearer restrictions. A few politicians spoke of the need to avoid hysterical treatment of the question. MP Bruce Smith said he had "no desire to see low-class Indians, Chinamen or Japanese...swarming into this country... But there is obligation...not (to) unnecessarily offend the educated classes of those nations".[238] Donald Cameron,[clarification needed] a member from Tasmania, expressed a rare note of dissension in the parliament, saying that no race on earth had been "treated in a more shameful manner than have the Chinese...".[239] Outside parliament, Australia's first Catholic cardinal, Patrick Francis Moran was politically active and denounced anti-Chinese legislation as "unchristian".[240] The popular press mocked the cardinal's position and the small European population of Australia generally supported the legislation and remained fearful of being overwhelmed by an influx of non-British migrants from the vastly different cultures of the highly populated empires to Australia's north.

The law passed both houses of Parliament and remained a central feature of Australia's immigration laws until abandoned in the 1950s. In the 1930s, the Lyons government unsuccessfully attempted to exclude Egon Erwin Kisch, a German Czechoslovakian communist author from entering Australia, by means of a 'dictation test' in Scottish Gaelic. The High Court of Australia ruled that Scottish Gaelic was not a European language within the meaning of the Immigration Act (1901–25). Concerns emerged that the law could be used for such political purposes.[241][242]

Before 1901, units of soldiers from all six Australian colonies had been active as part of British forces in the Boer War. When the British government asked for more troops from Australia in early 1902, the Australian government obliged with a national contingent. Some 16,500 men had volunteered for service by the war's end in June 1902.[243] But Australians soon felt vulnerable closer to home. The Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 "allowed the Royal Navy to withdraw its capital ships from the Pacific by 1907. Australians saw themselves in time of war a lonely, sparsely populated outpost."[244] The impressive visit of the US Navy's Great White Fleet in 1908 emphasised to the government the value of an Australian navy. The Defence Act of 1909 reinforced the importance of Australian defence, and in February 1910, Lord Kitchener provided further advice on a defence scheme based on conscription. By 1913, the battlecruiser Australia led the fledgling Royal Australian Navy. Historian Bill Gammage estimates that on the eve of war, Australia had 200,000 men "under arms of some sort".[245]

Historian Humphrey McQueen has it that working and living conditions for Australia's working classes in the early 20th century were of "frugal comfort".[246] While the establishment of the Court of Conciliation and Arbitration for industrial disputes was divisive, it was an acknowledgement of the need to set Industrial awards, where all wage earners in one industry enjoyed the same conditions of employment and wages. The Harvester Judgment of 1907 recognised the concept of a basic wage and in 1908 the Federal government also began an old age pension scheme. Together with the White Australia Policy and pioneering social policy, these developments have since been dubbed the Australian settlement. As a result of them, the new Commonwealth gained recognition as a laboratory for social experimentation and positive liberalism.[228]

Catastrophic droughts plagued some regions in the late 1890s and early 20th century and together with a growing rabbit plague, created great hardship in the rural area of Australia. Despite this, a number of writers "imagined a time when Australia would outstrip Britain in wealth and importance, when its open spaces would support rolling acres of farms and factories to match those of the United States. Some estimated the future population at 100 million, 200 million or more".[247] Amongst these was E. J. Brady, whose 1918 book Australia Unlimited described Australia's inland as ripe for development and settlement, "destined one day to pulsate with life".[248]

With the encouragement of Queensland, in 1884, a British protectorate had been proclaimed over the southern coast of New Guinea and its adjacent islands. British New Guinea, was annexed outright in 1888. The possession was placed under the authority of the newly federated Commonwealth of Australia in 1902 and with passage of the Papua Act of 1905, British New Guinea became the Australian Territory of Papua, with formal Australian administration beginning in 1906.[249]

First World War [ edit ]

The world war marked a decisive moment in the history of Australia, remember to this day for the ANZAC story of the Army's sacrifices at Gallipoli, and the coming-of-age of a young nation.[250]

The declaration of war by King George V in August 1914 automatically involved all of Britain's colonies and dominions.[251] Prime Minister Andrew Fisher probably expressed the views of most Australians when during the election campaign of late July he said "Turn your eyes to the European situation, and give the kindest feelings towards the mother country.... I sincerely hope that international arbitration will avail before Europe is convulsed in the greatest war of all time.... But should the worst happen... Australians will stand beside our own to help and defend her to the last man and the last shilling."[251]

More than 416,000 Australian men volunteered to fight during the First World War between 1914 and 1918[252] from a total national population of 4.9 million.[253] Historian Lloyd Robson estimates this as between one third and one half of the eligible male population.[254] The Sydney Morning Herald referred to the outbreak of war as Australia's "Baptism of Fire".[255] 8,141 men[256] were killed in 8 months of fighting at Gallipoli, on the Turkish coast. After the Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) was withdrawn in late 1915, and enlarged to five divisions, most were moved to France to serve under British command.

Some forces remained in the Mid-East, including members of the Light Horse Regiment. Light horsemen of the 4th and 12th Regiments captured heavily fortified Beersheba from Turk forces by means of a cavalry charge at full gallop on 31 October 1917. One of the last great cavalry charges in history, the attack opened a way for the allies to outflank the Gaza-Beersheba Line and drive the Ottomans back into Palestine.[257]

The AIF's first experience of warfare on the Western Front was also the most costly single encounter in Australian military history. In July 1916, at Fromelles, in a diversionary attack during the Battle of the Somme, the AIF suffered 5,533 killed or wounded in 24 hours.[258] Sixteen months later, the five Australian divisions became the Australian Corps, first under the command of General Birdwood, and later the Australian General Sir John Monash. Two bitterly fought and divisive conscription referendums were held in Australia in 1916 and 1917. Both failed, and Australia's army remained a volunteer force.

John Monash was appointed corps commander of the Australian forces in May 1918 and led some significant attacks in the final stages of the war. British Field Marshal Montgomery later called him "the best general on the western front in Europe". Monash made the protection of infantry a priority and sought to fully integrate all the new technologies of warfare in both the planning and execution of battles, thus he wrote that infantry should not be sacrificed needlessly to enemy bayonets and machine guns—but rather should "advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes". His first operation at the relatively small Battle of Hamel demonstrated the validity of his approach and later actions before the Hindenburg Line in 1918 confirmed it. Monash was knighted in the field of battle by King George V following the 8 August advance during the Battle of Amiens.[259] General Erich Ludendorff, the German commander, later wrote of 8 August 1918 as "the black day of the German Army... The 8th of August put t