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History of Australia (1851-1900)
Encyclopedia
The History of Australia(1851–1900) refers to the history of the indigenous and colonial peoples of the Australian continent during the 50 year period which preceded the foundation of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901.
Gold rushes
and agricultural industries brought prosperity and autonomous Parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the colonies from the mid-19th century. British settlers continued their expansion across the continent into the lands of the Indigenous Australians
and European explorers
were sent deep into the interior. The development of railways and the telegraph brought the disparate settlements closer together and a stronger sense of national identity emerged, evidenced in the writings of the bush ballad
eers and painters of the Heidelberg School
. A movement for the six colonies to come together in a federation
gathered strength and by the close of the century the colonies had voted to unite.
in New South Wales and then in the newly formed colony of Victoria, transformed Australia economically, politically and demographically. The goldrushes occurred hard on the heels of a major worldwide economic depression. As a result, about two per cent of the population of Britain and Ireland immigrated to NSW and Victoria during the 1850s. There were also large numbers of continental Europeans, North Americans and Chinese.
The rushes began in 1851 with the announcement of the discovery of payable gold
near Bathurst
by Edward Hargraves
. In that year New South Wales had about 200,000 people, a third of them within a day's ride of Sydney, the rest scattered along the coast and through the pastoral districts, from the Port Phillip District
in the south to Moreton Bay
in the north. In 1836 a new colony of South Australia
had been established, and its territory separated from New South Wales. The gold rushes of the 1850s brought a huge influx of settlers, although initially the majority of them went to the richest gold fields at Ballarat
and Bendigo
, in the Port Phillip District, which in 1851 was separated to become the colony of Victoria
.
Victoria soon had a larger population than New South Wales, and its upstart capital, Melbourne
, outgrew Sydney. But the New South Wales gold fields also attracted a flood of prospectors, and by 1857 the colony had more than 300,000 people. Inland towns like Bathurst, Goulburn
, Orange
and Young
flourished. Gold brought great wealth but also new social tensions. Multiethnic migrants came to New South Wales in large numbers for the first time. Young became the site of an infamous anti-Chinese miner riot in 1861 and the official Riot Act
was read to the miners on the 14th July – the only official reading in the history of New South Wales. Despite some tension, the influx of migrants also brought fresh ideas from Europe and North America to New South Wales – Norwegians introduced Skiing in Australia
to the hills above the Snowy Mountains
gold rush town of Kiandra around 1861. A famous Australian son was also born to a Norwegian miner in 1867, when the bush ballad
eer Henry Lawson
was born at the Grenfell goldfields
.
In 1858 a new gold rush began in the far north, which led in 1859 to the separation of Queensland
as a new colony. New South Wales thus attained its present borders, although what is now the Northern Territory
remained part of the colony until 1863, when it was handed over to South Australia. The separation and rapid growth of Victoria and Queensland mark the real beginning of New South Wales as a political and economic entity distinct from the other Australian colonies. Rivalry between New South Wales and Victoria was intense throughout the second half of the 19th century, and the two colonies developed in different directions. Once the easy gold ran out by about 1860, Victoria absorbed the surplus labour
force from the gold fields in manufacturing, protected by high tariff
walls. Victoria became the Australian stronghold of protectionism
, liberalism
and radicalism
. New South Wales, which was less radically affected demographically by the gold rushes, remained more conservative, still dominated politically by the squatter class and its allies in the Sydney business community. New South Wales, as a trading and exporting colony, remained wedded to free trade
.
Gold produced sudden wealth for a few, and some of Australia's oldest wealthy families date their fortunes from this period, but also employment and modest prosperity for many more. Within a few years these new settlers outnumbered the convicts and ex-convicts, and they began to demand trial by jury, representative government, a free press and the other symbols of liberty and democracy. Contrary to popular myth, there was little opposition to these demands from the colonial governors or the Colonial Office
in London, although there was some from the squatters
. New South Wales had already had a partly elected Legislative Council since 1825.
The Eureka Stockade
of 1854, an armed protest by miners on the Victorian goldfields, and the debate that followed, served as a significant impetus for democratising reforms. The rebellion came about as a result of opposition to government mining licences. Licence fees had to be paid regardless of whether a digger's claim resulted in any gold and less successful operators found it difficult to pay their licence fees. Official corruption was another concern. In November 1854, thousands of diggers rallied to call for the abolition of the licence fee and the vote for all males. A Reform League was formed, with some of its leaders linked to the Chartist
movement in England. On 30 November, a mass buring of licenses took place and protesters marched to the Eureka Diggings and constructed a stockade. Led by Peter Lalor
, 500 men swore an oath under a flag featuring the Southern Cross
and prepared to defend the stockade. On 3 December, the colonial troops attacked the stockade and a twenty minute battle ensued in which 22 diggers and 5 soldiers were killed. Thirteen diggers committed for trial were all acquitted and the following year the government granted the demands of the rebels. In the subsequent 1855 elections, Peter Lalor became the first Member of the Legislative Council for the seat of Ballarat.
In 1855 New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania
(as Van Diemen's Land was renamed) were granted full responsible government, with bicameral parliaments in which the lower houses were fully elected. The upper houses (Legislative Councils) remained dominated by government appointees and representatives of the squatters, worried that the radical democrats might try to seize their vast sheep-runs. Their fears were partly justified, with the Selection Acts
of the 1860s, in particular the Robertson Land Acts
of 1861, beginning the slow breakup of the squattocracy in Australia's more settled areas.
The arrival of old world
diseases were a catastrophe for the Aboriginal Australians. Between first European contact and the early years of the 20th century, the Aboriginal population dropped from an estimated 500,000 to about one tenth of that number (50,000). Smallpox
, measles
, and influenza
were major killers, many others added their toll; for a people without the thousands of years of genetically evolved resistance to diseases that Europeans had, even chickenpox
was deadly.
Bushrangers, originally referred to runaway convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia
who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australia
n bush
as a refuge to hide from the authorities. The term "bushranger" then evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base. These bushrangers were roughly analogous to British "highwaymen
" and American "Old West outlaws," and their crimes often included robbing small-town banks or coach services.
More than 2000 bushrangers are believed to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly
's last stand at Glenrowan.
Bold Jack Donahue
is recorded as the last convict bushranger. He was reported in newspapers around 1827 as being responsible for an outbreak of bushranging on the road between Sydney
and Windsor
. Throughout the 1830s he was regarded as the most notorious bushranger in the colony. Leading a band of escaped convicts, Donahue became central to Australian folklore as the Wild Colonial Boy.
Bushranging was common on the mainland, but Van Diemen's Land
(Tasmania
) produced the most violent and serious outbreaks of convict bushrangers. Hundreds of convicts were at large in the bush, farms were abandoned and martial law was proclaimed. Indigenous outlaw Musquito
defied colonial law and led attacks on settlers
The bushrangers' heyday was the Gold Rush
years of the 1850s and 1860s.
There was much bushranging activity in the Lachlan Valley
, around Forbes
, Yass
and Cowra
in News South Wales. Frank Gardiner
, John Gilbert
and Ben Hall led the most notorious gangs of the period. Other active bushrangers included Dan Morgan
, based in the Murray River
, and Captain Thunderbolt
, killed outside Uralla.
The increasing push of settlement, increased police efficiency, improvements in rail transport
and communications technology, such as telegraphy
, made it increasingly difficult for bushrangers to evade capture.
Among the last bushrangers was the Kelly Gang led by Ned Kelly
, who were captured at Glenrowan in 1880, two years after they were outlawed. Kelly was born in Victoria
to an Irish convict
father, and as a young man he clashed with the Victoria Police
. Following an incident at his home in 1878, police parties searched for him in the bush. After he killed three policemen, the colony proclaimed Kelly and his gang wanted outlaw
s.
A final violent confrontation with police took place at Glenrowan
on 28 June 1880. Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour
and helmet, was captured and sent to jail. He was hanged for murder at Old Melbourne Gaol in November 1880. His daring and notoriety made him an iconic
figure in Australian history, folklore, literature, art and film.
Some bushrangers, most notably Ned Kelly in his Jerilderie Letter
, and in his final raid on Glenrowan, explicitly represented themselves as political rebels. Attitudes to Kelly, by far the most well-known bushranger, exemplify the ambivalent views of Australians regarding bushranging.
and the Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt
, had met tragic ends attempting to fill in the gaps during the 1840s, but explorers remained ambitious to discover new lands for agriculture or answer scientific enquiries. Surveyors also acted as explorers and the colonies sent out expeditions to discover the best routes for lines of communication. The size of expeditions varied considerably from small parties of just two or three to large, well equipped teams led by gentlemen explorers assisted by smiths, carpenters, labourers and Aboriginal guides accompanied by horses, camels or bullocks.
In 1860, the ill-fated Burke and Wills led the first north-south crossing of the continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria
. Lacking bushcraft and unwilling to learn from the local Aboriginal people, Burke and Wills died in 1861, having returned from the Gulf to their rendez-vous point at Coopers Creek only to discover the rest of their party had departed the location only a matter of hours previously. Though an impressive feat of navigation, the expedition was an organisational disaster which continues to fascinate the Australian public.
In 1862, John McDouall Stuart
succeeded in traversing Central Australia from south to north. His expedition mapped out the route which was later followed by the Australian Overland Telegraph Line
.
Uluru
and Kata Tjuta
were first mapped by Europeans in 1872 during the expeditionary period made possible by the construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line
. In separate expeditions, Ernest Giles
and William Gosse
were the first European explorers to this area. While exploring the area in 1872, Giles sighted Kata Tjuta from a location near Kings Canyon
and called it Mount Olga, while the following year Gosse observed Uluru and named it Ayers Rock, in honor of the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. These barren desert lands of Central Australia disappointed the Europeans as unpromising for pastoral expansion, but would later come to be appreciated as emblematic of Australia.
The steady encroachment of European explorers and pastoralists into the lands of the Aborigines met with a variety of responses, from friendly or curious to fearful or violent reactions. Very often, early European expoloratory expeditions only succeeded by means of the assistance rendered by Aboriginal guides or negotiators or by advice from tribes encountered along the expeditionary route. Nevertheless, the arrival of Europeans profoundly disrupted Aboriginal society. According to the historian Geoffrey Blainey
, in Australia during the colonial period: "In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to another ... The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and it ally, demoralisation".
Pastoralists often established themselves beyond the frontiers of European settlement and competition for water and land between indigenous people and cattlemen was a source of potential conflict - especially in the arid interior. In later decades Aboriginal men began working as skilled stockmen on outback cattle stations.
Christian missionaries sought to convert Aboriginal people. Prominent Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson (born 1965), who was raised at a Lutheran mission in Cape York
, has written that Christian missions throughout Australia's colonial history "provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation".
Some Anthropological work was also conducted among the Aborigines during the period. A pioneering and landmark work on indigenous Australia was conducted by Walter Baldwin Spencer
and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of Central Australia in (1899) earned international renown and provides a valuable 19th century study of an indigenous Australian society. Around this time, Aboriginal welfare advocate and anthropologist Daisy Bates
commenced her work among the Aborigines after reading an allegation in The Times
about atrocities against Aboriginals in north-west Australia. Bates came to fear that the Aboriginal race was destined for extinction.
Once Europeans had gained control of Aboriginal territory, the local Aborigines who had not been affected by disease or conflict were generally pushed into reserves or missions. Others settled on the fringes of white settlement or worked as station hands for white farmers. Some either intermarried or bore children with Europeans. European diet, disease and alcohol adversely affected many Aboriginal people. A relative few remained living traditional lives un-affected by Europeans at the close of the 19th century - mainly in the far North and in the Centralian deserts.
The rapid economic expansion which followed the gold rushes produced a period of prosperity which lasted forty years, culminating in the great Land Boom of the 1880s. Melbourne in particular grew rapidly, becoming Australia's largest city and for a while the second-largest city in the British Empire
: its grand Victorian
buildings are a lasting reminder of the period. The traditional craft of Stonemasons in Melbourne were the first organised workers in the Australian labour movement
and in the world to win an eight-hour day in 1856.
Melbourne Trades Hall was opened in 1859 with Trades and Labour Council
s and Trades Hall
s opening in all cities and most regional towns in the following forty years. During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearer
s, miner
s, and stevedore
s (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all blue-collar jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day
and other benefits unheard of in Europe.
Australia gained a reputation as "the working man's paradise." Some employers tried to undercut the unions by importing Chinese labour. This produced a reaction which led to all the colonies restricting Chinese and other Asian immigration. This was the foundation of the White Australia Policy
. The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to continue for many years before gradually dissolving in the second half of the 20th century.
The Great Boom could not last forever, and in 1891 it gave way to the Great Crash, a decade-long depression
which created high unemployment, and ruined many businesses, and the employers responded by driving down wages. The unions responded with a series of strike
s, particularly the bitter and prolonged 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute
and the 1891
and 1894 shearers' strikes. The colonial ministries, made up for the most part of liberals
whom the unions had long seen as allies, turned sharply against the workers and there were a series of bloody confrontations, particularly in the pastoral areas of Queensland. The unions reacted to these defeats and what they saw as betrayals by liberal politicians by forming their own political parties
within their respective colonies, the forerunners of the Australian Labor Party
. These parties achieved rapid success: in 1899 Queensland saw the world's first Labour Party
parliamentary government, the Dawson
Government, which held office for six days.
The industrial struggles of the 1890s produced a new strain of Australian radicalism and nationalism
, exemplified in the Sydney-based magazine The Bulletin
, under its legendary editor J F Archibald. Writers such as A B "Banjo" Paterson
, Henry Lawson
and (a little later) Vance and Nettie Palmer
and Mary Gilmour promoted socialism
, republicanism
and Australian independence
. This newfound Australian consciousness also gave birth to a profound racism
, against Chinese, Japanese
and Indian immigrants. Attitudes towards indigenous Australians during the period varied from the outright armed hostility seen in earlier times to a paternalistic "smoothing the pillow" policy, designed to "civilise" the last remnants of what was considered a dying race.
By the mid 19th century, there was a strong desire for representative and responsible government in the colonies of Australia, fed by the democratic spirit of the goldfields
evident at the Eureka Stockade
and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping Europe
, the United States
and the British Empire. The end of convict transportation accelerated reform in the 1840s and 1850s. The Australian Colonies Government Act [1850] was a landmark development which granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments - though the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established Constitutional Monarchies
with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.
In 1855, limited self government was granted by London to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. An innovative secret ballot
was introduced in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia in 1856, in which the government supplied voting paper containing the names of candidates and voters could select in private. This system was adopted around the world, becoming known as the "Australian Ballot". 1855 also saw the granting of the right to vote to all male British subjects 21 years or over in South Australia
. This right was extended to Victoria in 1857 and New South Wales the following year. The other colonies followed until, in 1896, Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal male suffrage.
Propertied women in the colony of South Australia were granted the vote in local elections (but not parliamentary elections) in 1861. Henrietta Dugdale
formed the first Australian women's suffrage society in Melbourne
, Victoria in 1884. Women became eligible to vote for the Parliament of South Australia
in 1895. This was the first legislation in the world permitting women also to stand for election to political office and, in 1897, Catherine Helen Spence
became the first female political candidate for political office, unsuccessfully standing for election as a delegate to the Federal Convention on Australian Federation. Western Australia
granted voting rights to women in 1899.
Legally, Indigenous Australian males generally gained the right to vote during this period when Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia gave voting rights to all male British subjects over 21 - only Queensland and Western Australia barred Aboriginal people from voting. Thus, Aboriginal men and women voted in some juridictions for the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901. Early federal parliamentary reform and judicial interpretation however sought to limit Aboriginal voting in practice - a situation which endured until rights activists began campaigning in the 1940s.
Though the various parliaments of Australia have been constantly evolving, the key foundations for elected parliamentary government have maintained an historical continuity in Australia from the 1850s into the 21st century.
The 1890s depression (the most severe Australia had ever faced) made the inefficiencies of the six colonies seem ever more ridiculous, and, particularly in border areas, a push for an Australian Federation began. Other motives for Federation were the need for a common immigration policy (Queensland was busy importing indentured workers from New Caledonia
, known as Kanakas
, to work in the sugar industry: both the unions and the other colonies strongly opposed this), and fear of the other European powers, France and Germany, who were expanding into the region. British military leaders such as Horatio Kitchener urged Australia to create a national army and navy: this obviously required a federal government. It was also no coincidence that in the 1890s for the first time the majority of Australians, the children of the gold rush immigrants, were Australian-born.
Amid calls from London for the establishment of an intercolonial Australian army, and with the various colonies independently constructing railway lines, New South Wales Premier Sir Henry Parkes
addressed a rural audience in his 1889 Tenterfield Oration
, stating that the time had come to form a national executive government:
Parkes' vision called for a convention of Parliamentary representatives from the different colonies, to draft a constitution for the establishment of a national parliament, with two houses to legislate on "all great subjects". Though Parkes would not live to see it, each of these things would be achieved within a decade.
Parkes was the initial leader of the federation movement, but the other colonies tended to see it as a plot for New South Wales dominance, and an initial attempt to approve a federal constitution in 1891 failed. The cause was then taken up the Australian Natives Association
and younger politicians such as Alfred Deakin
and Edmund Barton
. Following a federalist convention in Corowa in 1893, the colonies agreed to hold elections for a Federal Convention, which met in various cities in 1897 and 1898.
A draft Constitution, largely written by the Queensland judge Sir Samuel Griffith
was approved, and was put to referendums in the colonies in 1899 and 1900. New South Wales voters rejected the draft because it gave too much power to the smaller colonies, but eventually a compromise was reached.
Discussions between Australian and British representatives led to adoption by the British Government of an Act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia late in 1900. The Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain
, nearly derailed the whole process by insisting that British courts retain their jurisdiction over Australia. The Australians eventually reluctantly agreed to this. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom gave her royal assent to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (Imp) on 9 July creating the Commonwealth and thus uniting the separate colonies on the continent under one federal government
. The Act came into effect on 1 January 1901.
The arts in Australia developed distinct and popular characteristics during the second half of the 19th century and the period remains in many respects, the foundation of many perceptions of Australia to this day. Christianity continued to play a central role in the culture outlook of the colonists and the Church of England
remained the largest denomination.
The origins of distinctly Australian painting is often associated with the Heidelberg School
of the 1880s-1890s. Artists such as Arthur Streeton
, Frederick McCubbin
and Tom Roberts
applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Some see strong connections between the art of the school and the wider Impressionist movement, while others point to earlier traditions of plain air painting elsewhere in Europe. Sayers states that "there remains something excitingly original and indisputably important in the art of the 1880s and 1890s", and that by this time "something which could be described as an Australian tradition began to be recognized".
Key figures in the School were Tom Roberts
, Arthur Streeton
(1867–1943), Frederick McCubbin
, and Charles Conder
. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers. The name itself comes from a camp Roberts and Streeton set up at a property near Heidelberg
, at the time on the rural outskirts of Melbourne
. Some of their paintings received international recognition, and many remain embedded in Australia's popular consciousness both inside and outside the art world.
Among the first Australian artists to gain a reputation overseas were the impressionist John Peter Russell
(during the 1880s) and Rupert Bunny
, a painter of landscape, allegory and sensual and intimate portraits. Opera singer Nellie Melba
(1861–1931) travelled to Europe in 1886 to commence her international career. She became among the best know Australians of the period and later participated in early gramophone recording and radio broadcasting.
The distinctive themes and origins of Australia's bush music can be traced to the songs sung by the convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of the British colonisation, beginning in 1788. Early Australian ballads sing of the harsh ways of life of the epoch and of such people and events as bushrangers, swagmen, drovers
, stockmen and shearer
s were popular during the 19th century. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: The Wild Colonial Boy
, Click Go The Shears
, The Dying Stockman and Moreton Bay. For much of its history, Australia's bush music belonged to an oral and folkloric tradition, and was only later published in print in volumes such as Banjo Paterson
's Old Bush Songs, in the 1890s. The lyrics of Waltzing Matilda
, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem
, and a quintessential early Australian country music
song were composed by the poet Banjo Paterson
in 1895.
Banjo Paterson's other seminal works include the bush ballad
s The Man From Snowy River
and Clancy of the Overflow
which remain classics of Australian literature
. Together with his contemporary Henry Lawson
, Paterson is considered among the most influential Australian writers. Lawson, the son of a Norwegian gold prospector wrote extensively on themes often seen as difinitive of an emerging Australian style - of egalitarianism
and mateship
among the young Australian society - as in such works as Shearers, in which he wrote:
Australian writers introduced the character of the Australian continent to world literature over the period. Early popular works told of a frontier
society - writers such as Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms
), Marcus Clarke
(For the Term of His Natural Life
) wrote of the bushranger
ing and convictism of nineteenth century Australia. Two Sydney journalists, J.F. Archibald and John Haynes
, founded The Bulletin
magazine: the first edition appeared on 31 January 1880. It was intended to be a journal of political and business commentary, with some literary content. Initially radical, nationalist, democratic and racist, it gained wide influence and became a celebrated entry-point to publication for Australian writers and cartoonists such as Henry Lawson
, Banjo Paterson
, Miles Franklin
, and the illustrator and novelist Norman Lindsay
. A celebrated literary debate
played out on the pages of the Bulletin about the nature of life in the Australian bush featuring the conflicting views of such as Paterson (called romantic) and Lawson (who saw bush life as exceedingly harsh) and notions of an Australian 'national character' were taking firmer root.
Christianity remained the overwhelmingly dominant religion of the colonists through the period - with the Church of England forming the largest denomination. The churches continued to establish missionary work among Australia's indigenous population. With earlier legal restrictions lifted on the observance of the Catholic religion, the Catholic population - largely Irish in origin - established an extensive school network and hospitals throughout the colonies. In 1857, Australia's first Catholic bishop John Bede Polding founded the first Australian order of nuns - the Sisters of the Good Samaritan
- to work in education and social work. The most famous Catholic religious of the period was Saint Mary Mackillop
, who co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart
in rural South Australia in 1866. Dedicated to the education of the children of the poor, it was the first religious order to be founded by an Australian. Mackillop established schools, orphanages and welfare institutions throughout the colonies. She became the first Australian to be honoured by canonisation as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church
in 2010.
South Australia was a haven for religious refugees leaving Europe over this period. German Lutherans established the influential Hermmannsberg Mission
in Central Australia in 1870. David Unaipon
who was to become a preacher and Australia's first Aboriginal author was born at Point McLeay Mission in South Australia in 1872. The son of Australia's first Aboriginal pastor, he is today honoured on the Australian $50 note.
The major churches established great cathedrals in the colonial capitals through the period - notably the Catholic St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
and St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
and the Anglican St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne
considered among the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in Australia.'Afghan camaleers' from British India were brought to Australia to help establish outback
transportation during the 19th century and Australia’s first mosque was built at Marree, South Australia
in 1861. Hindus came to the Australian colonies to work on cotton and sugar plantations and as merchants. A small number of Jews had come to Australia as convicts on the First Fleet
and continued to come as free settlers throughout the 19th century. Buddhists first arrived in large numbers during the gold rushes - Chinese labourers who travelled to the goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales. There were perhaps 27,000 in Victoria by 1857. However, these numbers had declined significantly by the end of the 19th century as many Chinese returned to their homeland.
The Victorian era saw the construction of many other grand public edifices throughout the colonies - including the Parliament buildings of the newly democratic colonies, art galleries, libraries and theatres. The University of Sydney
had been founded in 1850 as Australia's first university, and was followed in 1853 by Melbourne University. The National Gallery of Victoria
was founded in 1861, becoming an important repository of world and local art within Australia. The Royal Exhibition Building
, a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, was completed in 1880. The opulent Romanesque
shopping arcade Queen Victoria Building
, was completed in 1898 on the site of the old Sydney markets and built as a monument to the popular and long reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. The Victorian era remains a seminal period for the historic architecture of many Australian cities and towns.
Over the period, the foundations of the popularity of many Australian sports
took root. Intercolonial cricket in Australia
started in 1851 and Sheffield Shield inter-state cricket continues to this day. The 1876-77 season was notable for a match between a combined XI from New South Wales and Victoria and the touring Englishmen at the Melbourne Cricket Ground
, which was later recognised as the first Test Match
. A famous victory on the 1882 tour of England resulted in the placement of a satirical obituary
in an English newspaper saying that English cricket had "died", and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The English media then dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to "regain the ashes". The tradition continues with The Ashes
series remaining one of the most anticipated events on the international cricketing calendar.
The first reports of a sport like rugby
being played in Australia date back to the 1820s when visiting ship crews would play army teams in Sydney. However, it was in 1864, that the first formal club
was formed at Sydney University. From this beginning, the first metropolitan competition in Australia developed, formally beginning in 1874. The first inter-colonial match was played in Sydney in 1882 and the first international kicked off in 1899 when an Australian team composed of players from New South Wales and Queensland (a forerunner of the Australian Wallabies) played a first Test series - against a visiting team from the British Isles.
The game of Australian Rules Football
began evolving in Melbourne from inter-school games resembling rugby - the first being played in 1858. Melbourne football, geographically isolated, evolved various rule changes and was codified in 1877 when the Victorian Football Association was formed.
Gold rushes
Australian gold rushes
The Australian gold rush started in 1851 when prospector Edward Hammond Hargraves claimed the discovery of payable gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, at a site Edward Hargraves called Ophir.Eight months later, gold was found in Victoria...
and agricultural industries brought prosperity and autonomous Parliamentary democracies began to be established throughout the colonies from the mid-19th century. British settlers continued their expansion across the continent into the lands of the Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians
Indigenous Australians are the original inhabitants of the Australian continent and nearby islands. The Aboriginal Indigenous Australians migrated from the Indian continent around 75,000 to 100,000 years ago....
and European explorers
European exploration of Australia
The European exploration of Australia encompasses several waves of seafarers and land explorers. Although Australia is often loosely said to have been discovered by Royal Navy Lieutenant James Cook in 1770, he was merely one of a number of European explorers to have sighted and landed on the...
were sent deep into the interior. The development of railways and the telegraph brought the disparate settlements closer together and a stronger sense of national identity emerged, evidenced in the writings of the bush ballad
Bush ballad
Bush songs or bush ballads are a folk music and poetry tradition in Australia's outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia, a young country. The lyrical tradition of bush songs was born of settlers and influenced by Aboriginal...
eers and painters of the Heidelberg School
Heidelberg School
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism....
. A movement for the six colonies to come together in a federation
Federation of Australia
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia formed one nation...
gathered strength and by the close of the century the colonies had voted to unite.
Gold rushes
The discovery of gold, beginning in 1851 first at BathurstBathurst, New South Wales
-CBD and suburbs:Bathurst's CBD is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is approximately 25 hectares and surrounds two city blocks. Within this block layout is banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park* and monuments...
in New South Wales and then in the newly formed colony of Victoria, transformed Australia economically, politically and demographically. The goldrushes occurred hard on the heels of a major worldwide economic depression. As a result, about two per cent of the population of Britain and Ireland immigrated to NSW and Victoria during the 1850s. There were also large numbers of continental Europeans, North Americans and Chinese.
The rushes began in 1851 with the announcement of the discovery of payable gold
Australian gold rushes
The Australian gold rush started in 1851 when prospector Edward Hammond Hargraves claimed the discovery of payable gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, at a site Edward Hargraves called Ophir.Eight months later, gold was found in Victoria...
near Bathurst
Bathurst, New South Wales
-CBD and suburbs:Bathurst's CBD is located on William, George, Howick, Russell, and Durham Streets. The CBD is approximately 25 hectares and surrounds two city blocks. Within this block layout is banking, government services, shopping centres, retail shops, a park* and monuments...
by Edward Hargraves
Edward Hargraves
Edward Hammond Hargraves was a gold prospector who claimed to have found gold in Australia in 1851, starting the Australian gold rush....
. In that year New South Wales had about 200,000 people, a third of them within a day's ride of Sydney, the rest scattered along the coast and through the pastoral districts, from the Port Phillip District
Port Phillip District
The Port Phillip District was an historical administrative division of the Colony of New South Wales, existing from September 1836 until 1 July 1851, when it was separated from New South Wales and became the Colony of Victoria....
in the south to Moreton Bay
Moreton Bay
Moreton Bay is a bay on the eastern coast of Australia 45 km from Brisbane, Queensland. It is one of Queensland's most important coastal resources...
in the north. In 1836 a new colony of South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
had been established, and its territory separated from New South Wales. The gold rushes of the 1850s brought a huge influx of settlers, although initially the majority of them went to the richest gold fields at Ballarat
Ballarat, Victoria
Ballarat is a city in the state of Victoria, Australia, approximately west-north-west of the state capital Melbourne situated on the lower plains of the Great Dividing Range and the Yarrowee River catchment. It is the largest inland centre and third most populous city in the state and the fifth...
and Bendigo
Bendigo, Victoria
Bendigo is a major regional city in the state of Victoria, Australia, located very close to the geographical centre of the state and approximately north west of the state capital Melbourne. It is the second largest inland city and fourth most populous city in the state. The estimated urban...
, in the Port Phillip District, which in 1851 was separated to become the colony of Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
.
Victoria soon had a larger population than New South Wales, and its upstart capital, Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, outgrew Sydney. But the New South Wales gold fields also attracted a flood of prospectors, and by 1857 the colony had more than 300,000 people. Inland towns like Bathurst, Goulburn
Goulburn, New South Wales
Goulburn is a provincial city in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in Goulburn Mulwaree Council Local Government Area. It is located south-west of Sydney on the Hume Highway and above sea-level. On Census night 2006, Goulburn had a population of 20,127 people...
, Orange
Orange, New South Wales
Orange is a city in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. It is west of the state capital, Sydney, at an altitude of . Orange has an estimated population of 39,329 and the city is a major provincial centre....
and Young
Young, New South Wales
-Demographics:On census night, 7 August 2001, there were 6,821 people counted in Young. There were 238 people who identified as being of Indigenous origin in the 2001 Census...
flourished. Gold brought great wealth but also new social tensions. Multiethnic migrants came to New South Wales in large numbers for the first time. Young became the site of an infamous anti-Chinese miner riot in 1861 and the official Riot Act
Riot Act
The Riot Act was an Act of the Parliament of Great Britain that authorised local authorities to declare any group of twelve or more people to be unlawfully assembled, and thus have to disperse or face punitive action...
was read to the miners on the 14th July – the only official reading in the history of New South Wales. Despite some tension, the influx of migrants also brought fresh ideas from Europe and North America to New South Wales – Norwegians introduced Skiing in Australia
Skiing in Australia
Skiing in Australia takes place in the high country of the states of New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, as well as in the Australian Capital Territory, during the Southern Hemisphere winter....
to the hills above the Snowy Mountains
Snowy Mountains
The Snowy Mountains, known informally as "The Snowies", are the highest Australian mountain range and contain the Australian mainland's highest mountain, Mount Kosciuszko, which reaches 2,228 metres AHD, approximately 7310 feet....
gold rush town of Kiandra around 1861. A famous Australian son was also born to a Norwegian miner in 1867, when the bush ballad
Bush ballad
Bush songs or bush ballads are a folk music and poetry tradition in Australia's outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia, a young country. The lyrical tradition of bush songs was born of settlers and influenced by Aboriginal...
eer Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
was born at the Grenfell goldfields
Grenfell, New South Wales
Grenfell is a country town in the Central West of New South Wales, Australia, in Weddin Shire. It is 370 kilometres west of Sydney and five hours' drive from the city. It is close to Forbes, Cowra and Young. At the 2006 census, Grenfell had a population of 1,994.-History:Prior to European...
.
In 1858 a new gold rush began in the far north, which led in 1859 to the separation of Queensland
Queensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
as a new colony. New South Wales thus attained its present borders, although what is now the Northern Territory
Northern Territory
The Northern Territory is a federal territory of Australia, occupying much of the centre of the mainland continent, as well as the central northern regions...
remained part of the colony until 1863, when it was handed over to South Australia. The separation and rapid growth of Victoria and Queensland mark the real beginning of New South Wales as a political and economic entity distinct from the other Australian colonies. Rivalry between New South Wales and Victoria was intense throughout the second half of the 19th century, and the two colonies developed in different directions. Once the easy gold ran out by about 1860, Victoria absorbed the surplus labour
Surplus labour
Surplus labour is a concept used by Karl Marx in his critique of political economy. It means labour performed in excess of the labour necessary to produce the means of livelihood of the worker . According to Marxian economics, surplus labour is usually "unpaid labour"...
force from the gold fields in manufacturing, protected by high tariff
Tariff
A tariff may be either tax on imports or exports , or a list or schedule of prices for such things as rail service, bus routes, and electrical usage ....
walls. Victoria became the Australian stronghold of protectionism
Protectionism
Protectionism is the economic policy of restraining trade between states through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, restrictive quotas, and a variety of other government regulations designed to allow "fair competition" between imports and goods and services produced domestically.This...
, liberalism
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
and radicalism
Radicalization
Radicalization is the process in which an individual changes from passiveness or activism to become more revolutionary, militant or extremist. Radicalization is often associated with youth, adversity, alienation, social exclusion, poverty, or the perception of injustice to self or others.-...
. New South Wales, which was less radically affected demographically by the gold rushes, remained more conservative, still dominated politically by the squatter class and its allies in the Sydney business community. New South Wales, as a trading and exporting colony, remained wedded to free trade
Free trade
Under a free trade policy, prices emerge from supply and demand, and are the sole determinant of resource allocation. 'Free' trade differs from other forms of trade policy where the allocation of goods and services among trading countries are determined by price strategies that may differ from...
.
Secretary of State for War and the Colonies
The Secretary of State for War and the Colonies was a British cabinet level position responsible for the army and the British colonies . The Department was created in 1801...
in London, although there was some from the squatters
Squatting (pastoral)
In Australian history, a squatter was one who occupied a large tract of Crown land in order to graze livestock. Initially often having no legal rights to the land, they gained its usage by being the first Europeans in the area....
. New South Wales had already had a partly elected Legislative Council since 1825.
The Eureka Stockade
Eureka Stockade
The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 was an organised rebellion by gold miners which occurred at Eureka Lead in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Battle of Eureka Stockade was fought on 3 December 1854 and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict...
of 1854, an armed protest by miners on the Victorian goldfields, and the debate that followed, served as a significant impetus for democratising reforms. The rebellion came about as a result of opposition to government mining licences. Licence fees had to be paid regardless of whether a digger's claim resulted in any gold and less successful operators found it difficult to pay their licence fees. Official corruption was another concern. In November 1854, thousands of diggers rallied to call for the abolition of the licence fee and the vote for all males. A Reform League was formed, with some of its leaders linked to the Chartist
Chartist
Chartist may refer to:*Chartist , a person who uses charts for technical analysis*Chartist , a British social democratic periodical*An adherent of Chartism, a 19th-century political and social reform movement in the UK...
movement in England. On 30 November, a mass buring of licenses took place and protesters marched to the Eureka Diggings and constructed a stockade. Led by Peter Lalor
Peter Lalor
Peter Fintan Lalor was an activist turned politician who rose to fame for his leading role in the Eureka Rebellion, an event controversially identified with the "birth of democracy" in Australia.- Early life and migration to Australia :...
, 500 men swore an oath under a flag featuring the Southern Cross
Eureka Flag
The Eureka Flag is a design; a dark blue field with a central white symmetric cross consisting five eight-pointed stars, representing the Crux constellation....
and prepared to defend the stockade. On 3 December, the colonial troops attacked the stockade and a twenty minute battle ensued in which 22 diggers and 5 soldiers were killed. Thirteen diggers committed for trial were all acquitted and the following year the government granted the demands of the rebels. In the subsequent 1855 elections, Peter Lalor became the first Member of the Legislative Council for the seat of Ballarat.
In 1855 New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
(as Van Diemen's Land was renamed) were granted full responsible government, with bicameral parliaments in which the lower houses were fully elected. The upper houses (Legislative Councils) remained dominated by government appointees and representatives of the squatters, worried that the radical democrats might try to seize their vast sheep-runs. Their fears were partly justified, with the Selection Acts
Selection (Australian history)
Selection referred to "free selection before survey" of crown land in some Australian colonies under land legislation introduced in the 1860s. These acts were similar to the United States Homestead Act and were intended to encourage closer settlement, based on intensive agriculture, such as...
of the 1860s, in particular the Robertson Land Acts
Robertson Land Acts
The Crown Lands Acts 1861 were introduced by the New South Wales Premier, John Robertson, in 1861 to reform land holdings and in particular to break the squatters' domination of land tenure...
of 1861, beginning the slow breakup of the squattocracy in Australia's more settled areas.
The arrival of old world
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....
diseases were a catastrophe for the Aboriginal Australians. Between first European contact and the early years of the 20th century, the Aboriginal population dropped from an estimated 500,000 to about one tenth of that number (50,000). Smallpox
Smallpox
Smallpox was an infectious disease unique to humans, caused by either of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The disease is also known by the Latin names Variola or Variola vera, which is a derivative of the Latin varius, meaning "spotted", or varus, meaning "pimple"...
, measles
Measles
Measles, also known as rubeola or morbilli, is an infection of the respiratory system caused by a virus, specifically a paramyxovirus of the genus Morbillivirus. Morbilliviruses, like other paramyxoviruses, are enveloped, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA viruses...
, and influenza
Influenza
Influenza, commonly referred to as the flu, is an infectious disease caused by RNA viruses of the family Orthomyxoviridae , that affects birds and mammals...
were major killers, many others added their toll; for a people without the thousands of years of genetically evolved resistance to diseases that Europeans had, even chickenpox
Chickenpox
Chickenpox or chicken pox is a highly contagious illness caused by primary infection with varicella zoster virus . It usually starts with vesicular skin rash mainly on the body and head rather than at the periphery and becomes itchy, raw pockmarks, which mostly heal without scarring...
was deadly.
The Bushrangers
History of Australia (1788-1850)
The history of Australia from 1788–1850 covers the early colonies period of Australia's history, from the arrival of the First Fleet of British ships at Sydney to establish the penal colony of New South Wales in 1788 to the European exploration of the continent and establishment of other colonies...
who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n bush
The Bush
"The bush" is a term used for rural, undeveloped land or country areas in certain countries.-Australia:The term is iconic in Australia. In reference to the landscape, "bush" describes a wooded area, intermediate between a shrubland and a forest, generally of dry and nitrogen-poor soil, mostly...
as a refuge to hide from the authorities. The term "bushranger" then evolved to refer to those who abandoned social rights and privileges to take up "robbery under arms" as a way of life, using the bush as their base. These bushrangers were roughly analogous to British "highwaymen
Highwayman
A highwayman was a thief and brigand who preyed on travellers. This type of outlaw, usually, travelled and robbed by horse, as compared to a footpad who traveled and robbed on foot. Mounted robbers were widely considered to be socially superior to footpads...
" and American "Old West outlaws," and their crimes often included robbing small-town banks or coach services.
More than 2000 bushrangers are believed to have roamed the Australian countryside, beginning with the convict bolters and drawing to a close after Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly
Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...
's last stand at Glenrowan.
Bold Jack Donahue
Jack Donahue
Jack Donohue was a bushranger in Australia. He had numerous ballads written about him, including Bold Jack Donahue.Jack Donahue was born in Dublin in 1806...
is recorded as the last convict bushranger. He was reported in newspapers around 1827 as being responsible for an outbreak of bushranging on the road between Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
and Windsor
Windsor, New South Wales
Windsor is a town in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Windsor is located in the local government area of the City of Hawkesbury. It sits on the Hawkesbury River, on the north-western outskirts of the Sydney metropolitan area. At the 2006 census, Windsor had a population of...
. Throughout the 1830s he was regarded as the most notorious bushranger in the colony. Leading a band of escaped convicts, Donahue became central to Australian folklore as the Wild Colonial Boy.
Bushranging was common on the mainland, but Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land
Van Diemen's Land was the original name used by most Europeans for the island of Tasmania, now part of Australia. The Dutch explorer Abel Tasman was the first European to land on the shores of Tasmania...
(Tasmania
Tasmania
Tasmania is an Australian island and state. It is south of the continent, separated by Bass Strait. The state includes the island of Tasmania—the 26th largest island in the world—and the surrounding islands. The state has a population of 507,626 , of whom almost half reside in the greater Hobart...
) produced the most violent and serious outbreaks of convict bushrangers. Hundreds of convicts were at large in the bush, farms were abandoned and martial law was proclaimed. Indigenous outlaw Musquito
Musquito
Musquito was an Indigenous Australian outlaw, or bushranger, based in Van Diemens Land. He was born in Sydney Cove and transported to Van Diemens Land for murdering his wife....
defied colonial law and led attacks on settlers
The bushrangers' heyday was the Gold Rush
Victorian gold rush
The Victorian gold rush was a period in the history of Victoria, Australia approximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. In 10 years the Australian population nearly tripled.- Overview :During this era Victoria dominated the world's gold output...
years of the 1850s and 1860s.
There was much bushranging activity in the Lachlan Valley
Lachlan River
- Course :The river rises in the central highland of New South Wales, part of the Great Dividing Range, 13 km east of Gunning. Its major headwaters, the Carcoar River, the Belubula River and the Abercrombie River converge near the town of Cowra. Minor tributaries include the Morongla Creek...
, around Forbes
Forbes, New South Wales
-Notable residents:*Carolyn Simpson - Judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales; Member of the first all-female bench to sit in an Australian court*NSW Deputy Premier Carmel Tebbutt was born and raised in Forbes....
, Yass
Yass, New South Wales
Yass is a town in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia in Yass Valley Shire. The name appears to have been derived from an Aboriginal word, "Yarrh" , said to mean 'running water'....
and Cowra
Cowra, New South Wales
Cowra is a town in the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia in the Cowra Shire. It is located on the Mid-Western Highway, 317 kilometres west of Sydney on the banks of the Lachlan River at an altitude of 310 metres above sea level. At the 2006 census Cowra had a population of 8,430...
in News South Wales. Frank Gardiner
Frank Gardiner
Frank Gardiner was a noted Australian bushranger of the 19th century. He was born in Scotland about 1827 and migrated from to Australia as a child with his parents in 1834,. His real name was Francis Christie, though he often used one of several other aliases including Gardiner, Clarke or Christie...
, John Gilbert
John Gilbert (bushranger)
Johnny Gilbert was an Australian bushranger shot dead by the police at the age of 23 near Binalong, New South Wales on 13 May 1865.John Gilbert was the only Australian bushranger never to go to prison...
and Ben Hall led the most notorious gangs of the period. Other active bushrangers included Dan Morgan
Dan Morgan (bushranger)
John Fuller was an Australian bushranger.Fuller was born in Appin, New South Wales, Australia around 1830 to George Fuller and Mary Owen. He was their illigitimate son and from the ages of 2 to 17 he lived with an adoptive father, John Roberts...
, based in the Murray River
Murray River
The Murray River is Australia's longest river. At in length, the Murray rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains and, for most of its length, meanders across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between New South Wales and Victoria as it...
, and Captain Thunderbolt
Captain Thunderbolt
Frederick Wordsworth Ward was an Australian bushranger renowned for escaping from Cockatoo Island, and also for his reputation as the "gentleman bushranger" and his lengthy survival, being the longest roaming bushranger in Australian history.-Early years:Frederick Ward was the son of convict...
, killed outside Uralla.
The increasing push of settlement, increased police efficiency, improvements in rail transport
History of rail transport in Australia
Following the British model, Australians generally assumed in the 1850s that railways would be built by the private sector . Private companies built railways in the then colonies of Victoria, opened in 1854, and New South Wales, where the company was taken-over by the government before completion...
and communications technology, such as telegraphy
Telegraphy
Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages via some form of signalling technology. Telegraphy requires messages to be converted to a code which is known to both sender and receiver...
, made it increasingly difficult for bushrangers to evade capture.
Among the last bushrangers was the Kelly Gang led by Ned Kelly
Ned Kelly
Edward "Ned" Kelly was an Irish Australian bushranger. He is considered by some to be merely a cold-blooded cop killer — others, however, consider him to be a folk hero and symbol of Irish Australian resistance against the Anglo-Australian ruling class.Kelly was born in Victoria to an Irish...
, who were captured at Glenrowan in 1880, two years after they were outlawed. Kelly was born in Victoria
Victoria (Australia)
Victoria is the second most populous state in Australia. Geographically the smallest mainland state, Victoria is bordered by New South Wales, South Australia, and Tasmania on Boundary Islet to the north, west and south respectively....
to an Irish convict
Convicts in Australia
During the late 18th and 19th centuries, large numbers of convicts were transported to the various Australian penal colonies by the British government. One of the primary reasons for the British settlement of Australia was the establishment of a penal colony to alleviate pressure on their...
father, and as a young man he clashed with the Victoria Police
Victoria Police
Victoria Police is the primary law enforcement agency of Victoria, Australia. , the Victoria Police has over 12,190 sworn members, along with over 400 recruits, reservists and Protective Service Officers, and over 2,900 civilian staff across 393 police stations.-Early history:The Victoria Police...
. Following an incident at his home in 1878, police parties searched for him in the bush. After he killed three policemen, the colony proclaimed Kelly and his gang wanted outlaw
Outlaw
In historical legal systems, an outlaw is declared as outside the protection of the law. In pre-modern societies, this takes the burden of active prosecution of a criminal from the authorities. Instead, the criminal is withdrawn all legal protection, so that anyone is legally empowered to persecute...
s.
A final violent confrontation with police took place at Glenrowan
Glenrowan, Victoria
Glenrowan is a small town located in the Wangaratta Local Government Area of Victoria, Australia. It is 184 kilometres north-east of Melbourne and 14 kilometres from Wangaratta and located near the Warby Ranges and Mount Glenrowan...
on 28 June 1880. Kelly, dressed in home-made plate metal armour
Armour
Armour or armor is protective covering used to prevent damage from being inflicted to an object, individual or a vehicle through use of direct contact weapons or projectiles, usually during combat, or from damage caused by a potentially dangerous environment or action...
and helmet, was captured and sent to jail. He was hanged for murder at Old Melbourne Gaol in November 1880. His daring and notoriety made him an iconic
Cultural icon
A cultural icon can be a symbol, logo, picture, name, face, person, building or other image that is readily recognized and generally represents an object or concept with great cultural significance to a wide cultural group...
figure in Australian history, folklore, literature, art and film.
Some bushrangers, most notably Ned Kelly in his Jerilderie Letter
The Jerilderie Letter
The Jerilderie Letter was dictated by infamous bushranger Ned Kelly to Joe Byrne in 1879. The letter is named after the town of Jerilderie, New South Wales, Australia where the Kelly gang carried out a daring robbery.-External links:...
, and in his final raid on Glenrowan, explicitly represented themselves as political rebels. Attitudes to Kelly, by far the most well-known bushranger, exemplify the ambivalent views of Australians regarding bushranging.
Exploration of the interior
European explorers made their last great, often arduous and sometimes tragic expeditions into the interior of Australia over the period - some with the official sponsorship of the colonial authorities and others commissioned by private investors. By 1850, large areas of the inland were still unknown to Europeans. Trailblazers like Edmund KennedyEdmund Kennedy
Edmund Besley Court Kennedy was an explorer in Australia in the mid nineteenth century. He was the Assistant-Surveyor of New South Wales, working with Sir Thomas Mitchell...
and the Prussian naturalist Ludwig Leichhardt
Ludwig Leichhardt
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt, known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a Prussian explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.-Early life:...
, had met tragic ends attempting to fill in the gaps during the 1840s, but explorers remained ambitious to discover new lands for agriculture or answer scientific enquiries. Surveyors also acted as explorers and the colonies sent out expeditions to discover the best routes for lines of communication. The size of expeditions varied considerably from small parties of just two or three to large, well equipped teams led by gentlemen explorers assisted by smiths, carpenters, labourers and Aboriginal guides accompanied by horses, camels or bullocks.
In 1860, the ill-fated Burke and Wills led the first north-south crossing of the continent from Melbourne to the Gulf of Carpentaria
Gulf of Carpentaria
The Gulf of Carpentaria is a large, shallow sea enclosed on three sides by northern Australia and bounded on the north by the Arafura Sea...
. Lacking bushcraft and unwilling to learn from the local Aboriginal people, Burke and Wills died in 1861, having returned from the Gulf to their rendez-vous point at Coopers Creek only to discover the rest of their party had departed the location only a matter of hours previously. Though an impressive feat of navigation, the expedition was an organisational disaster which continues to fascinate the Australian public.
In 1862, John McDouall Stuart
John McDouall Stuart
John McDouall Stuart was one of the most accomplished and famous of all Australia's inland explorers. Stuart led the first successful expedition to traverse the Australian mainland from south to north and return, and the first to do so from a starting point in South Australia, achieving this...
succeeded in traversing Central Australia from south to north. His expedition mapped out the route which was later followed by the Australian Overland Telegraph Line
Australian Overland Telegraph Line
The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was a 3200 km telegraph line that connected Darwin with Port Augusta in South Australia. Completed in 1872 the Overland Telegraph Line allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world. An additional section was added in 1877 with the...
.
Uluru
Uluru
Uluru , also known as Ayers Rock, is a large sandstone rock formation in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia. It lies south west of the nearest large town, Alice Springs; by road. Kata Tjuta and Uluru are the two major features of the Uluṟu-Kata Tjuṯa National Park....
and Kata Tjuta
Kata Tjuta
Kata Tjuta, sometimes written Tjuṯa , and also known as Mount Olga , are a group of large domed rock formations or bornhardts located about southwest of Alice Springs, in the southern part of the Northern Territory, central Australia...
were first mapped by Europeans in 1872 during the expeditionary period made possible by the construction of the Australian Overland Telegraph Line
Australian Overland Telegraph Line
The Australian Overland Telegraph Line was a 3200 km telegraph line that connected Darwin with Port Augusta in South Australia. Completed in 1872 the Overland Telegraph Line allowed fast communication between Australia and the rest of the world. An additional section was added in 1877 with the...
. In separate expeditions, Ernest Giles
Ernest Giles
William Ernest Powell Giles , best known as Ernest Giles, was an Australian explorer who led three major expeditions in central Australia.- Early life :...
and William Gosse
William Gosse
William Christie Gosse , explorer, was born in Hertfordshire, England and migrated to Australia with his father in 1850. He was educated at J.L. Young's Adelaide Educational Institution and in 1859 he entered the Government service of South Australia. He held various positions in the survey...
were the first European explorers to this area. While exploring the area in 1872, Giles sighted Kata Tjuta from a location near Kings Canyon
Kings Canyon (Northern Territory)
Kings Canyon is part of the Watarrka National Park in Northern Territory, Australia. Sitting at the western end of the George Gill Range, it is 323 km southwest of Alice Springs and 1,316 km south of Darwin.- Description :...
and called it Mount Olga, while the following year Gosse observed Uluru and named it Ayers Rock, in honor of the Chief Secretary of South Australia, Sir Henry Ayers. These barren desert lands of Central Australia disappointed the Europeans as unpromising for pastoral expansion, but would later come to be appreciated as emblematic of Australia.
Impact on indigenous population
Geoffrey Blainey
Geoffrey Norman Blainey AC , is a prominent Australian historian.Blainey was born in Melbourne and raised in a series of Victorian country towns before attending Wesley College and the University of Melbourne. While at university he was editor of Farrago, the newspaper of the University of...
, in Australia during the colonial period: "In a thousand isolated places there were occasional shootings and spearings. Even worse, smallpox, measles, influenza and other new diseases swept from one Aboriginal camp to another ... The main conqueror of Aborigines was to be disease and it ally, demoralisation".
Pastoralists often established themselves beyond the frontiers of European settlement and competition for water and land between indigenous people and cattlemen was a source of potential conflict - especially in the arid interior. In later decades Aboriginal men began working as skilled stockmen on outback cattle stations.
Christian missionaries sought to convert Aboriginal people. Prominent Aboriginal activist Noel Pearson (born 1965), who was raised at a Lutheran mission in Cape York
Cape York Peninsula
Cape York Peninsula is a large remote peninsula located in Far North Queensland at the tip of the state of Queensland, Australia, the largest unspoilt wilderness in northern Australia and one of the last remaining wilderness areas on Earth...
, has written that Christian missions throughout Australia's colonial history "provided a haven from the hell of life on the Australian frontier while at the same time facilitating colonisation".
Some Anthropological work was also conducted among the Aborigines during the period. A pioneering and landmark work on indigenous Australia was conducted by Walter Baldwin Spencer
Walter Baldwin Spencer
Sir Walter Baldwin Spencer KCMG was a British-Australian biologist and anthropologist.Baldwin was born in Stretford, Lancashire. His father, Reuben Spencer, who had come from Derbyshire in his youth, obtained a position with Rylands and Sons, cotton manufacturers, and rose to be chairman of its...
and Frank Gillen in their renowned anthropological study The Native Tribes of Central Australia in (1899) earned international renown and provides a valuable 19th century study of an indigenous Australian society. Around this time, Aboriginal welfare advocate and anthropologist Daisy Bates
Daisy Bates
-People:* Daisy May Bates , Australian journalist, author, amateur anthropologist and lifelong student of Indigenous Australian culture and society...
commenced her work among the Aborigines after reading an allegation in The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
about atrocities against Aboriginals in north-west Australia. Bates came to fear that the Aboriginal race was destined for extinction.
Once Europeans had gained control of Aboriginal territory, the local Aborigines who had not been affected by disease or conflict were generally pushed into reserves or missions. Others settled on the fringes of white settlement or worked as station hands for white farmers. Some either intermarried or bore children with Europeans. European diet, disease and alcohol adversely affected many Aboriginal people. A relative few remained living traditional lives un-affected by Europeans at the close of the 19th century - mainly in the far North and in the Centralian deserts.
Booms, depressions and trade unions
British Empire
The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom. It originated with the overseas colonies and trading posts established by England in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. At its height, it was the...
: its grand Victorian
Victorian architecture
The term Victorian architecture refers collectively to several architectural styles employed predominantly during the middle and late 19th century. The period that it indicates may slightly overlap the actual reign, 20 June 1837 – 22 January 1901, of Queen Victoria. This represents the British and...
buildings are a lasting reminder of the period. The traditional craft of Stonemasons in Melbourne were the first organised workers in the Australian labour movement
Australian labour movement
The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...
and in the world to win an eight-hour day in 1856.
Melbourne Trades Hall was opened in 1859 with Trades and Labour Council
Labour council
A labour council, trades council or industrial council is an association of labour unions or union branches in a given area. Most commonly, they represent unions in a given geographical area, whether at the district, city, region, or provincial or state level...
s and Trades Hall
Trades Hall
A Trades Hall is an English term for a building where trade unions meet together, or work from cooperatively, as a local representative organisation, known as a Labor Council or Trades Hall Council...
s opening in all cities and most regional towns in the following forty years. During the 1880s Trade unions developed among shearer
Sheep shearer
A sheep shearer is a worker who uses -blade or machine shears to remove wool from domestic sheep during crutching or shearing.-History:...
s, miner
Miner
A miner is a person whose work or business is to extract ore or minerals from the earth. Mining is one of the most dangerous trades in the world. In some countries miners lack social guarantees and in case of injury may be left to cope without assistance....
s, and stevedore
Stevedore
Stevedore, dockworker, docker, dock labourer, wharfie and longshoreman can have various waterfront-related meanings concerning loading and unloading ships, according to place and country....
s (wharf workers), but soon spread to cover almost all blue-collar jobs. Shortages of labour led to high wages for a prosperous skilled working class, whose unions demanded and got an eight-hour day
Eight-hour day
The eight-hour day movement or 40-hour week movement, also known as the short-time movement, had its origins in the Industrial Revolution in Britain, where industrial production in large factories transformed working life and imposed long hours and poor working conditions. With working conditions...
and other benefits unheard of in Europe.
White Australia policy
The White Australia policy comprises various historical policies that intentionally restricted "non-white" immigration to Australia. From origins at Federation in 1901, the polices were progressively dismantled between 1949-1973....
. The "Australian compact", based around centralised industrial arbitration, a degree of government assistance particularly for primary industries, and White Australia, was to continue for many years before gradually dissolving in the second half of the 20th century.
The Great Boom could not last forever, and in 1891 it gave way to the Great Crash, a decade-long depression
Recession
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...
which created high unemployment, and ruined many businesses, and the employers responded by driving down wages. The unions responded with a series of strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
s, particularly the bitter and prolonged 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute
1890 Australian maritime dispute
The 1890 Australian Maritime Dispute, commonly known as the 1890 Maritime Strike, was on a scale unprecedented in the Australian colonies to that point in time, causing political and social turmoil across all Australian colonies and in New Zealand, including the collapse of colonial governments in...
and the 1891
1891 Australian shearers' strike
350px|thumb|Shearers' strike camp, Hughenden, central Queensland, 1891.The 1891 shearers' strike is one of Australia's earliest and most important industrial disputes. Working conditions for sheep shearers in 19th century Australia weren't good. In 1891 wool was one of Australia's largest industries...
and 1894 shearers' strikes. The colonial ministries, made up for the most part of liberals
Liberalism
Liberalism is the belief in the importance of liberty and equal rights. Liberals espouse a wide array of views depending on their understanding of these principles, but generally, liberals support ideas such as constitutionalism, liberal democracy, free and fair elections, human rights,...
whom the unions had long seen as allies, turned sharply against the workers and there were a series of bloody confrontations, particularly in the pastoral areas of Queensland. The unions reacted to these defeats and what they saw as betrayals by liberal politicians by forming their own political parties
Political Parties
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...
within their respective colonies, the forerunners of the Australian Labor Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
. These parties achieved rapid success: in 1899 Queensland saw the world's first Labour Party
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party is an Australian political party. It has been the governing party of the Commonwealth of Australia since the 2007 federal election. Julia Gillard is the party's federal parliamentary leader and Prime Minister of Australia...
parliamentary government, the Dawson
Anderson Dawson
Andrew Dawson , usually known as Anderson Dawson, was an Australian politician, the Premier of Queensland for one week in 1899...
Government, which held office for six days.
The industrial struggles of the 1890s produced a new strain of Australian radicalism and nationalism
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, exemplified in the Sydney-based magazine The Bulletin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...
, under its legendary editor J F Archibald. Writers such as A B "Banjo" Paterson
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
, Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
and (a little later) Vance and Nettie Palmer
Vance and Nettie Palmer
Vance and Nettie Palmer were two of Australia's best-known literary figures from the 1920s to the 1950s. Edward Vivian "Vance" Palmer was a novelist, dramatist, essayist and critic. Janet Gertrude "Nettie" Palmer was a poet, essayist and Australia's leading literary critic...
and Mary Gilmour promoted socialism
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
, republicanism
Republicanism
Republicanism is the ideology of governing a nation as a republic, where the head of state is appointed by means other than heredity, often elections. The exact meaning of republicanism varies depending on the cultural and historical context...
and Australian independence
Independence
Independence is a condition of a nation, country, or state in which its residents and population, or some portion thereof, exercise self-government, and usually sovereignty, over its territory....
. This newfound Australian consciousness also gave birth to a profound racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
, against Chinese, Japanese
Ethnic Japanese
Ethnic Japanese may mean:* Japanese people, when referring to people of Japanese descent** May also be used as a term to refer to the Yamato people as opposed to the minority peoples of Japan: the Ainu, Ryukyuans, Burakumin and immigrant groups such as the Han Chinese and Koreans.* Japanese...
and Indian immigrants. Attitudes towards indigenous Australians during the period varied from the outright armed hostility seen in earlier times to a paternalistic "smoothing the pillow" policy, designed to "civilise" the last remnants of what was considered a dying race.
Development of Australian democracy
Australian gold rushes
The Australian gold rush started in 1851 when prospector Edward Hammond Hargraves claimed the discovery of payable gold near Bathurst, New South Wales, at a site Edward Hargraves called Ophir.Eight months later, gold was found in Victoria...
evident at the Eureka Stockade
Eureka Stockade
The Eureka Rebellion of 1854 was an organised rebellion by gold miners which occurred at Eureka Lead in Ballarat, Victoria, Australia. The Battle of Eureka Stockade was fought on 3 December 1854 and named for the stockade structure erected by miners during the conflict...
and the ideas of the great reform movements sweeping Europe
History of Europe
History of Europe describes the history of humans inhabiting the European continent since it was first populated in prehistoric times to present, with the first human settlement between 45,000 and 25,000 BC.-Overview:...
, the United States
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
and the British Empire. The end of convict transportation accelerated reform in the 1840s and 1850s. The Australian Colonies Government Act [1850] was a landmark development which granted representative constitutions to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania and the colonies enthusiastically set about writing constitutions which produced democratically progressive parliaments - though the constitutions generally maintained the role of the colonial upper houses as representative of social and economic "interests" and all established Constitutional Monarchies
Constitutional monarchy
Constitutional monarchy is a form of government in which a monarch acts as head of state within the parameters of a constitution, whether it be a written, uncodified or blended constitution...
with the British monarch as the symbolic head of state.
In 1855, limited self government was granted by London to New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Tasmania. An innovative secret ballot
Secret ballot
The secret ballot is a voting method in which a voter's choices in an election or a referendum are anonymous. The key aim is to ensure the voter records a sincere choice by forestalling attempts to influence the voter by intimidation or bribery. The system is one means of achieving the goal of...
was introduced in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia in 1856, in which the government supplied voting paper containing the names of candidates and voters could select in private. This system was adopted around the world, becoming known as the "Australian Ballot". 1855 also saw the granting of the right to vote to all male British subjects 21 years or over in South Australia
South Australia
South Australia is a state of Australia in the southern central part of the country. It covers some of the most arid parts of the continent; with a total land area of , it is the fourth largest of Australia's six states and two territories.South Australia shares borders with all of the mainland...
. This right was extended to Victoria in 1857 and New South Wales the following year. The other colonies followed until, in 1896, Tasmania became the last colony to grant universal male suffrage.
Propertied women in the colony of South Australia were granted the vote in local elections (but not parliamentary elections) in 1861. Henrietta Dugdale
Henrietta Dugdale
Henrietta Augusta Dugdale was a pioneer suffragist and radical in the Australian state of Victoria.She was born in London. Married at age 14 to a man named Davies, she and her husband moved to Melbourne. Following his death in 1859, she married William Dugdale and they had three children. Austin,...
formed the first Australian women's suffrage society in Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
, Victoria in 1884. Women became eligible to vote for the Parliament of South Australia
Parliament of South Australia
The Parliament of South Australia is the bicameral legislature of the Australian state of South Australia. It consists of the Legislative Council and the House of Assembly. It follows a Westminster system of parliamentary government....
in 1895. This was the first legislation in the world permitting women also to stand for election to political office and, in 1897, Catherine Helen Spence
Catherine Helen Spence
Catherine Helen Spence was a Scottish-born Australian author, teacher, journalist, politician and leading suffragette. In 1897 she became Australia's first female political candidate after standing for the Federal Convention held in Adelaide...
became the first female political candidate for political office, unsuccessfully standing for election as a delegate to the Federal Convention on Australian Federation. Western Australia
Western Australia
Western Australia is a state of Australia, occupying the entire western third of the Australian continent. It is bounded by the Indian Ocean to the north and west, the Great Australian Bight and Indian Ocean to the south, the Northern Territory to the north-east and South Australia to the south-east...
granted voting rights to women in 1899.
Legally, Indigenous Australian males generally gained the right to vote during this period when Victoria, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia gave voting rights to all male British subjects over 21 - only Queensland and Western Australia barred Aboriginal people from voting. Thus, Aboriginal men and women voted in some juridictions for the first Commonwealth Parliament in 1901. Early federal parliamentary reform and judicial interpretation however sought to limit Aboriginal voting in practice - a situation which endured until rights activists began campaigning in the 1940s.
Though the various parliaments of Australia have been constantly evolving, the key foundations for elected parliamentary government have maintained an historical continuity in Australia from the 1850s into the 21st century.
Push for federation
New Caledonia
New Caledonia is a special collectivity of France located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, east of Australia and about from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of...
, known as Kanakas
Kanakas
Kanaka was the term for a worker from various Pacific Islands employed in British colonies, such as British Columbia , Fiji and Queensland in the 19th and early 20th centuries...
, to work in the sugar industry: both the unions and the other colonies strongly opposed this), and fear of the other European powers, France and Germany, who were expanding into the region. British military leaders such as Horatio Kitchener urged Australia to create a national army and navy: this obviously required a federal government. It was also no coincidence that in the 1890s for the first time the majority of Australians, the children of the gold rush immigrants, were Australian-born.
Amid calls from London for the establishment of an intercolonial Australian army, and with the various colonies independently constructing railway lines, New South Wales Premier Sir Henry Parkes
Henry Parkes
Sir Henry Parkes, GCMG was an Australian statesman, the "Father of Federation." As the earliest advocate of a Federal Council of the colonies of Australia, a precursor to the Federation of Australia, he was the most prominent of the Australian Founding Fathers.Parkes was described during his...
addressed a rural audience in his 1889 Tenterfield Oration
Tenterfield Oration
The Tenterfield Oration was a speech given by Sir Henry Parkes at the Tenterfield School of Arts, New South Wales, Australia on 24 October 1889 asking for the Federation of the six Australian colonies, which were at the time self-governed but under the distant central authority of the British...
, stating that the time had come to form a national executive government:
Parkes' vision called for a convention of Parliamentary representatives from the different colonies, to draft a constitution for the establishment of a national parliament, with two houses to legislate on "all great subjects". Though Parkes would not live to see it, each of these things would be achieved within a decade.
Parkes was the initial leader of the federation movement, but the other colonies tended to see it as a plot for New South Wales dominance, and an initial attempt to approve a federal constitution in 1891 failed. The cause was then taken up the Australian Natives Association
Australian Natives Association
The Australian Natives' Association , a mutual society was founded in Melbourne, Australia in April 1871. The Association played a leading role in the movement for Australian federation in the last 20 years of the 19th century. In 1900 it had a membership of 17,000, mainly in Victoria.The ANA...
and younger politicians such as Alfred Deakin
Alfred Deakin
Alfred Deakin , Australian politician, was a leader of the movement for Australian federation and later the second Prime Minister of Australia. In the last quarter of the 19th century, Deakin was a major contributor to the establishment of liberal reforms in the colony of Victoria, including the...
and Edmund Barton
Edmund Barton
Sir Edmund Barton, GCMG, KC , Australian politician and judge, was the first Prime Minister of Australia and a founding justice of the High Court of Australia....
. Following a federalist convention in Corowa in 1893, the colonies agreed to hold elections for a Federal Convention, which met in various cities in 1897 and 1898.
A draft Constitution, largely written by the Queensland judge Sir Samuel Griffith
Samuel Griffith
Sir Samuel Walker Griffith GCMG QC, was an Australian politician, Premier of Queensland, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia and a principal author of the Constitution of Australia.-Early life:...
was approved, and was put to referendums in the colonies in 1899 and 1900. New South Wales voters rejected the draft because it gave too much power to the smaller colonies, but eventually a compromise was reached.
Discussions between Australian and British representatives led to adoption by the British Government of an Act to constitute the Commonwealth of Australia late in 1900. The Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain
Joseph Chamberlain was an influential British politician and statesman. Unlike most major politicians of the time, he was a self-made businessman and had not attended Oxford or Cambridge University....
, nearly derailed the whole process by insisting that British courts retain their jurisdiction over Australia. The Australians eventually reluctantly agreed to this. Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom gave her royal assent to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act 1900 (Imp) on 9 July creating the Commonwealth and thus uniting the separate colonies on the continent under one federal government
Federalism
Federalism is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head. The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of the government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and...
. The Act came into effect on 1 January 1901.
Cultural development
Church of England
The Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
remained the largest denomination.
Heidelberg School
The Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism....
of the 1880s-1890s. Artists such as Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...
, Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian painter who was prominent in the Heidelberg School, one of the more important periods in Australia's visual arts history....
and Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts , usually known simply as Tom, was a prominent Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School.-Life:...
applied themselves to recreating in their art a truer sense of light and colour as seen in Australian landscape. Like the European Impressionists, they painted in the open air. These artists found inspiration in the unique light and colour which characterises the Australian bush. Some see strong connections between the art of the school and the wider Impressionist movement, while others point to earlier traditions of plain air painting elsewhere in Europe. Sayers states that "there remains something excitingly original and indisputably important in the art of the 1880s and 1890s", and that by this time "something which could be described as an Australian tradition began to be recognized".
Key figures in the School were Tom Roberts
Tom Roberts
Thomas William Roberts , usually known simply as Tom, was a prominent Australian artist and a key member of the Heidelberg School.-Life:...
, Arthur Streeton
Arthur Streeton
Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton was an Australian landscape painter.-Early life:Streeton was born in Mount Duneed, near Geelong, and his family moved to Richmond in 1874. In 1882, Streeton commenced art studies with G. F. Folingsby at the National Gallery School.Streeton was influenced by French...
(1867–1943), Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin
Frederick McCubbin was an Australian painter who was prominent in the Heidelberg School, one of the more important periods in Australia's visual arts history....
, and Charles Conder
Charles Conder
Charles Edward Conder was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer. He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.-Early life:Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son,...
. Their most recognised work involves scenes of pastoral and wild Australia, featuring the vibrant, even harsh colours of Australian summers. The name itself comes from a camp Roberts and Streeton set up at a property near Heidelberg
Heidelberg, Victoria
Heidelberg is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 11 km north-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Banyule....
, at the time on the rural outskirts of Melbourne
Melbourne
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city in the state of Victoria, and the second most populous city in Australia. The Melbourne City Centre is the hub of the greater metropolitan area and the Census statistical division—of which "Melbourne" is the common name. As of June 2009, the greater...
. Some of their paintings received international recognition, and many remain embedded in Australia's popular consciousness both inside and outside the art world.
Among the first Australian artists to gain a reputation overseas were the impressionist John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell
John Peter Russell was an Australian impressionist painter.-Life and work:John Peter Russell was born at the Sydney suburb of Darlinghurst, the eldest of four children of John Russell, a Scottish engineer, his wife Charlotte Elizabeth, née Nicholl, from London. J. P. Russell was a nephew of Sir...
(during the 1880s) and Rupert Bunny
Rupert Bunny
Rupert Charles Wulsten Bunny was an Australian painter, born in St Kilda, Victoria. He achieved success and critical acclaim as an expatriate in fin-de-siècle Paris....
, a painter of landscape, allegory and sensual and intimate portraits. Opera singer Nellie Melba
Nellie Melba
Dame Nellie Melba GBE , born Helen "Nellie" Porter Mitchell, was an Australian operatic soprano. She became one of the most famous singers of the late Victorian Era and the early 20th century...
(1861–1931) travelled to Europe in 1886 to commence her international career. She became among the best know Australians of the period and later participated in early gramophone recording and radio broadcasting.
The distinctive themes and origins of Australia's bush music can be traced to the songs sung by the convicts who were sent to Australia during the early period of the British colonisation, beginning in 1788. Early Australian ballads sing of the harsh ways of life of the epoch and of such people and events as bushrangers, swagmen, drovers
Drover (Australian)
A drover in Australia is a person, typically an experienced stockman, who moves livestock, usually sheep or cattle, "on the hoof" over long distances. Reasons for droving may include: delivering animals to a new owner's property, taking animals to market, or moving animals during a drought in...
, stockmen and shearer
Sheep shearer
A sheep shearer is a worker who uses -blade or machine shears to remove wool from domestic sheep during crutching or shearing.-History:...
s were popular during the 19th century. Convict and bushranger verses often railed against government tyranny. Classic bush songs on such themes include: The Wild Colonial Boy
The Wild Colonial Boy
"The Wild Colonial Boy" is a traditional Irish–Australian ballad of which there are many different versions, the most prominent being the Irish and Australian versions. The original version was about Jack Donahue, an Irish rebel who became a convict, then a bushranger , who was eventually shot down...
, Click Go The Shears
Click Go the Shears
"Click Go the Shears" is a traditional Australian folk song. The song details a day's work for a sheep shearer in the days before machine shears. The enduring popularity of this song reflects the traditional role that the wool industry has played in Australian life...
, The Dying Stockman and Moreton Bay. For much of its history, Australia's bush music belonged to an oral and folkloric tradition, and was only later published in print in volumes such as Banjo Paterson
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
's Old Bush Songs, in the 1890s. The lyrics of Waltzing Matilda
Waltzing Matilda
"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's most widely known bush ballad. A country folk song, the song has been referred to as "the unofficial national anthem of Australia"....
, often regarded as Australia's unofficial National anthem
National anthem
A national anthem is a generally patriotic musical composition that evokes and eulogizes the history, traditions and struggles of its people, recognized either by a nation's government as the official national song, or by convention through use by the people.- History :Anthems rose to prominence...
, and a quintessential early Australian country music
Australian country music
Australian country music is a part of the music of Australia. There is a broad range of styles, from bluegrass, to yodelling to folk to the more popular. The genre has been influenced by Celtic and English folk music, by the traditions of Australian bush balladeers, as well as by popular American...
song were composed by the poet Banjo Paterson
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
in 1895.
Bush ballad
Bush songs or bush ballads are a folk music and poetry tradition in Australia's outback. The rhyming songs, poems and tales often relate to the itinerant and rebellious spirit of Australia, a young country. The lyrical tradition of bush songs was born of settlers and influenced by Aboriginal...
s The Man From Snowy River
The Man From Snowy River
"The Man from Snowy River" is a poem by Australian bush poet Banjo Paterson. It was first published in The Bulletin, an Australian news magazine, on 26th April 1890....
and Clancy of the Overflow
Clancy of the Overflow
"Clancy of The Overflow" is a poem by Banjo Paterson, first published in The Bulletin, an Australian news magazine, on 21 December 1889. The poem is typical of Paterson, offering a romantic view of rural life, and is one of his best-known works.-History:...
which remain classics of Australian literature
Australian literature
Australian literature is the written or literary work produced in the area or by the people of the Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding colonies. During its early western history, Australia was a collection of British colonies, therefore, its literary tradition begins with and is linked to...
. Together with his contemporary Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
, Paterson is considered among the most influential Australian writers. Lawson, the son of a Norwegian gold prospector wrote extensively on themes often seen as difinitive of an emerging Australian style - of egalitarianism
Egalitarianism
Egalitarianism is a trend of thought that favors equality of some sort among moral agents, whether persons or animals. Emphasis is placed upon the fact that equality contains the idea of equity of quality...
and mateship
Mateship
Mateship is an Australian cultural idiom that embodies equality, loyalty and friendship. There are two types of mateship, the inclusive and the exclusive; the inclusive is in relation to a shared situation , whereas the exclusive type is toward a third party...
among the young Australian society - as in such works as Shearers, in which he wrote:
- They tramp in mateship side by side -
- The Protestant and Roman
- They call no biped lord or sir
- And touch their hat to no man.
Australian writers introduced the character of the Australian continent to world literature over the period. Early popular works told of a frontier
Frontier
A frontier is a political and geographical term referring to areas near or beyond a boundary. 'Frontier' was absorbed into English from French in the 15th century, with the meaning "borderland"--the region of a country that fronts on another country .The use of "frontier" to mean "a region at the...
society - writers such as Rolf Boldrewood (Robbery Under Arms
Robbery Under Arms
Robbery Under Arms is a classic Australian novel by Rolf Boldrewood . It was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883, then in three volumes in London in 1888...
), Marcus Clarke
Marcus Clarke
Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke was an Australian novelist and poet, best known for his novel For the Term of his Natural Life.- Biography :...
(For the Term of His Natural Life
For the Term of his Natural Life
For the Term of His Natural Life, written by Marcus Clarke, was published in the Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872 , appearing as a novel in 1874. It is the best known novelisation of life as a convict in early Australian history...
) wrote of the bushranger
Bushranger
Bushrangers, or bush rangers, originally referred to runaway convicts in the early years of the British settlement of Australia who had the survival skills necessary to use the Australian bush as a refuge to hide from the authorities...
ing and convictism of nineteenth century Australia. Two Sydney journalists, J.F. Archibald and John Haynes
John Haynes (Australian journalist)
John Haynes was a parliamentarian in New South Wales, Australia for five months short of thirty years, and co-founder , with J. F. Archibald, of The Bulletin....
, founded The Bulletin
The Bulletin
The Bulletin was an Australian weekly magazine that was published in Sydney from 1880 until January 2008. It was influential in Australian culture and politics from about 1890 until World War I, the period when it was identified with the "Bulletin school" of Australian literature. Its influence...
magazine: the first edition appeared on 31 January 1880. It was intended to be a journal of political and business commentary, with some literary content. Initially radical, nationalist, democratic and racist, it gained wide influence and became a celebrated entry-point to publication for Australian writers and cartoonists such as Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson
Henry Lawson was an Australian writer and poet. Along with his contemporary Banjo Paterson, Lawson is among the best-known Australian poets and fiction writers of the colonial period and is often called Australia's "greatest writer"...
, Banjo Paterson
Banjo Paterson
Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson, OBE was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood...
, Miles Franklin
Miles Franklin
Stella Maria Sarah Miles Franklin, known as Miles Franklin was an Australian writer and feminist who is best known for her novel My Brilliant Career, published in 1901...
, and the illustrator and novelist Norman Lindsay
Norman Lindsay
Norman Alfred William Lindsay was an Australian artist, sculptor, writer, editorial cartoonist, scale modeler, and boxer. He was born in Creswick, Victoria....
. A celebrated literary debate
Bulletin Debate
thumb|250px|right|[[Henry Lawson]] with [[J.F. Archibald]], the co-founder of [[The Bulletin]]The "Bulletin Debate" was a famous dispute in The Bulletin magazine from 1892-93 between two of Australia's most iconic writers and poets: Henry Lawson and Andrew Barton "Banjo" Paterson.- Origin :At the...
played out on the pages of the Bulletin about the nature of life in the Australian bush featuring the conflicting views of such as Paterson (called romantic) and Lawson (who saw bush life as exceedingly harsh) and notions of an Australian 'national character' were taking firmer root.
Christianity remained the overwhelmingly dominant religion of the colonists through the period - with the Church of England forming the largest denomination. The churches continued to establish missionary work among Australia's indigenous population. With earlier legal restrictions lifted on the observance of the Catholic religion, the Catholic population - largely Irish in origin - established an extensive school network and hospitals throughout the colonies. In 1857, Australia's first Catholic bishop John Bede Polding founded the first Australian order of nuns - the Sisters of the Good Samaritan
Sisters of the Good Samaritan
The Congregation of the Sisters of the Good Samaritan is a Roman Catholic Congregation of religious women commenced by , Australia’s first Catholic bishop, in Sydney in 1857. The congregation was the first religious congregation to be founded in Australia. The sisters form an apostolic institute...
- to work in education and social work. The most famous Catholic religious of the period was Saint Mary Mackillop
Mary MacKillop
Mary Helen MacKillop , also known as Saint Mary of the Cross, was an Australian Roman Catholic nun who, together with Father Julian Tenison Woods, founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart and a number of schools and welfare institutions throughout Australasia with an emphasis on...
, who co-founded the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart
Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart
The Sisters of Saint Joseph of the Sacred Heart, often called the Josephites , were founded in Penola, South Australia in 1866 by Mary MacKillop and Father Julian Tenison Woods....
in rural South Australia in 1866. Dedicated to the education of the children of the poor, it was the first religious order to be founded by an Australian. Mackillop established schools, orphanages and welfare institutions throughout the colonies. She became the first Australian to be honoured by canonisation as a saint of the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
in 2010.
South Australia was a haven for religious refugees leaving Europe over this period. German Lutherans established the influential Hermmannsberg Mission
Hermannsburg, Northern Territory
Hermannsburg is an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory of Australia, 131 km southwest of Alice Springs. It is known in the local Western Arrernte language as Ntaria....
in Central Australia in 1870. David Unaipon
David Unaipon
David Unaipon was an Australian Aboriginal of the Ngarrindjeri people, a preacher, inventor and writer. He was the most widely known Aboriginal in Australia, and broke stereotypes of Aboriginals...
who was to become a preacher and Australia's first Aboriginal author was born at Point McLeay Mission in South Australia in 1872. The son of Australia's first Aboriginal pastor, he is today honoured on the Australian $50 note.
The major churches established great cathedrals in the colonial capitals through the period - notably the Catholic St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
The Metropolitan Cathedral of St Mary is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Sydney and the seat of the Archbishop of Sydney, Cardinal George Pell. The cathedral is dedicated to "Mary, Help of Christians", Patron of Australia...
and St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
St Patrick's Cathedral, Melbourne
St Patrick's Cathedral is the cathedral church of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia, and seat of its archbishop, currently Denis J. Hart. The building is known internationally as a leading example of the Gothic Revival style of architecture.In 1974 Pope Paul VI...
and the Anglican St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne
St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne
St Paul's Cathedral, Melbourne, is the metropolitical and cathedral church of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne, Victoria in Australia. It is the seat of the Anglican Archbishop of Melbourne and Metropolitan of the Province of Victoria...
considered among the finest examples of ecclesiastical architecture in Australia.'Afghan camaleers' from British India were brought to Australia to help establish outback
Outback
The Outback is the vast, remote, arid area of Australia, term colloquially can refer to any lands outside the main urban areas. The term "the outback" is generally used to refer to locations that are comparatively more remote than those areas named "the bush".-Overview:The outback is home to a...
transportation during the 19th century and Australia’s first mosque was built at Marree, South Australia
Marree, South Australia
Marree is a small town located in the north of South Australia. It lies North of Adelaide at the junction of the Oodnadatta Track and the Birdsville Track, above sea level. The area is the home of the Dieri people. At the 2006 census, Marree had a population of 70.The town was home to Australia's...
in 1861. Hindus came to the Australian colonies to work on cotton and sugar plantations and as merchants. A small number of Jews had come to Australia as convicts on the First Fleet
First Fleet
The First Fleet is the name given to the eleven ships which sailed from Great Britain on 13 May 1787 with about 1,487 people, including 778 convicts , to establish the first European colony in Australia, in the region which Captain Cook had named New South Wales. The fleet was led by Captain ...
and continued to come as free settlers throughout the 19th century. Buddhists first arrived in large numbers during the gold rushes - Chinese labourers who travelled to the goldfields of Victoria and New South Wales. There were perhaps 27,000 in Victoria by 1857. However, these numbers had declined significantly by the end of the 19th century as many Chinese returned to their homeland.
University of Sydney
The University of Sydney is a public university located in Sydney, New South Wales. The main campus spreads across the suburbs of Camperdown and Darlington on the southwestern outskirts of the Sydney CBD. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in Australia and Oceania...
had been founded in 1850 as Australia's first university, and was followed in 1853 by Melbourne University. The National Gallery of Victoria
National Gallery of Victoria
The National Gallery of Victoria is an art gallery and museum in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1861, it is the oldest and the largest public art gallery in Australia. Since December 2003, NGV has operated across two sites...
was founded in 1861, becoming an important repository of world and local art within Australia. The Royal Exhibition Building
Royal Exhibition Building
The Royal Exhibition Building is a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, Australia, completed in 1880. It is located at 9 Nicholson Street in the Carlton Gardens, flanked by Victoria, Nicholson, Carlton and Rathdowne Streets, at the north-eastern edge of the central business district...
, a World Heritage Site-listed building in Melbourne, was completed in 1880. The opulent Romanesque
Romanesque architecture
Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of Medieval Europe characterised by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque architecture, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 10th century. It developed in the 12th century into the Gothic style,...
shopping arcade Queen Victoria Building
Queen Victoria Building
The Queen Victoria Building, or QVB, is a late nineteenth century building by the architect George McRae in the central business district of Sydney, Australia. The Romanesque Revival building is 30 metres wide by 190 metres long, and fills a city block, bounded by George, Market, York and Druitt...
, was completed in 1898 on the site of the old Sydney markets and built as a monument to the popular and long reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. The Victorian era remains a seminal period for the historic architecture of many Australian cities and towns.
Over the period, the foundations of the popularity of many Australian sports
Sport in Australia
Australia has a long sporting history dating back to the mid 1800s. By the 1920s, a number of sports were being played by both men and women, including cricket, badminton, judo, swimming, tennis, netball, lacrosse, golf, hockey and various codes of football....
took root. Intercolonial cricket in Australia
Intercolonial cricket in Australia
Intercolonial cricket in Australia was the name used to describe first-class cricket matches played between the various colonies of Australia prior to federation in 1901. After federation, they became known as Interstate matches. By the 1880s regular intercolonials were being played, generally...
started in 1851 and Sheffield Shield inter-state cricket continues to this day. The 1876-77 season was notable for a match between a combined XI from New South Wales and Victoria and the touring Englishmen at the Melbourne Cricket Ground
Melbourne Cricket Ground
The Melbourne Cricket Ground is an Australian sports stadium located in Yarra Park, Melbourne and is home to the Melbourne Cricket Club. It is the tenth largest stadium in the world, the largest in Australia, the largest stadium for playing cricket, and holds the world record for the highest light...
, which was later recognised as the first Test Match
Test cricket
Test cricket is the longest form of the sport of cricket. Test matches are played between national representative teams with "Test status", as determined by the International Cricket Council , with four innings played between two teams of 11 players over a period of up to a maximum five days...
. A famous victory on the 1882 tour of England resulted in the placement of a satirical obituary
Obituary
An obituary is a news article that reports the recent death of a person, typically along with an account of the person's life and information about the upcoming funeral. In large cities and larger newspapers, obituaries are written only for people considered significant...
in an English newspaper saying that English cricket had "died", and the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia. The English media then dubbed the next English tour to Australia (1882–83) as the quest to "regain the ashes". The tradition continues with The Ashes
The Ashes
The Ashes is a Test cricket series played between England and Australia. It is one of the most celebrated rivalries in international cricket and dates back to 1882. It is currently played biennially, alternately in the United Kingdom and Australia. Cricket being a summer sport, and the venues...
series remaining one of the most anticipated events on the international cricketing calendar.
The first reports of a sport like rugby
Rugby football
Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...
being played in Australia date back to the 1820s when visiting ship crews would play army teams in Sydney. However, it was in 1864, that the first formal club
Sydney University Football Club
Sydney University Football Club, founded in 1863 , is the oldest club now playing rugby union in Australia, and as such is nicknamed "The Birthplace of Australian Rugby" or simply "The Birthplace".The club are the current NSWRU Premiers.The club was a member of the inaugural Sydney club competition...
was formed at Sydney University. From this beginning, the first metropolitan competition in Australia developed, formally beginning in 1874. The first inter-colonial match was played in Sydney in 1882 and the first international kicked off in 1899 when an Australian team composed of players from New South Wales and Queensland (a forerunner of the Australian Wallabies) played a first Test series - against a visiting team from the British Isles.
The game of Australian Rules Football
Australian rules football
Australian rules football, officially known as Australian football, also called football, Aussie rules or footy is a sport played between two teams of 22 players on either...
began evolving in Melbourne from inter-school games resembling rugby - the first being played in 1858. Melbourne football, geographically isolated, evolved various rule changes and was codified in 1877 when the Victorian Football Association was formed.
Further reading
- Clark, Victor S. "Australian Economic Problems. I. The Railways," Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 22, No. 3 (May, 1908), pp. 399-451 in JSTOR, history to 1907
See also
- Australia and the American Civil WarAustralia and the American Civil WarDespite being across the world from the conflict, Australia was affected by the American Civil War economically and by immigration. The Australian cotton crop became more important to England, which had lost its American sources, and it served as a supply base for Confederate blockade runners...
- History of Australia (1901-1945)History of Australia (1901-1945)The history of Australia from 1901–1945 begins with the federation of the colonies to create the Commonwealth of Australia. The young nation joined Britain in the First World War, suffered in the global Great Depression and again joined Britain in the Second World War against Nazi Germany in...
- List of Australian Aboriginal massacres