Australia, History of

Australia, History of. The history of Australia is the story of the people of Australia, whose ancestors have come from many places and cultures. Each group has played an important role in shaping Australia’s history and society. Australian history is also the story of the growth of a nation.

Australia’s earliest inhabitants were Aboriginal people. Archaeologists (scientists who study the cultural remains left behind by past civilizations) have found evidence of their presence on the continent more than 65,000 years ago. Australia’s other Indigenous (native) people are the Torres Strait Islander peoples. Several thousand years ago, they left New Guinea and settled on the Torres Strait Islands, which lie between New Guinea and the northern tip of Australia. Australia’s Indigenous peoples are also known as First Nations peoples and First Australians. Most Australians today, however, are descended from Europeans, who began to arrive in the late 1700’s. Each group formed a unique society and relationship with the land, and each has played a vital part in shaping the history of Australia.

The Australian environment shaped the patterns of settlement and population on the continent. The majority of the population occupies the southeast area, which has fertile soils, more moderate weather, and more regular rainfall. The largest cities are there, and the majority of people are of European descent. In the drier north, center, and west of the continent, the soils are not as good. This vast area is thinly populated, but its people and cultural outlooks are much more diverse. The population includes Aboriginal peoples, Chinese people, Pacific Islanders, Southeast Asians, Afghans, and Europeans.

Indonesian fishing crews probably visited the northern coast for hundreds of years before Europeans came to the continent. The first recorded European to see Australia was Willem Jansz, a Dutch sea captain who explored the Gulf of Carpentaria in 1606. In 1770, the English navigator James Cook became the first European to voyage along the east coast of Australia. He named it New South Wales. Although he could see that Aboriginal people already occupied the land, he claimed it for Britain (now known as the United Kingdom).

In 1787, a group of British ships called the First Fleet left England with convicts and their guards to establish a prison colony in Australia. The fleet reached the southeast coast of Australia in January 1788. Arthur Phillip, an officer of the Royal Navy, was the fleet’s commander and the first governor of New South Wales. Phillip established a settlement at Sydney Cove in Port Jackson. This became the site of Australia’s largest city, Sydney.

The convicts were the first European colonizers in Australia. They built themselves housing and established families, businesses, and farms. During the 1830’s, the United Kingdom encouraged immigration of free settlers to the Australian colonies. As the numbers of free settlers grew, the society of the colonies changed.

Prospectors discovered gold in New South Wales and Victoria in 1851. It transformed Australia’s economy and society. Gold attracted a large new population and laid the foundation for economic growth. It also helped bring democracy to the colonies. The gold rushes were followed by a period of growth from 1860 to 1890 that historians call the long boom. Thousands of immigrants continued to arrive, the majority from the United Kingdom.

As the colonies grew, Indigenous peoples suffered a rapid decline in population because of diseases, violent conflicts with the settlers, and the loss of land, along with the foods and resources their lands had provided. By 1900, the estimated Indigenous population was less than 100,000.

In the 1890’s, the colonies agreed to unite in a federal union to form the Commonwealth of Australia. In 1899 and 1900, the voters of Australia agreed to federation in several referendums (proposals submitted to the people for approval). The new nation was proclaimed on Jan. 1, 1901, at Centennial Park in Sydney.

Since federation, Australia’s history has been one of growth and expansion into a modern, multicultural society. Australia has played an important role in world affairs. It led the way in social welfare policies and granting women the right to vote, though these were initially limited to white people. Australian soldiers fought in both World War I (1914-1918) and World War II (1939-1945). In the 1960’s, Australia also became involved in the Vietnam War, although widespread opposition to the war eventually led to the fall of a long-ruling conservative government.

In the period between the world wars, Australia suffered from economic depression and high unemployment, which reached a peak in the early 1930’s. After World War II, the government began a massive program to bring immigrants to Australia to strengthen the economy and populate the country. Since the mid-1900’s, many people from such places as the Middle East and Southeast Asia have also settled in Australia. The immigration program, together with the women’s rights movement and the Indigenous rights movement from the 1960’s and 1970’s, had a profound impact in reshaping modern Australia.

Early Indigenous inhabitants

The first people to inhabit the Australian continent were the ancestors of Australia’s modern Aboriginal peoples. According to some Aboriginal traditions, ancestors of today’s Aboriginal people have always been in Australia. These traditions teach that land and people were created by ancestral beings during a period called the Dreamtime. Archeaological evidence indicates that Aboriginal peoples have lived in Australia for more than 65,000 years. Archaeologists estimate that these first people came to Australia from Southeast Asia during the most recent ice age, a period in Earth’s history when ice sheets covered vast regions of land. At that time, conditions on the continent were much different than they are today. The sea level was lower, and land bridges connected mainland Australia, New Guinea, and Tasmania in a landmass that scientists call Sahul. The islands of Indonesia were separated by smaller stretches of ocean than they are now. People could travel between islands in Southeast Asia and only rarely be out of sight of land. The Australian continent was up to one-third larger than it is today, and the surrounding seas were much cooler. Many volcanoes were still active in Australia when people first arrived. Giant kangaroos and other marsupials (mammals that carry their young in a pouch) that are now extinct roamed the land.

The first Aboriginal people traveled by boat to the northern parts of Australia and New Guinea. However, no one knows what sort of boats they used or exactly what routes they took. Aboriginal people soon spread throughout Australia, probably following the coastline and moving up the river valleys into the interior. By about 40,000 years ago, they had spread throughout most of the diverse regions of the country, from the tropical rain forests to the central deserts and Tasmania (see Warratyi). They lived through the last ice age and its aftermath, and adjusted to rising sea levels that covered vast areas of coastal land. The rising waters separated Australia from New Guinea. Tasmania became a separate island about 12,000 years ago. Bathurst and Melville islands off Australia’s northern coast became islands about 8,000 years ago. Australia’s coasts reached their modern shape about 6,500 years ago.

As Aboriginal people traveled through the continent, they learned about the land and how to live on it. Over thousands of years, they developed methods of land management and social organization that were suited to their environment. Aboriginal peoples lived in family groups. Nomadic hunter gatherer groups traveled from place to place within their own territories to hunt, fish, and gather food. The seasons and the country in which they lived partly controlled their movement and diet. Eventually, some groups in southern Australia began to live in semi-permanent villages, although they also were highly mobile when they needed to be. Aboriginal peoples in western Victoria created an aquaculture system of weirs (dams) and channels to trap eels and make fishing easier.

Aboriginal people used special techniques to modify and manage their environment, well before the earliest farming societies appeared in Europe about 5,000 to 7,000 years ago. They used fire to clear the land for plants, either for eating or to attract animals. This burning, called firestick farming, allowed for easier movement across the land and encouraged the growth of grasses and vegetation that wildlife needed to eat. In one desert area, Aboriginal people used irrigation.

The people made tools and weapons from stone, shell, bone, wood, fiber, and natural gums. Among these tools were the world’s earliest known edge-ground axes and millstones (tools for grinding grains and seeds).

Australia is the world’s driest inhabited continent. The Aboriginal people knew where to find and dig for water, and they knew the paths of underground rivers. They dug wells throughout the deserts and other dry areas.

Aboriginal people also developed trading systems. They dug extensively for many types of stone for their tools and weapons and for ocher, an earthy mixture containing clay and iron oxide used for coloring. They were active traders of such goods as shells, stone, tools, and pituri, a desert plant that contains nicotine. Aboriginal groups exchanged these goods, along with ideas and news, through extensive trading networks that crossed Australia.

A complex system of laws governed Aboriginal society. There were no chiefs. The older men in the bands or groups tended to make the decisions, but older women also played important roles. Individuals gained respect and the right of leadership through age, experience, and knowledge.

Aboriginal religion reflected the people’s reliance on the land. Aboriginal people produced beautiful and complex art, turning many parts of the country into art galleries of rock paintings and engravings.

Scientists who have analyzed the population characteristics and trends estimate that about 500,000 to 1 million people lived in Australia by the time that European colonizers came to the continent in 1788. The Aboriginal peoples spoke around 250 distinct languages at that time, and about 600 dialects of those languages. The Europeans often assumed that Aboriginal people had a technologically primitive society. However, it was a society rich in spirituality, art, languages, and understanding of the Australian environment. See Aboriginal peoples of Australia.

The Torres Strait Islander peoples are a distinct population of Indigenous Australian peoples. The ancestors of the Torres Strait Islander peoples sailed to the islands from New Guinea and settled there several thousand years ago. They were hunter-gatherers and farmers. They hunted birds and land animals. They also fished and hunted such sea animals as turtles and large sea mammals called dugongs. The people built large, sea-going canoes for fishing, raiding, and trading. They had contact with some people in New Guinea and with Aboriginal peoples on Australia’s Cape York Peninsula. The peoples of the Torres Strait Islands were organized into clans. Storytelling carried family histories, cultural practices, and other customs from one generation to the next. See Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Asian and European voyagers and visitors

Asian fishing fleets.

Ships from Asia reached Australia’s northern shores before the arrival of the Europeans, although historians know little about these earliest contacts. In the 1400’s, a fleet of Chinese junks (ships) explored as far south as Timor, just north of New Guinea. Winds may have blown other Chinese ships off course to the northern shores of Australia. Arab traders had also traveled to Indonesia by the 1400’s and may have known of Australia. Pacific Islanders from the northeast could also have visited.

The most important of the early visitors to Australia were the fleets of fishing boats called praus from the Indonesian port of Makassar (also spelled Macassar), from about 1700 to around 1900. The fishing crews arrived each year by boat using the summer monsoons (seasonal winds). They stayed for about five months before the southern monsoons blew them home again. They came to fish for the trepang (sea cucumber), which was a prized delicacy in China. The trepang trade became Australia’s first major export industry.

The Makassans had an important influence on Aboriginal society and culture in the region. They introduced the dugout canoe and sail, iron blades, spears, and knives. Some Aboriginal people joined them on the voyages back to Indonesia. Makassan words and place names became part of Aboriginal languages, and new images and ideas entered Aboriginal art and culture. Aboriginal peoples adopted the Makassan smoking pipe, and some Aboriginal men began to wear their beards in the same style as the visitors. Some Makassan men formed relationships with Aboriginal women during their stays, so their children had relations in both Australia and Indonesia. These family links are still recognized by the Yolngu Aboriginal people today.

For most of its history, therefore, Australia’s main relationship for colonization and trade was with Asia, particularly Southeast Asia. The population of the vast north and northwest of Australia still reflects this influence. However, after 1500, European countries began to explore and colonize other lands. The European colonization of Australia began in 1788. The British settlements caused a radical shift in the development and culture of the Aboriginal peoples.

First European explorers.

The Europeans had long believed in the existence of a great land to the south of Asia. From the 1500’s to the 1700’s, they used the name Terra Australis Incognita (Unknown Southland) for a land they believed filled the entire southern part of the world. Some historians have suggested that Portuguese navigators may have sighted the coast of Australia in the 1500’s. These historians base their ideas on maps produced in the 1500’s that show a large land mass to the south of Java called Jave-la-Grande, which could have been Australia. Other historians disagree with this theory, however.

The first recorded date for a European sighting of Australia is 1606. An expedition led by the Dutch explorer Willem Jansz entered the Gulf of Carpentaria in northern Australia and sailed along the west coast of Cape York Peninsula in extreme northeastern Australia. The same year, the Spanish navigator Luis Vaez de Torres sailed through the same waters, though in the opposite direction. The Torres Strait now bears his name. While Torres navigated along the coast of New Guinea, Jansz charted the north coast of Australia. He came ashore near what is now Weipa and clashed with local Aboriginal people, whom he called “wild, cruel dark barbarians.”

For the next 100 years, the Dutch continued to explore Australia. Their ships sailed along every coastline except the eastern seaboard. The most significant Dutch expeditions were those led by the Dutch sea captain Abel Tasman. In 1642, the governor of the Dutch colonies, Anthony van Diemen, instructed Tasman to find a route from the Cape of Good Hope, at the bottom of South Africa, to South America. Van Diemen instructed Tasman to use a wind system known as the roaring forties, which blows over the North and South middle latitudes from west to east.

On Nov. 24, 1642, Tasman sighted the island now named Tasmania at Cape Sorell on the island’s west coast. He sailed around the southern part of the island, which he claimed for the Netherlands. He continued eastward, sighting the South Island of New Zealand. In 1644, van Diemen sent Tasman in search of a more northerly sea route to the eastern Pacific. Unable to negotiate the Torres Strait, Tasman turned back and charted the northern coast of Australia. He named the land New Holland. See Tasman, Abel Janszoon.

The Dutch found the continent harsh and forbidding, with no opportunities for trade in such goods as spices and precious metals. As a result, the Dutch lost interest in Australia. They made no settlements and left no lasting imprint on the country. Their contacts with Aboriginal people consisted mainly of violence and kidnapping. However, their expeditions had roughly mapped the continent’s northern, western, and southwestern coastlines—though maps drawn at the time still showed the east coast extending to New Zealand and beyond.

The English navigator and mapmaker William Dampier visited the northwestern coast of Australia in 1688 and again in 1699. He was the first Englishman to make a written description of the Australian mainland, its plants and animals, and the Aboriginal people. His views of the country and its people were as unfavorable as those of the Dutch.

Cook’s voyage.

By the mid-1700’s, the British had become interested in the Pacific Islands as potential trading centers. In 1768, the British Admiralty appointed the British navigator Lieutenant James Cook to captain the Endeavour on an expedition to Tahiti led by the British botanist Joseph Banks. The stated purpose of the journey was to observe the path of the planet Venus across the face of the sun. In secret instructions, however, the British government ordered Cook to find and take possession of what it called the southern continent. From Tahiti, Cook sailed south, navigating around the two islands that make up New Zealand and proving that they were not part of the continent. He then sailed west from New Zealand. Southerly winds blew him off course, and on April 19, 1770, he sighted the east coast of Australia. Sailing up the coast, Cook reached and landed at Botany Bay on the southeast coast of Australia on April 29.

The climate of southeastern Australia is more comfortable than many of the regions explored by the Dutch voyagers, and the area of Botany Bay left a good impression on Cook and Banks. The land seemed suitable for farming. The Aboriginal people they saw at first ignored them completely. When a group of 30 or more Europeans approached them, two Aboriginal men armed with spears came forward. They gestured for the Europeans to go away and threw spears at the newcomers. They refused to move, even when one was hit in the leg with small shot the Europeans fired from a musket. Cook’s party shot one man three times before he retreated. In spite of this bravery, Banks later dismissed the Aboriginal people as “rank cowards.”

After surveying the bay, Cook continued northward, passing Port Jackson, where Sydney was later founded. On June 10, the Endeavour struck a reef that was part of the Great Barrier Reef. The crew made repairs on the ship in the mouth of a river in northern Queensland that Cook later named the Endeavour. On August 22, Cook landed on what is now called Possession Island, just off the coast of Cape York at the northern tip of Queensland. There, he claimed the east coast of the continent for Britain and named it New South Wales.

Cook’s view of the continent was much more favorable than the critical views of the Dutch and Dampier. Instead of a hostile desert, Cook and his crew found some areas on the east coast where they believed crops would grow and European farm animals could thrive. Cook did not understand the Aboriginal ways of land management. He assumed the Aboriginal peoples did not really own the country, and it was therefore free for British settlement. These impressions of the land and its people changed the course of Australian history. See Cook, James.

The first British settlements

By 1770, European navigators knew the broad outline of Australia. They still believed that Tasmania was part of the mainland, but they knew New Zealand and New Guinea were separate from Australia. The expanding British Empire and its needs soon led the British government to form permanent settlements in Australia.

In January 1788, the Aboriginal people of Botany Bay again saw sails on the horizon. The sails belonged to the 11 ships of the First Fleet, carrying convicts and soldiers sent from Britain to found a colony in New South Wales.

Transportation of convicts.

Deportation to overseas colonies was an important part of the British system of justice and punishment. In the 1700’s, an increasing number of crimes drew a sentence of transportation (deportation). Authorities often reduced sentences of life imprisonment or death to the less harsh punishment of transportation. Until the American Revolution (1775-1783), most British convicts were sent to the American Colonies, usually Maryland and Virginia. After the war for American independence began, the Americans would not accept any more British convicts.

By the mid-1780’s, British jails and hulks (ships used as prisons for convicts sentenced to hard labor) became overcrowded. British officials needed to find a new place for the transportation of convicts. The site had to be isolated to deter any escapees from returning home. The site also had to have land rich enough to support agriculture, so that the colony could provide its own food. British authorities thought a new colony would encourage convicts to reform and lead more productive lives. Although they examined sites in Africa, Sir Joseph Banks’s promising description of Botany Bay persuaded British officials to try Australia. See Convicts in Australia.

The British Empire and its trade.

During the late 1700’s, the British government began to establish its eastern empire in India. With the loss of the American Colonies in the 1780’s, British leaders saw the east as the place for a new empire. In addition, the British government was concerned about the activities of other European powers in the Asian and Pacific regions. A new colony in the east could act as a strategic post to monitor the activities of other European powers in the area.

The British also wanted to open up new areas of trade in the Southeast Asian region. They wanted new sources of timber for the expanding Navy and of New Zealand flax, a plant used to make sails and other textiles. British authorities hoped that the Norfolk Island pines that grew on Norfolk Island, off the east coast of Australia, would provide good timber for masts. They also hoped that settlers could grow flax on Norfolk Island and Botany Bay.

The first fleets.

The First Fleet, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, brought the first group of British convicts to Australia. The fleet consisted of 11 ships: H.M.S. Sirius, H.M.S. Supply, 6 vessels that served as convict transports, and 3 that served as supply ships. Of the more than 1,000 people who sailed, about 750 were convicts and their children, with more than 200 marines to guard them. The fleet left England on May 13, 1787. It reached Botany Bay between Jan. 18 and 20, 1788. The voyage had few problems. The 31 deaths during the trip were a small number compared to other voyages. See First Fleet.

The conditions on the Second and Third fleets were starkly different from those on the First Fleet. Of the approximately 1,000 convicts who boarded the Second Fleet, 267 died before reaching Sydney. Overcrowding, starvation, and savage punishment inflicted by ships’ masters on the convicts caused the high death toll. When the convicts arrived at Sydney Cove, townspeople watched in horror as the new arrivals came ashore, so weak they could only crawl. On the Third Fleet, 200 of the approximately 1,800 convicts died. An additional 576 convicts were desperately ill on arrival. Conditions on the convict ships slowly improved, and no later fleet equaled the horrors of the Second and Third fleets.

The settlement at Sydney.

The First Fleet arrived in Botany Bay at the height of summer. Instead of the “fine meadows” Cook and Banks had described on their autumn visit, Phillip found brown grasses and a diminished water supply. He quickly decided that Botany Bay was unsuitable as the site for the new settlement. He then sailed farther north into Port Jackson, described it as “the finest harbor in the world,” and selected a small cove with a freshwater stream. This site became the city of Sydney. On Jan. 26, 1788, the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Cove, and the British flag was unfurled over the lands of the Cadigal Aboriginal people. See Camp Cove.

Phillip faced considerable problems in the early years. Scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C, broke out among the people soon after landing. Those affected urgently needed fresh vegetables and fruit to help them recover. The first crops were hurriedly planted even though it was the wrong season. The soil around Sydney Cove is sandy and lacks the nutrients plants need to grow, and these first crops failed. The livestock brought with the fleet either died or disappeared into the bush. By late 1788, food supplies were low, and the Sirius was sent to the Cape of Good Hope to get additional supplies. In 1790, food was still scarce, and the Supply was sent to Batavia (now Jakarta, Indonesia) for more food and equipment.

The arrival of the Second Fleet’s supply ships and the return of the Supply eased the situation. The European settlers also began to grow and collect their own food. They established vegetable gardens, planted fruit trees, caught fish, collected oysters, and gathered native vegetables and fruits. By 1791, the colony’s food supply was much steadier. Government farms operated at Rose Hill and Toongabbie by 1792, and private gardens flourished. Many observers remarked that Sydney was a healthy place to live.

The small stream at Sydney was later known as the Tank Stream because deep tanks were cut into its sandstone bed to create water reservoirs. It still runs underneath the modern city streets. The Tank Stream also became the settlement’s first dividing line. On the east side were the first government offices and the houses of nonmilitary officials. The convicts made their town on the western side, where steep areas of rugged, broken sandstone rose from the narrow strip of flat land along the water’s edge. They called the area the Rocks, and this name is still used for the neighborhood today. To the south of the Rocks was the military area, where the officers and marines lived in barracks and houses.

Phillip laid out a grand town plan for Sydney in May 1788, but it was never carried out. By 1790, he could see that Sydney had taken shape in a disorderly layout and it was already too late to change. He founded a new town, Rose Hill, at the head of the Parramatta River inland on the Cumberland Plain. Later called Parramatta, this town was the center of a new farming district. It was planned with straight streets leading up to a new government house. The convicts’ huts stood in neat rows. Phillip and his officials sent the healthy, strong convicts there to work, while the sick and feeble remained in Sydney. Phillip hoped that Sydney would shrivel and fade away, but instead it continued to grow. It remained the center for European population, trade, and government. Parramatta continued as the first inland town.

Convict settlers.

The convicts sent to Australia were mainly from the working classes of England and Ireland. They provided the skilled and unskilled labor to build the colony. The marines refused to supervise their work, so convicts served as overseers, too. Within a few years, the prisoners had cleared the dense tree cover. On the Rocks and to the south, they built small huts out of wattle (wood) and daub (clay) with tile roofs. Some of these houses stood in rows, while others were scattered amid dead and dying trees and patches of garden. Most of these dwellings were not occupied by official grant or lease, but by permissive occupancy. That is, convict women and men had simply taken the land and built on it, but they did not officially own it.

Although the colony was established as a kind of jail, the convicts did not live in jail conditions. In this first phase, the colony operated much like a village in England. The convicts mostly wore their own clothes and lived in their own houses. Men and women formed relationships, and families occupied some houses. Convicts worked on government works, such as building roads, bridges, and buildings. They also worked on government farms. Others set up their own businesses, such as hotels, blacksmiths, butchers, and bakeries. Convict women looked after their children and also ran hotels, shops, and bakeries. They bought and sold land, worked as dressmakers and launderers, and did many other kinds of work. Husbands and wives often worked together as partners. Sometimes free husbands and wives and children came to the colony to join a convict spouse or parent.

Aboriginal peoples and Europeans.

The first encounters between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans had mixed results. Some meetings were friendly, curious, and funny, and others were hostile and angry. The convicts and soldiers often stole tools and weapons, which angered the Aboriginal people and often led them to steal from or attack the Europeans. After these first contacts, Aboriginal people avoided Sydney altogether for months, perhaps hoping that the invaders would go away.

Phillip wanted to establish friendly relations with Aboriginal people and learn more about them. The Aboriginal people avoided contact with the Europeans, so in December 1788 and the following year, Phillip kidnapped several Aboriginal people and held them at Government House in Sydney. One of the Aboriginal men was named Bennelong. He quickly learned to speak English, wore European-style clothing, and shared food at the tables of his captors, who became his friends. He and his family were considered guests of the governor, which caused resentment among the convicts and soldiers. See Arabanoo.

After the two groups had established contact, Aboriginal people started to visit the town. They were the first to paddle out to the newly arrived ships. They gathered in Sydney’s streets to dance and sing. They also helped the Europeans search for stolen goods and traveled long distances to bring them news of shipwrecks and drownings. These good relations, however, did not last long.

European colonization expanded over the Cumberland Plain, taking more and more Aboriginal land. The Aboriginal people found themselves hungry and barred from their own lands. Convicts and settlers inflicted terrible assaults and murders on Aboriginal people and were brutally attacked and killed in return.

A terrible disease, which historians now believe was smallpox, was introduced by the Makassan fishing crews in northern Australia. The disease spread quickly across the continent and broke out among Aboriginal people in Sydney in April 1789. It killed as much as half of the local population. All but a few of the local Cadigal Aboriginal people died. The disease spread rapidly into the country. For many years afterward, European explorers of the inland met Aboriginal people with pockmarked (smallpox-scarred) faces and heard reports that whole groups had already died from the disease.

Other settlements.

Soon after establising the first colonial settlement at Sydney, Phillip sent a small party under Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to Norfolk Island. Phillip instructed King to establish a settlement and begin the harvest of the New Zealand flax and timber that grew there. However, the native flax proved to be impossible to process, and the Norfolk Island pines were unsuitable for making masts. The convicts then established farms on the island. Some were sent there for crimes they committed after they arrived in the colony. Authorities disbanded the settlement in 1814 but reopened it in 1825 as a brutal convict station for second offenders. See Norfolk Island.

Newcastle, on the Coal River (now the Hunter River) to the north, was another place of punishment for second offenders, established in 1804. Convicts sent there worked in the coal mines. The fertile Hunter Valley eventually attracted graziers (farmers who graze livestock). Colonial authorities closed the convict station in 1823 and reestablished it farther north at Port Macquarie. The Hunter Valley was opened to free settlers and was known as “the garden of the colony.”

Seal hunting, one of Australia’s most important early industries, began in Bass Strait in the 1790’s and continued until the seals were hunted to extinction. In 1804, Hobart and Launceston, were established on Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), mainly for strategic purposes. The colonists there were convicts and administrators sent from Sydney. The colony’s impact on Aboriginal peoples of Tasmania was devastating. See Colonial life in Australia and New Zealand.

The New South Wales Corps.

Phillip left the colony in 1792. He had established a permanent settlement and had tried to work for peace and understanding between Europeans and Aboriginal peoples in Australia. The British officials who replaced him merely tried to control the violence.

The marines who had accompanied Phillip were replaced in 1792 by the New South Wales Corp, an infantry regiment recruited in Britain. The corps established economic control in the colony and gained considerable power. One of the most influential members of the corps was Lieutenant John Macarthur.

The officers of the corps controlled trade in the colony by buying up the cargo of any ship that came to Sydney. They then sold the goods to the colonists and to the government for a large profit. The corps leaders granted land to members of the corps and assigned convict labor to them. They also guaranteed the officers a market for their goods. The government was the sole buyer of agricultural goods. Agricultural production increased, especially as farms were established on the rich banks of the Hawkesbury and Nepean rivers.

During the corps’ administration, colonists and administrators used alcohol—particularly rum—as the colony’s currency. It was used to buy goods and pay wages. The corps controlled both imported alcohol and the production of alcohol in the colony. Its members ruthlessly suppressed any production of alcohol not under their control. The corps was called the Rum Corps by later historians.

Both Governor John Hunter, who took office in 1795, and Governor Philip Gidley King, who took office in 1800, failed to curb the rum trade or the power of the corps. King was replaced by the British sea captain William Bligh in August 1806. See New South Wales Corps.

The 1808 Rebellion.

Bligh was a stern leader with a strong temper. He had already survived a mutiny on his ship, the H.M.S. Bounty. As governor of New South Wales, he mounted an attack on the rum trade and soon made enemies of the corps officers, large landholders, and merchants. He also insisted that most of the land in Sydney belonged to the British government. He attempted to reclaim all the land already occupied by settlers, including officers, free people, convicts, and ex-convicts. Even though they did not have leases or grants, many people had already built houses and other buildings on this land and feared losing it.

Macarthur led the opposition to Governor Bligh. On Jan. 26, 1808, the commander of the New South Wales Corps, George Johnston, along with a detachment of soldiers, marched up to Government House, the home and office of Governor Bligh. There, they stormed the building, arrested Bligh, and locked him up in the town jail. Johnston took control of the colony, and Macarthur proclaimed himself lieutenant governor. The revolt, which had the support of many of the townspeople, was called the Rum Rebellion by later historians, although it was largely a conflict over land and property issues. See Macarthur, John.

In 1809, the British sent Lachlan Macquarie to be the new governor. Macquarie brought his own regiment of troops to replace the New South Wales Corps. Johnston was arrested and sent to England to stand trial on charges of mutiny. He was found guilty and was dishonorably discharged from the Army. Macarthur escaped punishment but was not allowed to return to New South Wales until 1817. See Bligh, William; Rum Rebellion.

Convicts and free immigrants

Macquarie’s administration.

Macquarie realized that Sydney’s people wanted to keep the land and buildings they occupied. He believed that he could not take the land back from them. Instead, he asked that they fill out petitions for the land and then granted all of them official leases.

Macquarie quickly ended the trading monopoly held by the New South Wales Corps and its allies. He began a program of improvement and ordered construction of new buildings, including a hospital, housing for male convicts, and the Parish Church of St. James the Greater, all of which still stand in Macquarie Street. He laid out five new towns in the rural areas to the west and began a program of road and bridge building. Macquarie introduced a new currency, although he also tolerated the continued use of rum as currency and payment. He also established the Bank of New South Wales.

Macquarie established a more liberal, tolerant policy toward convicts and emancipists (pardoned convicts). He believed in encouraging reform by rewarding good behavior. He issued tickets of leave (permission to travel) and pardons to convicts. Macquarie granted land to emancipists and gave them government assistance to help them start farming. He used skilled convicts and emancipists in government service. Macquarie also actively promoted the acceptance of emancipists back into society and appointed some wealthy and capable emancipists as magistrates (judges). These policies angered wealthy free settlers, who thought they were superior to the emancipists. Both the free colonists in New South Wales and British officials criticized Macquarie’s convict policy. See Convicts in Australia (The convict system).

The Bigge Report.

The British government worried about the costs of Macquarie’s public works program. In 1819, British officials appointed Commissioner John Thomas Bigge to lead an investigation of the colony. Bigge’s report was critical of Macquarie’s policies, especially the freedoms and rights given to convicts and emancipists. Macquarie imagined a well-ordered colony based on thriving agriculture and filled with pleasing buildings. Bigge also imagined a successful colony. However, he saw the colony’s future favoring the wealthy capitalist settlers, with convicts providing a cheap source of labor. He disapproved of the concentration of convicts in Sydney and their freedoms. Bigge recommended the extension of assignment, the practice of assigning convicts to free settlers who put them to work on farms or in businesses. He also concluded that transportation as punishment did not discourage crime and recommended that it be made much more severe.

In response to Bigge’s report, the colonial officials reduced the number of convicts on public works. British authorities instructed the next governors, Thomas Brisbane and Ralph Darling, to increase the severity of the convict system. After the 1820’s, life for convicts became much stricter and more controlled. Officials introduced harsher punishments for second offenders, such as working in road gangs. The British government recalled Macquarie to England, where he died soon after. See Bigge, John Thomas.

The struggle for emancipist rights.

The Bigge Report brought an end to Macquarie’s emancipist policy. After the report, emancipists were not allowed to serve as members of the colony’s Legislative Council, which was established in 1823. They could not hold a court position, serve on a jury, or open a legal practice.

The Australian lawyer and statesman William Charles Wentworth and a small group of wealthy emancipists and their children mounted a campaign against these restrictions. Among the emancipists was Simeon Lord, an English-born merchant who had been convicted for stealing cloth. Their group, known as the Emancipist Party, continued a long campaign for the right to trial by jury and other rights for emancipists. The wealthy free settlers, who were known as exclusives or pure merinos, vigorously opposed the emancipists. The exclusives, led by John Macarthur, the former lieutenant in the New South Wales Corps, blocked every attempt at reform until the arrival of Governor Sir Richard Bourke in 1831. Bourke was sympathetic to the emancipist cause. In 1833, he used his vote to pass an act in the Legislative Council that allowed trial by jury in all criminal cases.

The balance of convicts and free immigrants.

The numbers of convicts in New South Wales swelled. Between 1821 and 1830, about 21,000 convicts arrived. They provided the forced labor for colonial economic development and expansion during this period of economic boom. Meanwhile, the children of the first convict arrivals had grown up and started families of their own. Many colonial observers described them as honest, independent, and hard-working. The new generation also had a reputation for disliking authority. By 1828, those born in the colony already made up almost one-fourth of the population. By this time, free people outnumbered convicts in the colony.

Free immigrants had been arriving in Australia since 1788, with the first group of free settlers arriving in 1793. At first, their numbers were small, but they grew steadily. About 8,000 free settlers arrived in the 1820’s. Most were men and women attracted by free land grants and cheap convict labor. Like many of the convict settlers, they hoped to improve their position in life and make money in the new land. They moved in waves into the areas beyond Sydney, to the Hunter Valley and beyond in the north, the Bathurst Plains in the west, and out to present-day Canberra on the Molonglo Plains in the southwest. Others stayed in Sydney and established themselves in businesses, professions, and shipping ventures.

In 1831, the British government introduced assisted migration to the colonies. Under this system, the government provided money raised from the sale of land to support new settlers. The British government particularly sought skilled workers and single women as immigrants. Men were needed to work on estates, farms, and cattle and sheep ranches, while skilled women were needed as domestic servants. From 1831 to 1840, more than 40,000 assisted immigrants arrived in Australia. By 1850, the total number of assisted immigrants was more than 110,000.

The end of convict transportation.

Opposition to convict transportation became widespread during the 1830’s, both in the colonies and in England. In England, a growing number of reformers questioned its worth as a way to stop crime. In Australia, free immigrants to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land increasingly objected to living in a prison colony. Cheap convict labor kept wages low, and restrictions on civil liberties were greater than those in England. The free immigrants became an influential voice in the growing opposition to transportation. They called first for a representative government and later for self-government.

In 1838, the House of Commons of the United Kingdom appointed a committee led by the English colonial official Sir William Molesworth to examine transportation and the convict system. The committee, known as the Molesworth Committee, recommended that the government end transportation to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land and abolish assignment. Following its report, the British abolished assignment and stopped transportation to New South Wales in 1840. British lawmakers repeatedly defeated attempts by the wealthy landholders and their supporters to reintroduce transportation in New South Wales.

The Molesworth Report was a victory for the antitransportation movements in Australia. However, it also had a harmful impact because it portrayed the colonies as deeply tainted and corrupted by convicts. This picture of Australia disappointed and shocked the colonists, because it was not the way they saw themselves, and it was not true of the convict experience in Australia. Nevertheless, this portrayal had a lasting impact on Australian society well into the 1900’s. It made many Australians ashamed and sensitive about their convict origins.

Transportation continued to other colonies and settlements that had been established by this time. In the 1840’s, a small number of convicts were sent to the Port Phillip district (now Victoria), where the farming and livestock grazing industry was rapidly spreading. However, most British convicts during this period were sent to Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania), where authorities had introduced an elaborate new system of punishment based on stages of reform. The convicts worked in groups and gained increasing freedom for good behavior. Authorities expanded older convict stations, such as Port Arthur and the Female Factory at Ross. There, they built new complexes of buildings to house, punish, and reform the convicts. Many of these structures still stand today, especially on the Tasman Peninsula. The new system failed, however. The British government temporarily suspended it in Van Diemen’s Land in 1846 and officially abolished it in 1852, with the last convict ship reaching the island in 1853.

The final chapter of Australia’s convict history occurred in Western Australia, where convict transportation started in 1850 and was not abolished until 1868. There, convicts, or exiles, as they were called, provided the labor to build roads, bridges, and buildings, and a market that the struggling colony desperately needed.

Mapping the continent

When Europeans first began to colonize New South Wales, they did not know if Australia consisted of one huge land mass or of two or more large islands. Explorers had thoroughly mapped the northwestern, western, and southwestern coastline, and so it was known that all of western Australia formed one land mass. Tasman had named this land New Holland. The east coast of Australia was mapped after Cook discovered it. However, much of the southern coastline and part of the northern coastline remained uncharted. People therefore thought that New South Wales and New Holland might be islands rather than parts of one continent.

Motives for exploration

varied. Some navigators explored out of curiosity and for scientific research and recording. Later, the various colonies competed with each other for the glory of being the first Europeans into new country or the first to cross from one coast to the other. Most often the motive was economic. Explorers hoped to find new land for the Europeans to use. In the early period, they looked for land that could be cultivated. With the increase of the cattle and wool industries, the quest was for land suitable for grazing. The trails the explorers blazed were soon followed by the tramping hooves of thousands of sheep and cattle.

The British also sent expeditions in response to French explorations of the area. Several French navigators, including Marion du Fresne and Nicolas Baudin, explored Australian waters in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The French presence in the area prompted the British to claim more Australian land for themselves, to keep the French from gaining control in the area.

In 1803, Governor King’s fears of French territorial claims motivated him to send a party of marines, free settlers, and convicts to Port Phillip Bay to establish a settlement at Sorrento, in what is now Victoria. The attempt failed, and the colonizers moved to Hobart Town in Van Diemen’s Land. A second settlement in response to French exploration was established on the Tamar River in the north, at what is now Launceston.

Charting the coastline.

Two British navigators, Matthew Flinders and George Bass, completed the exploration of Australia’s coastlines in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. In the 1790’s, they explored the south coast of New South Wales in the tiny boat Tom Thumb. On another expedition, sailing farther south, they sailed completely around Van Diemen’s Land, proving that it was an island. Bass and Flinders also explored the strait between it and the mainland, which was named after Bass.

Flinders undertook his most important expedition from 1801 to 1803 in the Investigator. Starting at Cape Leeuwin in southwestern Western Australia, he sailed eastward along the southern coast, reaching Sydney in May 1802. He continued north, rounded Cape York Peninsula, and charted the Gulf of Carpentaria. There he encountered a fleet of six praus (Indonesian fishing boats) and met the fleet commander, Pobassoo. Flinders named an island after Pobassoo and gave the name Malay Road to the place where they had met. He then sailed to Timor and south and east around the continent to Sydney. He was the first European to sail completely around the continent. He suggested Australia as the name for the continent in his journal, which was later published, and Governor Macquarie adopted his suggestion.

Aboriginal explorations.

Aboriginal people were great explorers in the 1800’s in Australia. Europeans rarely explored new country on their own. They probably could not have made a number of these epic expeditions without Aboriginal assistance. Often the Aboriginal people crossed into new territory they did not know any better than the Europeans. The Aboriginal people guided the parties, found food and water, and saved their lives by acting as peacemakers when they communicated with other, hostile Aboriginal groups. An Aboriginal guide named Wylie went with the English explorer Edward John Eyre in the 1840’s. Another Aboriginal guide, called Dick, accompanied the Irish explorer Robert O’Hara Burke and the English explorer William John Wills on an expedition in the 1860’s. The Europeans sometimes acknowledged these Aboriginal guides as faithful helpers, sometimes made fun of them, but most often simply forgot them.

Charting the inland areas.

In the first months and years after the settlement of Sydney, European explorers discovered the Hawkesbury River and the Nepean River, and then realized that the two waterways were the same river. They explored the head of the harbor along the Parramatta River. Some scientific expeditions crossed parts of the rugged Blue Mountains, which rose to the west of Sydney.

By 1813, graziers wanted more land for their stock. Grazing and caterpillar plagues had destroyed much of the pastureland of the Cumberland Plains. The graziers Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson, and William Charles Wentworth, later a leading Australian statesman, made a journey over the Blue Mountains in 1813, following the ridges. They returned to Sydney with news of good, open grazing land in the west.

This journey set the pattern for later exploration. Grazing by sheep and cattle soon led to the loss of native pastures. In its place grew tough, prickly weeds, which the cattle could not eat. The graziers were in constant need of more land. From the 1820’s through the 1840’s, explorers continued to discover new grazing country, open ground with few trees and good grasses. In 1827, an English botanist and explorer named Allan Cunningham traveled northwest from the Hunter Valley and discovered some of Queensland’s richest grazing country, the Darling Downs. On his 1836 journey, the Scottish explorer Thomas Livingstone Mitchell explored southwestern Victoria, which he named Australia Felix.

Thomas Laycock, an English soldier and explorer, found a route from Hobart to Launceston in 1807, and exploration in Van Diemen’s Land spread quickly after that. By the mid-1830’s, the inhospitable and rugged western ranges remained to be explored. In Western Australia, expeditions led in 1830 by the explorer and soldier Robert Dale, in 1831 by the explorer and soldier Thomas Bannister, and during the 1830’s and 1840’s by the English explorer John Septimus Roe opened up land for settlement.

Some of the early expeditions also posed the riddle of the rivers, the question of where the westerly flowing rivers and marshes led. Many people imagined that the rivers must flow into a huge river or a vast inland sea at the center of the continent. In 1817, John Oxley, an English-born naval officer, followed the Lachlan River until he met dense, impassable marshes. In 1824, the Australian explorer Hamilton Hume and the English-born explorer William Hovell traveled southwest from New South Wales and crossed the Murray River, opening up an overland route from Sydney to the future site of Melbourne.

The British military officer and navigator Charles Sturt was one of the strongest believers in an inland sea, but he showed in 1829 that the rivers of western New South Wales joined the meandering Murray River. Sturt sailed down the Murrumbidgee into the Murray and then followed the Murray to the sea, near what is now Adelaide. He thus opened the way for the establishment of the colony of South Australia in 1836.

The explorations of the Scottish surveyor Thomas L. Mitchell and the English officer George Grey in the 1830’s and 1840’s further dispelled the idea of an inland sea. Mitchell was firmly convinced of the existence of a great river. He found one he named Victoria River, which he thought was a river to India. It was later renamed Cooper’s Creek when disappointed explorers discovered that it trickled off into the interior.

Central Australia was largely explored from Adelaide. The English explorer Edward John Eyre traveled north from Adelaide but could not cross the dry, inhospitable country. From 1844 to 1846, he traveled into northeastern South Australia. Most of the country he explored was desert. By 1850, the colonists saw the interior as a desert rather than a sea.

In 1844 and 1845, a Prussian explorer, Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, journeyed from Moreton Bay, Brisbane, to Port Essington, near where the city of Darwin now stands. He was determined to be the first to cross the continent from east to west. In 1848, he set out again from a settlement on the Condamine River near Moreton Bay. He and his six companions, along with nearly 300 animals, vanished without a trace.

The early colonies

The wool industry and spread of the squatters.

Members of the First Fleet brought sheep with them to New South Wales. Graziers brought some Merino sheep to Australia in the late 1700’s. Such graziers as Samuel Marsden, an English clergyman; John Macarthur, the former New South Wales Corps officer; and Macarthur’s wife, Elizabeth, experimented with crossbreeding, the mating of animals of different breeds to create a new, unique breed. In 1805, Macarthur brought several pure Spanish Merinos to New South Wales with a large grant of land at Camden from the British government. Soon, large landholders began breeding sheep for fine wool.

By 1820, graziers had secured a small market for their wool in England. The inland areas were excellent for sheep grazing. Sheep graziers rapidly moved out into new country, well beyond the reach of government. In 1826, Governor Darling declared limits to the area that could be settled. Graziers who did not want to buy land—or could not find good land within the limits—settled illegally on land beyond the limits. They were soon called squatters. In 1829, the governor again attempted to control the spread of squatting by imposing new limits, called the limits of occupation.

By the mid-1830’s, squatters had moved hundreds of miles beyond the limits of occupation, settling on new pasture areas. They had reached northeastern Victoria in the south and New England in the northwest of New South Wales. Squatters from Van Diemen’s Land had begun to settle the Port Phillip district. The government could no longer ignore the squatters’ occupation of southeastern Australia. In 1836, officials introduced annual licenses allowing the squatters to occupy the land beyond the limits.

The squatters continued to move into the interior of Australia. By 1840, they had occupied most of Victoria and eastern New South Wales and had reached the Darling Downs in present-day Queensland. Squatters had also pushed beyond the areas of settlement in the colonies of South Australia and Western Australia.

Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the Ripon Regulations.

The early colonial land policy in Australia involved granting land to deserving men and women in return for a small fee. The government hoped that this would encourage and reward reform as well as foster agriculture. Edward Gibbon Wakefield, a British colonial reformer, argued that the British government should sell Australian land at a higher cost and use the proceeds to assist immigrants in coming to the colony. He argued that the government should carefully choose prospective immigrants according to their skills. The price of land would control the number of settlers able to buy land. Wakefield called his theory systematic colonization. Wakefield’s theories were used in the settlement of South Australia in the 1830’s.

In 1831, the British government introduced the Ripon Regulations, a set of provisions similar to Wakefield’s ideas. Under these provisions, officials would raise money to help run the colonies and to assist migration to Australia. Land could only be sold within the colonies’ settled areas. In New South Wales, this meant within the official limits. The problem with this system was that it did not differentiate between types of land. All land, whether poor or fertile, steep or flat, was sold at the same price. Also, the squatting boom was reaching its peak, so demand for land began to decline. Squatters continued to spread to other lands without purchasing the land set aside in the Ripon Regulations.

New colonies

By the early 1850’s, four new colonies had been established. They became the present states of Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia, and Victoria.

Tasmania,

then called Van Diemen’s Land, was settled in 1803 and became a separate colony from New South Wales in 1825. Farming and grazing flourished in the 1830’s, transforming the landscape. A busy maritime trade flourished in Hobart. Then, an economic depression in the 1840’s and the end of convict assignment dealt a severe blow to the colony. The end of transportation in 1853 and withdrawal of British funding for the convict system was a triumph for the antitransportation movement, but also another economic setback. In 1856, the colony’s name was changed to Tasmania, and it achieved self-government. See Tasmania (History).

Western Australia.

In 1827, the British navigator James Stirling explored the Swan River and recommended it as the site for a new, free colony. The British government agreed to grant Thomas Peel, a London businessman, a large plot of Australian land on the condition that he encourage free settlers to migrate to the colony. Stirling was appointed governor, and the Swan River Colony was founded in 1829. In 1832, the colony was renamed Western Australia, and its borders were extended to their current limits.

Development in the colony was slow. The first colonizers arrived during difficult winter weather and later found that the soil was sandy and unsuited for farming. There were too many landowners and not enough laborers. In the late 1840’s, the settlement teetered on the edge of ruin, and the colonists petitioned the British government to send convicts to Western Australia. The British agreed, and transportation to Western Australia continued until 1868. The convicts provided labor that made the economy stronger and more stable. See Western Australia (History).

South Australia

is the only state to which convicts were never sent. In 1834, the British Parliament passed the South Australian Act, which followed Wakefield’s plan for using assisted immigration rather than convict labor. In 1836, a London banker and shipowner named George Fife Angas set up the South Australian Company and purchased a large tract of land to sell to potential settlers. It raised enough capital to cover the costs of running the colony. The colony was founded in late 1836 under a joint agreement between the South Australian Company and the British government. South Australia would be a British colony with a British governor, but the South Australian Company would appoint a board of commissioners to administer the sale of land.

The colony was slow to develop. In 1841, the colony faced bankruptcy, and so the British government took over control of South Australia. The colony’s new governor, Sir George Grey, introduced harsh economic measures, and the colony’s economy began to improve. The discovery of copper at Burra in 1845 further boosted the colony’s economy. See South Australia (History).

Victoria.

After the failed attempt at settlement at Sorrento in 1803, a permanent settlement was made at Portland in 1834 by the brothers Edward and Francis Henty, squatters from Van Diemen’s Land. In 1835, two Australians, the colonial livestock farmer John Batman and the journalist and politician John Pascoe Fawkner, landed on separate expeditions at the head of Port Phillip and established Melbourne. In the four years that followed, squatters and their stock overran almost all of present-day Victoria. Officials in Sydney administered the area, but the settlers soon began to demand separation from New South Wales. The British Parliament granted their wish in the Australian Colonies Government Act of 1850, and the colony of Victoria was proclaimed on July 1, 1851. See Victoria (History).

Colonial society

Aboriginal peoples.

The Europeans believed strongly that when they discovered land, they owned it. In reality, the land was not unknown or unoccupied at all. Aboriginal people lived on almost every part of the continent. The numerous Aboriginal peoples (groups) had already named, divided, and managed it.

British officials instructed the early governors to establish friendly relations with Aboriginal people and protect them. Some of the governors, particularly Arthur Phillip, Lachlan Macquarie, and George Gipps, followed these instructions and respected Aboriginal people. Macquarie also tried to convert Aboriginal people to European ways through land grants and education. Other governors were not sympathetic or humane.

Colonial authorities created land reserves and encouraged missionary activity for Aboriginal people as part of the official policy after 1788. Agents called protectors were responsible for distributing food, blankets, and clothing to Aboriginal people. However, the government’s approach was often random and disorganized. Officials often revoked Aboriginal reserves to allow Europeans to occupy the land. Missionary activities had little success, though such missionaries as Lancelot Threlkeld learned Aboriginal languages and campaigned for their protection and rights.

Most of the colonists believed that Aboriginal people were an inferior race who had no right to the land that they occupied. The Europeans’ disregard for Aboriginal people was strongest on the frontier. Believing that the Aboriginal peoples had not made proper use of the land, the squatters claimed the right to take the land without compensating them. When Aboriginal people resisted the invasion of their land and attacked settlers, even Macquarie responded by ordering raids that resulted in massacres. The authorities in Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria also created native police forces, made up of young Aboriginal men, to help break Aboriginal resistance.

When the Europeans first arrived, the various Aboriginal peoples usually tried to draw them into their own familial and legal systems. When it became clear that the Europeans would not respect Aboriginal society, the Aboriginal peoples resisted their settlement. In many areas, they mounted a skillful and intense form of guerrilla warfare against the settlers. This resistance was strong but usually short-lived. Although they were frightening and powerful warriors, and their spears and other weapons were deadly, the Aboriginal fighters were no match for mounted men carrying guns. This was especially true after the introduction of breech-loading repeating rifles in the 1870’s. These rifles could be loaded quickly from the back and could fire one bullet after another.

One of the most famous examples of Aboriginal resistance took place in Van Diemen’s Land, and the response was the creation of Lieutenant Governor George Arthur’s Black Line. The Aboriginal peoples in Tasmania had so seriously obstructed the settlement of the island that Governor Arthur decided to remove them from most of the island. In 1830, he organized a combined group of police, military, and civilians to form a line designed to force the Aboriginal people into Tasman Peninsula, where they could then be isolated. The drive claimed only two captives. However, Arthur’s policy was put into effect slowly over the next few years, as government officials and missionaries encouraged the Aboriginal people of Tasmania to surrender. Colonial officials resettled the Aboriginal people on Flinders Island, where the majority of them died of diseases introduced by the Europeans.

European massacres of large numbers of Aboriginal people, including women, children, and old people, also occurred. The most notorious massacre happened at Myall Creek, near Inverell, New South Wales, in 1838. White cattle station workers, angered over cattle stealing and killing they blamed on Aboriginal people, killed about 28 Aboriginal men, women, and children. After a controversial trial, seven Europeans were hanged for the murders. See Myall Creek Massacre.

Australian officials stripped Aboriginal peoples of more and more of their land. Aboriginal people faced a rising number of deaths as a result of European diseases to which they had no resistance. Their traditional Aboriginal societies began to crumble. Many Aboriginal people died of malnutrition because they could no longer hunt and gather food. Many became discouraged, and alcohol consumption became a major problem. By 1850, many people believed that the Aboriginal populations in settled areas were doomed to extinction.

Some Aboriginal people survived these crises, however, and many of them stayed with their land for as long as they could. Some went to live on the large estates of European cattle and sheep graziers. Others retreated into the areas Europeans did not want for farming or grazing, but came back to their own country regularly for corroborees (public ceremonies) or to visit their sacred sites. Others lived on the outskirts of the cities and towns. A small number managed to get some of their land back through land grants and reserves. Some of these Aboriginal people became successful farmers.

The Europeans.

From 1788 to 1850, Australia changed from a prison colony to a collection of colonies on the verge of self-government. Despite the Australians’ harsh treatment of Aboriginal people, Australian society seemed, to many observers, to have more equal rights than British society.

There were far more men than women in the colonies in the early 1800’s. The imbalance was greatest in the prison colonies, Van Diemen’s Land, and New South Wales, and in the rural districts of all the colonies. Even the free immigration programs of the 1830’s and 1840’s, which encouraged the migration of families and single women, did not correct the imbalance. Many men did not marry. Women tended to marry at a younger age and bear more children than women in the United Kingdom. In the 1830’s, the average number of children in a family was seven.

Until the 1830’s, convicts and ex-convicts dominated colonial society. Because there were so few single women, many convicts could not marry and have families. Those who settled in the towns and rural settlements, though, did establish family life. But they did not always consider legal marriage necessary or a good idea. Some of the elite were shocked at the high rate of illegitimacy—that is, children born to parents who were not legally married. However, many convicts and ex-convicts did not consider illegitimacy a social disgrace. Disapproval of relationships outside marriage and illegitimacy came with the rising number of free immigrants during the 1830’s.

The free immigrants of the 1830’s and 1840’s brought a stricter form of family life, with an emphasis on marriage, to the colonies. Two active promoters of free immigration and family morals were the outspoken Presbyterian minister John Dunmore Lang, who sponsored Scottish immigration, and the British social rights leader Caroline Chisholm. Both promoted the idea of married couples working the land in rural districts. Lang fought to end transportation and encouraged migration of free settlers. Chisholm worked to improve the colony’s moral condition by helping more women immigrate and by fostering family life. She encouraged settlement of the nearby farmland and established organizations to help new migrants.

The colonists brought British concepts of food and diet with them to Australia. The early colonists’ rations consisted of salt beef or pork, rice, flour, sugar, and dried peas. In some areas, such as Sydney in the 1790’s, the colonists also ate native animals and plants, especially when food was in short supply or expensive. Later, in both the countryside and the towns, the settlers ate meat every day—a luxury beyond the reach of most people in the United Kingdom. People continued to eat huge quantities of oysters, harvesting the large mud oyster to extinction. After the spread of farms, such native animals and birds as kangaroos, wallabies, pigeons, and parrots became the staple diet of many rural families. It was often the only meat they could afford. The colonists also drank a large amount of tea. By the 1830’s, the colonists consumed more tea per person than any other country in the world.

Organized education was slowly established in Australia. In 1789, a convict named Isabella Rosson conducted the first school class in a hut in Sydney. In 1793, the clergyman Richard Johnson began using his church as a school on weekdays. However, New South Wales and the other colonies had generally poor educational facilities. By the 1820’s, the Anglican Church had established a number of schools with government assistance. In the 1830’s, other religious groups demanded support in establishing their own schools.

The discovery of gold

The discovery of gold transformed Australia’s economy and society. Gold stimulated the production and distribution of goods. It attracted a large, new population, which laid the foundation for the growth of manufacturing.

The first gold strikes.

Prospectors had found some gold in Australia before 1851, but colonial authorities either ignored or suppressed the discoveries. Then, the discovery of gold in the United States in 1848 interested thousands of colonists from New South Wales. In April 1851, prospector John Lister and three brothers—William, James, and Henry Tom—made the first major discovery of gold in Australia near Bathurst, New South Wales. As a result, authorities in Victoria offered a reward for the discovery of gold there, and in July 1851, prospectors found rich deposits at Clunes. Further discoveries were made at Ballarat, Beechworth, Bendigo, Buninyong, and Castlemaine.

Gold fever gripped Victoria. Men left their jobs for the gold fields. Employers found it impossible to find workers, and Melbourne was soon deserted. Some women and children were left behind to support themselves when the men went to the gold fields. Other families went to the gold fields with the men. Miners poured into the colony from New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania. The news of the discoveries reached Europe in late 1851. By early 1852, the first miners and their families arrived from overseas.

Mining life.

Initially, the gold seekers mined alluvial gold, deposits found in and near streams. Miners either panned the gold-bearing soil or rocked and rinsed it in a device called a cradle to wash away the soil and extract the gold. The remaining rocks and soil, called tailings, often still held gold and were later reworked, usually by Chinese laborers. Miners also dug shafts to reach gold in ancient river beds deep below the surface of the ground. By the late 1850’s, companies able to purchase equipment for deep mining were replacing private miners on the early goldfields.

Each gold field became a huge canvas town with tents for the miners and their families and canvas houses for officials and storekeepers. Sometimes women would also pan for gold. The Chinese were among the first non-British miners to arrive on the gold fields. Although their numbers were small, they were the target of fierce racism. Anti-Chinese riots occurred on the Buckland field in Victoria in 1857 and at Lambing Flat in New South Wales in 1861.

The Eureka Stockade.

The government required all miners to purchase licenses before they were allowed to dig for gold. For most, the fee was more than they earned from mining. All the men in the gold fields had to pay for a license whether they were digging or not. The police conducted license hunts to catch miners who were digging illegally. The miners resented the licenses and held protests against them.

On the Ballarat field, resistance to the license fee was strong. Miners established the Ballarat Reform League to work for the abolition of fees, miners’ right to vote, and access to land. In November 1854, miners held a mass meeting and burned their licenses as a protest. The commissioner ordered a license hunt the next day. In response, the miners built a stockade (defensive wall) at Eureka. Sir Charles Hotham, the governor, sent troops to restore order. In the short fight that followed, about 30 miners and 6 soldiers were killed. In 1855, the government abolished the license fee and introduced a miner’s right fee of one pound a year. It also allowed anyone holding a miner’s right to vote. See Ballarat; Eureka Stockade; Lalor, Peter.

Later discoveries.

Although Victoria remained the major producer of gold until the 1890’s, prospectors discovered gold in other colonies as well. In New South Wales, a rich find was made at Lambing Flat, near Young, in 1860. Discoveries were also made in Queensland. The richest finds in Queensland were made at Charters Towers in 1872 and on the Palmer River, about 75 miles (120 kilometers) inland from what is now Cooktown, in 1873. Small discoveries were also made in Tasmania and South Australia. In Western Australia, gold was discovered in the 1880’s. In 1892 and 1893, prospectors found the fields around Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, and a new gold rush started, boosting the state’s population. These were the richest fields ever worked in Australia.

Effects.

At first, the discovery of gold had a harmful effect on the economy. Employers found it hard to find labor. Wives and children were abandoned. People worried that ordinary people acquiring sudden riches would destroy the structure and morals of society. Some colonies, such as South Australia, saw their populations decline. Initially, only importers and merchants benefited from the changes because they could sell supplies to miners at inflated prices. After 10 years, however, the benefits brought by gold were widespread.

The squatters found they now had markets for two of their goods: wool for England and meat for miners. Small farmers prospered, especially in South Australia, because miners provided a market for crops. South Australians used Murray River trade to carry goods to the Victorian fields and to take gold and wool back to the colony for export. Gold also created new towns. Many regional centers, such as Ballarat and Bendigo in Victoria, owed their existence to gold, although many others had only a brief life and disappeared.

Other minerals

were also discovered in Australia, although none achieved the economic importance of gold. Coal was discovered in the Hunter Valley in 1797 and was mined after the early 1800’s. Copper was discovered in South Australia in the early 1840’s and later in Tasmania and Queensland. Tin deposits were found in the 1870’s, particularly in Tasmania and New South Wales. Shale oil, diamond, silver, and opal deposits were discovered before 1900.

Besides gold, the two most significant mineral discoveries were silver and lead deposits at Broken Hill in New South Wales and copper and silver at Mount Lyell in Tasmania.

Toward a nation

From 1850 to 1900, Australia’s society, economy, and political structure were transformed. In 1850, the colonies were not yet self-governing. In 1900, they were on the verge of becoming a nation. The main cause of these changes was Australia’s new wealth from gold, which attracted settlers and stimulated the growth of manufacturing.

Self-government for the colonies.

As the number of free settlers in Australia grew, so did the colonists’ demands for self-government. The British government established legislative councils in New South Wales in 1823, in Van Diemen’s Land in 1825, in Swan River Colony in 1830, and in South Australia in 1842. The councils were appointed and had only an advisory role. The British government introduced limited trial by jury to Australia in the 1820’s.

After calls for reform, in 1842, the British government granted a measure of representative government to New South Wales. The new Legislative Council was made up of 36 members, 24 of whom were elected by colonists who met property qualifications. Power was restricted to the wealthy men in the colony. The council could propose legislation on local matters, but financial and land policies remained the province of the governor. The council was dominated by squatters, who wanted a representative government to have control of land policy. The British did not grant Van Diemen’s Land representative government with New South Wales in 1842, because the colony still received convicts.

In 1850, the British Parliament passed the Australian Colonies Government Act. This act called on the colonies’ councils to draft constitutions for their respective colonies. Because of the introduction of convict labor in Western Australia, steps to self-government were postponed there until the late 1800’s.

The colonial parliaments met for the first time in New South Wales, Victoria, and Tasmania (formerly Van Diemen’s Land) in 1856, and in South Australia in 1857. They were bicameral (two-house) parliaments, with a lower house called an Assembly and an upper house called a Council. The Assembly formed government policy and controlled colonial income and spending. The Council acted as a house of review. The United Kingdom continued to manage the foreign affairs and defense of the colonies.

Squatters had settled the part of New South Wales north and west of Brisbane. In 1859, the United Kingdom created the colony of Queensland out of this area, with Brisbane as its capital. Western Australia received representative government in 1870 and its own parliament in 1890.

After 1858, all adult men in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia could vote for their Assemblies. South Australia and Victoria introduced the secret ballot in 1856, and New South Wales and Tasmania introduced it in 1858. Victoria was the first colony to pay members of parliament, beginning in 1870. Women in South Australia campaigned for and won the right to vote in Assembly elections in 1894, one of the earliest victories for women voters in the world.

Squatters’ rights.

By 1860, thousands of disappointed gold miners wanted to buy plots of land and take up farming. However, squatters held most of the best farmland. During the early 1860’s, the colonial legislatures passed laws to redistribute the squatters’ land. The Nicholson Land Act was one of many selection acts passed in the colonies between 1858 and 1895. These acts allowed any man or single woman to select a small block of land. Selectors had to live on their land, cultivate and fence it, and pay for it.

The first selection act passed in Tasmania in 1859. Victoria followed in 1860. The first Queensland parliament brought in free selection in 1860, and New South Wales passed its selection act in 1861. South Australia followed in 1869, and Western Australia enacted its first selection act in 1872.

Selection was not as successful as its supporters expected. Farms were often too small, and the environment was often unsuitable for agricultural use. Many people who took up the land knew nothing about farming. Transport could be inadequate, and markets were slow to develop. Selectors also faced opposition from the squatters, who often used illegal means to keep their farms intact. However, selection succeeded where the land was suitable for crop growing and dairy farms, and in places that also had ready access to markets. In such areas as northwest Victoria, the Macleay Valley in New South Wales, and the Darling Downs in Queensland, selection boosted the agriculture industry. See Selection acts.

By the 1880’s, colonial governments had begun to develop more realistic land policies. They set aside the drier regions for grazing use. They supported irrigation processes at Mildura in Victoria and Renmark in South Australia, though these processes often caused disastrous environmental problems. Colonial leaders introduced new settlement plans in the 1890’s to further divide the large landholdings into small family farms. These plans laid the foundation for the dairy industry in all colonies. In Queensland, the programs fostered the development of small sugar farms.

Land exploration and reform.

The last phase of Australian exploration has been called the heroic age. Although explorers had shown that there was no inland sea, they continued to cross the center of the continent, often in danger of dying of thirst and hunger. They were celebrated as heroes by the colonists back in the cities.

The first west-to-east crossing of northern Australia, from the Kimberley to Queensland, was made by the English-born explorer Augustus Charles Gregory in 1855 and 1856. In 1860, the Scottish-born explorer John McDouall Stuart explored the center of the continent. He reached the geographical center of the continent, marking a tree and planting a flag for the United Kingdom. In August 1860, a large expedition commanded by the Irish explorer Robert O’Hara Burke and the English explorer William John Wills set out from Melbourne. Burke and Wills reached the Gulf of Carpentaria in February 1861, becoming the first Europeans to cross the continent from the south. On the return journey, both men died on the banks of Cooper’s Creek. Stuart, starting out from Adelaide, successfully reached the north coast in July 1862 and returned to Adelaide safely.

In the 1870’s, attention shifted to exploring the country between Western Australia and the Overland Telegraph, a telegraph link running from Port Augusta, in South Australia, to Port Darwin, in the Northern Territory. The most important expedition was led by the Australian explorer John Forrest, who later became the first premier of Western Australia. In 1874, Forrest crossed from Geraldton in Western Australia to Peake on the telegraph line in South Australia. The English-born explorer Ernest Giles crossed the western half of Australia from east to west in 1875 and from west to east in 1876. Peter Egerton Warburton, a British military officer and explorer, crossed from Alice Springs to Roebourne, near Karatha, in 1873 and 1874. This and other expeditions opened up the Pilbara and Kimberley regions for grazing.

City growth.

Australia’s capitals were the first and most important cities to be established. Sydney was founded in 1788, and Hobart was founded in 1803. Brisbane was settled in 1824, and Perth was established in 1829. Melbourne was first settled in 1835. Adelaide was founded in 1836, and Palmerston (later called Darwin) was established in 1869.

The capitals grew at different rates and at different times between 1851 and the federation of the colonies in 1901. Melbourne replaced Sydney as Australia’s largest city during the 1850’s, and the rivalry between the two cities has continued ever since. Melbourne’s population quadrupled from 1851 to 1861, and city growth boomed during the 1880’s. During the depression of the 1890’s, Melbourne’s growth slowed. In 1906, with a population of 526,000, Melbourne was the second largest city in Australia. Sydney, with a population of 539,000, was again Australia’s largest city.

Up until the 1860’s, the capitals were walking cities, compact in area with people living close enough to their jobs to walk to work. Terrace houses were a common form of housing. During the 1860’s, the development of mass transport and a greater availability of money transformed the cities. Colonial governments built extensive tram (trolley) and railroad systems with relatively cheap fares. These developments allowed the cities to spread into new suburbs. Suburban blocks were larger, and detached houses became a popular housing style, especially for the expanding middle classes. By the 1880’s, a building boom was underway in most capitals, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney.

Providing safe water supplies and adequate sewerage systems were major government concerns during the second half of the 1800’s. Supplying the city populations with clean water was a serious problem. The governments built large dams beyond the capitals to provide it. They constructed extensive networks of sewers to carry storm water and sewage away from the city. Both measures reduced infections from waterborne diseases. Sydney was the first city to have streets lit by gas lighting, beginning in 1841. By 1865, all of the state capitals except Perth had gas lighting. In 1894, Melbourne became the first city with electric street lighting. Roads and footpaths improved.

Social changes

The society of Australia continued to change rapidly in the 1800’s as a result of the discovery of gold and the growth of cities. The immigration of settlers brought further problems and challenges, but also economic growth and cultural development.

Immigrants.

Although gold attracted a large number of immigrants, several colonial governments, especially Queensland’s, still offered assisted migration to workers who would immigrate and settle in the colony. More than 1.3 million immigrants arrived in the colonies between 1850 and 1901. Most settled in Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland.

The majority of immigrants came from the United Kingdom and Ireland. Some immigrants also came from continental Europe, particularly Germany. Two immigrant groups, however, were not welcome: the Chinese and the Pacific Islanders. Colonial governments passed legislation to prevent Chinese immigration to all colonies after the 1850’s. These laws reflected the widespread anti-Chinese attitudes on the gold fields. Plantation owners first brought Pacific Islanders as indentured (contract) labor to work Queensland’s sugar plantations in the early 1860’s. As a result of growing opposition to this system from other states, claims that the Pacific Islanders were treated as enslaved laborers, and demands for limits on non-European immigrants, the government outlawed the importing of labor from the Pacific Islands in 1904.

The role of women.

The greater number of men than women in the Australian colonies was a continuing problem. The gold rushes again swelled the male population. In 1861, men outnumbered women in Australia by more than a third, with about 638,000 men and 462,000 women. By 1901, women made up almost one-half of the population, with 1,977,472 men and 1,796,329 women. This ratio depended partly on location. Women tended to stay in towns and cities, where the numbers of men and women approached a balance. There were far fewer women in the outlying rural areas. The immigration and land policies both aimed at bringing more women into rural Australia, so that family, social, and cultural life would be established and nurtured.

Women in the colonies were often in a vulnerable economic position because there were few employment opportunities for them. Those who were employed were paid only a fraction of men’s wages. The majority of women were dependent on men, usually their husbands or fathers. In good marriages, wives and husbands might work together for a secure future. If women were deserted or widowed, they were often left in poverty, barely making a living for themselves and their children. Wives married to violent and abusive husbands had little prospect of escape because, until the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, it was difficult to get a divorce. Families were still large. In 1870, the average number of children in a family was seven. Many women died in childbirth, so having large families was another danger for women.

Working opportunities for women were limited, and conditions were particularly bad in the jobs they could get. Many women were exploited under a system known as sweatshops or sweating. Under this system, women worked long hours for low wages. Children were employed in factories and paid even lower wages than their parents.

Women also took in piecework at home to earn an income. Through this system, the women were paid for the completed piece (article), working in their own homes. They often did this in addition to looking after children and homes. Rates for piecework were low.

Working conditions.

Although the cities had impressive public buildings and growing economies, life was hard for some of the working classes, especially the semiskilled and unskilled workers. Unemployment was common. There was no social security system, and unemployed people relied on aid from charitable organizations. Working conditions were primitive. Many workplaces were cramped and badly ventilated. There were few safeguards for the operation of machinery, and industrial accidents were common. Wages were low, and working hours were long. These difficult conditions contributed to a rise in the reform and labor union movements.

Factory acts.

Victoria led Australia in passing acts that regulated working conditions in factories. In 1873, it passed the first Factory Acts, which provided minimum standards for ventilation in factories. It also limited the hours women could work to daytime periods. From 1885 to 1900, Victoria passed eight more acts extending controls on factories. The employment of children was prohibited. In 1896, the government established a wages board to set a minimum wage for factory, workshop, and shop employees. Although the other colonies also passed factory legislation during the 1890’s, Victoria’s was the most comprehensive.

Education.

From 1852 to 1900, all colonies established state systems that provided free secular (nonreligious) education. However, students frequently missed classes. This was particularly true in working-class suburbs in the cities and in rural areas, where children’s labor added to family incomes. The government of Tasmania introduced compulsory school attendance in 1869. It was applied in all colonies by 1900.

Leisure.

Horse racing was a popular leisure activity during the second half of the 1800’s. In 1861, jockeys held the first Melbourne Cup, a race that remains the most prestigious Australian sports event. Cricket also emerged as a major spectator sport. The first Test match between Australia and England was held in 1877, establishing a cricket rivalry that continues today. Australia developed its own football rules during the 1850’s. By 1900, Australian Rules football was the major spectator sport in all colonies except Queensland and New South Wales. In those two colonies, rugby, introduced in the 1860’s and 1870’s, remained dominant.

Attending the theater became a popular leisure activity. Entertainment included minstrel shows (musical or comedy shows), pantomime, drama, and, after the 1890’s, vaudeville (live entertainment in a series of short acts).

The long boom

The discovery of gold during the 1850’s and 1860’s boosted the Australian economy. It earned income for the people and attracted a large, new population that was increased by continuing immigration during the 1870’s and 1880’s. Australia’s white population rose from 1.1 million in 1861 to 3.8 million in 1901. The Australian colonies also attracted overseas investment, particularly from the United Kingdom. Historians have called the period from 1860 to 1890 the long boom.

Agriculture.

Sheep and cattle grazing prospered after the initial setback caused by gold. Wool prices rose steadily during the 1860’s. By 1871, wool had again emerged as Australia’s major export earner. Developments in technology, such as wire fencing and the invention of shearing machines, also aided the wool industry. Refrigeration allowed the cattle industry to develop an export market, because the graziers could ship the meat without spoilage. The discovery of underground water sources allowed graziers to move into more distant areas. By the late 1880’s, many of these areas, particularly the far west of New South Wales, had become overstocked. In addition, rabbits had reached plague proportions and were competing with livestock for food. In some places, they stripped the land bare. Grazing by cattle, sheep, and rabbits led to the erosion of the soil, which then blew away in terrible dust storms.

South Australia was a leader in wheat production and became the granary of Australia, producing half the continent’s wheat crop. However, many areas that had been settled were too dry. During the 1880’s, a series of drought years brought crop failures. The failures of the 1880’s plunged South Australia into economic depression. Wheat production in the other colonies was slow until the 1880’s and 1890’s, when the development of railroads provided transport for crops and British markets opened up for Australian wheat. Better farming practices, new machinery, and the development of new strains of wheat suited to the dry farming conditions stimulated wheat production.

Dairy farming was boosted with the introduction of refrigeration and better rail and water transport. By 1900, it had secured a small export market in the United Kingdom. The sugar industry, established during the 1860’s, grew steadily for 40 years.

Manufacturing.

Gold stimulated manufacturing in the colonies, particularly in Victoria. Immigration provided both a market and a labor force for manufacturers. The government gave local manufacturers an advantage by introducing tariffs (taxes on imported goods) to protect local industry. Victoria relied heavily on tariffs, and by the 1880’s, the colony had become the major manufacturing colony in Australia.

The main industries were food-processing industries and those that produced building materials, textiles, and clothing. Other manufacturing businesses included breweries, tanneries (factories that prepare hides to make leather goods), and foundries (metalworking plants).

Transport and communication.

Until 1860, the sea was the main link between the colonies. After the 1860’s, developers opened up land links. The Murray River system became an inland water highway. Coach companies, such as Cobb and Co., established passenger and delivery services across the continent. The telegraph linked towns and cities, and after 1872, connected Australia with the outside world.

Railroads were the most important transport system developed during the 1800’s. The first railroads in Australia were built by private companies. But state governments soon assumed responsibility for building, operating, and maintaining railroads to cover the large distances between rural and urban areas in Australia. The railroads opened up new areas for settlement, lowered transport costs, and carried such bulky goods as wheat.

With the exception of Queensland, the railroad lines ran through and between all of the capital cities. The first line was opened in Victoria in 1854. By 1870, about 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) of track had been laid in Australia. During the 1880’s, railroad construction boomed. By 1890, almost 10,000 miles (16,000 kilometers) of track had been laid, and the basic rail network had been established in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria.

However, the railroad system was not entirely efficient. Each colonial government chose a different gauge (track size) to suit local conditions and keep trade within their own states by making it difficult for producers to use trains other than their own. This problem was not resolved until the introduction of a standard gauge and the construction of new lines in the mid-1990’s.

The depression of the 1890’s

Causes of the depression.

Public and private debt rose substantially during the 1880’s. By the late 1880’s, there were clear signs that the economic boom was beginning to falter. South Australia was already in depression. Wool prices began to fall. In the cities—particularly in Melbourne—the building boom collapsed.

By 1890, British investors had begun to lose confidence in the colonial economies, and neither colonial governments nor private banks could raise the funds they needed. The problem was made worse by financial problems in the United Kingdom. Authorities uncovered many examples of mismanagement and corruption by financial dealers, mainly in Melbourne. This shocked the citizens and shook the confidence of investors.

Governments cut back on public works, throwing thousands of people out of work. Banks cut back on lending programs. The colonial economies became steadily worse during 1891 and 1892. Unemployment rose dramatically, reaching crisis proportions in 1893 and 1894. Victoria was the hardest hit. Recovery from the depression was slow. Only Western Australia escaped the depression, because the discovery of gold there created a boom economy.

The bank crash.

The most spectacular feature of the 1890’s depression was the near collapse of the Australian banking system in 1893. Many of the banks lacked adequate cash or gold reserves to cover a sudden increase in withdrawals. With the onset of the depression, withdrawals rose sharply. The crisis was most pronounced in Melbourne, where most banks suspended trading between January and June. The bank crash highlighted inadequacies in the banking system. Australia had too many banks, and regulations governing their conduct of business were inadequate.

The labor movement.

Skilled workers had formed unions or trade societies as early as the 1830’s. These associations largely provided support for unemployed members. There were few unions, however, and they had small memberships. Strikes were rare, mainly because laws and court rulings heavily favored the rights of employers over employees.

In the 1880’s, two types of unions held prominence. One was the craft unions, small unions that came mainly from the skilled building, printing, and metal trades. The other consisted of the mass unions. These unions had developed during the 1880’s for semiskilled and unskilled workers, such as sheep shearers, miners, and maritime workers, particularly in the nonindustrial sector of the labor force.

Craft unions,

which began in the 1840’s, were small and conservative. They preferred to improve conditions and wages by negotiating with employers rather than by striking. An eight-hour working day was a major craft union demand. Stonemasons in Sydney and Melbourne first gained an eight-hour day in 1856. It spread to other unions and, later, to the other colonies.

During the 1870’s, the craft unions organized themselves at colonial and intercolonial meetings to coordinate action for improved conditions. Members formed trade and labor councils in Sydney in 1871, in Brisbane in 1873, and in Adelaide in 1879. Intercolonial labor union congresses were held after 1879. The congresses worked for more rights for the workers. They also supported social reform, such as free education, the protection of local industries, and workers’ compensation (pay to workers who were injured or needed to leave the job for a time). In 1889, the congresses proposed the formation of an Australian labor federation and political representation for the labor movement.

Mass unions.

The mass unions coined the term new unionism to distinguish the mass unions from the craft unions. They were as concerned with social reform as with improving wages and conditions for the workers. The mass unions had their own newspapers, such as the Australian socialist William Lane’s Worker. Although the mass unions were prepared to negotiate with employers, they were also prepared to strike. An important objective of the mass unions was the creation of closed shops, where only union labor could be employed.

The new unions grew at a rapid rate during the 1880’s under the organizational skills of such people as William Guthrie Spence, an Australian labor leader and politician. The most important of these unions were the Federated Seamen’s Union of Australasia, the Amalgamated Miners’ Association, and the Amalgamated Shearers’ Union.

Most of the unions during the period admitted only men, but some women formed unions, too. The Tailoresses Union fought and won a battle over piecework by going on strike in the early 1880’s. However, in 1883, the factory owners defeated their union drive by sending the work out to workers in private homes and using machines to do the women’s work. In 1906, the Tailoresses Union joined with the Tailors Union.

Some women tried to work in areas that were traditionally male dominated but were bitterly opposed by men. Women printers working on the women’s journal Dawn in the 1880’s were harassed and attacked by members of the male-only Typographical Union and had to seek police protection.

The strikes of the 1890’s.

Employers became alarmed at the gains made by the unions. Employers formed associations, such as the Victorian Employers Union, to fight union demands. Employers saw the economic downturn of 1890 as an ideal opportunity to cut back on union gains. As the unions demanded closed shops, the employers asserted their right to hire any workers. These opposing views led to a series of strikes in the 1890’s. A maritime strike was held in 1890. A Queensland shearers’ strike took place in 1891. Miners at Broken Hill went on strike in 1892, and shearers went on strike again in 1894.

All of the strikes of the 1890’s failed for several reasons. A shortage of strike funds hindered any long-term strike. The depression of the 1890’s, with its rising number of unemployed workers, allowed the employers to recruit nonunion labor. Government support of the employers and the use of the police to protect nonunion labor and break up picket lines also weakened the unions’ power. The labor movement turned to other means to achieve reform.

The struggle for women’s rights.

Even though they played an essential role in building the new nation, women had been treated as second-class citizens in the 1800’s. In most places, they could not vote and were excluded from public life and most employment opportunities. The United Kingdom passed Married Women’s Property acts in the 1870’s and 1880’s, giving women some rights of ownership. Before these acts, women’s property had automatically become that of their husbands at marriage. Divorce laws and judgments also favored husbands over wives.

The 1880’s brought a significant turning point for Australian women. The first women’s suffrage movements, literary organizations, and the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, an influential organization campaigning for abstinence (avoidance of alcohol) and a reduction in the number of hotels, gained thousands of members. These organizations and campaigns were led by a number of Australian women. They included Rose Scott, a women’s rights advocate; Louisa Lawson, an editor and publisher; and the educators Maybanke Susannah Anderson and Louisa MacDonald, in New South Wales. Leaders in Victoria included Betsy (also known as Bessie) Lee, a temperance crusader; and two women’s rights advocates, Vida Goldstein and Bridgetena (also known as Brettena) Smyth. In South Australia, Catherine Helen Spence, a novelist, and Mary Lee, a women’s rights advocate, were among the leaders. These women wrote pamphlets and newspapers, held meetings, and gave public lectures. A range of women’s journals appeared, the most famous and successful being Louisa Lawson’s journal Dawn.

The colonial governments amended divorce laws to be more accessible to women in the 1880’s and 1890’s. The birth rate was declining, which made family life more manageable and reduced childbirth-related deaths for women. Female education levels increased with the introduction of universal education. Women began to study medicine and law at the universities for the first time. Women won the right to vote in South Australia in 1895 and in Western Australia in 1899.

Federation

The 1890’s saw the first steps towards the federation of the six Australian colonies as a nation. However, even as the nationalism and federation movements gained strength, most Australians remained conscious of being members of the British Empire. Few saw their Australian nationality outside the context of the empire, and many identified themselves as British-Australians. This dual belief in an independent Australia and the British Empire remained with Australians until the mid-1900’s.

Nationalism.

Until the 1880’s, each colony fiercely guarded its independence. During the 1880’s, the telegraph and the railroad drew the colonies closer together. The makeup of the population changed. For the first time, Australian-born people were a majority of the population and did not necessarily view the United Kingdom as “home.” This new sense of Australian identity was reflected in the growth of the Australian Natives Association in Victoria during the 1880’s. Made up of native-born white men, it was proudly Australian and dedicated both to the federation of the Australian colonies and to the creation of a White Australia. This policy attempted to limit immigration of non-Europeans, especially from South Asia.

The expression of a national identity was also evident in the arts. Artists of the Heidelberg School were the first to capture the atmosphere and light of Australian landscapes accurately. They also painted the people who inhabited the bush—especially shearers and other bush workers. Australian literature also reflected a growing sense of national identity. The works of the writers Henry Lawson, Miles Franklin, Banjo Paterson, and Steele Rudd were distinctly Australian in both subject matter and language. The Bulletin, a magazine established in 1880, was aggressively Australian and anti-British. It favored a united, white Australia. The magazine’s editors, J. F. Archibald and A. G. Stephens, encouraged such writers as Lawson, Franklin, and Joseph Furphy, known for creating a distinctly Australian “bush” literature.

Scattered support for the unification of the Australian colonies existed as early as the 1840’s. Members of the colonies met during the 1860’s and 1870’s to discuss matters of common interest, especially postage and tariffs. However, the colonies’ political and economic self-interest limited any move toward unification. Geographic isolation also hindered early efforts toward the creation of a nation. By the 1880’s, the growth of railroads, the telegraph, newspapers, and the national unions reduced isolation and forged links between the colonies. Australians’ view of the colonies as separate political entities was rapidly fading. The growing spirit of nationalism resulted in many people seeing themselves as Australians rather than members of a specific colony.

Before the 1880’s, external threats to the colonies were either nonexistent or short-lived. During the 1880’s, however, French and German colonial activity in the Pacific region increased. Queensland, fearing that Germany would annex (take over) eastern New Guinea, claimed it as part of the colony in 1883. In 1884, Germany did annex northeastern New Guinea, and the United Kingdom annexed southeastern New Guinea.

In 1889, a British Army officer, Major General Bevan Edwards, issued a report stating that the Australian colonies were vulnerable to invasion because they did not have an adequate land-based army and a well-run railroad system. To many of the colonial leaders, it seemed vital that the Australian colonies speak with a united voice in their own foreign affairs and have the capacity to defend themselves as a nation.

Economic factors were also important in the decision to unify the Australian colonies. By the 1880’s, markets were national rather than colonial. However, basic economic differences between the colonies hampered proposals for political unification. Victoria, for example, believed in tariffs to protect local industries, while New South Wales believed in free trade. The other colonies adopted a mixture of both policies.

Proposals for unification.

A wide variety of groups put forward proposals for unification. At one extreme were the republicans, who sought to establish a unified democracy and to sever all ties with the United Kingdom. At the other extreme were the Imperial Federationists. They placed loyalty to the United Kingdom above all and proposed that the colonies become provinces of the United Kingdom and elect members to the British Parliament. The most popular proposal was for a federation of the separate colonies into one nation. This nation would have its own federal government but would still maintain important constitutional, economic, and defense ties with the United Kingdom. The Australian Natives Association, the Australasian Federation League, and many organizations around Australia supported this approach.

Sir Henry Parkes, who served as premier of New South Wales five times, played a large role in the early plans. In 1880, Parkes called for the creation of a federal council as a step toward unification. In 1883, the premiers called an intercolonial conference to pursue the matter. The members, led by Queensland premier Sir Samuel Griffith, drafted a constitution for a Federal Council of Australasia. The council met several times but achieved little.

The National Australasian Convention of 1891 also drafted a constitution for a unified nation. Again, the work was done mainly by Griffith, with the Victorian representative Alfred Deakin making a major contribution. The 1891 draft constitution did not gain support in the New South Wales Parliament, which stalled the movement to federation.

A second federal convention was held, in three sessions, in 1897 and 1898. At the first, in Adelaide, participants wrote a new constitution based on Griffith’s proposals. The convention’s participants accepted federation as the best form of political unification. They transferred specific powers to the new national government. The most important of these powers were the right to raise revenue by taxes, the control of defense and currency matters, the creation of a system to settle interstate industrial disputes, and the responsibility for some forms of social welfare.

The drafters of the constitution agreed that the new parliament would have two houses, with the lower house, the House of Representatives, forming the branch of Parliament that more directly represents the people. The upper house, the Senate, was intended to represent the interests of the states. The drafters made plans for the creation of a High Court and the appointment of a governor general to represent the interests of the United Kingdom. In placing executive authority in the Parliament, this model followed the British system. In establishing a federal system in which all states were equally represented in the Senate, it drew on the North American example.

In 1898, the government submitted the constitution in a referendum to the voters in most of the colonies. The constitution was not submitted to voters in Western Australia, where Premier Sir John Forrest believed it would disadvantage the colony, or in Queensland, which had not participated in the conventions. A majority of voters in South Australia, Tasmania, and Victoria accepted the constitution. A majority also approved the referendum in New South Wales, but legislators there required the referendum to pass by at least 80,000 votes, which it did not. At a premiers’ conference in 1899, the premiers made some amendments to the document, including an agreement to create a national capital in New South Wales. The new capital could not be less than 100 miles (160 kilometers) from Sydney. Voters approved it in a second referendum, which included Queensland. Officials in Western Australia, however, continued to refuse to submit the constitution to their voters. They feared there would be harmful financial consequences in a common economic policy. They also disapproved of the fact that Western Australia was not given a guaranteed railroad connection with the eastern states.

Australian leaders submitted the constitution to the British Parliament in July 1900. In the same month, after a vigorous campaign mounted by supporters of federation, colonial officials finally submitted the constitution to the voters in Western Australia, who approved it. The Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the bill, which then received the approval of the British monarch, Queen Victoria. The Commonwealth of Australia came into being on Jan. 1, 1901. However, Australians were still British citizens, retained the British monarch as their head of state, sang “God Save the Queen” (or “God Save the King”) as their national anthem, and flew the Union Jack as their flag. The United Kingdom continued to control Australia’s foreign policy. See Federation of Australia.

Building a nation

The early Commonwealth.

Three main groups competed for power in the first election held for the new federal Parliament in March 1901. The Protectionists were led by Edmund Barton, an Australian barrister (lawyer) and statesman, with Alfred Deakin, also a barrister and statesman, as his deputy. The Labor Party was later led by Chris Watson, a Chilean-born labor leader. The third group was the conservative Free Traders, who were led by George Houstoun Reid, a Scottish barrister and statesman. Barton became prime minister with support from the Labor Party.

No single group commanded a majority in the House of Representatives from 1901 to 1910. This created some political instability. Nevertheless, all political groups agreed on the importance of resolving three major issues facing the Commonwealth. They were: 1) a White Australia policy, 2) arbitration (settlement of disputes) in workers’ issues, and 3) the place of Australia in the British Empire.

A White Australia.

Most white Australians had British ancestry and firmly believed that non-Europeans, and even non-Britons, were inferior to them. They believed it was urgent that the new nation should remove and keep out non-Europeans.

One of the first pieces of legislation that the new federal government passed was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. This act prevented non-European immigration into Australia. Australian authorities gave dictation tests in a European language to people who were considered “undesirable” immigrants. Immigrants who failed were not allowed to come to Australia. This act became the basis of the White Australia policy that lasted for more than 60 years.

Despite opposition from Queensland’s sugar plantation owners, the government prohibited the use of laborers from the Pacific Islands after 1904. The government arranged for the Pacific Islanders to be sent back to their island homes. A small number of the workers were allowed to stay in Australia, though many others were forced to leave their Australian families. The government offered plantation owners subsidies (money to help support their farms) if they employed white laborers. The federal government also passed legislation to control naturalization, the process of becoming a citizen of the country.

Arbitration, new protection, and the courts.

A series of court decisions regarding workers’ rights and wages established important guidelines for the new federation. The High Court came into operation in 1903, and Sir Samuel Griffith became the first chief justice in 1903. He was joined on the court by Barton and former senator Richard O’Conner. Henry Bournes Higgins and Isaac Isaacs were additional appointments. Guided by Griffith, the court’s interpretations of the Constitution were often narrow, although Higgins and Isaacs often entered dissenting judgments.

When Barton became a member of the new High Court, Alfred Deakin replaced him as prime minister in 1903. Deakin was briefly voted out of power, then regained the prime ministership in 1905 with Labor support and a policy of new protection. The policy was designed to extend the benefits of protection to the workers. In exchange for increased tariff protection for their goods, Deakin wanted employers to pay a “fair and reasonable wage” to male workers. A “fair” wage was considered the minimum an employee would need to support himself and his family. See Deakin, Alfred.

The government established the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration in 1904, and the court soon made important decisions involving industrial issues and wages for workers. The court made its first significant contribution with the Harvester judgment of 1907. In this ruling, Justice Higgins set a minimum wage for unskilled males. This ruling established the concept of a minimum wage for white unskilled men that became the basis of a national wage policy that lasted until the 1960’s. Wages for most women remained about half those paid to men.

Australia and the British Empire.

Australian foreign policy remained under the control of the British government. Although Australia, along with other dominions (member nations) within the empire, attended imperial conferences, these were advisory meetings. The British government often made foreign policy decisions without consulting with the dominions.

In 1905, the Japanese defeated the Russians in a naval battle in the Straits of Tsushima. Australia increasingly saw Japan as a potential military threat. Prime Minister Deakin argued that Australia needed a navy to protect itself from the Japanese. The British government initially disagreed, but the United Kingdom’s unease about Germany’s aggressive naval program soon brought change in their Australian defense policy. In 1909, the British Admiralty granted Australia permission to build a navy. In 1911, King George V granted the title of Royal Australian Navy to the new fleet.

Legislation was passed requiring compulsory military service for within Australia in the event of war after the Anglo-Boer War of 1899-1902, to which Australia contributed more than 16,000 volunteers. The government began compulsory military training for young men in 1911, and the Royal Military College opened that year to train officers.

The first tariffs.

Tariffs were important sources of revenue for colonial governments. With federation, the national government took over the power to levy tariffs. The members of the government agreed that a substantial proportion of revenue raised from a new national tariff would be redistributed among the states. However, political groups disagreed on the level of the tariff. The Protectionists saw it as a means of protecting and promoting local industry and wanted a high tariff. The Free Traders believed the tariff should be as low as possible. Members from Victoria generally favored a high tariff, while those from New South Wales wanted a low tariff. In 1908, Prime Minister Deakin, with Labor support, established a new tariff that made British-made imports 5 percent cheaper than goods from countries outside the British Empire.

The two-party system.

With the adoption of a national tariff in 1908, the major issue separating the Free Traders and Protectionists had gone. But between 1901 and 1908, differences between the Labor Party and non-Labor groups had begun to emerge. Deakin began discussions among his Protectionists, the Free Traders, and a third group led by Sir John Forrest, the Australian explorer who became premier of Western Australia. The three groups joined together as the Fusion Party in 1909, with Deakin as leader. The name was changed to the Liberal Party shortly afterward. The two-party system, with a Labor and a non-Labor party, was thus established.

In 1910, the Labor Party, led by the Scottish-born Australian statesman Andrew Fisher, won a majority in both houses of Parliament. The Labor government was reformist and moderate. It strengthened social welfare measures, founded the Commonwealth Bank, a government-backed bank, in 1911, and continued the liberal policies established between 1901 and 1909.

Social reforms.

White women won the right to vote in federal elections in 1902, and states that had not yet given women the vote were forced to grant it. Women gained suffrage in New South Wales in 1902, in Tasmania in 1903, in Queensland in 1905, and in Victoria in 1908. At the same time women won the vote, however, the federal government took the right to vote away from Indigenous individuals who were not already registered to vote. Australians did not consider Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to be citizens of the new nation and did not count them in the census.

Numerous women’s groups campaigned actively for social reform, and Australia became known internationally for its groundbreaking social welfare policies. In 1910, the government introduced pensions for the elderly and for sick people. Some state governments introduced workers’ compensation. In 1912, women’s lobbying achieved the establishment of a maternity allowance, known as the baby bonus, which gave 5 pounds to a white woman upon the birth of a child. However, Aboriginal, Torres Stait Islander, Asian, and Pacific Islander mothers were excluded from this policy. This policy was aimed at boosting Australia’s population, but it failed in this respect. Women had fewer babies, and the birth rate continued to fall. By the 1920’s, the average number of births per woman was three.

The Stolen Generations.

The new Constitution prohibited the federal government from making laws and policies for Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Over the first half of the 1900’s, most Australians expected the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to die out. The governments of the states and territories increased policies of segregation and control. About 1870, authorities had begun to take Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children from their families and place them in institutions and foster homes. By 1912, all of the state governments except Tasmania passed legislation that made this practice legal. As a result, some families tried to hide their heritage, for fear of losing their children. The children who were taken from their homes are often called the Stolen Generations.

Prosperity returned

to the Australian economy during the early 1900’s. From 1904 to 1913, Australia’s gross domestic product—that is, the value of all goods and services produced by the country in a given period—rose significantly. Production of wool, wheat, and other agricultural products rose. New railroads were built, and closer settlement programs were continued in all states. The federal government introduced a subsidy to foster the production of iron and steel in 1908. Broken Hill Proprietary Ltd., the first modern steelworks, was built at Newcastle in 1915. The states, rather than the federal government, continued to encourage immigration.

World War I (1914-1918)

When the United Kingdom declared war on Germany on Aug. 4, 1914, Australia was automatically at war. Australia was also in the middle of an election campaign. Liberal Prime Minister Joseph Cook offered Australia’s naval squadron and a force of 20,000 men to the British government. The Labor leader, Andrew Fisher, promised “our last man and our last shilling.” The Labor Party won the election.

War fever gripped Australia. The government formed the Australian Imperial Force (AIF). By the end of 1914, more than 52,000 men had enlisted. They were sent with troops from New Zealand to train in Egypt, where the term ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) was coined to describe them. A naval force landed at Rabaul in German New Guinea in September and soon occupied the German colony. On Nov. 9, 1914, the Royal Australian Navy gained another victory when the cruiser H.M.A.S. Sydney sank the German ship Emden off the Cocos Islands in the Indian Ocean.

Gallipoli.

Early in 1915, as part of an Allied strategy, British and ANZAC forces took part in an attack on the Ottoman Empire, based in what is now Turkey, which was allied with Germany. Allied troops planned to take the Gallipoli Peninsula, opening up the way for an attack on Constantinople, the Ottoman capital. The Allied forces, which included mainly British, French, ANZAC, and Indian troops, fought with great courage. However, the Ottoman defense held firm. A long stalemate followed until the Allied troops withdrew in December 1915 and January 1916. Australia lost more than 8,000 men, and New Zealand lost more than 2,700. Gallipoli was a military failure. At the same time, it established the fighting reputation of the ANZAC soldiers and passed into Australian legend. See ANZAC.

The Western front.

After the withdrawal from Gallipoli, most of the ANZAC’s were transferred, with reinforcements, to the Western Front in Europe. The ANZAC’s fought in all the major British offensives on the front, including in the Somme in 1916 and the Third Battle of Ypres in 1917. Australians played a significant part in halting the German offensive of 1918. They also had a major role in breaking the German lines—an action that helped end the war. The soldiers’ reputations as fierce and courageous fighters grew, but at great cost. See World War I.

The home front.

Any patriotic fervor felt by the working classes during the war quickly soured. Trade was disrupted, and unemployment rose. Rents and prices rose, and wages could not keep up with them—a situation that led to serious strikes in 1916 and 1917. Unrest among workers and a growing antiwar sentiment grew within the working classes, especially those of Irish descent.

The patriotism that had grown since the start of the war also had its ugly side. Australians saw German settlers and the descendants of Germans as aliens and treated them with hostility. Many were interned (placed in special camps). In South Australia and other states, the governments changed German place names to English or Aboriginal ones.

Conscription for overseas service.

At first, enlistment in the AIF was high, reaching a peak in 1915. Then enrollment dropped. Prime Minister William Morris Hughes, who came to power in October 1915, had initially rejected calls for conscription (mandatory enlistment). By mid-1916, after a visit to England, he had changed his mind. Enlistment had dropped below the levels required to maintain the AIF. Hughes was aware that many members of his own party were opposed to conscription for overseas service and that the Senate would reject any such legislation. He put the question to the people in a general referendum in October 1916.

The debate was bitter and deeply divisive. Women’s votes were an important factor. As the wives, sisters, and mothers of soldiers, some women were strongly opposed to conscription. Others supported it, arguing that more troops were needed to help the men already fighting. The labor union movement, as well as many other groups, were opposed to conscription. The referendum was narrowly defeated.

Hughes, with more than 20 parliamentary followers, left the Labor Party and joined with non-Labor politicians (known as the Liberals) to form the Nationalist Party. Hughes won the 1917 election and held another referendum on conscription in November, but it was also rejected.

End of the war.

Australia’s casualty rate in World War I was the highest among the British forces, with about 60,000 soldiers killed and over 156,000 wounded or captured. At the end of the war, the United Kingdom did not intend to allow any of its dominions to participate in the postwar peace conference. But Hughes, pointing to Australia’s important role and high casualty rate, secured a place for Australia in negotiations. Opposed to any leniency toward Germany, he insisted on the transfer of German New Guinea to Australia. Australia also joined the League of Nations, a forerunner of the United Nations, as a founding member.

Between the wars

The period between the two world wars was initially prosperous for Australia. High wartime demands, restrictions on imports, and new technology led to a dramatic increase in industrial development. After 1929, however, the country was in the grip of a Great Depression. The Depression lasted until 1936, when the effects of a general world recovery took effect. For the country’s poorest people, the recovery took even longer. Many political and social changes also took place during this time.

Two new political parties

were founded in Australia after World War I. The conservative Australian Country Party (now the National Party) was formed at the national level in 1920. The party was called the Australian Country Party until 1975 and the National Country Party from 1975 to 1982. It joined a coalition (partnership) with the Nationalist Party. With Nationalist support, the Country Party gained concessions for rural Australia. The Communist Party of Australia formed in 1920.

Hughes won the election in 1919. In 1922, the Nationalists won the federal election, but failed to win an outright majority. Stanley Melbourne Bruce, who negotiated a coalition with the Country Party, led by Earle C. G. Page, replaced Hughes as prime minister in 1923. The resulting administration, known as the Bruce-Page government, held office until 1929, when the Labor Party returned to power under James Scullin. Scullin appointed the first Australian-born governor general, Sir Isaac Isaacs.

Changes in society.

Australia faced two immediate postwar problems: returning members of the armed services to civilian life and combating an influenza epidemic. The government established a repatriation plan—that is, a plan for bringing the soldiers back into Australian society. Under the plan, the government provided free vocational training, educational fees, and pensions to returning servicemen and servicewomen. The government also offered war service loans and gave former members of the armed forces preference in government employment. The repatriation plan also included programs to settle soldiers on the land. Servicemen formed associations to lobby for their cause.

As the country worked to bring its soldiers back into civilian society, a deadly influenza epidemic, part of a worldwide outbreak, spread through Australia in 1919. By the time the epidemic had run its course, it had claimed about 12,000 lives, one-fifth as many as had died in the war. Worldwide, about 20 million people died.

Immigration

remained a major government objective after the war, although control shifted from the individual states to the federal government. In the 1920’s, more than 300,000 immigrants arrived in Australia, the great majority British. Quotas (numerical limits) were placed on the immigrants from southern Europe.

The capital cities continued to grow and establish their dominance in each state. Motion pictures and radio programs became mass forms of entertainment and helped spread the increasing American influence on Australian culture. Services previously restricted to the cities, such as electric power, began to appear in rural areas. Some conditions and benefits for women improved, and women’s place in society made progress, compared with the 1800’s. The economic status of women had changed little, however. Women in the work force were still paid at rates half those of their male counterparts.

Indigenous rights.

The period between the wars was significant for Australia’s Indigenous peoples. In New South Wales, the government took back the land given to Aboriginal people through official reserves and individual grants, often giving it to local white farmers and returning white soldiers instead. From 1911 to 1927, the government took nearly 13,000 acres (about 5,260 hectares). Much of this land was in the fertile area of the north coast, where many independent Aboriginal farmers had already established successful farms.

This process had two important outcomes: it started a move of Aboriginal people to the cities, and it caused Aboriginal people and their white supporters to form the first activist groups promoting Aboriginal rights. The Australian Aborigines Progressive Association formed in the 1920’s. The organization protested the land seizures through rallies, speeches, petitions to Parliament, and appeals to the press. It succeeded in raising awareness of the plight of Australia’s Indigenous peoples and in persuading the Aboriginal Protection Board to modify its child removal policy. The Aboriginal leader William Cooper headed the Australian Aborigines’ League, formed in Victoria in the 1930’s. In the west and northwest, the Aboriginal activists William Ferguson, Pearl Gibbs, and Bert Groves led the Aborigines’ Progressive Association, based in Dubbo, New South Wales. These organizations also campaigned for Aboriginal people to be given the same civil rights as white people enjoyed. They protested economic discrimination and poor living conditions.

During the Depression of the 1930’s, government authorities removed Aboriginal people from the camps near the towns because of white people’s complaints. Officials forced the Aboriginal people to live in distant camps, where conditions were poor and disease was common. In many places, the authorities closely supervised and controlled Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, who could not marry, work, or travel without permission of the government board.

In 1938, white Australians held traditional celebrations and a reenactment of Phillip’s landing at Sydney Cove on Australia Day, January 26. At the same time, a small group of Aboriginal people gathered on the steps of Sydney Town Hall and proclaimed January 26 as a Day of Mourning and Protest. They presented the Aboriginal view of European settlement as an invasion that had deadly consequences for Aboriginal peoples.

The Great Depression.

The world economy declined rapidly in 1929. Prices for many manufactured goods dropped sharply, reducing the income Australia earned from exports. Australia fell deeply in debt because of loans raised to finance such development programs as land settlement, assisted immigration from the United Kingdom, the building of railroads, and the extension of roads and services. Interest payments on the debt took an increasing proportion of national income. Cuts in government spending followed. Unemployment rose rapidly, and by 1932, about one-third of the work force was unemployed. People were evicted from their houses because they could not pay rent. Soup kitchens fed the hungry. Many people left the cities in an unsuccessful search for work in the countryside. It was the worst social crisis since the 1890’s.

Prime Minister James Scullin, who came to power with the Labor government in 1929, was ill equipped to deal with the Depression. He cut back government expenditure, ended assisted immigration programs, and introduced new taxes to help balance the budget. Many of his measures met with little approval from the Senate, who still opposed his economic initiatives and blocked several bills.

In 1930, a representative from the Bank of England visited Australia, examined its finances, and proposed wide-sweeping changes. This meeting was followed by a premiers’ conference in 1931, at which the state premiers agreed to the Premiers Plan. This plan aimed to reduce government expenditures by 20 percent. The Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration had already ordered a 10 percent cut in basic wages. Despite these policies, the Depression deepened.

Political and social effects.

In the cities, the Depression fueled class differences and political hatred and fear. In Melbourne, conservative men, many of them former servicemen, formed small secret armies, such as the Silent Knights and the White Army. In Sydney, Eric Campbell, a former Army officer, established a right-wing and British loyalist group called the New Guard, which attracted more than 50,000 men. The New Guard was a tightly disciplined group of armed men that targeted and attacked members of socialist and communist parties.

The Communist Party of Australia (CPA) had less than 5,000 members in 1931, but was active in speaking on behalf of the workers and the unemployed through marches, petitions, and demonstrations. The CPA formed the Unemployed Workers Movement in 1930. The movement attracted about 30,000 members and fought for better conditions for the jobless. However, participation was hard to maintain because activists often suffered harassment from the police.

Attempts to deal with the Depression tore the federal Labor Party apart. In February 1931, the Australian statesmen Joseph A. Lyons and James Fenton resigned from the Cabinet. In May, with several colleagues, they had merged with the Nationalists to form the United Australia Party (UAP), with Lyons as leader. In the following election, the UAP came to power. In later elections, it formed a coalition with the Country Party and remained in power for the next 10 years.

Recovery from the Depression began in 1933, but it did not gain strength until 1936. It was prompted by the general world recovery and by protection policies implemented in Australia. The government raised tariffs, which stimulated manufacturing. The government also subsidized wool and wheat industries. By 1939, unemployment had dropped to around 10 percent.

World War II (1939-1945)

Political instability marked the end of the 1930’s. In March 1939, Attorney General Robert Gordon Menzies resigned from the Cabinet. A month later, Prime Minister Lyons died. Although Menzies was elected leader of the UAP, Page refused to serve with Menzies and withdrew the Country Party from the coalition. A minority government held power when World War II broke out in 1939.

Although the Statute of Westminster in 1931 gave Australia constitutional independence, Australia still left foreign policy matters to the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom warned Australia during the 1930’s that if war broke out in Europe, the United Kingdom could not come to Australia’s defense. However, Australia made few preparations for its own defense. Government officials pinned their hopes on the defenses built at Singapore to protect the country.

Australia entered World War II on the side of the United Kingdom on Sept. 3, 1939. The government announced the formation of the Second AIF, but enlistment was slow. Conscription for home defense was reintroduced. Continued instability in the UAP-Country coalition led to the election of Labor leader John Curtin as prime minister in 1941. Curtin provided able leadership until his death in 1945.

The Second AIF left for the Middle East in January 1940 under the command of Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Blamey. It fought in the North African campaigns of 1940 to 1942, including the Battle of El Alamein, on the coast of Egypt. During the defense of Tobruk, on the Libyan coast, a German commentator called the Ninth Division the rats of Tobruk, a title they adopted with pride. The Second AIF also took part in an attempt by Sir Winston Churchill, then the United Kingdom’s first lord of the admiralty, to stop the German invasion of Greece.

Japan’s entry into the war

in 1941 transformed the war for Australians. Instead of a distant conflict that seemed irrelevant to them, the war was suddenly on their doorstep. By the middle of December, the Japanese had invaded Hong Kong, attacked Pearl Harbor, invaded the Philippines, and landed troops in northern Malaya. Prime Minister Curtin appealed to the United States for assistance in a famous speech in which he declared: “Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.”

On Feb. 15, 1942, Singapore, long regarded as Australia’s first line of defense, fell quickly to the Japanese. Rabaul in New Guinea had already fallen to Japan, and on Feb. 19, 1942, the Japanese launched the first of more than 60 air raids against Darwin. The Japanese also began submarine warfare in Australian waters, and in May 1942, three Japanese submarines entered Sydney Harbour. Australia seemed in immediate danger of invasion, and Australians made plans for both defense and evacuation. Curtin recalled two divisions of the Second AIF to defend Australia.

Kokoda.

Japanese strategy was concerned more with isolating Australia than with invading it. In May 1942, a Japanese invasion force sailed toward Australia’s base at Port Moresby on the south coast of the island of New Guinea (now Papua New Guinea). Port Moresby lay at Australia’s doorstep. American warships met the Japanese force in the Coral Sea, northeast of Australia. The United States Navy, with assistance from the Royal Australian Navy, defeated the Japanese in the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942. The Japanese then began a land drive toward Port Moresby along a jungle trail called the Kokoda Track. Initially, members of the Australian Military Forces met the Japanese advance alone. Later, they were reinforced by recalled units of the AIF.

After months of bitter fighting, the Australians turned the Japanese back and, by November 1942, had driven them north. American troops had arrived in Australia in late 1941, and Australia had become the base for the offensive against Japan. From March 1942 on, Australian soldiers were placed under the command of the American General Douglas MacArthur. Australian troops continued to fight in New Guinea and Borneo, and an Australian representative was present at the Japanese surrender in 1945.

Casualties and prisoners.

Australians sustained their heaviest casualties in the Pacific. Illness, particularly malaria, took a heavy toll. The proportion of Australians who died as prisoners of war to the total number of casualties was markedly higher than in World War I. About 15,000 Australians were captured at Singapore. Conditions in Japanese camps were barbarous, and prisoners were used as forced labor. The prisoners included nurses, some of whom the Japanese executed.

In Australia, camps were established to hold German, Italian, and Japanese prisoners of war and internees (nonprisoners from enemy countries who are held in camps). In 1944, Japanese prisoners of war attempted a mass escape at Cowra in New South Wales. In the unsuccessful attempt, more than 230 Japanese and 4 Australians died.

Women

played a significant role in the war effort. Many joined the services, either as nurses or as part of the auxiliary arms of the services. Other women joined the Australian Women’s Land Army, which the government established to help farmers boost food production. Many women were drafted into factory jobs, in areas such as weapons production. They also took jobs left by the men, sometimes in areas where they had previously been excluded, and these women were for the first time paid the same wages as men.

The government

acquired and used broad powers during the war. Curtin and the Labor Party returned to power in the election of 1943 but lost a referendum in 1944 designed to broaden the powers of the Commonwealth. Ben Chifley became prime minister after Curtin’s death and led Labor to electoral victory in 1946 against Menzies’s newly created Liberal Party. In the same year, a constitutional referendum transferred responsibility for social security to the federal government.

Postwar Australia

By the end of the war, Australia had undergone important economic and social changes. The war boosted Australia’s manufacturing industry. The status of women increased, particularly in the work force. The ethnic composition of the country would soon undergo substantial change with postwar immigration. And with the end of the war, the government turned its attention to reconstruction.

Reconstruction.

As had happened after World War I, the government offered returned World War II servicemen blocks of land for settlement. This time, settlement was planned more carefully. Soldier settlers received more assistance, and the 1950’s were a boom decade for agricultural goods. The government also offered returned servicemen financial help to attend universities. The government continued such World War I repatriation policies as providing pensions and medical care to former servicemen.

Manufacturing grew rapidly. However, it could not keep up with demands created by a population that was also growing rapidly, both through natural increase and through immigration. Housing and building materials were scarce, and the federal government allocated funds for housing to be administered by state housing commissions.

New Australians.

The most successful aspect of postwar reconstruction was Australia’s immigration program, directed by Arthur Calwell, leader of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) from 1960 to 1967. At first, the Australian government sought only British immigrants. When it became clear that not enough of them wanted to come to Australia, the government offered assisted passage to displaced people and refugees from mainland Europe. In all, 853,953 assisted immigrants arrived in Australia from 1947 to 1960. The White Australia Policy steadily eroded, and these new Australians had a profound impact on society.

Economic boom and nationalization.

Both the Australian and the world economy grew rapidly after the late 1940’s, ushering in 20 years of nearly full employment. Prices for wool and agricultural products remained high during the early 1950’s. However, the government could not fully implement its reconstruction plans. Although social welfare provisions were widened, a proposed national health program never came into being. Voters rejected the government’s attempts to bring prices and rents under government control.

The Chifley government’s nationalization program—that is, the program to bring industries under the ownership and control of the government—met the most resistance. Chifley nationalized the airline Qantas and Australia’s overseas telecommunications industry. In 1946, the government established Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA). That same year, the government set up the Joint Coal Board to control coal production.

In 1947, the government attempted to nationalize the private banks. The banks and financial institutions strongly opposed the proposal. Liberal Party leader Menzies organized anti-Labor forces, including those opposed to the nationalization programs, to campaign against the policies of the Chifley government. At the general election of 1949, the Labor government was defeated. Menzies became prime minister in a coalition government with the Country Party. He remained in office until 1966. Labor did not return to federal power until 1972.

The Petrov Affair.

During the Cold War, a period of hostility between Communist and democratic nations that began in the late 1940’s, many Australians feared Communism. Menzies exploited that fear during his time as prime minister and attempted to outlaw the Communist Party. The High Court declared his attempts to outlaw the party unconstitutional, however, and the voters rejected banning the party in a referendum in 1951.

In 1954, Menzies announced the defection of Vladimir Petrov, a Soviet diplomat, and the creation of a royal commission to investigate Petrov’s allegations of a Soviet spy ring in Australia. Australia severed diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. Although no spy ring was found, the affair exposed deep divisions within Australia over its attitude toward Communism. Labor Party leaders, including H. V. Evatt, accused the government of staging the Petrov Affair to boost its popularity just before an election. Anti-Communist Labor Party members accused Evatt of being pro-Communist.

Foreign policy.

Most historians agree that Curtin’s 1941 call to the United States for military assistance marked the emergence of an independent Australian foreign policy. Evatt was an important voice in the creation of the United Nations (UN) in 1945 and served as the president of the UN General Assembly in 1948 and 1949. Many historians credit him with forcing Australia out of its isolation into an awareness of the world and, in particular, an awareness of Asia.

In 1951, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States signed a defense treaty, called ANZUS after the first letters of the participants’ names. Under the treaty, the nations pledged support for the others in the event that any of them were attacked. The ANZUS alliance reflected the more conservative stance in foreign policy taken by Menzies, showed Australia’s reliance on the United States as an ally, and illustrated Australia’s fear of Communism. This concern also led Australia to send troops to the Korean War (1950-1953) and to Malaya (now called Malaysia) during Communist uprisings in the early 1950’s.

Society and culture.

The 1950’s and the 1960’s were years of peace, prosperity, and political stability for many Australians. Marriage and childbirth rates rose, along with home ownership levels. A generation of Australians emerged from depression and war into lives of well-being and security at a level not seen before. The population boomed, and new suburbs sprang up at a rapid rate, pushing the boundaries of the cities farther and farther outward.

A more confident sense of national identity emerged in the arts with the publication of such novels as Frank Hardy’s Power Without Glory (1950), Sidney Nolan’s famous series of paintings about the outlaw Ned Kelly, and the staging of Ray Lawler’s play Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (1955). The establishment of the Australian Elizabethan Theater Trust in 1955 resulted in the founding of national opera and ballet companies and theater companies in the capital cities. The creation of the Trust also began a program of government funding of cultural activities and institutions.

The 1960’s to the 1990’s

The economic boom

that began after World War II continued into the 1960’s, turning Australia into a prosperous, modern society. Over the next few decades, Australia, along with most societies in Europe and the Americas, experienced great social, technological, and economic transformation. A strong growth in mineral exports contributed to the economic expansion. Continued immigration provided workers from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. After the abandonment of the discriminatory White Australia policy, Australia was officially declared a multicultural society—one that supports all cultures and ethnic backgrounds. Australian cities continued to grow, suburbs spread rapidly, and homeownership increased.

Over time, the structure of Australia’s work force began to change. As manufacturing declined in the 1980’s, a growing percentage of workers held white-collar jobs—that is, business, clerical, and professional positions. Leisure time increased, both with a shorter workweek and with longer annual vacations. The baby boom generation—that is, the group of people born during the period from the end of World War II to the early 1960’s—had greater educational and economic opportunities than previous generations did. Baby boomers also were willing to explore alternative ways of living. By the early 1980’s, economic growth slowed, and social attitudes again began to change. Marriage and birth rates fell, as did the level of homeownership.

The women’s movement

reemerged in a new and more radical form during the late 1960’s. One of its major international leaders was the Australian writer Germaine Greer. Many of the feminists from the 1890’s to the 1930’s had sought to improve the situation and status of women. The feminists of the 1960’s and 1970’s, on the other hand, believed that women should be equal in every sphere of life. They argued that all jobs and public positions should be open to women, and they demanded equal pay and working conditions. The feminists’ efforts led to the elimination of a regulation that forced women to retire from public service when they married. Soon, more women began to pursue careers outside the home. In 1972, a ruling by the Commonwealth Court of Conciliation and Arbitration established the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. In 1984, the Sex Discrimination Act prohibited discrimination against women on the basis of sex, marital status, or pregnancy.

The campaign for Indigenous rights

forced its way into the Australian public awareness during a wave of activism and organization in the 1960’s. In 1966, Aboriginal workers on outback stations (ranches in the back country), such as Wave Hill, held strikes to draw attention to poor working and living conditions. Their demands included better working conditions, equal pay for Indigenous workers, and the right to own their ancestral lands. They eventually won these struggles. However, station owners soon modernized their properties, and many Aboriginal workers lost their jobs.

In 1962, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples received the right to vote in national elections. A constitutional referendum in 1967 allowed the federal government to legislate on their behalf. The first Indigenous land claims were made in the late 1960’s, and groups petitioned the United Nations for compensation for the injustices done to them. In 1971, for the first time, the Indigenous population was included in the national census.

The Vietnam War.

Two factors that greatly changed Australian society during the 1960’s were technological advancements and Australia’s participation in the Vietnam War (1957-1975). Communications technology broke down the country’s isolation, making issues, trends, and ideas from overseas immediately accessible to Australians. Television, which was introduced in Australia in 1956, was especially influential in shaping Australians’ views on the Vietnam War and on society in general.

Australia’s anti-Communist and pro-American foreign policy led to its involvement in the Vietnam War. In 1954, Vietnam was divided. In the North, the Communist-led nationalists, the Vietminh, formed a government. The South was controlled by anti-Communists who were supported by the United States. In 1962, Australia sent Army advisers to the South. In 1964, Prime Minister Menzies announced a form of military conscription (draft) called national service. In 1965, the first Australian troops went to Vietnam. In 1966, the government increased Australia’s commitment to the war and sent the first drafted soldiers to Vietnam.

Opposition to the Vietnam War began in Australia almost immediately. It came from traditional Labor sources who were opposed to conscription for overseas service, as well as from many other organizations and individuals. By the late 1960’s, opposition was widespread and cut across traditional class lines. The debate over the Vietnam War was bitter and divisive. Australians seriously questioned the morality of their involvement in the war. Mass demonstrations against the war took place in 1970 and 1971, and many people questioned Australia’s alliance with the United States.

Political upheavals.

Menzies, who had been in power since 1949, retired in 1966 and was succeeded as prime minister by Harold Holt. Holt disappeared while swimming in December 1967 and was presumed to have drowned. John Gorton then became prime minister. In 1969, Gorton led a Liberal-Country coalition to a narrow victory over a rejuvenated Labor Party led by Gough Whitlam. Internal party squabbles soon forced Gorton to resign in 1971, and William McMahon became the prime minister.

The Vietnam War was a major election issue in 1972. Other important issues in the campaign included education and social equality. In 1972, an organization called the Women’s Electoral Lobby was established to lobby for women’s issues. In December 1972, Whitlam led the Labor Party to victory in the House of Representatives and became prime minister. No elections were held for the Senate, which remained under the control of the Liberal-Country coalition.

The Whitlam government,

within its first months in office, abolished conscription and pulled the remaining Australian troops out of Vietnam. In foreign policy, Whitlam charted a new course. His government established diplomatic relations with Communist China, and he developed closer economic and cultural relations with other Asian countries. Australia granted Papua New Guinea self-government in 1973 and independence in 1975.

Domestically, the Whitlam government introduced a range of progressive measures. The government promoted a policy of multiculturalism; established Medibank, a national health plan; increased funding for education; and encouraged regional development. The government also supported Aboriginal rights and pushed for reforms in land rights in the Northern Territory. Under Whitlam’s government, the voting age was reduced to 18. Reforms in the area of family and women’s rights included the Family Law Act, which modernized divorce laws.

Despite its many important reforms, the Whitlam government was plagued by problems. Many policies had been hastily conceived and were largely ineffective. Whitlam was forced to demand the resignation of some ministers and to fire others. In addition, an economic recession had begun to take its toll on Australia.

The dismissal.

In 1974, the Senate refused to pass government legislation, which led to a double dissolution—that is, both the House of Representatives and the Senate were dissolved. The elections that followed gave neither party a majority in the Senate. In 1975, the balance of power in the Senate shifted to a coalition of the Liberal and National parties.

In October 1975, the Liberal-National coalition used its Senate majority to threaten to stop the supply of money for day-to-day government operations. It hoped to force Whitlam to resign, paving the way for new elections. When Whitlam refused to step down, the opposition parties blocked the approval of funds needed to run the government. A constitutional crisis followed, and in November 1975, Governor General John Kerr intervened and removed Whitlam from office. Kerr named Liberal Party leader Malcolm Fraser to serve as prime minister until new elections could be held.

Many people criticized the actions of the Senate and doubted the legal capacity of the governor general to dismiss the Whitlam government. The dismissal led many people to question whether the British monarch and the governor general held too much power over Australian affairs.

The Liberal-National coalition won elections in December 1975 and in 1977 and 1980. Fraser remained prime minister, and he dismantled some of Whitlam’s policies, notably the health plan. However, Fraser supported multiculturalism, expanded immigration from Asia, and established the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), a government-funded multilingual television and radio service. Don Chipp, a former Liberal minister, formed a new party called the Australian Democrats in 1977. The party held the balance of power in the Senate after 1980. Whitlam resigned as leader of the Labor Party and was replaced by Bill Hayden.

Labor returns to power.

Shortly after Fraser called an election in 1983, the Labor Party elected Bob Hawke, former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), as its leader. The Labor Party regained power in the 1983 elections, and Hawke became prime minister. The ALP remained in power after elections in 1984, 1987, and 1990.

The Hawke government established a new national health plan, known as Medicare. In 1983, government, business, and union leaders held an economic summit and agreed to a wages and prices accord—an agreement to promote economic growth through a variety of policies addressing both labor and business concerns. Throughout his time in power, Hawke backed away from the traditional ALP use of tariffs to protect Australian industries and jobs. Instead, the government reduced protection for domestic business, bringing an increase in competition. Hawke’s government also introduced reforms in the tax system, as well as reforms in education and training. In addition, a number of nationally owned companies became privately owned. By the mid-1980’s, economic recovery had begun to falter.

A number of significant legal reforms took place during Hawke’s time in office. Previously, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, which consisted chiefly of judges from the United Kingdom’s highest courts, served as Australia’s ultimate court of appeal. The Australia Act of 1986 abolished appeals to the Privy Council. The High Court of Australia then became the country’s highest court of appeal. Also, before 1986, the British Parliament had the power to make statutes affecting Australia. The Australia Act of 1986 formally ended that power.

Australia’s ethnic base changed during the 1970’s and 1980’s. Although the British remained the largest immigrant group, the proportion of immigrants from the Middle East and Asia rose substantially. Trading patterns also changed. Japan passed Europe and the United States to become Australia’s leading trading partner. Australia further developed an independent role for itself in the international community, though it remained a basically European country in an Asian-Pacific region of the world. Australia celebrated the bicentennial (200th anniversary) of European settlement in 1988.

In the 1980’s, environmental issues became increasingly prominent in Australia. Protests over a plan to dam the Franklin River in Tasmania in the early 1980’s became symbolic of the Australian environmental movement. In 1983, Hawke’s government pledged that it would halt the dam, which resulted in a legal dispute between the federal and Tasmanian state governments. The High Court made a landmark ruling in favor of the federal government. The Australian Greens party formed as a result of environmental activism.

The Keating government.

In 1991, the Labor members of Parliament voted to replace Hawke with Treasurer Paul Keating as head of their party. As a result, Keating also replaced Hawke as prime minister. Despite a recession in the early 1990’s, the Labor Party won parliamentary elections in 1993, and Keating remained prime minister. Keating advanced the possibility of Australia becoming a republic with an Australian head of state, rather than a constitutional monarchy headed by the British Crown. In foreign affairs, Keating strengthened Australia’s regional ties with Asian nations, including Indonesia. Among the reforms introduced by the Keating government was a national pension program.

Keating also called for reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians. In 1992, he delivered a famous speech at a park in the city of Redfern. The speech—sometimes called the “Redfern Speech” or “Redfern Address”—included the first formal acknowledgement by an Australian prime minister that European settlement had led to the current struggles of Indigenous Australians.

Indigenous land decisions.

The long struggle for Indigenous land rights won a significant victory in 1992. Eddie Koiki Mabo and four other Torres Strait Islander people claimed that their people had lived on their land continuously since before Europeans arrived. Australia’s High Court ruled that they successfully demonstrated their claim. For much of Australia’s history, British and Australian law stated that Australia had been terra nullius, a Latin legal term meaning land belonging to nobody, when Europeans arrived in the 1770’s. The Mabo decision, as the ruling is often called, declared the concept of terra nullius to be incorrect and illegal. It recognized that native title had existed at the time of the European invasion, and still existed where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples had maintained a continuous association with their land. Native title refers to the land rights of Indigenous peoples based on their traditional laws and customs.

In 1993, the federal government passed the Native Title Act. This law recognized and protected Indigenous rights to traditional lands. However, it also reduced the amount of land that Indigenous peoples could claim. In addition, regulations about the process of claiming native title have often made rights to native title difficult to prove. An equally important case was the 1996 High Court ruling called the Wik decision. The Wik people of the Cape York peninsula succeeded in their challenge to have native title recognized in areas where graziers had leases. In this case, the High Court ruled that graziers’ leases had not taken the place of native title, but that the two had coexisted.

Referendum on the republic.

During the 1990’s, many Australians called for their nation to become a republic, with a president replacing the British monarch as head of state. In 1998, a constitutional convention voted in favor of making Australia a republic by 2001. In a constitutional referendum held in 1999, however, Australian voters rejected the convention’s model for the republic. As a result, the British monarch remained Australia’s head of state.

Cultural development.

Australian literature, film, music, and visual and performing arts gained greater international recognition in the second half of the 1900’s. Government support for the arts and a rapidly expanding higher education system contributed to this growth. In 1973, the government established the Australia Council, an advisory and funding organization that provides support for the visual, literary, and performing arts. Over time, an increasing number of women, immigrants, and Indigenous Australians contributed to Australia’s artistic output. The Sydney Opera House, designed by the Danish architect Jørn Utzon, opened in 1973 and has since become an architectural and cultural landmark.

Beginning in the 1970’s, the Australian film industry flourished, and it produced a number of films exploring Australia’s distinctive environment and culture. Australian film and television production became high-profile export industries. In the decades that followed, such motion-picture stars as Eric Bana, Cate Blanchett, Russell Crowe, Mel Gibson, Hugh Jackman, and Nicole Kidman gained international acclaim for their work. The diverse films of directors Bruce Beresford, Baz Luhrmann, George Miller, and Peter Weir showed the growing importance and creativity of Australian film. In music, Australian composers, such as Peter Sculthorpe, the rock groups AC/DC and INXS, and popular music performers, such as Kylie Minogue and Keith Urban, gained worldwide fame.

Notable Australian artists of the second half of the 1900’s included Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Brett Whitely, and Fred Williams. These artists, in varying styles, reacted to Australia’s landscape and culture. Other artists integrated international and local influences to create pieces that could be identified as uniquely Australian. Since the 1970’s, many Aboriginal artists have depicted their religious rituals and ancestral stories on canvas. The works of such artists as Emily Kngwarreye, Michael Nelson Tjakamarra, and Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri contributed to a highly original world art movement. Such Australian architects as Philip Cox, Daryl Jackson, and Glenn Murcutt, gained critical acclaim for designing houses that conserve energy and are sensitive to the environment.

Literature also flourished in the second half of the 1900’s. Such dramatists as Jack Davis, Ray Lawler, Hannie Rayson, and David Williamson contributed to a distinctive Australian theater. Such poets as A. D. Hope, Judith Wright, Peter Porter, and Chris Wallace-Crabbe became well known. In 1973, the Australian novelist Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. Other well-known writers include Thomas Keneally, whose 1982 novel Schindler’s Ark is known as Schindler’s List in the United States; Peter Carey; David Malouf; and Tim Winton. In 2008, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared Melbourne a City of Literature in recognition of its lively literary and publishing culture. See Australian literature (Recent Australian literature).

The 2000’s

The Howard government.

In 1996, a coalition of the Liberal and National parties won general elections with a large majority. John Howard, the leader of the Liberal Party, became prime minister. He was reelected in 1998, 2001, and 2004, and he controlled the government until 2007.

The Howard government introduced economic reforms, including a new goods and services tax (GST) to replace the previous federal sales tax. Howard also influenced industrial relations by seeking to reduce the bargaining power of labor unions. Howard emphasized the importance of traditional family and social values. He criticized previous policies of multiculturalism and refused to acknowledge or apologize for dispossession (taking away of land) of Aboriginal people or for the Stolen Generations. The Howard administration also caused controversy with its strong policies on refugees. His government refused to allow refugees to land on Australian soil and held them in detention centers if they did land.

In 2000, Sydney hosted the Summer Olympic Games. The Australian swimmer Ian Thorpe was one of the stars of the event. The Olympics provided an opportunity for Australia to showcase its culture to international audiences. By the early 2000’s, Australia’s reputation for literature, art, popular culture, and creativity had become well established.

In 2003, workers completed work on Australia’s longest rail line. This line, the nation’s first north-south transcontinental railroad, extends from Adelaide in South Australia to Darwin in the Northern Territory, a distance of 1,851 miles (2,979 kilometers). The railroad was built to transport freight and passengers across some of the country’s harshest terrain. Australia’s federal government had promised to complete such a rail line in 1911, when it took control of the Northern Territory.

The Iraq War and counterterrorism.

The Howard government was committed to supporting the U.S.-led “war on terror”—a response to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States in 2001. It also supported the U.S.-led war against Iraq, which began in 2003. That year, Howard’s government sent troops from the Australian Army, the Royal Australian Navy, and the Royal Australian Air Force to serve in Iraq. The allied forces quickly gained control of Iraq and ended the rule of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Some Australian troops remained in Iraq after the fall of the Hussein government to take part in peacekeeping operations. Australia’s participation in the Iraq War was not popular with large sections of the Australian public. In July 2009, Australian military forces were formally withdrawn from Iraq.

In 2002, Muslim extremists bombed two nightclubs on the Indonesian island of Bali, just north of Australia. The attacks killed about 200 people, including 88 Australian citizens, highlighting the impact of international terrorism on Australians. In 2005, the Australian Parliament passed counterterrorism laws that gave the federal government wider powers to combat domestic terrorists. Under the provisions of the laws, the government may hold terrorism suspects for up to 14 days without charging them with a crime. The government may also impose controls on suspects’ activities for up to a year. The laws also provide for greater police powers and tougher consequences for individuals who encourage rebellion against the government. Opponents of the measures argued that the laws endangered Australians’ civil rights.

The Rudd government.

In general elections in 2007, the ALP defeated Howard’s government, and Kevin Rudd became prime minister. In 2008, Rudd issued a formal apology for grief, suffering, and loss caused among Australia’s Indigenous peoples by the policies of previous governments. Loading the player...
Kevin Rudd delivers apology to Indigenous Australians

A global economic crisis began in 2007 and brought hardship and unemployment for many Australians. The Rudd government sought to stimulate the economy through government spending. In foreign policy, the Rudd government expressed its commitment to strong relations with Asia, the United States, and the United Nations.

Environmental issues.

During the early 2000’s, prolonged periods of drought and increased concerns over climate change dominated Australia’s outlook on the environment. These issues led to the development of federal and state plans for improved management of water and natural resources. The Murray-Darling Basin Authority, for instance, is a government agency that works to manage and protect the Murray-Darling Basin, one of Australia’s most important sources of water for irrigation and industry.

The Rudd government signed the Kyoto Protocol in December 2007. The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement aimed at reducing the output of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and increase Earth’s surface temperature. The Howard government had long resisted signing the agreement, arguing that it could harm Australia’s mining industry.

In February 2009, the deadliest bushfires in Australian history devastated southern Victoria, leaving 173 people dead. The fires reached their height on Saturday, February 9, when several entire towns were destroyed. The day became known as Black Saturday. Officials suspected that arson had caused some of the fires, which destroyed thousands of homes and forced the evacuation of thousands of people.

In 2010, Rudd’s popularity waned. He shelved a proposed emissions trading plan that had been a large part of his environmental strategy. In June, his deputy, Julia Gillard, successfully challenged him for the leadership of the ALP. She became Australia’s first female prime minister. In an August 2010 general election, neither the ALP nor the Liberal-National coalition won a clear parliamentary majority. After two weeks of negotiations, the ALP gained the support of several Green Party and independent members of Parliament. The party remained in power, and Gillard stayed in office as prime minister.

Heavy rains in late 2010 and early 2011 caused major flooding in eastern Australia. The floods began in Queensland, where they overwhelmed the Murray-Darling Basin and drenched farmland. Queensland’s capital, Brisbane, was also hit hard. Flooding then spread to Victoria. Government officials estimated that the damage caused by the floods could make them Australia’s costliest natural disaster.

Refugees.

In the early 2000’s, an increasing number of people sought political asylum (shelter and protection) in Australia. Thousands of people from countries such as Afghanistan, Iran, and Sri Lanka attempted to sail to Australia from Indonesia. Under John Howard, the Royal Australian Navy had diverted many of the refugees to a processing center on Christmas Island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean. Other refugees were sent to processing centers in the Pacific Islands nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The refugees were kept at these centers until their asylum claims could be processed.

Kevin Rudd ordered the Nauru and Papua New Guinea centers closed, but the number of refugees continued to climb. In mid-2012, Julia Gillard created a nonpartisan panel to develop a plan to deal with the refugees. The panel recommended reopening the Nauru and Papua New Guinea centers. By late 2012, the government had begun transporting asylum-seekers from Christmas Island to Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

Kevin Rudd successfully challenged Gillard for the ALP leadership in 2013. Gillard stepped down from her post, and Rudd again became prime minister. After Rudd returned to power, he announced that asylum-seekers arriving in Australia by boat would be resettled in Papua New Guinea rather than in Australia. In a general election that same year, a coalition of the Liberal and National parties defeated the ALP. Coalition leader Tony Abbott became prime minister. Shortly afterward, the Royal Australian Navy began intercepting boats carrying asylum-seekers, sending them to Nauru and Papua New Guinea, or back to Indonesia. This move increased tensions between Indonesia and Australia.

In 2015, Malcolm Turnbull successfully challenged Abbott for the leadership of the Liberal Party and became prime minister. Turnbull claimed Abbott had not successfully guided Australia’s economic policies. Turnbull’s government reintroduced several pieces of legislation addressing the regulation of labor unions in the construction industry. The bills had been introduced under Abbott in 2013 and were voted down in the Senate in 2015. In 2016, the Senate again defeated the bills. Turnbull used the opportunity to call a double dissolution. Both houses of Parliament were dissolved, and fresh elections were scheduled. Turnbull led the coalition to victory in the elections and remained in power, but with a reduced parliamentary majority.

Also in 2016, Turnbull negotiated an agreement with U.S. President Barack Obama to resettle more than 1,200 asylum seekers in the United States. In 2017, the Australian government closed the detention center in Papua New Guinea. Refugees who had been held there and in Nauru began arriving in the United States late that year. The center in Nauru was closed in 2019. A few asylum seekers remained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. However, they were housed in the community, not in detention centers. At the end of 2021, Australia discontinued its refugee processing arrangement with Papua New Guinea, which assumed responsibility for the asylum seekers still living there. Almost all the asylum seekers housed on Nauru left the island by June 2023. In late 2023, however, the Australian government began sending additional asylum seekers to Nauru for processing.

Recent developments.

In a nonbinding 2017 referendum, a majority of Australians voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. In early December, Parliament passed legislation allowing gay people to marry. Australia’s first same-sex weddings took place later that month.

In 2018, Scott Morrison replaced Turnbull as leader of the Liberal Party and became prime minister. In 2019, Morrison led the Liberal-National coalition to victory in a federal election and remained in office as prime minister.

High temperatures and drought conditions led to a widespread outbreak of bushfires in late 2019 that continued into early 2020. Fires burned more than 46 million acres (18 million hectares) of land in Australia. Although annual wildfires normally burn large areas of sparsely settled scrub land in such regions as the Northern Territory, many of the bushfires of 2019-2020 swept through areas of forestland, farms, and towns.

The most destructive fires blazed across eastern Australia, particularly in the highly populated states of New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria. As smoke from the fires spread, the air in many cities and towns became dangerous to breathe. Authorities in affected areas urged thousands of residents to evacuate their homes to escape the smoke and fires. Heavy rains finally helped firefighters contain the spread of the fires in these areas in early 2020. More than 30 people and hundreds of millions of animals died in the bushfires of 2019-2020, and more than 3,000 homes were destroyed.

Beginning in 2020, Australia faced the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic (global epidemic). COVID-19 is a sometimes fatal respiratory disease that was first identified in China in late 2019. Australia recorded its first case in late January 2020. To curb the spread of the disease, Australia’s government placed restrictions on travel to Australia from China and other countries. Other government measures included banning public gatherings, closing nonessential businesses, and requiring residents to practice social distancing. Federal, state, and territorial governments also established programs to ease the financial hardship caused by COVID-19.

By early May 2020, some states and territories had begun relaxing COVID-19 restrictions on the public, following a significant decline in Australia’s infection rate. However, Australia experienced a spike in cases during its winter months of July and August. Australia’s vaccination program to fight the disease began in late February 2021, but some policies to limit new outbreaks continued. By the end of 2021, more than 90 percent of Australians over age 16 had received at least one vaccine injection. Australia eased many restrictions, including those on travel. But new, more contagious variants (forms) of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 continued to present a challenge. By mid-2023, more than 11 million COVID-19 cases had been recorded in Australia, and more than 20,000 Australians had died from the disease.

Australia held a general election in May 2022. The Australian Labor Party won the most seats in the House of Representatives, and the Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, became prime minister.

Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom died on Sept. 8, 2022, at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland. She had reigned for more than 70 years. As the British monarch, the queen also served as the official head of state of Australia, represented in Australia by the governor general. Elizabeth’s eldest child, Charles, succeeded her. He became King Charles III of the United Kingdom, and the official head of state of Australia.

In 2023, the Albanese government faced calls for a constitutional amendment to address the legal and political concerns of Australia’s Indigenous peoples, also called First Nations peoples. The government held a nonbinding referendum on an amendment to establish the First Nations Voice. This proposed advisory group would represent the interests of the country’s Indigenous peoples in Parliament. It would consist of Aboriginal people and Torres Strait Islander people. In the referendum, a majority of voters rejected the amendment, despite strong support for it among Indigenous people.