Australia

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Wool, Gold, and Economic Development

Australian soils and climate, with the recurrent droughts, were better suited for large-scale livestock grazing than for farming. During the 1830s and 1840s the continent was rapidly transformed as squatters established huge sheep runs. Paying only a minimal license fee, squatters could claim virtually as much land as they wanted. From 1830 to 1850 wool exports rose from 2 million to 41 million pounds while the population of the colonies increased from 70,000 to 334,000. With new immigrants and the growth of the capital cities, each of which served as the major port for its region, the Australian colonies were poised to enter a new phase of development.

In April 1851 Edward Hargraves found gold at Summer Hill Creek, near Bathurst in New South Wales. Hargraves had recently returned from the California gold rush, and his find precipitated a new rush to the other side of the Pacific. After additional finds, the rush quickly became centered in Victoria at Mount Alexander (focused on the town of Castlemaine), Ballarat, and Bendigo. These concentrations of rich minerals offset the dispersion of sheep farming settlements and created Australia’s largest inland towns. Gold was later found elsewhere in New South Wales and Queensland.

In the following ten years, Australia exported at least 30 million ounces (850 metric tons) of gold. In a single decade the Australian population trebled from 400,000 to 1.2 million, and Melbourne, the gateway to the new goldfields, overtook Sydney as the largest city in Australia. British and Irish immigrants led the rush, but Americans, Germans, Italians, and Canadians also arrived in unprecedented numbers. In Victoria miners quickly became irritated with the high cost of mining licenses and the regulation of their right to search for gold. After miners staged an uprising at the Eureka claim at Ballarat in December 1854, the license fee for miners was replaced with an export tariff on gold (see Eureka Rebellion). Miners thereafter held a miner’s right instead of a license; for the fee of one pound per year, the miner’s right also gave them the right to vote.

Both miners and colonists responded with alarm, and fierce racial hatred, to the influx of Chinese immigrants attracted by gold. In 1856 Victoria restricted the entry of Chinese. By the end of the century, exclusionary legislation in several colonies had established the foundations of the so-called White Australia Policy, which was made explicit by the new federal government in 1901. For a while it seemed that Queensland, which began to bring in Polynesian laborers for its sugarcane plantations in the 1860s, might remain at odds with the other colonies; it eventually conformed, however, and small-scale sugar farms run by whites replaced the plantations. For many decades thereafter, the White Australia Policy continued to limit the number of non-Europeans immigrating to Australia for purposes of permanent settlement.

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Development of Political Institutions

Unlike most other British colonies, those in Australia were slow to attain a significant measure of self-government. The colonial wealth generated by gold hastened the movement toward colonial independence. The abolition of convict transportation was also a factor, as the colonies transformed into free settlements. In 1842 New South Wales was granted an enlarged legislative council, with two-thirds of its members to be elected. In 1852 New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, and Van Diemen’s Land (which changed its name to Tasmania in 1856) were allowed to draw up new constitutions, and these were all approved by the British Parliament by 1856. (Similar constitutions were approved for Queensland when it became a colony in 1859 and for Western Australia in 1890.) The constitutions provided for bicameral (two-chamber) parliaments, with most of the membership elected on a franchise based on property qualifications. Property qualifications were lower for elections to the lower houses, or assemblies, than to the upper houses, or councils. Executive power was held in each colony by a premier and a cabinet or council of ministers, who were required to maintain the support of the lower house. Voting by secret ballot (instead of by raising hands) and other innovations made the new colonial governments quite democratic. In general, the more property-based upper houses tended to counter the reformist leanings of the lower houses.

The colonies then set out to gain control over their land policies. The gold rush generation—the most skilled, best educated, and politically aware in Australia’s colonial history—led demands to break the squatters’ hold on the land. Several colonies passed acts to enable settlers to acquire land on credit and establish small farms.

In the 1860s the gold rush ebbed, although deep-shaft mining sustained the main centers into the 1890s, and new mineral fields continued to be discovered in western New South Wales, Queensland, and Western Australia. Although wool exports kept the colonies fairly prosperous, colonial debate soon centered on the role of government in the economy. In particular, railroad construction became a government activity because of the huge costs involved.

In 1866 Victoria, followed by South Australia and Tasmania, adopted a policy of high tariffs on imported goods in order to protect its own small industries and markets. New South Wales (and Queensland to a lesser extent) maintained a free-trade policy.

Throughout the 1870s and 1880s, arguments over free trade versus protection divided the press, the political parties, and the colonies. This, together with the continuing jealousies among them, hindered any significant attempts at cooperation and possible union among the six colonies until the 1890s.

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Colonial-Aboriginal Conflict

Phillip’s initial settlement at Sydney brought him into contact with Aboriginal people, many of whom used the surrounding lands as their campsites and hunting domains. The governor had sought “to conciliate their affections,” and relatively few major confrontations took place between colonists and indigenous people in the first decade. As more settlers arrived, however, conflict intensified. On the mainland, the Aboriginal communities were forced to retreat into the drier interior as graziers sought lands for their sheep runs. In the early 1820s troops were deployed near Bathurst, northwest of Sydney, in response to reports of an “exterminating war” between graziers and Aboriginal people. Conflicts were deadliest in Van Diemen’s Land, where in 1828 Lieutenant Governor Arthur proclaimed martial law in an attempt to drive Aboriginal people from the settled districts. Unable to overcome colonial arms and fears, and despite the official British policy of protection, the 5,000 Aboriginal people of the island were quickly reduced to a tiny remnant confined to Flinders Island in Bass Strait. See also Colonial-Aboriginal Wars.

In principle, the official colonial policy throughout the 19th century was to treat the Aboriginal people as equals, with the intention of eventually converting them to Christianity and European civilization. Governor Macquarie even established a school for Aboriginal children. Although official policy stressed good intentions, such acts were frequently not supported and were sometimes even actively resisted.

In the 1830s and 1840s Christian missions and protectorates were established throughout Australia, and many Aboriginal people were sent to them. The protectorates were created under British legislation requiring the protection of indigenous peoples throughout the British Empire. They were often formed under religious auspices, although most later came under state control. Mission life had a profound and lasting impact on the lives of Aboriginal families. Many, if not most, Aboriginal people lived under the influence of the missions, which in the early 20th century became the main conduit for Aboriginal children being fostered or adopted into white families.

The clash between whites and Aboriginal people was especially severe on the frontier. In the 1830s and 1840s, as settlers pushed inland, some Aboriginal people were employed on sheep stations, and others were used for police patrols, but even some active church efforts to serve and educate the Aboriginal people did not stabilize race relations. White settlers sometimes poisoned and hunted Aboriginal people and abused and exploited Aboriginal women and children. The primary causes of the catastrophic decline in Aboriginal population, however, were probably European-introduced diseases such as smallpox and measles, malnutrition, and alcoholism and its associated violence. Between 1788 and 1930 the Aboriginal population fell from as many as 500,000 to less than 100,000. By the 20th century Aboriginal people living in their traditional way were largely confined to remote areas of the Northern Territory, Queensland, and Western Australia. Not until the 1950s did the Aboriginal population begin to inch back to its level prior to European contact, and not until the 1970s did the federal government begin to review and correct past policies.

In addition, government-sponsored assimilation policies encouraged the eradication of Indigenous Australian culture. From 1910 to 1970 at least 100,000 indigenous children, especially those of mixed descent, were forcibly removed from their parents and communities. Placed in state institutions, church missions, or white foster families, they were completely cut off from their own culture and assimilated into white society. Those who were removed in this way later became known as the Stolen Generations. The practice officially ended in the late 1960s, but the effects would be felt for generations to come.

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Cities and Suburbs

Between 1851 and 1891 the Australian population grew from 437,000 to 3.2 million. It became one of the fastest growing and most urbanized regions of the world. In 1891 more than one-third of Australians lived in the six capital cities. The largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney, were as populous as all but the largest European and American cities. The colonial cities sprawled; Melbourne’s 473,000 people occupied as much area as London’s 4.7 million.

People gathered in the cities in part because the staple industry, grazing, employed relatively few people. Mining, the next most significant industry, was based on exhaustible resources in remote locations and usually did not produce permanent settlements. Increased urbanization was also a reflection of the high demand for urban goods and services in a prosperous and increasingly suburbanized society. Australian per capita incomes exceeded those of the United States and other developed countries. Australia was arguably the first suburban nation. Working people, who formed the bulk of colonial immigrants, were often able to aspire to homes and gardens of their own. However, many of their houses were cheap and flimsy shanties built on low-lying, badly drained allotments. Sydney and Melbourne had typhoid rates equal to the worst-hit European cities.

Each capital served as the major port and administrative center for its respective colony. Perceiving others as rivals, each tended to emphasize its own identity. Newspapers and colonial politicians talked up their differences. The rivalry between Melbourne and Sydney was especially intense. Until the 1890s contacts between individual colonies were secondary to their ties with Britain. Even when transport and communications links were established between the colonies, these did as much to divide as to unite them. In fact, each of the eastern colonies—Victoria, New South Wales, and Queensland—built its railways to a different gauge.

The capital cities were also the center of political change. In the 1850s merchants and professionals agitated for political reform and the drafting of new colonial constitutions. Small-scale manufacturers and early trade union leaders aided the passage of tariff and industrial legislation favorable to the urban working class. In 1856 Victoria’s stonemasons successfully struck in support of an eight-hour working day, the beginning of a movement that rapidly secured support across all the colonies. All the colonies established systems of free, compulsory, and secular primary education by the 1880s, making education primarily a government responsibility. The power base for most reforms crossed class lines, although by 1890 trade unionists were moving steadily toward the formation of their own political party. By the 1890s Australia was widely regarded as a pacesetter in progressive social legislation.

The culture of the cities was essentially British. Many colonial Australians read, with a three-month delay due to distance, the books and newspapers being read and discussed in London. However, a small number of Australian writers began to command a wider public. Local themes took precedence in For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) by Marcus Clarke and Clara Morrison: A Tale of South Australia During the Gold Fever (1854) by Catherine Helen Spence. Despite the dominance of the cities, by the 1880s Australians had begun to fashion a national identity based on the romantic images of the sheep shearer, small farmer (known as a selector), and miner. Short-story writer Henry Lawson and balladist A. B. “Banjo” Paterson became the leaders of a literary movement based in Sydney that celebrated the rugged countryside—known as the bush or outback—as the original source of Australian ideals. The movement was associated with the Sydney weekly journal the Bulletin. The true bushman, as portrayed by the Bulletin writers, was both an individualist who was a natural rebel against authority and a collectivist who was a loyal comrade, or “mate.” The archetypal bushman struggled against his boss and the squatter, but his most implacable enemy was the harsh, waterless country of the outback. As distinctive as these writers’ outlook was their vernacular style, which echoed the laconic speech and sardonic humor of the people they characterized.

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Movement Toward Federation

Federation of the Australian colonies came later than similar movements elsewhere. The idea of unification appeared as early as 1847 in proposals by Earl Grey, Britain’s colonial secretary. In the 1850s John Dunmore Lang, a Scottish Presbyterian cleric in New South Wales, formed the Australian League to campaign for a united Australia. Conferences among colonial governments in the 1860s also considered closer cooperation and unification. With the formation of the Dominion of Canada in 1867, British officials began to expect a similar effort among Australians. No plan, however, received serious attention, due to the intense rivalries among the colonies.

In the 1880s the prospect of European—as distinct from British—colonization of the Pacific triggered fears of Australia’s lack of defense. Queensland, anticipating German moves, claimed Papua on New Guinea in 1883 but, unable to support this claim, had to urge Britain to rule the territory and to claim other islands. Concerned that they might not be able to direct British policy in their interests and aware of the emergence of new powers in Europe, the Australian colonies created a Federal Council in 1885, but it was merely a consultative body, with no legislative or executive powers. The refusal of New South Wales to participate in the council meetings doomed this effort at federalism.

Other developments during the 1880s, however, served to keep the idea of unification alive. As trade and communications between the colonies advanced, pressure mounted for the lowering of the customs barriers between them. Debate over the White Australia Policy demonstrated the need for uniform immigration rules. As more Australian workers unionized, trade unions became more centralized, suggesting the attractiveness of a single economic and political system. Unstable economic conditions and outright depression by 1892 contributed to the development of labor parties in each colony to represent worker interests.

In the early 1890s the long economic boom that had sustained the colonies’ progress since the 1860s came to an abrupt end. The crash hit Melbourne especially hard, and helped to shift the initiative in the federal movement from Victoria, where it had been strong during the 1880s, to New South Wales. In 1889 the premier of New South Wales, Henry Parkes, announced his support for a new form of federalism that was not based on the Federal Council model. In 1891 a convention of colonial delegates in Sydney began drafting a federal constitution, but political and regional rivalries slowed the process. It was 1897 before the policymakers agreed upon a draft constitution and 1899 before the Australian people finally approved it. The Commonwealth of Australia was accordingly approved by the British Parliament in 1900 and became a reality on January 1, 1901.

The federal constitution reflected both British and American constitutional models. It incorporated the British principle of parliamentary government, with cabinets responsible to a bicameral legislature, but, as in the United States, delegated only specific, limited powers to the federal government. The new House of Representatives, like the British House of Commons, was based on popular representation, but the Senate, like its American counterpart, preserved the representation of the six colonies, which now became states. As neither Sydney nor Melbourne was an acceptable federal capital, in 1911 the Australian Capital Territory was established for a new capital, Canberra—again based on the Washington, D.C., model.

The trade unions led the way in developing Australia’s political party system. Some larger unions of miners and sheep shearers were already federal in structure before 1901. The Labor Party, founded by the combined unions through the Trades Hall Councils, moved to adopt a national program and required its parliamentary representatives to carry out the party’s program by voting as a bloc. The effectiveness of this model of disciplined class-based party organization was demonstrated when Labor gained office nationally in 1904. Other parties quickly followed Labor’s lead.

Meanwhile, women in Australia were securing more political rights. In 1894 the women of South Australia won the right to vote, making them the first women of a British colony after New Zealand to do so. In 1902 the new commonwealth government extended that right to all Australian women.

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