History of New South Wales
Encyclopedia
The history of New South Wales refers to the history of the Australia
n State of New South Wales
and its preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies. The Mungo Lake remains indicate occupation of New South Wales by Aboriginal Australians for at least 40,000 years. The English navigator James Cook
became the first European to map the coast in 1770 and a First Fleet
of British convicts followed to establish a penal colony
at Sydney
in 1788. The colony established an autonomous Parliamentary democracy from the 1840s and became a state
of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 following a vote to Federate with the other British colonies of Australia. Through the 20th century, the state was a major destination for an increasingly diverse collection of migrants from many nations. In the 21st century, the state is the most populous in Australia, and its capital, Sydney is a major financial capital and host to international cultural and economic events.
The first people to occupy the area now known as New South Wales were Australian Aborigines
. Their presence in Australia began around 40,000–60,000 years ago with the arrival of the first of their ancestors by boat from what is now Indonesia
. Their descendants moved south and, though never large in numbers, occupied all areas of Australia, including the future New South Wales.
Mungo Man and other remains have been found at the dried up Lake Mungo
in New South Wales, some 3000 km south of the North Coast of Australia, and have been dated to approximately 40,000 years ago. These early humans appear to have been buried with ceremonial accompaniment and have been found close to stone tools and the bones of now extinct mega fauna (such as giant kangaroos and wombats). These are the earliest human remains yet found in Australia, though precise dating is difficult and debated. They nevertheless appear to confirm that New South Wales was populated some tens of thousands of years before the arrival of the British First Fleet
at a time when the climate was far wetter and humans were conducting some of their earliest religious and artistic practices. Examples of Aboriginal stone tools and Aboriginal art (often recording the stories of the Dreamtime
religion) can be found throughout New South Wales: even within the metropolis of modern Sydney, as in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
.
, in command of the HMS Endeavour
, sailed along the east coast of Australia
, becoming the first known Europeans to do so. On 19 April 1770, the crew of the Endeavour sighted the east coast of Australia and ten days later landed at a bay in what is now southern Sydney. The ship's naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks
, was so impressed by the volume of flora and fauna hitherto unknown to European science, that Cook named the inlet Botany Bay
. Cook charted the East coast to its northern extent and, on 22 August, at Possession Island in the Torres Strait
, Cook wrote in his journal: "I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third
, took possession of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude 38°S
down to this place by the name of New South Wales
." Cook and Banks then reported favourably to London on the possibilities of establishing a British colony at Botany Bay.
Britain thereby became the first European power to officially claim any area on the Australian mainland. "New South Wales", as defined by Cook's proclamation, covered most of eastern Australia, from 38°S 145°E (near the later site of Mordialloc, Victoria
), to the tip of Cape York
, with an unspecified western boundary. By implication, the proclamation excluded: Van Diemen's Land
(later Tasmania), which had been claimed for the Netherlands
by Abel Tasman
in 1642; a small part of the mainland south of 38° (later southern Victoria) and; the west coast of the continent
(later Western Australia), which Louis de Saint Aloüarn
officially claimed for France
in 1772 — even though it had been mapped previously by Dutch mariners.
The British claim remained theoretical until January 1788, when Arthur Phillip
arrived with the First Fleet
to found a convict settlement at what is now Sydney
. Phillip, as Governor of New South Wales, exercised nominal authority over all of Australia east of the 135th meridian east
between the latitudes of 10°37'S and 43°39'S, which included most of New Zealand
except for the southern part of South Island
.
The First Fleet
of 11 vessels consisted of over a thousand settlers, including 778 convicts (192 women and 586 men). A few days after arrival at Botany Bay
the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson
where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove
on 26 January 1788. This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day
. The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at Sydney. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Philip famously described as:
Governor Phillip was vested with complete authority over the inhabitants of the colony. Enlightened for his Age, Phillip's personal intent was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people and try to reform as well as discipline the convicts of the colony. Phillip and several of his officers - most notably Watkin Tench
– left behind journals and accounts of which tell of immense hardships during the first years of settlement. Often Phillip's officers despaired for the future of New South Wales. Early efforts at agriculture were fraught and supplies from overseas were few and far between. Between 1788 and 1792 about 3546 male and 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney – many "professional criminals" with few of the skills required for the establishment of a colony. Many new arrivals were also sick or unfit for work and the conditions of healthy convicts only deteriorated with hard labour and poor sustenance in the settlement. The food situation reached crisis point in 1790 and the Second Fleet which finally arrived in June 1790 had lost a quarter of its 'passengers' through sickness, while the condition of the convicts of the Third Fleet appalled Phillip. From 1791 however, the more regular arrival of ships and the beginnings of trade lessened the feeling of isolation and improved supplies.
Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils and fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion and moved many of the convicts from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life, leaving Sydney Cove as an important port and focus of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a building programme, assisted by convict labour, advanced steadily. Between 1788–92, convicts and their gaolers made up the majority of the population - but after this, a population of emancipated convicts began to grow who could be granted land and these people pioneered a non-government private sector economy and were later joined by soldiers whose military service had expired - and finally, free settlers who began arriving from Britain. Governor Phillip departed the colony for England on 11 December 1792, with the new settlement having survived near starvation and immense isolation for four years
For the next 40 years the history of New South Wales was identical with the History of Australia
, since it was not until 1803 that any settlements were made outside the current boundaries of New South Wales, and these, at Hobart
and Launceston
in Van Diemen's Land
(Tasmania), were at first dependencies of New South Wales. It was not until 1825 that Van Diemen's Land became a separate colony. Also that year, on 16 July, the border of New South Wales was set further west at the Western Australia
border (129th meridian
) to encompass the short lived settlement on Melville Island. In 1829 this border became the border with Western Australia
, which was proclaimed a colony.
The indigenous Australians
or Aboriginal people had lived in what is now New South Wales for at least 50,000 years, making their living through hunting, gathering and fishing. The impact of European settlement on these people was immediate and devastating. They had no natural resistance to European diseases, and epidemics of measles
and smallpox
spread far ahead of the frontier of settlement, radically reducing population and fatally disrupting indigenous society. Although there was some resistance to European occupation, in general the indigenous people were evicted from their lands without difficulty. Dispossession, disease, violence and alcohol reduced them to a remnant within a generation in most areas.
Accounts of early encounters between Sydney's Aboriginal people and the British are provided by the author Watkin Tench
, who was an officer on the First Fleet
and the writer of one of the first works of literature about New South Wales. The colony struggled in its early days for economic self-sufficiency, since supplies from Britain were few and inadequate. The whaling
industry provided some early revenue, but it was the development of the wool
industry by John MacArthur
and his wife Elizabeth Macarthur
and other enterprising settlers that created the colony's first major export industry. For the first half of the 19th century New South Wales was essentially a sheep run, supported by the port of Sydney and a few subsidiary towns such as Newcastle
(where a permanent settlement was established in 1804) and Bathurst
(1815). Newcastle, north of Sydney, was named after the English coal mining city and would grow to be a major industrial centre and the State's second largest city, but it was initially established as a severe punishment camp for troublesome convicts following the Castle Hill Rebellion. The State's third city, Wollongong, south of Sydney, began in 1829 as an outpost for a contingent of soldiers sent in response to conflict between local Aborigines and the unruly timber-getters who had established themselves in the area. Agriculture soon established itself and dairy and coal mining had begun by the 1840s and the city also grew to become a major industrial centre.
Constitutionally, New South Wales was founded as an autocracy run by the Governor, although he nearly always exercised his powers within the restraints of British law. In practice the early Governors ruled by consent, with the advice of military officers, officials and leading settlers. The New South Wales Corps
was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet
. Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade in the colony. In the Rum Rebellion
of 1808, the Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur
, staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, deposing Governor
William Bligh
and instigating a brief period of military rule in the colony prior to the arrival from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie
in 1810.
Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony
to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank
, churches, and charitable institutions and sought good relations with the Aborigines. In 1813 he sent Blaxland
, Wentworth
and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior. Central, however to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipist
s, whom he decreed should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. Against opposition, he appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway
as colonial architect and William Redfern
as a magistrate. London judged his public works to be too expensive and society was scandalised by his treatment of emancipists. His legacy lives on with Macquarie Street, Sydney
bearing his name as the well as the New South Wales Parliament and various buildings designed during his tenure including the UNESCO
listed Hyde Park Barracks
.
In 1821 there were still only 36,000 Europeans in the country. Although the number of free settlers began to increase rapidly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars
in 1815, convicts were still 40% of the population in 1820, and it was not until the 1820s that free settlers began to occupy most of what is now rural New South Wales. An inland settlement was established at Bathurst
, west of the Blue Mountains, on the banks of the Macquarie River. It was proclaimed a town in 1815 and properties across the plains began to support cattle and grow wheat, vegetables and fruit and produce fine wool for export to the knitting mills of industrial Britain. The period from 1820 to 1850 is regarded as the golden age of the squatters
.
In 1825 the New South Wales Legislative Council
, Australia's oldest legislative body, was established, as an appointed body to advise the Governor. In the same year trial by jury
was introduced, ending the military's judicial power. In 1842 the Council was made partly elective, through the agitation of democrats like William Wentworth
. This development was made possible by the abolition of transportation of convicts to New South Wales in 1840, by which time 150,000 convicts had been sent to Australia. After 1840 the settlers saw themselves as a free people and demanded the same rights they would have had in Britain.
In October 1795 George Bass
and Matthew Flinders
, accompanied by William Martin sailed the boat Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson
to Botany Bay
and explored the Georges River
further upstream than had been done previously by the colonists. Their reports on their return led to the settlement of Banks' Town
. In March 1796 the same party embarked on a second voyage in a similar small boat, which they also called the Tom Thumb. During this trip they travelled as far down the coast as Lake Illawarra
, which they called Tom Thumb Lagoon. They discovered and explored Port Hacking
. In 1798-99, Bass and Flinders set out in a sloop and circumnavigated Tasmania
, thus proving it to be an island.
Aboriginal guides and assistance in the European exploration of the colony were common and often vital to the success of missions. In 1801-02 Matthew Flinders in The Investigator lead the first circumnavigation of Australia. Aboard ship was the Aboriginal explorer Bungaree
, of the Sydney district, who became the first person born on the Australian continent to circumnavigate the Australian continent. Previously, the famous Bennelong
and a companion had become the first people born in the area of New South Wales to sail for Europe, when, in 1792 they accompanied Governor Phillip to England and were presented to King George III.
In 1813, Gregory Blaxland
, William Lawson and William Wentworth
succeeded in crossing the formidable barrier of forested gulleys and shere cliffs presented by the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, by following the ridges instead of looking for a route through the valleys. At Mount Blaxland they looked out over "enough grass to support the stock of the colony for thirty years", and expansion of the British settlement into the interior could begin.
In 1824 the Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane
, commissioned Hamilton Hume
and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell
to lead an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the mystery of where New South Wales's western rivers flowed. Over 16 weeks in 1824-25, Hume and Hovell
journeyed to Port Phillip and back. They made many important discoveries including the Murray River
(which they named the Hume), many of its tributaries, and good agricultural and grazing lands between Gunning, New South Wales
and Corio Bay, Victoria.
Charles Sturt
led an expedition along the Macquarie River in 1828 and discovered the Darling River
. A theory had developed that the inland rivers of New South Wales were draining into an inland sea. Leading a second expedition in 1829, Sturt followed the Murrumbidgee River
into a 'broad and noble river', the Murray River, which he named after Sir George Murray, secretary of state for the colonies. His party then followed this river to its junction with the Darling River
, facing two threatening encounters with local Aboriginal people along the way. Sturt continued down river on to Lake Alexandrina
, where the Murray meets the sea in South Australia
. Suffering greatly, the party had to then row back upstream hundreds of kilometers for the return journey.
Surveyor General Sir Thomas Mitchell conducted a series of expeditions from the 1830s to 'fill in the gaps' left by these previous expeditions. He was meticulous in seeking to record the original Aboriginal place names around the colony, for which reason the majority of place names to this day retain their Aboriginal titles.
The Polish scientist/explorer Count Paul Edmund Strzelecki conducted surveying work in the Australian Alps
in 1839 and became the first European to ascend Australia's highest peak, which he named Mount Kosciuszko
in honour of the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko
.
A golden age of a new kind 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 radically 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
.
At Broken Hill, New South Wales
in the 1880s, BHP Billiton
(now a major global mining and gas company) began as a silver, lead and zinc mine operation. By 1891, the population of the Outback town had passed 21,000, making Broken Hill the third largest town in the colony of New South Wales.
In the course of the 19th century the increasingly ambitious colony established many of its major cultural institutions. The first Sydney Royal Easter Show
, an agricultural exhibition and New South Wales cultural institution, began in 1823. Alexander Macleay
started collecting the exhibits of Australia's oldest museum - Sydney's Australian Museum
– in 1826 and the current building opened to the public in 1857. The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper began printing in 1831. The University of Sydney
commenced in 1850. The Royal National Park
, south of Sydney opened in 1879 (second only to Yellowstone National Park
in the USA). An academy of art formed in 1870 and the present Art Gallery of New South Wales
building began construction in 1896.
The New South Wales Rugby Union
(or then, The Southern RU – SRU) was established in 1874, and the very first club competition took place in Sydney that year. In 1882 the first New South Wales team
was selected to play Queensland
in a two-match series (initially popular, the sport would became secondary in popularity in New South Wales after the creation of the New South Wales Rugby League
as a professional code in 1907). In 1878 the inaugural first class cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground
was played between New South Wales and Victoria.
The Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 showcased the colonial capital to the world. Some exhibits from this event were kept to constitute the original collection of the new Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum of New South Wales (today's Powerhouse Museum
).
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.
William Wentworth
established the Australian Patriotic Association (Australia's first political party) in 1835 to demand democratic government for New South Wales. The reformist attorney general, John Plunkett
, sought to apply Enlightenment
principles to governance in the colony, pursuing the establishment of equality before the law, first by extending jury rights to emancipist
s, then by extendeding legal protections to convicts, assigned servants and Aborigines
. Plunkett twice charged the colonist perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre
of Aborigines with murder, resulting in a conviction and his landmark Church Act of 1836 disestablished
the Church of England
and established legal equality between Anglicans
, Catholics, Presbyterians and later Methodists.
In 1838, the celebrated humanitarian Caroline Chisolm arrived at Sydney and soon after began her work to alleviate the conditions for the poor women migrants of the colony. She met every immigrant ship at the docks, found positions for immigrant girls and established a Female Immigrants' Home. Later she began campaiging for legal reform to alleviate poverty and assist female immigration and family support in the colonies.
In 1840, the Sydney City Council was established. Men who possessed 1000 pounds worth of property were able to stand for election and wealthy landowners were permitted up to four votes each in elections. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the New South Wales Legislative Council
in 1843, again with voting rights (for males only) tied to property ownership or financial capacity. 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.
The end of transportation and the rapid growth of population following the gold rush led to a demand for "British institutions" in New South Wales, which meant an elected parliament and responsible government
. In 1851 the franchise for the Legislative Council was expanded, but this did not satisfy the settlers, many of whom (such as the young Henry Parkes
) had been Chartists
in Britain in the 1840s. Successive Governors warned the Colonial Office of the dangers of republicanism
if the demands for self-government were not met. There was, however, a prolonged battle between the conservatives, now led by Wentworth, and the democrats as to what kind of constitution New South Wales would have. The key issue was control of the pastoral lands, which the democrats wanted to take away from the squatters and break up into farms for settlers. Wentworth wanted a hereditary upper house controlled by the squatters to prevent any such possibility. The radicals, led by rising politicians like Parkes and journalists like Daniel Deniehy
, ridiculed suggestions of a "bunyip
aristocracy."
1855 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).
The New South Wales Constitution Act of 1855, steered through the British Parliament
by the veteran radical Lord John Russell
, who wanted a constitution which balanced democratic elements against the interests of property, as did the Parliamantary system in Britain at this time. The Act created a bicameral
Parliament of New South Wales
, with a lower house, the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
, consisting of 54 members elected by adult males who met a moderate property qualification (anyone who owned property worth a hundred pounds, or earned a hundred pounds a year, or held a pastoral licence, or who paid ten pounds a year for lodgings, could vote). The Assembly was heavily malapportioned in favour of the rural areas. The Legislative Council was to consist of at least 21 members (but with no upper limit) appointed for life by the Governor, and Council members had to meet a higher property qualification.
These seemed like formidable barriers to democracy, but in practice they did not prove so, because the Constitution Act could be modified by simple majorities of both Houses. In 1858 the property franchise for the Assembly was abolished, and the secret ballot
introduced. Since the principle that the Governor should always act on the advice of his ministers was soon established, a Premier whose bills were rejected by the Council could simply advise the Governor to appoint more members until the opposition was "flooded": usually the threat of "flooding" was enough. The ministry of Charles Cowper
marked the victory of colonial liberalism, although New South Wales liberals were never as radical as those in Victoria or South Australia. The major battle for the liberals, unlocking the lands from the squatters, was more or less won by John Robertson, five times Premier during the 1860s, who passed the Robertson Land Acts
to break up the squatters' estates.
From the 1860s onwards government in New South Wales became increasingly stable and assured. Fears of class conflict faded as the population bulge resulting from the gold rushes was accommodated on the newly available farmlands and in the rapidly growing towns. The last British troops left the colony in 1870, and law and order was maintained by the police and a locally raised militia, which had little to do apart from catching a few bushranger
s. The only issue which really excited political passions in this period was education, which was the source of bitter conflict between Catholics
, Protestants
, and secularists
, who all had conflicting views on how schools should be operated, funded and supervised. This was a major preoccupation for Henry Parkes, the dominant politician of the period (he was Premier five times between 1872 and 1889). In 1866 Parkes, as Education Minister, brought in a compromise Schools Act that brought all religious schools under the supervision of public boards, in exchange for state subsidies. But in 1880 the secularists won out when Parkes withdrew all state aid for church schools and established a statewide system of free secular schools.
New South Wales and Victoria continued to develop along divergent paths. Parkes and his successor as leader of the New South Wales liberals, George Reid
, were Gladstonian liberals
committed to free trade, which they saw as both economically beneficial and as necessary for the unity of the British Empire
. They regarded Victorian protectionism as economically foolish and narrowly parochial. It was this hostility between the two largest colonies, symbolised by Victorian customs posts along the Murray River
, which prevented any moves towards uniting the Australian colonies, even after the advent of the railways and the telegraph made travel and communication between the colonies much easier by the 1870s. So long as Victoria was larger and richer than New South Wales, the mother colony (as it liked to see itself) would never agree to surrender its free trade principles to a national or federal government which would be dominated by Victorians.
into the south-west Pacific area made colonial defence an urgent question, which became more urgent with the rise of Japan
as an expansionist power. Finally the issue of Chinese and other non-European immigration made federation of the colonies an important issue, with advocates of a White Australia policy
arguing the necessity of a national immigration policy.
As a result the movement for federation was initiated by Parkes with his Tenterfield Oration
of 1889 (earning him the title "Father of Federation"), and carried forward after Parkes' death by another New South Wales politician, Edmund Barton
. Opinion in New South Wales about federation remained divided through the 1890s. The northern and southern border regions, which were most inconvenienced by the colonial borders and the system of intercolonial tariffs, were strongly in favour, while many in the Sydney commercial community were sceptical, fearing that a national Parliament would impose a national tariff (which was indeed what happened). The first attempt at federation in 1891 failed, mainly as a result of the economic crisis of the early '90s. It was the federalists of the border regions who revived the federal movement in the later '90s, leading up to the Constitutional Convention
of 1897-98 which adopted a draft Australian Constitution.
When the draft was put to referendum
in New South Wales in 1899, Reid (Free Trade Premier from 1894 to 1899), adopted an equivocal position, earning him the nickname "Yes-No Reid." The draft was rejected, mainly because New South Wales voters thought it gave the proposed Senate
, which would dominated by the smaller states, too much power. Reid was able to bargain with the other Premiers to modify the draft so that it suited New South Wales interests, and the draft was then approved. On 1 January 1901, following a proclamation
by Queen Victoria
, New South Wales ceased to be a self-governing colony and became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the new Governor-General
and Prime Minister
were sworn in Sydney, Melbourne was to be the temporary seat of government until the permanent seat of government was established. This was to be in New South Wales, but at least 100 miles (160 km) from Sydney. The first Prime Minister (Barton) the first Opposition Leader (Reid) and the first Labor
leader (Chris Watson
) were all from New South Wales.
At the time of federation the New South Wales economy was still heavily based on agriculture, particularly wool growing, although mining - coal from the Hunter Valley
and silver, lead and zinc from Broken Hill
- was also important. Federation was followed by the imposition of protective tariffs just as the Sydney Free Traders had feared, and this boosted domestic manufacturing. Farmers, however, suffered from increased costs, as well as from the prolonged drought that afflicted the state at the turn of the century. A further boost to both manufacturing and farming came from the increased demand during World War I
. By the 1920s New South Wales was overtaking Victoria as the centre of Australian heavy industry, symbolised by the Broken Hill Proprietary
(BHP) steelworks at Newcastle, opened in 1915, and another steel mill at Port Kembla
in 1928.
The growth of manufacturing and mining brought with it the growth of an industrial working class. Trade union
s had been formed in New South Wales as early as the 1850s, but it was great labour struggles of the 1890s that led them to move into politics. The most important was the Australian Workers' Union
(AWU), formed from earlier unions by William Spence
and others in 1894. The defeat of the great shearers' and maritime strikes in the 1890s led the AWU to reject direct action and to take the lead in forming the Labor Party
. Labor had its first great success in 1891, when it won 35 seats in the Legislative Assembly, mainly in the pastoral and mining areas. This first parliamentary Labor Party, led by Joseph Cook
, supported Reid's Free Trade government, but broke up over the issue of free trade versus protection, and also over the "pledge" which the unions required Labor members to take always to vote in accordance with majority decisions. After federation, Labor, led by James McGowen
, soon recovered, and won its first majority in the Assembly in 1910, when McGowen became the state's first Labor Premier.
This early experience of government, plus the social base of New South Wales party in the rural areas rather than in the militant industrial working class of the cities, made New South Wales Labor notably more moderate than its counterparts in other states, and this in turn made it more successful at winning elections. The growth of the coal, iron, steel and shipbuilding industries gave Labor new "safe" areas in Newcastle and Wollongong
, while the mining towns of Broken Hill and the Hunter also became Labor strongholds. As a result of these factors, Labor has ruled New South Wales for 59 of the 96 years since 1910, and every leader of the New South Wales Labor Party except one has become Premier of the state.
But Labor came to grief in New South Wales as elsewhere during World War I
, when the Premier, William Holman
, supported the Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes
in his drive to introduce conscription
. New South Wales voters rejected both attempts by Hughes to pass a referendum
authorising conscription, and in 1916 Hughes, Holman, Watson, McGowen, Spence and many other founders of the party were expelled, forming the Nationalist Party
under Hughes and Holman. Federal Labor did not recover from this split for many years, but New South Wales Labor was back in power by 1920, although this government lasted only 18 months, and again from 1925 under Jack Lang
.
In the years after World War I it was the farmers rather than the workers who were the most discontented and militant class in New South Wales. The high prices enjoyed during the war fell with the resumption of international trade, and farmers became increasingly discontented with the fixed prices paid by the compulsory marketing authorities set up as a wartime measure by the Hughes government. In 1919 the farmers formed the Country Party
, led at national level by Earle Page
, a doctor from Grafton
, and at state level by Michael Bruxner
, a small farmer from Tenterfield
. The Country Party used its reliable voting base to make demands on successive non-Labor governments, mainly to extract subsidies and other benefits for farmers, as well as public works in rural areas.
The Great Depression
which began in 1929 ushered a period of unprecedented political and class conflict in New South Wales. The mass unemployment and collapse of commodity prices brought ruin to both city workers and to farmers. The beneficiary of the resultant discontent was not the Communist Party
, which remained small and weak, but Jack Lang's Labor populism. Lang's second government was elected in November 1930 on a policy of repudiating New South Wales' debt to British bondholders and using the money instead to help the unemployed through public works. This was denounced as illegal by conservatives, and also by James Scullin
's federal Labor government. The result was that Lang's supporters in the federal Caucus brought down Scullin's government, causing a second bitter split in the Labor Party. in May 1932 the Governor, Sir Philip Game
, convinced that Lang was acting illegally, dismissed his government, and Labor spent the rest of the 1930s in opposition.
In a Sheffield Shield cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground
in 1930, Don Bradman, a young New South Welshman of just 21 years of age wrote his name into the record books at by smashing the previous highest batting score in first-class cricket with 452 runs not out in just 415 minutes. Although Bradman would later transfer to play for South Australia, his world beating performances provided much needed joy to Australians through the emerging Great Depression
.
The 1938 British Empire Games
were held in Sydney from February 5–12, timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary (150 years since the foundation of British settlement in Australia).
By the outbreak of World War II
in 1939, the differences between New South Wales and the other states that had emerged in the 19th century had faded as a result of federation and economic development behind a wall of protective tariffs. New South Wales continued to outstrip Victoria as the centre of industry, and increasingly of finance and trade as well.
The radicalism of the Lang period subsided as the Depression eased, and his removal as Labor Leader in 1939 marked the permanent (as it turned out) defeat of the left of the New South Wales Labor Party. Labor returned to office under the moderate leadership of William McKell
in 1941 and stayed in power for 24 years.
World War II saw another surge in industrial development to meet the needs of a war economy, and also the elimination of unemployment. When Ben Chifley
, a railwayman from Bathurst, became Prime Minister in 1945, New South Wales Labor assumed what it saw as its rightful position of national leadership.
After launching their Pacific War
, the Imperial Japanese Navy
managed to infiltrate New South Wales waters
and in late May and early June 1942, Japanese submarines made a series of attacks
on the cities of Sydney and Newcastle. Though casualties were light, the population feared Japanese invasion. The main Japanese naval advance towards Australian territory was however halted with the assistance of the United States Navy
, in May 1942, at the Battle of the Coral Sea
. The Cowra Breakout
of 1944 saw Japanese prisoners of war launch a suicidal escape attempt from their camp in the Central West of New South Wales. This is considered the only fighting within New South Wales of the war.
The postwar years, however, saw renewed industrial conflict, culminating in the 1949 coal strike
, largely fomented by the Communist Party of Australia
, which crippled the state's industry. This contributed to the defeat of the Chifley government
at the 1949 election
s and the beginning of the long rule at a Federal level of Robert Menzies
, a politician from Victoria, of the newly founded Liberal Party of Australia
. The postwar years also saw massive immigration to Australia, begun by Chifley's Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell
, and continued under the Liberals. Sydney, hitherto an almost entirely British and Irish city by origin (apart from a small Chinese community), became increasingly multi-cultural, with many immigrants from Italy
, Greece
, Malta
and eastern Europe (including many Jews
), and later from Lebanon
and Vietnam
, permanently changing its character.
The Snowy Mountains Scheme
began construction in the state's south. This hydroelectricity
and irrigation
complex in the Snowy Mountains
called for the construction of sixteen major dams and seven power stations between 1949 and 1974. It remains the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia and necessitated the employment of 100,000 people from over 30 countries
. Socially this project symbolises a period during which Australia became an ethnic "melting pot" of the twentieth century but which also changed Australia's character and increased its appreciation for a wide range of cultural diversity. The Scheme built several temporary towns for its construction workers, several of which have become permanent: notably Cabramurra
, which became highest town in Australia. The sleepy rural town of Cooma
became a bustling construction economy, while small rural townships like Adaminaby and Jindabyne had to make way for the construction of Lakes Eucumbene
and Jindabyne
. Improved vehicular access to the High Country enabled ski-resort villages to be constructed at Thredbo and Guthega in the 1950s by ex-Snowy Scheme workers who realised the potential for expansion of Skiing in Australia
.
Labor stayed in power in New South Wales until 1965, growing increasingly conservative and (according to its critics) lazy and even corrupt in office. In 1965 a vigorous Liberal leader, Robert Askin
, finally broke Labor's long grip on power, and stayed in office for ten years. During these years Sydney began its transformation into a world city and a centre of the arts, with the building of the Sydney Opera House
as the great symbol of the period. The rest of the state, however, began a gradual decline, demographically and economically, as Australia lost some of its traditional export markets for primary products in Britain and as New South Wales' iron, steel and shipbuilding industries became increasingly uncompetitive in the face of competition from Japan
and other new entrants. Sydney's share of the state's population and wealth grew steadily. One consequence of this was a strong secessionist movement in the New England
region of northern New South Wales, which for a time looked as though it might succeed in forming a new state, but which faded away in the late 1960s.
Since the 1970s New South Wales has undergone an increasingly rapid economic and social transformation. Old industries such as steel and shipbuilding have largely disappeared, and although agriculture remains important, its share of the state's income is smaller than ever before. New industries such as information technology, education, financial services and the arts, largely centred in Sydney, have risen to take their place. Coal exports to China are increasingly important to the state's economy. Tourism has also become hugely important, with Sydney as its centre but also stimulating growth on the North Coast, around Coffs Harbour
and Byron Bay
. As aviation has replaced shipping, most new migrants to Australia have arrived in Sydney by air rather than in Melbourne by ship, and Sydney now gets the lion's share of new arrivals, mostly from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
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Although generally of mild climate, the State endured several notable natural disasters around the turn of the century. In 1989, an earthquake struck Newcastle. It was a Richter magnitude
5.6 earthquake
and one of Australia's most serious natural disaster
s, killing 13 people and injuring more than 160. The damage bill has been estimated at A$
4 billion (including an insured loss of about $1 billion). The Newcastle earthquake was the first Australian earthquake in recorded history to claim human lives. The following, year, 1990, saw major flooding in the State's central west, with Nyngan suffering a devasting innundation. In 1993-4, the State suffered a serious bushfire season
, causing destruction even within urban areas of Sydney. Agricultural production was severely curtailed by prolonged drought
during the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly in the Murray-Darling basin
. The drought was followed by sever flooding in 2010.
In 1973, after a long period of planning and construction, the Sydney Opera House
was officially opened. The building was from a design by Joern Utzon. It became a symbol not only of Sydney, but of the Australian nation and was inscribed by UNESCO
in 2007. Sydney has maintained extensive political, economic and cultural influence over Australia as well as international renown in recent decades. The city hosted the 2000 Olympic Games
, the 2003 Rugby World Cup
and the APEC Leaders conference of 2007
. From 1991-2007, Sydney-siders governed as Prime Minister of Australia
- first Paul Keating
(1991-1996) and later John Howard
(1996-2007).
In recent decades Sydney has also undergone a major social liberalisation, with huge entertainment and gambling industries. Though there has been a decline in the dominance of Christianity
through increased secularisation and the growing presence of an increasingly diverse migrant population, Sydney's two outspoken Archbishops, George Pell
(Catholic) and Peter Jensen (Anglican
) remain vocal in national debates and the hosting of Catholic World Youth Day 2008
, led by Pope Benedict XVI
, drew huge crowds of worshipers to the city. An evangelical Christian "bible belt" has developed in the north-western suburbs. Buddhist and Muslim
communities in particular are growing, but so is irreligiosity. While a grant from the State government permitted the final completion of the spires of St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney
in 2000 (the foundation stone was laid in 1868), construction of the present structure of the large Auburn Gallipoli Mosque
began in 1986 and at Wollongong, south of Sydney, Nan Tien Temple
opened in 1995 as one of the southern hemisphere
's largest Buddhist temples. Sydney has gained a reputation for secularism and hedonism, with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
becoming a world-famous event. Star City Casino
opened in the mid 1990s as Sydney's only legal casino.
The Australian Labor Party
has had long periods of governance in New South Wales in recent decades, holding power under Neville Wran
and Barrie Unsworth
from 1976 to 1988. A period of Liberal-National Coalition
rule followed under Nick Greiner
and John Fahey
from 1988 to 1995, but the Labor Party was led back to power by Bob Carr
in 1995 and has remained in office ever since. Carr retired and was succeeded by a series of Labor premiers between 2005-2011: Morris Iemma
won the 2007 Election but his party replaced him with Nathan Rees
in 2007, who was, in turn, replaced by Kristina Keneally
in 2008. Two recent Premiers have been of non-British background: Greiner (Liberal 1988-92), who is of Hungarian descent, and Iemma whose parents are Italian. The current Governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir
, is of Lebanese origin and is the first woman to be appointed to the office of Governor. The current Premier of New South Wales, Kristina Keneally
, was born and raised in the United States and became the first female Premier when her party selected her as leader in 2008. Elections to the 55th Parliament of New South Wales
are fixed to be held on Saturday, 26 March 2011.
Most commentators predict that Sydney and the coast areas of northern New South Wales will continue to grow in the coming decades, although Bob Carr and others have argued that Sydney (which by 2006 had over 4 million people) cannot grow any bigger without putting intolerable strain on its environment and infrastructure. The southern coastal areas around Canberra are also expected to grow, although less rapidly. The rest of the state, however, is expected to continue to decline, as traditional industries disappear. Already many small towns in western New South Wales have lost so many services and businesses that they are no longer viable, causing population to consolidate in regional centres like Dubbo and Wagga Wagga.
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 State of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
and its preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies. The Mungo Lake remains indicate occupation of New South Wales by Aboriginal Australians for at least 40,000 years. The English navigator James Cook
James Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
became the first European to map the coast in 1770 and a 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 ...
of British convicts followed to establish a penal colony
Penal colony
A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory...
at 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...
in 1788. The colony established an autonomous Parliamentary democracy from the 1840s and became a state
States and territories of Australia
The Commonwealth of Australia is a union of six states and various territories. The Australian mainland is made up of five states and three territories, with the sixth state of Tasmania being made up of islands. In addition there are six island territories, known as external territories, and a...
of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901 following a vote to Federate with the other British colonies of Australia. Through the 20th century, the state was a major destination for an increasingly diverse collection of migrants from many nations. In the 21st century, the state is the most populous in Australia, and its capital, Sydney is a major financial capital and host to international cultural and economic events.
Ancient history
The first people to occupy the area now known as New South Wales were Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines
Australian Aborigines , also called Aboriginal Australians, from the latin ab originem , are people who are indigenous to most of the Australian continentthat is, to mainland Australia and the island of Tasmania...
. Their presence in Australia began around 40,000–60,000 years ago with the arrival of the first of their ancestors by boat from what is now Indonesia
Indonesia
Indonesia , officially the Republic of Indonesia , is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania. Indonesia is an archipelago comprising approximately 13,000 islands. It has 33 provinces with over 238 million people, and is the world's fourth most populous country. Indonesia is a republic, with an...
. Their descendants moved south and, though never large in numbers, occupied all areas of Australia, including the future New South Wales.
Mungo Man and other remains have been found at the dried up Lake Mungo
Lake Mungo
Lake Mungo is a dry lake in south-western New South Wales, Australia. It is located about 760 km due west of Sydney and 90 km north-east of Mildura. The lake is the central feature of Mungo National Park, and is one of seventeen lakes in the World Heritage listed Willandra Lakes Region...
in New South Wales, some 3000 km south of the North Coast of Australia, and have been dated to approximately 40,000 years ago. These early humans appear to have been buried with ceremonial accompaniment and have been found close to stone tools and the bones of now extinct mega fauna (such as giant kangaroos and wombats). These are the earliest human remains yet found in Australia, though precise dating is difficult and debated. They nevertheless appear to confirm that New South Wales was populated some tens of thousands of years before the arrival of the British 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 ...
at a time when the climate was far wetter and humans were conducting some of their earliest religious and artistic practices. Examples of Aboriginal stone tools and Aboriginal art (often recording the stories of the Dreamtime
Dreamtime
In the animist framework of Australian Aboriginal mythology, The Dreaming is a sacred era in which ancestral Totemic Spirit Beings formed The Creation.-The Dreaming of the Aboriginal times:...
religion) can be found throughout New South Wales: even within the metropolis of modern Sydney, as in Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park
Ku-ring-gai Chase is a national park in New South Wales, Australia, 25 km north of Sydney located largely within the Ku-ring-gai, Hornsby, Warringah and Pittwater municipal areas. Ku-ring-gai Chase is also officially classed as a suburb by the Geographical Names Board of New South Wales...
.
1770 James Cook's proclamation
In 1770 Lieutenant (later Captain) James CookJames Cook
Captain James Cook, FRS, RN was a British explorer, navigator and cartographer who ultimately rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy...
, in command of the HMS Endeavour
HMS Endeavour
HMS Endeavour may refer to one of the following ships:In the Royal Navy:, a 36-gun ship purchased in 1652 and sold in 1656, a 4-gun bomb vessel purchased in 1694 and sold in 1696, a fire ship purchased in 1694 and sold in 1696, a storeship hoy purchased in 1694 and sold in 1705, a storeship...
, sailed along the east coast of 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...
, becoming the first known Europeans to do so. On 19 April 1770, the crew of the Endeavour sighted the east coast of Australia and ten days later landed at a bay in what is now southern Sydney. The ship's naturalist, Sir Joseph Banks
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...
, was so impressed by the volume of flora and fauna hitherto unknown to European science, that Cook named the inlet Botany Bay
Botany Bay
Botany Bay is a bay in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. The Cooks River and the Georges River are the two major tributaries that flow into the bay...
. Cook charted the East coast to its northern extent and, on 22 August, at Possession Island in the Torres Strait
Torres Strait
The Torres Strait is a body of water which lies between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is approximately wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, the northernmost continental extremity of the Australian state of Queensland...
, Cook wrote in his journal: "I now once more hoisted English Coulers [sic] and in the Name of His Majesty King George the Third
George III of the United Kingdom
George III was King of Great Britain and King of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of these two countries on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland until his death...
, took possession of the whole Eastern Coast from the above Latitude 38°S
38th parallel south
The 38th parallel south is a circle of latitude that is 38 degrees south of the Earth's equatorial plane. It crosses the Atlantic Ocean, the Indian Ocean, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Ocean, and the southern end of South America, including the Andes Mountains and Patagonia.At this latitude...
down to this place by the name of New South Wales
New South Wales
New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...
." Cook and Banks then reported favourably to London on the possibilities of establishing a British colony at Botany Bay.
Britain thereby became the first European power to officially claim any area on the Australian mainland. "New South Wales", as defined by Cook's proclamation, covered most of eastern Australia, from 38°S 145°E (near the later site of Mordialloc, Victoria
Mordialloc, Victoria
Mordialloc is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 24 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Kingston...
), to the tip of 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...
, with an unspecified western boundary. By implication, the proclamation excluded: Van Diemen's Land
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...
(later Tasmania), which had been claimed for the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
by Abel Tasman
Abel Tasman
Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer, explorer, and merchant, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the VOC . His was the first known European expedition to reach the islands of Van Diemen's Land and New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands...
in 1642; a small part of the mainland south of 38° (later southern Victoria) and; the west coast of the continent
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...
(later Western Australia), which Louis de Saint Aloüarn
Louis Aleno de St Aloüarn
Louis Francois Marie Aleno de Saint Aloüarn was a notable French naval officer and explorer.St Aloüarn was the first European to make a formal claim of sovereignty — on behalf of France — over the west coast of Australia, which was known at the time as "New Holland"...
officially claimed for France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
in 1772 — even though it had been mapped previously by Dutch mariners.
1788: Establishment of the colony
Arthur Phillip
Admiral Arthur Phillip RN was a British admiral and colonial administrator. Phillip was appointed Governor of New South Wales, the first European colony on the Australian continent, and was the founder of the settlement which is now the city of Sydney.-Early life and naval career:Arthur Phillip...
arrived with 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 ...
to found a convict settlement at what is now 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...
. Phillip, as Governor of New South Wales, exercised nominal authority over all of Australia east of the 135th meridian east
135th meridian east
The meridian 135° east of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, Asia, the Pacific Ocean, Australasia, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole....
between the latitudes of 10°37'S and 43°39'S, which included most of New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
except for the southern part of South Island
South Island
The South Island is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand, the other being the more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman Sea, to the south and east by the Pacific Ocean...
.
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 ...
of 11 vessels consisted of over a thousand settlers, including 778 convicts (192 women and 586 men). A few days after arrival at Botany Bay
Botany Bay
Botany Bay is a bay in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. The Cooks River and the Georges River are the two major tributaries that flow into the bay...
the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, containing Sydney Harbour, is the natural harbour of Sydney, Australia. It is known for its beauty, and in particular, as the location of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge...
where a settlement was established at Sydney Cove
Sydney Cove
Sydney Cove is a small bay on the southern shore of Port Jackson , on the coast of the state of New South Wales, Australia....
on 26 January 1788. This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day
Australia Day
Australia Day is the official national day of Australia...
. The colony was formally proclaimed by Governor Phillip on 7 February 1788 at Sydney. Sydney Cove offered a fresh water supply and a safe harbour, which Philip famously described as:
Governor Phillip was vested with complete authority over the inhabitants of the colony. Enlightened for his Age, Phillip's personal intent was to establish harmonious relations with local Aboriginal people and try to reform as well as discipline the convicts of the colony. Phillip and several of his officers - most notably Watkin Tench
Watkin Tench
Lieutenant-General Watkin Tench was a British Marine officer who is best known for publishing two books describing his experiences in the First Fleet, which established the first settlement in Australia in 1788...
– left behind journals and accounts of which tell of immense hardships during the first years of settlement. Often Phillip's officers despaired for the future of New South Wales. Early efforts at agriculture were fraught and supplies from overseas were few and far between. Between 1788 and 1792 about 3546 male and 766 female convicts were landed at Sydney – many "professional criminals" with few of the skills required for the establishment of a colony. Many new arrivals were also sick or unfit for work and the conditions of healthy convicts only deteriorated with hard labour and poor sustenance in the settlement. The food situation reached crisis point in 1790 and the Second Fleet which finally arrived in June 1790 had lost a quarter of its 'passengers' through sickness, while the condition of the convicts of the Third Fleet appalled Phillip. From 1791 however, the more regular arrival of ships and the beginnings of trade lessened the feeling of isolation and improved supplies.
Phillip sent exploratory missions in search of better soils and fixed on the Parramatta region as a promising area for expansion and moved many of the convicts from late 1788 to establish a small township, which became the main centre of the colony's economic life, leaving Sydney Cove as an important port and focus of social life. Poor equipment and unfamiliar soils and climate continued to hamper the expansion of farming from Farm Cove to Parramatta and Toongabbie, but a building programme, assisted by convict labour, advanced steadily. Between 1788–92, convicts and their gaolers made up the majority of the population - but after this, a population of emancipated convicts began to grow who could be granted land and these people pioneered a non-government private sector economy and were later joined by soldiers whose military service had expired - and finally, free settlers who began arriving from Britain. Governor Phillip departed the colony for England on 11 December 1792, with the new settlement having survived near starvation and immense isolation for four years
For the next 40 years the history of New South Wales was identical with the History of Australia
History of Australia
The History of Australia refers to the history of the area and people of Commonwealth of Australia and its preceding Indigenous and colonial societies. Aboriginal Australians are believed to have first arrived on the Australian mainland by boat from the Indonesian archipelago between 40,000 to...
, since it was not until 1803 that any settlements were made outside the current boundaries of New South Wales, and these, at Hobart
Hobart
Hobart is the state capital and most populous city of the Australian island state of Tasmania. Founded in 1804 as a penal colony,Hobart is Australia's second oldest capital city after Sydney. In 2009, the city had a greater area population of approximately 212,019. A resident of Hobart is known as...
and Launceston
Launceston, Tasmania
Launceston is a city in the north of the state of Tasmania, Australia at the junction of the North Esk and South Esk rivers where they become the Tamar River. Launceston is the second largest city in Tasmania after the state capital Hobart...
in 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), were at first dependencies of New South Wales. It was not until 1825 that Van Diemen's Land became a separate colony. Also that year, on 16 July, the border of New South Wales was set further west at the 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...
border (129th meridian
129th meridian east
The meridian 129° east of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, Asia, Australia, the Indian Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to the South Pole....
) to encompass the short lived settlement on Melville Island. In 1829 this border became the border with 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...
, which was proclaimed a colony.
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....
or Aboriginal people had lived in what is now New South Wales for at least 50,000 years, making their living through hunting, gathering and fishing. The impact of European settlement on these people was immediate and devastating. They had no natural resistance to European diseases, and epidemics of 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 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"...
spread far ahead of the frontier of settlement, radically reducing population and fatally disrupting indigenous society. Although there was some resistance to European occupation, in general the indigenous people were evicted from their lands without difficulty. Dispossession, disease, violence and alcohol reduced them to a remnant within a generation in most areas.
Accounts of early encounters between Sydney's Aboriginal people and the British are provided by the author Watkin Tench
Watkin Tench
Lieutenant-General Watkin Tench was a British Marine officer who is best known for publishing two books describing his experiences in the First Fleet, which established the first settlement in Australia in 1788...
, who was an officer 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 the writer of one of the first works of literature about New South Wales. The colony struggled in its early days for economic self-sufficiency, since supplies from Britain were few and inadequate. The whaling
Whaling
Whaling is the hunting of whales mainly for meat and oil. Its earliest forms date to at least 3000 BC. Various coastal communities have long histories of sustenance whaling and harvesting beached whales...
industry provided some early revenue, but it was the development of the wool
Wool
Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, vicuña, alpaca, camel from animals in the camel family, and angora from rabbits....
industry by John MacArthur
John Macarthur (wool pioneer)
John Macarthur was a British army officer, entrepreneur, politician, architect and pioneer of settlement in Australia. Macarthur is recognised as the pioneer of the wool industry that was to boom in Australia in the early 19th century and become a trademark of the nation...
and his wife Elizabeth Macarthur
Elizabeth Macarthur
Elizabeth Macarthur was born in Devon, England, the daughter of provincial farmers, Richard and Grace Veale, of Cornish origin. Her father died when she was 7; her mother remarried when she was 11, leaving Elizabeth in the care of her grandfather John and friends. Elizabeth married Plymouth...
and other enterprising settlers that created the colony's first major export industry. For the first half of the 19th century New South Wales was essentially a sheep run, supported by the port of Sydney and a few subsidiary towns such as Newcastle
Newcastle, New South Wales
The Newcastle metropolitan area is the second most populated area in the Australian state of New South Wales and includes most of the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie Local Government Areas...
(where a permanent settlement was established in 1804) and 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...
(1815). Newcastle, north of Sydney, was named after the English coal mining city and would grow to be a major industrial centre and the State's second largest city, but it was initially established as a severe punishment camp for troublesome convicts following the Castle Hill Rebellion. The State's third city, Wollongong, south of Sydney, began in 1829 as an outpost for a contingent of soldiers sent in response to conflict between local Aborigines and the unruly timber-getters who had established themselves in the area. Agriculture soon established itself and dairy and coal mining had begun by the 1840s and the city also grew to become a major industrial centre.
Constitutionally, New South Wales was founded as an autocracy run by the Governor, although he nearly always exercised his powers within the restraints of British law. In practice the early Governors ruled by consent, with the advice of military officers, officials and leading settlers. The New South Wales Corps
New South Wales Corps
The New South Wales Corps was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet to Australia. The regiment, led by Major Francis Grose, consisted of three companies...
was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment to relieve the marines who had accompanied 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 ...
. Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade in the colony. In the Rum Rebellion
Rum Rebellion
The Rum Rebellion of 1808 was the only successful armed takeover of government in Australia's history. The Governor of New South Wales, William Bligh, was deposed by the New South Wales Corps under the command of Major George Johnston, working closely with John Macarthur, on 26 January 1808, 20...
of 1808, the Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur
John Macarthur (wool pioneer)
John Macarthur was a British army officer, entrepreneur, politician, architect and pioneer of settlement in Australia. Macarthur is recognised as the pioneer of the wool industry that was to boom in Australia in the early 19th century and become a trademark of the nation...
, staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, deposing Governor
Governors of New South Wales
The Governor of New South Wales is the state viceregal representative of the Australian monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, who is equally shared with 15 other sovereign nations in a form of personal union, as well as with the eleven other jurisdictions of Australia, and resides predominantly in her...
William Bligh
William Bligh
Vice Admiral William Bligh FRS RN was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. A notorious mutiny occurred during his command of HMAV Bounty in 1789; Bligh and his loyal men made a remarkable voyage to Timor, after being set adrift in the Bounty's launch by the mutineers...
and instigating a brief period of military rule in the colony prior to the arrival from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie
Lachlan Macquarie
Major-General Lachlan Macquarie CB , was a British military officer and colonial administrator. He served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, Australia from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social, economic and architectural development of the colony...
in 1810.
Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony
Penal colony
A penal colony is a settlement used to exile prisoners and separate them from the general populace by placing them in a remote location, often an island or distant colonial territory...
to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank
Westpac
Westpac , is a multinational financial services, one of the Australian "big four" banks and the second-largest bank in New Zealand....
, churches, and charitable institutions and sought good relations with the Aborigines. In 1813 he sent Blaxland
Gregory Blaxland
Gregory Blaxland was a pioneer farmer and explorer in Australia.- Early life :Gregory Blaxland was born 17 June 1778 at Fordwich, Kent, England, the fourth son of John Blaxland, mayor from 1767 to 1774, whose family had owned estates nearby for generations, and Mary, daughter of Captain Parker,...
, Wentworth
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior. Central, however to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipist
Emancipist
An emancipist was any of the convicts sentenced and transported under the convict system to Australia, who had been given conditional or absolute pardons...
s, whom he decreed should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. Against opposition, he appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway
Francis Greenway
-References:* *...
as colonial architect and William Redfern
William Redfern
William Redfern was a leading surgeon in early colonial New South Wales.-Early life:Redfern appears to have been born in Canada and raised in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England...
as a magistrate. London judged his public works to be too expensive and society was scandalised by his treatment of emancipists. His legacy lives on with Macquarie Street, Sydney
Macquarie Street, Sydney
Macquarie Street is the easternmost street of Sydney's central business district. Macquarie Street extends from Hyde Park at its southern end to the Sydney Opera House at its north.-Description:...
bearing his name as the well as the New South Wales Parliament and various buildings designed during his tenure including the UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
listed Hyde Park Barracks
Hyde Park Barracks
Hyde Park Barracks may refer to*Hyde Park Barracks, London in England*Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney in Australia...
.
In 1821 there were still only 36,000 Europeans in the country. Although the number of free settlers began to increase rapidly after the end of the Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
in 1815, convicts were still 40% of the population in 1820, and it was not until the 1820s that free settlers began to occupy most of what is now rural New South Wales. An inland settlement was established at 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...
, west of the Blue Mountains, on the banks of the Macquarie River. It was proclaimed a town in 1815 and properties across the plains began to support cattle and grow wheat, vegetables and fruit and produce fine wool for export to the knitting mills of industrial Britain. The period from 1820 to 1850 is regarded as the golden age of 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....
.
In 1825 the New South Wales Legislative Council
New South Wales Legislative Council
The New South Wales Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of New South Wales in Australia. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney. The Assembly is referred to as the lower house and the Council as...
, Australia's oldest legislative body, was established, as an appointed body to advise the Governor. In the same year trial by jury
Jury trial
A jury trial is a legal proceeding in which a jury either makes a decision or makes findings of fact which are then applied by a judge...
was introduced, ending the military's judicial power. In 1842 the Council was made partly elective, through the agitation of democrats like William Wentworth
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
. This development was made possible by the abolition of transportation of convicts to New South Wales in 1840, by which time 150,000 convicts had been sent to Australia. After 1840 the settlers saw themselves as a free people and demanded the same rights they would have had in Britain.
Exploration
George Bass
George Bass was a British naval surgeon and explorer of Australia.-Early years:He was born on 30 January 1771 at Aswarby, a hamlet near Sleaford, Lincolnshire, the son of a tenant farmer, George Bass, and a local beauty named Sarah Nee Newman. His father died in 1777 when Bass was 6...
and Matthew Flinders
Matthew Flinders
Captain Matthew Flinders RN was one of the most successful navigators and cartographers of his age. In a career that spanned just over twenty years, he sailed with Captain William Bligh, circumnavigated Australia and encouraged the use of that name for the continent, which had previously been...
, accompanied by William Martin sailed the boat Tom Thumb out of Port Jackson
Port Jackson
Port Jackson, containing Sydney Harbour, is the natural harbour of Sydney, Australia. It is known for its beauty, and in particular, as the location of the Sydney Opera House and Sydney Harbour Bridge...
to Botany Bay
Botany Bay
Botany Bay is a bay in Sydney, New South Wales, a few kilometres south of the Sydney central business district. The Cooks River and the Georges River are the two major tributaries that flow into the bay...
and explored the Georges River
Georges River
The Georges River is a waterway in the state of New South Wales in Australia. It rises to the south-west of Sydney near the coal mining town of Appin, and then flows north past Campbelltown, roughly parallel to the Main South Railway...
further upstream than had been done previously by the colonists. Their reports on their return led to the settlement of Banks' Town
Bankstown, New South Wales
Bankstown is a suburb of south-western Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Bankstown is located 20 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district and is the administrative centre of the local government area of the City of Bankstown.-History:Prior to European...
. In March 1796 the same party embarked on a second voyage in a similar small boat, which they also called the Tom Thumb. During this trip they travelled as far down the coast as Lake Illawarra
Lake Illawarra
Lake Illawarra is a large coastal lagoon located in the city of Wollongong about 100 km south of Sydney, New South Wales.The lake receives runoff from the Illawarra escarpment through Macquarie Rivulet and Mullet Creek, and has a narrow tidal entrance to the sea at Windang...
, which they called Tom Thumb Lagoon. They discovered and explored Port Hacking
Port Hacking
Port Hacking is an Australian estuary, located in Southern Sydney, New South Wales and fed by the Hacking River and several smaller creeks, including Bundeena Creek and The Basin. It is a ria, a river basin which has become submerged by the sea...
. In 1798-99, Bass and Flinders set out in a sloop and circumnavigated 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...
, thus proving it to be an island.
Aboriginal guides and assistance in the European exploration of the colony were common and often vital to the success of missions. In 1801-02 Matthew Flinders in The Investigator lead the first circumnavigation of Australia. Aboard ship was the Aboriginal explorer Bungaree
Bungaree
Bungaree was an Aboriginal Australian from the Broken Bay area, who was known as an explorer, entertainer, and Aboriginal community leader He became a familiar sight in colonial Sydney, dressed in a succession of military and naval uniforms that had been given to him...
, of the Sydney district, who became the first person born on the Australian continent to circumnavigate the Australian continent. Previously, the famous Bennelong
Bennelong
Woollarawarre Bennelong was a senior man of the Eora, an Aboriginal people of the Port Jackson area, at the time of the first British settlement in Australia, in 1788...
and a companion had become the first people born in the area of New South Wales to sail for Europe, when, in 1792 they accompanied Governor Phillip to England and were presented to King George III.
In 1813, Gregory Blaxland
Gregory Blaxland
Gregory Blaxland was a pioneer farmer and explorer in Australia.- Early life :Gregory Blaxland was born 17 June 1778 at Fordwich, Kent, England, the fourth son of John Blaxland, mayor from 1767 to 1774, whose family had owned estates nearby for generations, and Mary, daughter of Captain Parker,...
, William Lawson and William Wentworth
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
succeeded in crossing the formidable barrier of forested gulleys and shere cliffs presented by the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, by following the ridges instead of looking for a route through the valleys. At Mount Blaxland they looked out over "enough grass to support the stock of the colony for thirty years", and expansion of the British settlement into the interior could begin.
In 1824 the Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane
Thomas Brisbane
Major-General Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, 1st Baronet GCH, GCB, FRS, FRSE was a British soldier, colonial Governor and astronomer.-Early life:...
, commissioned Hamilton Hume
Hamilton Hume
Hamilton Hume was the first Australian born explorer. Along with Hovell in 1824, Hume was part of an expedition that first took an overland route from Sydney to Port Phillip near the site of present day Melbourne...
and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell
William Hovell
William Hilton Hovell was an English explorer of Australia.-Early life:Hovell was born in Yarmouth, Norfolk, England and went to sea as a boy, becoming a Royal Navy captain before settling in New South Wales, arriving in October 1813 aboard the Earl Spencer with his wife Esther née Arndell...
to lead an expedition to find new grazing land in the south of the colony, and also to find an answer to the mystery of where New South Wales's western rivers flowed. Over 16 weeks in 1824-25, Hume and Hovell
Hume and Hovell expedition
The Hume and Hovell expedition was one of the most important journeys of explorations undertaken in eastern Australia. In 1824 the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Thomas Brisbane, commissioned Hamilton Hume and former Royal Navy Captain William Hovell to lead an expedition to find new grazing land...
journeyed to Port Phillip and back. They made many important discoveries including 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...
(which they named the Hume), many of its tributaries, and good agricultural and grazing lands between Gunning, New South Wales
Gunning, New South Wales
Gunning is a town on the Old Hume Highway, between Goulburn and Yass in the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales, Australia, about 260 km south-west of Sydney and 75 km north of the national capital, Canberra. On Census night 2006, Gunning had a population of 487 people...
and Corio Bay, Victoria.
Charles Sturt
Charles Sturt
Captain Charles Napier Sturt was an English explorer of Australia, and part of the European Exploration of Australia. He led several expeditions into the interior of the continent, starting from both Sydney and later from Adelaide. His expeditions traced several of the westward-flowing rivers,...
led an expedition along the Macquarie River in 1828 and discovered the Darling River
Darling River
The Darling River is the third longest river in Australia, measuring from its source in northern New South Wales to its confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth, New South Wales. Including its longest contiguous tributaries it is long, making it the longest river system in Australia.The...
. A theory had developed that the inland rivers of New South Wales were draining into an inland sea. Leading a second expedition in 1829, Sturt followed the Murrumbidgee River
Murrumbidgee River
The Murrumbidgee River is a major river in the state of New South Wales, Australia, and the Australian Capital Territory . A major tributary of the Murray River, the Murrumbidgee flows in a west-northwesterly direction from the foot of Peppercorn Hill in the Fiery Range of the Snowy Mountains,...
into a 'broad and noble river', the Murray River, which he named after Sir George Murray, secretary of state for the colonies. His party then followed this river to its junction with the Darling River
Darling River
The Darling River is the third longest river in Australia, measuring from its source in northern New South Wales to its confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth, New South Wales. Including its longest contiguous tributaries it is long, making it the longest river system in Australia.The...
, facing two threatening encounters with local Aboriginal people along the way. Sturt continued down river on to Lake Alexandrina
Lake Alexandrina (South Australia)
Lake Alexandrina is a lake in South Australia adjacent to the coast of the Southern Ocean, about 100 kilometres south-east of Adelaide.-Name:The lake was named after Princess Alexandrina, niece and successor of King William IV of Great Britain and Ireland...
, where the Murray meets the sea 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...
. Suffering greatly, the party had to then row back upstream hundreds of kilometers for the return journey.
Surveyor General Sir Thomas Mitchell conducted a series of expeditions from the 1830s to 'fill in the gaps' left by these previous expeditions. He was meticulous in seeking to record the original Aboriginal place names around the colony, for which reason the majority of place names to this day retain their Aboriginal titles.
The Polish scientist/explorer Count Paul Edmund Strzelecki conducted surveying work in the Australian Alps
Australian Alps
The Australian Alps are the highest mountain ranges of mainland Australia. They are located in southeastern Australia and straddle the Australian Capital Territory, south-eastern New South Wales and eastern Victoria...
in 1839 and became the first European to ascend Australia's highest peak, which he named Mount Kosciuszko
Mount Kosciuszko
Mount Kosciuszko is a mountain located in the Snowy Mountains in Kosciuszko National Park. With a height of 2,228 metres above sea level, it is the highest mountain in Australia...
in honour of the Polish patriot Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Tadeusz Kosciuszko
Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko was a Polish–Lithuanian and American general and military leader during the Kościuszko Uprising. He is a national hero of Poland, Lithuania, the United States and Belarus...
.
Gold Rush
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 radically 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...
.
At Broken Hill, New South Wales
Broken Hill, New South Wales
-Geology:Broken Hill's massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits. The orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the...
in the 1880s, BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton is a global mining, oil and gas company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and with a major management office in London, United Kingdom...
(now a major global mining and gas company) began as a silver, lead and zinc mine operation. By 1891, the population of the Outback town had passed 21,000, making Broken Hill the third largest town in the colony of New South Wales.
Cultural development
Sydney Royal Easter Show
The Sydney Royal Easter Show, also known as the Royal Easter Show or simply The Show, is an annual show held in Sydney, Australia over two weeks around Easter.It is run by the Royal Agricultural Society of New South Wales and was first held in 1823...
, an agricultural exhibition and New South Wales cultural institution, began in 1823. Alexander Macleay
Alexander Macleay
Hon. Alexander Macleay MLC FLS FRS was a leading member of the Linnean Society and a fellow of the Royal Society.Macleay was born on Ross-shire, Scotland, eldest son of William Macleay, provost of Wick...
started collecting the exhibits of Australia's oldest museum - Sydney's Australian Museum
Australian Museum
The Australian Museum is the oldest museum in Australia, with an international reputation in the fields of natural history and anthropology. It features collections of vertebrate and invertebrate zoology, as well as mineralogy, palaeontology, and anthropology...
– in 1826 and the current building opened to the public in 1857. The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper began printing in 1831. The University of Sydney
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...
commenced in 1850. The Royal National Park
Royal National Park
Royal National Park is a national park in New South Wales, Australia, 29 km south of Sydney CBD.Founded by Sir John Robertson, Acting Premier of New South Wales, and formally proclaimed on 26 April 1879, it is the world's second oldest purposed national park, the first usage of the term...
, south of Sydney opened in 1879 (second only to Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Yellowstone National Park, established by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by President Ulysses S. Grant on March 1, 1872, is a national park located primarily in the U.S. state of Wyoming, although it also extends into Montana and Idaho...
in the USA). An academy of art formed in 1870 and the present Art Gallery of New South Wales
Art Gallery of New South Wales
The Art Gallery of New South Wales , located in The Domain in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, was established in 1897 and is the most important public gallery in Sydney and the fourth largest in Australia...
building began construction in 1896.
The New South Wales Rugby Union
New South Wales Rugby Union
The New South Wales Rugby Union is the organisation responsible for the sport of rugby union in most of the state of New South Wales, Australia...
(or then, The Southern RU – SRU) was established in 1874, and the very first club competition took place in Sydney that year. In 1882 the first New South Wales team
New South Wales Waratahs
The New South Wales Waratahs are an Australian rugby union football team, representing the majority of New South Wales in the Super 15 Super Rugby competition...
was selected to play Queensland
Queensland Reds
The Queensland Reds represent Queensland in the sport of rugby union in the Southern Hemisphere Super Rugby competition. Prior to 1996 they were a representative team selected on merit from the rugby union club competitions in Queensland...
in a two-match series (initially popular, the sport would became secondary in popularity in New South Wales after the creation of the New South Wales Rugby League
New South Wales Rugby League
The New South Wales Rugby League is the governing body of rugby league in New South Wales and is a member of the Australian Rugby League. It was formed in Sydney on 8 August 1907 and was known as the New South Wales Rugby Football League until 1984 when forward thinking marketing managers decided...
as a professional code in 1907). In 1878 the inaugural first class cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
was played between New South Wales and Victoria.
The Sydney International Exhibition of 1879 showcased the colonial capital to the world. Some exhibits from this event were kept to constitute the original collection of the new Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum of New South Wales (today's Powerhouse Museum
Powerhouse Museum
The Powerhouse Museum is the major branch of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Sydney, the other being the historic Sydney Observatory...
).
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.
Self-government and democracy
William Wentworth
William Charles Wentworth was an Australian poet, explorer, journalist and politician, and one of the leading figures of early colonial New South Wales...
established the Australian Patriotic Association (Australia's first political party) in 1835 to demand democratic government for New South Wales. The reformist attorney general, John Plunkett
John Plunkett
John Hubert Plunkett was Attorney-General of New South Wales and elected as a member of the Legislative Assembly.-Early life:...
, sought to apply Enlightenment
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
principles to governance in the colony, pursuing the establishment of equality before the law, first by extending jury rights to emancipist
Emancipist
An emancipist was any of the convicts sentenced and transported under the convict system to Australia, who had been given conditional or absolute pardons...
s, then by extendeding legal protections to convicts, assigned servants and Aborigines
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....
. Plunkett twice charged the colonist perpetrators of the Myall Creek massacre
Myall Creek massacre
Myall Creek Massacre involved the killing of up to 30 unarmed Australian Aborigines by European settlers on 10 June 1838 at the Myall Creek near Bingara in northern New South Wales...
of Aborigines with murder, resulting in a conviction and his landmark Church Act of 1836 disestablished
State religion
A state religion is a religious body or creed officially endorsed by the state...
the Church of England
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...
and established legal equality between Anglicans
Anglican Church of Australia
The Anglican Church of Australia is a member church of the Anglican Communion. It was previously officially known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania...
, Catholics, Presbyterians and later Methodists.
In 1840, the Sydney City Council was established. Men who possessed 1000 pounds worth of property were able to stand for election and wealthy landowners were permitted up to four votes each in elections. Australia's first parliamentary elections were conducted for the New South Wales Legislative Council
New South Wales Legislative Council
The New South Wales Legislative Council, or upper house, is one of the two chambers of the parliament of New South Wales in Australia. The other is the Legislative Assembly. Both sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney. The Assembly is referred to as the lower house and the Council as...
in 1843, again with voting rights (for males only) tied to property ownership or financial capacity. 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.
The end of transportation and the rapid growth of population following the gold rush led to a demand for "British institutions" in New South Wales, which meant an elected parliament and responsible government
Responsible government
Responsible government is a conception of a system of government that embodies the principle of parliamentary accountability which is the foundation of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy...
. In 1851 the franchise for the Legislative Council was expanded, but this did not satisfy the settlers, many of whom (such as the young 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...
) had been Chartists
Chartism
Chartism was a movement for political and social reform in the United Kingdom during the mid-19th century, between 1838 and 1859. It takes its name from the People's Charter of 1838. Chartism was possibly the first mass working class labour movement in the world...
in Britain in the 1840s. Successive Governors warned the Colonial Office of the dangers of 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...
if the demands for self-government were not met. There was, however, a prolonged battle between the conservatives, now led by Wentworth, and the democrats as to what kind of constitution New South Wales would have. The key issue was control of the pastoral lands, which the democrats wanted to take away from the squatters and break up into farms for settlers. Wentworth wanted a hereditary upper house controlled by the squatters to prevent any such possibility. The radicals, led by rising politicians like Parkes and journalists like Daniel Deniehy
Daniel Deniehy
Daniel Henry Deniehy was an Australian journalist, orator and politician; and early advocate of democracy in colonial New South Wales.-Early life:...
, ridiculed suggestions of a "bunyip
Bunyip
The bunyip, or kianpraty, is a large mythical creature from Aboriginal mythology, said to lurk in swamps, billabongs, creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes....
aristocracy."
1855 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).
The New South Wales Constitution Act of 1855, steered through the British Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
by the veteran radical Lord John Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, KG, GCMG, PC , known as Lord John Russell before 1861, was an English Whig and Liberal politician who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in the mid-19th century....
, who wanted a constitution which balanced democratic elements against the interests of property, as did the Parliamantary system in Britain at this time. The Act created a bicameral
Bicameralism
In the government, bicameralism is the practice of having two legislative or parliamentary chambers. Thus, a bicameral parliament or bicameral legislature is a legislature which consists of two chambers or houses....
Parliament of New South Wales
Parliament of New South Wales
The Parliament of New South Wales, located in Parliament House on Macquarie Street, Sydney, is the main legislative body in the Australian state of New South Wales . It is a bicameral parliament elected by the people of the state in general elections. The parliament shares law making powers with...
, with a lower house, the New South Wales Legislative Assembly
New South Wales Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of New South Wales, an Australian state. The other chamber is the Legislative Council. Both the Assembly and Council sit at Parliament House in the state capital, Sydney...
, consisting of 54 members elected by adult males who met a moderate property qualification (anyone who owned property worth a hundred pounds, or earned a hundred pounds a year, or held a pastoral licence, or who paid ten pounds a year for lodgings, could vote). The Assembly was heavily malapportioned in favour of the rural areas. The Legislative Council was to consist of at least 21 members (but with no upper limit) appointed for life by the Governor, and Council members had to meet a higher property qualification.
These seemed like formidable barriers to democracy, but in practice they did not prove so, because the Constitution Act could be modified by simple majorities of both Houses. In 1858 the property franchise for the Assembly was abolished, and the 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...
introduced. Since the principle that the Governor should always act on the advice of his ministers was soon established, a Premier whose bills were rejected by the Council could simply advise the Governor to appoint more members until the opposition was "flooded": usually the threat of "flooding" was enough. The ministry of Charles Cowper
Charles Cowper
Sir Charles Cowper, KCMG was an Australian politician and the Premier of New South Wales on five different occasions from 1856 to 1870....
marked the victory of colonial liberalism, although New South Wales liberals were never as radical as those in Victoria or South Australia. The major battle for the liberals, unlocking the lands from the squatters, was more or less won by John Robertson, five times Premier during the 1860s, who passed 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...
to break up the squatters' estates.
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...
s. The only issue which really excited political passions in this period was education, which was the source of bitter conflict between Catholics
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...
, Protestants
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
, and secularists
Secularism
Secularism is the principle of separation between government institutions and the persons mandated to represent the State from religious institutions and religious dignitaries...
, who all had conflicting views on how schools should be operated, funded and supervised. This was a major preoccupation for Henry Parkes, the dominant politician of the period (he was Premier five times between 1872 and 1889). In 1866 Parkes, as Education Minister, brought in a compromise Schools Act that brought all religious schools under the supervision of public boards, in exchange for state subsidies. But in 1880 the secularists won out when Parkes withdrew all state aid for church schools and established a statewide system of free secular schools.
New South Wales and Victoria continued to develop along divergent paths. Parkes and his successor as leader of the New South Wales liberals, George Reid
George Reid (Australian politician)
Sir George Houstoun Reid, GCB, GCMG, KC was an Australian politician, Premier of New South Wales and the fourth Prime Minister of Australia....
, were Gladstonian liberals
Gladstonian Liberalism
Gladstonian Liberalism is a political doctrine named after the British Victorian Prime Minister and leader of the Liberal Party, William Ewart Gladstone. Gladstonian Liberalism consisted of limited government expenditure and low taxation whilst making sure government had balanced budgets...
committed to free trade, which they saw as both economically beneficial and as necessary for the unity of the British Empire
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...
. They regarded Victorian protectionism as economically foolish and narrowly parochial. It was this hostility between the two largest colonies, symbolised by Victorian customs posts along 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...
, which prevented any moves towards uniting the Australian colonies, even after the advent of the railways and the telegraph made travel and communication between the colonies much easier by the 1870s. So long as Victoria was larger and richer than New South Wales, the mother colony (as it liked to see itself) would never agree to surrender its free trade principles to a national or federal government which would be dominated by Victorians.
Statehood
Federation
By the 1890s, several new factors were drawing the Australian colonies towards political union. The great land boom in Victoria in the 1880s was followed a prolonged depression, which allowed New South Wales to recover the economic and demographic superiority it had lost in the 1850s. There was a steady rise in imperial sentiment in the 1880s and '90s, which made the creation of united Australian dominion seem an important imperial project. The intrusion of other colonial powers such as France and GermanyGerman Empire
The German Empire refers to Germany during the "Second Reich" period from the unification of Germany and proclamation of Wilhelm I as German Emperor on 18 January 1871, to 1918, when it became a federal republic after defeat in World War I and the abdication of the Emperor, Wilhelm II.The German...
into the south-west Pacific area made colonial defence an urgent question, which became more urgent with the rise of Japan
Empire of Japan
The Empire of Japan is the name of the state of Japan that existed from the Meiji Restoration on 3 January 1868 to the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of...
as an expansionist power. Finally the issue of Chinese and other non-European immigration made federation of the colonies an important issue, with advocates of a White Australia policy
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....
arguing the necessity of a national immigration policy.
As a result the movement for federation was initiated by Parkes with his 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...
of 1889 (earning him the title "Father of Federation"), and carried forward after Parkes' death by another New South Wales politician, 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....
. Opinion in New South Wales about federation remained divided through the 1890s. The northern and southern border regions, which were most inconvenienced by the colonial borders and the system of intercolonial tariffs, were strongly in favour, while many in the Sydney commercial community were sceptical, fearing that a national Parliament would impose a national tariff (which was indeed what happened). The first attempt at federation in 1891 failed, mainly as a result of the economic crisis of the early '90s. It was the federalists of the border regions who revived the federal movement in the later '90s, leading up to the Constitutional Convention
Constitutional Convention (Australia)
In Australian history, the term Constitutional Convention refers to four distinct gatherings.-1891 convention:The 1891 Constitutional Convention was held in Sydney in March 1891 to consider a draft Constitution for the proposed federation of the British colonies in Australia and New Zealand. There...
of 1897-98 which adopted a draft Australian Constitution.
When the draft was put to referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
in New South Wales in 1899, Reid (Free Trade Premier from 1894 to 1899), adopted an equivocal position, earning him the nickname "Yes-No Reid." The draft was rejected, mainly because New South Wales voters thought it gave the proposed Senate
Australian Senate
The Senate is the upper house of the bicameral Parliament of Australia, the lower house being the House of Representatives. Senators are popularly elected under a system of proportional representation. Senators are elected for a term that is usually six years; after a double dissolution, however,...
, which would dominated by the smaller states, too much power. Reid was able to bargain with the other Premiers to modify the draft so that it suited New South Wales interests, and the draft was then approved. On 1 January 1901, following a proclamation
Proclamation Declaring the Establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia
The Proclamation Declaring the Establishment of the Commonwealth was a royal proclamation made by Queen Victoria on 17 September 1900 federating the six separate British colonies of New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria and Western Australia under the name of the...
by Queen Victoria
Victoria of the United Kingdom
Victoria was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. From 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India....
, New South Wales ceased to be a self-governing colony and became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia. Although the new Governor-General
Governor-General of Australia
The Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia is the representative in Australia at federal/national level of the Australian monarch . He or she exercises the supreme executive power of the Commonwealth...
and Prime Minister
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
were sworn in Sydney, Melbourne was to be the temporary seat of government until the permanent seat of government was established. This was to be in New South Wales, but at least 100 miles (160 km) from Sydney. The first Prime Minister (Barton) the first Opposition Leader (Reid) and the first Labor
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...
leader (Chris Watson
Chris Watson
John Christian Watson , commonly known as Chris Watson, Australian politician, was the third Prime Minister of Australia...
) were all from New South Wales.
Federation to World War II
Hunter Valley
The Hunter Region, more commonly known as the Hunter Valley, is a region of New South Wales, Australia, extending from approximately to north of Sydney with an approximate population of 645,395 people. Most of the population of the Hunter Region lives within of the coast, with 55% of the entire...
and silver, lead and zinc from Broken Hill
Broken Hill, New South Wales
-Geology:Broken Hill's massive orebody, which formed about 1,800 million years ago, has proved to be among the world's largest silver-lead-zinc mineral deposits. The orebody is shaped like a boomerang plunging into the earth at its ends and outcropping in the centre. The protruding tip of the...
- was also important. Federation was followed by the imposition of protective tariffs just as the Sydney Free Traders had feared, and this boosted domestic manufacturing. Farmers, however, suffered from increased costs, as well as from the prolonged drought that afflicted the state at the turn of the century. A further boost to both manufacturing and farming came from the increased demand during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. By the 1920s New South Wales was overtaking Victoria as the centre of Australian heavy industry, symbolised by the Broken Hill Proprietary
BHP Billiton
BHP Billiton is a global mining, oil and gas company headquartered in Melbourne, Australia and with a major management office in London, United Kingdom...
(BHP) steelworks at Newcastle, opened in 1915, and another steel mill at Port Kembla
Port Kembla, New South Wales
Port Kembla is a suburb of Wollongong 8 km south of the CBD and part of the Illawarra region of New South Wales. The suburb comprises a seaport, industrial complex , a small harbour foreshore nature reserve, and a small commercial sector. It is situated on the tip of Red Point, first sighted...
in 1928.
The growth of manufacturing and mining brought with it the growth of an industrial working class. Trade union
Trade union
A trade union, trades union or labor union is an organization of workers that have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiates labour contracts with...
s had been formed in New South Wales as early as the 1850s, but it was great labour struggles of the 1890s that led them to move into politics. The most important was the Australian Workers' Union
Australian Workers' Union
The Australian Workers' Union is one of Australia's largest and oldest trade unions. It traces its origins to unions founded in the pastoral and mining industries in the 1880s, and currently has approximately 135,000 members...
(AWU), formed from earlier unions by William Spence
William Spence
William Guthrie Spence , Australian trade union leader and politician, played a leading role in the formation of both Australia's largest union, the Australian Workers Union, and the Australian Labor Party.-Early life:...
and others in 1894. The defeat of the great shearers' and maritime strikes in the 1890s led the AWU to reject direct action and to take the lead in forming the 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...
. Labor had its first great success in 1891, when it won 35 seats in the Legislative Assembly, mainly in the pastoral and mining areas. This first parliamentary Labor Party, led by Joseph Cook
Joseph Cook
Sir Joseph Cook, GCMG was an Australian politician and the sixth Prime Minister of Australia. Born as Joseph Cooke and working in the coal mines of Silverdale, Staffordshire during his early life, he emigrated to Lithgow, New South Wales during the late 1880s, and became General-Secretary of the...
, supported Reid's Free Trade government, but broke up over the issue of free trade versus protection, and also over the "pledge" which the unions required Labor members to take always to vote in accordance with majority decisions. After federation, Labor, led by James McGowen
James McGowen
James Sinclair Taylor McGowen was an Australian politician and the first Labor Premier of New South Wales from 21 October 1910 to 30 June 1913.-Early life and family:...
, soon recovered, and won its first majority in the Assembly in 1910, when McGowen became the state's first Labor Premier.
This early experience of government, plus the social base of New South Wales party in the rural areas rather than in the militant industrial working class of the cities, made New South Wales Labor notably more moderate than its counterparts in other states, and this in turn made it more successful at winning elections. The growth of the coal, iron, steel and shipbuilding industries gave Labor new "safe" areas in Newcastle and Wollongong
Wollongong, New South Wales
Wollongong is a seaside city located in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. It lies on the narrow coastal strip between the Illawarra Escarpment and the Pacific Ocean, 82 kilometres south of Sydney...
, while the mining towns of Broken Hill and the Hunter also became Labor strongholds. As a result of these factors, Labor has ruled New South Wales for 59 of the 96 years since 1910, and every leader of the New South Wales Labor Party except one has become Premier of the state.
But Labor came to grief in New South Wales as elsewhere during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, when the Premier, William Holman
William Holman
William Arthur Holman was an Australian Labor Party Premier of New South Wales, Australia, who split with the party on the conscription issue in 1916 during World War I, and immediately became Premier of a conservative Nationalist Party Government.-Early life:Holman was born in St Pancras, London,...
, supported the Labor Prime Minister Billy Hughes
Billy Hughes
William Morris "Billy" Hughes, CH, KC, MHR , Australian politician, was the seventh Prime Minister of Australia from 1915 to 1923....
in his drive to introduce conscription
Conscription
Conscription is the compulsory enlistment of people in some sort of national service, most often military service. Conscription dates back to antiquity and continues in some countries to the present day under various names...
. New South Wales voters rejected both attempts by Hughes to pass a referendum
Referendum
A referendum is a direct vote in which an entire electorate is asked to either accept or reject a particular proposal. This may result in the adoption of a new constitution, a constitutional amendment, a law, the recall of an elected official or simply a specific government policy. It is a form of...
authorising conscription, and in 1916 Hughes, Holman, Watson, McGowen, Spence and many other founders of the party were expelled, forming the Nationalist Party
Nationalist Party of Australia
The Nationalist Party of Australia was an Australian political party. It was formed on 17 February 1917 from a merger between the conservative Commonwealth Liberal Party and the National Labor Party, the name given to the pro-conscription defectors from the Australian Labor Party led by Prime...
under Hughes and Holman. Federal Labor did not recover from this split for many years, but New South Wales Labor was back in power by 1920, although this government lasted only 18 months, and again from 1925 under Jack Lang
Jack Lang (Australian politician)
John Thomas Lang , usually referred to as J.T. Lang during his career, and familiarly known as "Jack" and nicknamed "The Big Fella" was an Australian politician who was Premier of New South Wales for two terms...
.
In the years after World War I it was the farmers rather than the workers who were the most discontented and militant class in New South Wales. The high prices enjoyed during the war fell with the resumption of international trade, and farmers became increasingly discontented with the fixed prices paid by the compulsory marketing authorities set up as a wartime measure by the Hughes government. In 1919 the farmers formed the Country Party
National Party of Australia
The National Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Traditionally representing graziers, farmers and rural voters generally, it began as the The Country Party, but adopted the name The National Country Party in 1975, changed to The National Party of Australia in 1982. The party is...
, led at national level by Earle Page
Earle Page
Sir Earle Christmas Grafton Page, GCMG, CH was the 11th Prime Minister of Australia, and is to date the second-longest serving federal parliamentarian in Australian history, with 41 years, 361 days in Parliament.-Early life:...
, a doctor from Grafton
Grafton, New South Wales
The city of Grafton is the commercial hub of the Clarence River Valley. Established in 1851, Grafton features many historic buildings and tree-lined streets. Located approximately 630 kilometres north of Sydney and 340 km south of Brisbane, Grafton and the Clarence Valley can be reached...
, and at state level by Michael Bruxner
Michael Bruxner
Lieutenant Colonel Sir Michael Frederick Bruxner KBE, DSO, JP was an Australian politician and soldier, serving for many years as Leader of the Country Party and its predecessors...
, a small farmer from Tenterfield
Tenterfield, New South Wales
Tenterfield is a town in New South Wales, Australia. It is located in the New England region at the intersection of the New England and Bruxner Highways. Tenterfield is a three-hour drive from Brisbane, 2.5 hours from Byron Bay, two hours from Armidale, New South Wales and 10 hours from Sydney....
. The Country Party used its reliable voting base to make demands on successive non-Labor governments, mainly to extract subsidies and other benefits for farmers, as well as public works in rural areas.
The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
which began in 1929 ushered a period of unprecedented political and class conflict in New South Wales. The mass unemployment and collapse of commodity prices brought ruin to both city workers and to farmers. The beneficiary of the resultant discontent was not the Communist Party
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, which remained small and weak, but Jack Lang's Labor populism. Lang's second government was elected in November 1930 on a policy of repudiating New South Wales' debt to British bondholders and using the money instead to help the unemployed through public works. This was denounced as illegal by conservatives, and also by James Scullin
James Scullin
James Henry Scullin , Australian Labor politician and the ninth Prime Minister of Australia. Two days after he was sworn in as Prime Minister, the Wall Street Crash of 1929 occurred, marking the beginning of the Great Depression and subsequent Great Depression in Australia.-Early life:Scullin was...
's federal Labor government. The result was that Lang's supporters in the federal Caucus brought down Scullin's government, causing a second bitter split in the Labor Party. in May 1932 the Governor, Sir Philip Game
Philip Game
Air Vice-Marshal Sir Philip Woolcott Game GCB, GCVO, GBE, KCMG, DSO was a British Royal Air Force commander, who later served as Governor of New South Wales and Commissioner of Police of the Metropolis...
, convinced that Lang was acting illegally, dismissed his government, and Labor spent the rest of the 1930s in opposition.
In a Sheffield Shield cricket match at the Sydney Cricket Ground
Sydney Cricket Ground
The Sydney Cricket Ground is a sports stadium in Sydney in Australia. It is used for Australian football, Test cricket, One Day International cricket, some rugby league and rugby union matches and is the home ground for the New South Wales Blues cricket team and the Sydney Swans of the Australian...
in 1930, Don Bradman, a young New South Welshman of just 21 years of age wrote his name into the record books at by smashing the previous highest batting score in first-class cricket with 452 runs not out in just 415 minutes. Although Bradman would later transfer to play for South Australia, his world beating performances provided much needed joy to Australians through the emerging Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
.
The 1938 British Empire Games
1938 British Empire Games
The 1938 British Empire Games was the third British Empire Games, the Commonwealth Games being the modern-day equivalent. Held in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia from February 5–12, 1938, they were timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary...
were held in Sydney from February 5–12, timed to coincide with Sydney's sesqui-centenary (150 years since the foundation of British settlement in Australia).
World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
in 1939, the differences between New South Wales and the other states that had emerged in the 19th century had faded as a result of federation and economic development behind a wall of protective tariffs. New South Wales continued to outstrip Victoria as the centre of industry, and increasingly of finance and trade as well.
The radicalism of the Lang period subsided as the Depression eased, and his removal as Labor Leader in 1939 marked the permanent (as it turned out) defeat of the left of the New South Wales Labor Party. Labor returned to office under the moderate leadership of William McKell
William McKell
Sir William John McKell GCMG , Australian politician, was Premier of New South Wales from 1941 to 1947, and was the 12th Governor-General of Australia. He was also the oldest Governor General of Australia, at 93 when he died....
in 1941 and stayed in power for 24 years.
World War II saw another surge in industrial development to meet the needs of a war economy, and also the elimination of unemployment. When Ben Chifley
Ben Chifley
Joseph Benedict Chifley , Australian politician, was the 16th Prime Minister of Australia. He took over the Australian Labor Party leadership and Prime Ministership after the death of John Curtin in 1945, and went on to retain government at the 1946 election, before being defeated at the 1949...
, a railwayman from Bathurst, became Prime Minister in 1945, New South Wales Labor assumed what it saw as its rightful position of national leadership.
After launching their Pacific War
Pacific War
The Pacific War, also sometimes called the Asia-Pacific War refers broadly to the parts of World War II that took place in the Pacific Ocean, its islands, and in East Asia, then called the Far East...
, the Imperial Japanese Navy
Imperial Japanese Navy
The Imperial Japanese Navy was the navy of the Empire of Japan from 1869 until 1947, when it was dissolved following Japan's constitutional renunciation of the use of force as a means of settling international disputes...
managed to infiltrate New South Wales waters
Axis naval activity in Australian waters
Although Australia was remote from the main battlefronts, there was considerable Axis naval activity in Australian waters during the Second World War. A total of 54 German and Japanese warships and submarines entered Australian waters between 1940 and 1945 and attacked ships, ports and other targets...
and in late May and early June 1942, Japanese submarines made a series of attacks
Attack on Sydney Harbour
In late May and early June 1942, during World War II, submarines belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy made a series of attacks on the cities of Sydney and Newcastle in New South Wales, Australia...
on the cities of Sydney and Newcastle. Though casualties were light, the population feared Japanese invasion. The main Japanese naval advance towards Australian territory was however halted with the assistance of the United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
, in May 1942, at the Battle of the Coral Sea
Battle of the Coral Sea
The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought from 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first fleet action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
. The Cowra Breakout
Cowra breakout
During World War II, a prisoner of war camp near the town of Cowra in New South Wales, Australia was the site of one of the largest prison escapes of the war, on 5 August 1944. At least 545 Japanese POWs were involved in the breakout.-The camp:...
of 1944 saw Japanese prisoners of war launch a suicidal escape attempt from their camp in the Central West of New South Wales. This is considered the only fighting within New South Wales of the war.
Post World War Two
1949 Australian coal strike
The 1949 Australian coal strike is the first time that Australian military forces were used during peacetime to break a Trade union strike. The strike by 23,000 coal miners lasted for seven weeks, from 27 June 1949 to 15 August 1949, with troops being sent in by the Ben Chifley Federal Labor...
, largely fomented by the Communist Party of Australia
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia was founded in 1920 and dissolved in 1991; it was succeeded by the Socialist Party of Australia, which then renamed itself, becoming the current Communist Party of Australia. The CPA achieved its greatest political strength in the 1940s and faced an attempted...
, which crippled the state's industry. This contributed to the defeat of the Chifley government
Ben Chifley
Joseph Benedict Chifley , Australian politician, was the 16th Prime Minister of Australia. He took over the Australian Labor Party leadership and Prime Ministership after the death of John Curtin in 1945, and went on to retain government at the 1946 election, before being defeated at the 1949...
at the 1949 election
Australian federal election, 1949
Federal elections were held in Australia on 10 December 1949. All 121 seats in the House of Representatives, and 42 of the 60 seats in the Senate were up for election, where the single transferable vote was introduced...
s and the beginning of the long rule at a Federal level of Robert Menzies
Robert Menzies
Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, , Australian politician, was the 12th and longest-serving Prime Minister of Australia....
, a politician from Victoria, of the newly founded Liberal Party of Australia
Liberal Party of Australia
The Liberal Party of Australia is an Australian political party.Founded a year after the 1943 federal election to replace the United Australia Party, the centre-right Liberal Party typically competes with the centre-left Australian Labor Party for political office...
. The postwar years also saw massive immigration to Australia, begun by Chifley's Immigration Minister, Arthur Calwell
Arthur Calwell
Arthur Augustus Calwell Australian politician, was a member of the Australian House of Representatives for 32 years from 1940 to 1972, Immigration Minister in the government of Ben Chifley from 1945 to 1949 and Leader of the Australian Labor Party from 1960 to 1967.-Early life:Calwell was born in...
, and continued under the Liberals. Sydney, hitherto an almost entirely British and Irish city by origin (apart from a small Chinese community), became increasingly multi-cultural, with many immigrants from Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Greece
Greece
Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , and historically Hellas or the Republic of Greece in English, is a country in southeastern Europe....
, Malta
Malta
Malta , officially known as the Republic of Malta , is a Southern European country consisting of an archipelago situated in the centre of the Mediterranean, south of Sicily, east of Tunisia and north of Libya, with Gibraltar to the west and Alexandria to the east.Malta covers just over in...
and eastern Europe (including many Jews
Jews
The Jews , also known as the Jewish people, are a nation and ethnoreligious group originating in the Israelites or Hebrews of the Ancient Near East. The Jewish ethnicity, nationality, and religion are strongly interrelated, as Judaism is the traditional faith of the Jewish nation...
), and later from Lebanon
Lebanon
Lebanon , officially the Republic of LebanonRepublic of Lebanon is the most common term used by Lebanese government agencies. The term Lebanese Republic, a literal translation of the official Arabic and French names that is not used in today's world. Arabic is the most common language spoken among...
and Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...
, permanently changing its character.
The Snowy Mountains Scheme
Snowy Mountains Scheme
The Snowy Mountains scheme is a hydroelectricity and irrigation complex in south-east Australia. It consists of sixteen major dams; seven power stations; a pumping station; and 225 kilometres of tunnels, pipelines and aqueducts and was constructed between 1949 and 1974. The Chief engineer was Sir...
began construction in the state's south. This hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity
Hydroelectricity is the term referring to electricity generated by hydropower; the production of electrical power through the use of the gravitational force of falling or flowing water. It is the most widely used form of renewable energy...
and irrigation
Irrigation in Australia
Irrigation in Australia is a widespread practice to supplement low rainfall levels in Australia with water from other sources to assist in the production of crops or pasture. As the driest inhabited continent, irrigation is required in many areas for production of crops for domestic and export use...
complex in 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....
called for the construction of sixteen major dams and seven power stations between 1949 and 1974. It remains the largest engineering project undertaken in Australia and necessitated the employment of 100,000 people from over 30 countries
Post war migrant arrivals, australia
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, Ben Chifley, Prime Minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949, established the Federal Department of Immigration and thereby launched a large scale immigration program...
. Socially this project symbolises a period during which Australia became an ethnic "melting pot" of the twentieth century but which also changed Australia's character and increased its appreciation for a wide range of cultural diversity. The Scheme built several temporary towns for its construction workers, several of which have become permanent: notably Cabramurra
Cabramurra, New South Wales
Cabramurra is the highest permanently inhabited town on the Australian continent, situated at 1,488m AHD in the western Snowy Mountains of the Great Dividing Range, in the state of New South Wales...
, which became highest town in Australia. The sleepy rural town of Cooma
Cooma, New South Wales
-Education: is Cooma's only public high school, it serves the town and seven of the neighbouring rural towns and villages such as Berridale, Jindabyne, Nimmitabel, Bredbo and Dalgety....
became a bustling construction economy, while small rural townships like Adaminaby and Jindabyne had to make way for the construction of Lakes Eucumbene
Lake Eucumbene
Lake Eucumbene is a man-made lake on the Eucumbene River in the Snowy Mountains of Southern New South Wales in Australia. The lake was created by the damming of the river as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme. The dam was built between 1956 and 1958....
and Jindabyne
Lake Jindabyne
Lake Jindabyne is a man-made lake on the Snowy River on the eastern slopes of the Snowy Mountains in Southern New South Wales. The lake was created by the damming of the River as part of the Snowy Mountains Scheme.-Flow of water:...
. Improved vehicular access to the High Country enabled ski-resort villages to be constructed at Thredbo and Guthega in the 1950s by ex-Snowy Scheme workers who realised the potential for expansion of 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....
.
Labor stayed in power in New South Wales until 1965, growing increasingly conservative and (according to its critics) lazy and even corrupt in office. In 1965 a vigorous Liberal leader, Robert Askin
Robert Askin
Sir Robert William Askin GCMG, was an Australian politician and the 32nd Premier of New South Wales from 1965 to 1975, the first representing the Liberal Party of Australia. He was born in 1907 as Robin William Askin, but always disliked his first name and changed it by deed poll in 1971...
, finally broke Labor's long grip on power, and stayed in office for ten years. During these years Sydney began its transformation into a world city and a centre of the arts, with the building of the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...
as the great symbol of the period. The rest of the state, however, began a gradual decline, demographically and economically, as Australia lost some of its traditional export markets for primary products in Britain and as New South Wales' iron, steel and shipbuilding industries became increasingly uncompetitive in the face of competition from Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
and other new entrants. Sydney's share of the state's population and wealth grew steadily. One consequence of this was a strong secessionist movement in the New England
New England (Australia)
New England or New England North West is the name given to a generally undefined region about 60 kilometres inland, that includes the Northern Tablelands and the North West Slopes regions in the north of the state of New South Wales, Australia.-History:The region has been occupied by Indigenous...
region of northern New South Wales, which for a time looked as though it might succeed in forming a new state, but which faded away in the late 1960s.
Post 1970s
Coffs Harbour, New South Wales
-History:By the early 1900s, the Coffs Harbour area had become an important timber production centre. Before the opening of the North Coast Railway Line, the only way to transport large items of heavy but low value, such as timber, was by coastal shipping. This meant sawmillers on the North Coast...
and Byron Bay
Byron Bay, New South Wales
Byron Bay is a beachside town located in the far-northeastern corner of the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is located north of Sydney and south of Brisbane. Cape Byron, a headland adjacent to the town, is the easternmost point of mainland Australia. At the 2006 Census, the town had a...
. As aviation has replaced shipping, most new migrants to Australia have arrived in Sydney by air rather than in Melbourne by ship, and Sydney now gets the lion's share of new arrivals, mostly from Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.
Richter magnitude scale
The expression Richter magnitude scale refers to a number of ways to assign a single number to quantify the energy contained in an earthquake....
5.6 earthquake
Earthquake
An earthquake is the result of a sudden release of energy in the Earth's crust that creates seismic waves. The seismicity, seismism or seismic activity of an area refers to the frequency, type and size of earthquakes experienced over a period of time...
and one of Australia's most serious natural disaster
Natural disaster
A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...
s, killing 13 people and injuring more than 160. The damage bill has been estimated at A$
Australian dollar
The Australian dollar is the currency of the Commonwealth of Australia, including Christmas Island, Cocos Islands, and Norfolk Island, as well as the independent Pacific Island states of Kiribati, Nauru and Tuvalu...
4 billion (including an insured loss of about $1 billion). The Newcastle earthquake was the first Australian earthquake in recorded history to claim human lives. The following, year, 1990, saw major flooding in the State's central west, with Nyngan suffering a devasting innundation. In 1993-4, the State suffered a serious bushfire season
1994 Eastern seaboard fires
The 1994 Eastern seaboard fires were bushfires in New South Wales, Australia between 27 December 1993 and 16 January 1994 were widespread along the NSW coast from Bega to the Queensland border and inland as far as Bathurst. Over 80 separate fires encouraged by extreme hot dry and windy conditions...
, causing destruction even within urban areas of Sydney. Agricultural production was severely curtailed by prolonged drought
2000s Australian drought
The 2000s drought in Australia is the worst since settlement. This drought began in 1995 and continued until late 2009....
during the late 1990s and early 2000s, particularly in the Murray-Darling basin
Murray-Darling Basin
The Murray-Darling basin is a large geographical area in the interior of southeastern Australia, whose name is derived from its two major rivers, the Murray River and the Darling River. It drains one-seventh of the Australian land mass, and is currently by far the most significant agricultural...
. The drought was followed by sever flooding in 2010.
In 1973, after a long period of planning and construction, the Sydney Opera House
Sydney Opera House
The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in the Australian city of Sydney. It was conceived and largely built by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, finally opening in 1973 after a long gestation starting with his competition-winning design in 1957...
was officially opened. The building was from a design by Joern Utzon. It became a symbol not only of Sydney, but of the Australian nation and was inscribed by UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
in 2007. Sydney has maintained extensive political, economic and cultural influence over Australia as well as international renown in recent decades. The city hosted the 2000 Olympic Games
2000 Summer Olympics
The Sydney 2000 Summer Olympic Games or the Millennium Games/Games of the New Millennium, officially known as the Games of the XXVII Olympiad, were an international multi-sport event which was celebrated between 15 September and 1 October 2000 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
, the 2003 Rugby World Cup
2003 Rugby World Cup
The 2003 Rugby World Cup was the fifth Rugby World Cup and was won by England. Originally planned to be co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand, all games were shifted to Australia following a contractual dispute over ground signage rights between the New Zealand Rugby Football Union and Rugby World...
and the APEC Leaders conference of 2007
APEC Australia 2007
APEC Australia 2007 was a series of political meetings held around Australia between the 21 member economies of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation during 2007...
. From 1991-2007, Sydney-siders governed as Prime Minister of Australia
Prime Minister of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and Head of Her Majesty's Australian Government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful...
- first Paul Keating
Paul Keating
Paul John Keating was the 24th Prime Minister of Australia, serving from 1991 to 1996. Keating was elected as the federal Labor member for Blaxland in 1969 and came to prominence as the reformist treasurer of the Hawke Labor government, which came to power at the 1983 election...
(1991-1996) and later John Howard
John Howard
John Winston Howard AC, SSI, was the 25th Prime Minister of Australia, from 11 March 1996 to 3 December 2007. He was the second-longest serving Australian Prime Minister after Sir Robert Menzies....
(1996-2007).
In recent decades Sydney has also undergone a major social liberalisation, with huge entertainment and gambling industries. Though there has been a decline in the dominance of Christianity
Christianity in Australia
Christianity is the largest religion listed by Australians in the national census. In the 2006 Census, 63.9% of Australians were listed as Christian. Australia has no official state religion and the Australian Constitution protects freedom of religion. The presence of Christianity in Australia...
through increased secularisation and the growing presence of an increasingly diverse migrant population, Sydney's two outspoken Archbishops, George Pell
George Pell
George Pell AC is an Australian cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. He is the eighth and current Archbishop of Sydney, serving since 2001. He previously served as auxiliary bishop and archbishop of the Archdiocese of Melbourne...
(Catholic) and Peter Jensen (Anglican
Anglican Church of Australia
The Anglican Church of Australia is a member church of the Anglican Communion. It was previously officially known as the Church of England in Australia and Tasmania...
) remain vocal in national debates and the hosting of Catholic World Youth Day 2008
World Youth Day 2008
The 23rd World Youth Day 2008 was a Catholic youth festival that started on 15 July and continued until 20 July 2008 in Sydney, Australia. It was the first World Youth Day held in Australia and the first World Youth Day in Oceania. This meeting was decided by Pope Benedict XVI, during the Cologne...
, led by Pope Benedict XVI
Pope Benedict XVI
Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the Sovereign of the Vatican City State and the leader of the Catholic Church as well as the other 22 sui iuris Eastern Catholic Churches in full communion with the Holy See...
, drew huge crowds of worshipers to the city. An evangelical Christian "bible belt" has developed in the north-western suburbs. Buddhist and Muslim
Islam
Islam . The most common are and . : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...
communities in particular are growing, but so is irreligiosity. While a grant from the State government permitted the final completion of the spires of 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...
in 2000 (the foundation stone was laid in 1868), construction of the present structure of the large Auburn Gallipoli Mosque
Auburn Gallipoli Mosque
The Auburn Gallipoli Mosque is an Ottoman-style mosque in Auburn, a suburb of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The mosque attracts about 800 worshippers every week and is primarily used by Turkish Australians....
began in 1986 and at Wollongong, south of Sydney, Nan Tien Temple
Nan Tien Temple
Nan Tien Temple is a Buddhist temple complex located in the industrial suburb of Berkeley, on the southern outskirts of the Australian city of Wollongong, approximately 80 km south of Sydney...
opened in 1995 as one of the southern hemisphere
Southern Hemisphere
The Southern Hemisphere is the part of Earth that lies south of the equator. The word hemisphere literally means 'half ball' or "half sphere"...
's largest Buddhist temples. Sydney has gained a reputation for secularism and hedonism, with the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras
The Sydney Mardi Gras is an annual LGBTQI pride parade and festival in Sydney, Australia, and draws in thousands of visitors from around Australia and overseas...
becoming a world-famous event. Star City Casino
Star City Casino
The Star Sydney Casino & Hotel in Pyrmont, Sydney, is the second largest casino in Australia after rival Melbourne's Crown Casino. Overlooking Darling Harbour, The Star Sydney Casino features two gaming floors, eight bars, seven restaurants, 351 hotel rooms and 130 serviced and privately owned...
opened in the mid 1990s as Sydney's only legal casino.
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...
has had long periods of governance in New South Wales in recent decades, holding power under Neville Wran
Neville Wran
Neville Kenneth Wran, AC, CNZM, QC was the Premier of New South Wales from 1976 until 1986. He was National President of the Australian Labor Party from 1980 to 1986 and Chairman of both the Lionel Murphy Foundation and the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation from 1986...
and Barrie Unsworth
Barrie Unsworth
Barrie John Unsworth was an Australian politician, representing the Australian Labor Party in the Parliament of New South Wales from 1978 to 1991. He served as the 36th Premier from July 1986 to March 1988.-Early years:...
from 1976 to 1988. A period of Liberal-National Coalition
Coalition (Australia)
The Coalition in Australian politics refers to a group of centre-right parties that has existed in the form of a coalition agreement since 1922...
rule followed under Nick Greiner
Nick Greiner
Nicholas "Nick" Frank Hugo Greiner AC, is an Australian businessman and former politician. He was the 37th Premier New South Wales from 1988 to 1992. He was Leader of the New South Wales Division of the Liberal Party from 1983 to 1992 and Leader of the Opposition from 1983 to 1988. He is married...
and John Fahey
John Fahey
John Fahey may refer to:* John Fahey , American guitarist and composer* John Fahey , former state premier of New South Wales, Australia, and later Australian federal Finance Minister, current President of WADA...
from 1988 to 1995, but the Labor Party was led back to power by Bob Carr
Bob Carr
Robert John "Bob" Carr , Australian statesman, was Premier of New South Wales from 4 April 1995 to 3 August 2005. He holds the record for the longest continuous service as premier of NSW...
in 1995 and has remained in office ever since. Carr retired and was succeeded by a series of Labor premiers between 2005-2011: Morris Iemma
Morris Iemma
Morris Iemma , is a former Australian politician and 40th Premier of New South Wales, succeeding Bob Carr after he resigned on 3 August 2005. Iemma led the Australian Labor Party to victory in the 2007 election before resigning as Premier on 5 September 2008, and as a Member of Parliament on 19...
won the 2007 Election but his party replaced him with Nathan Rees
Nathan Rees
Nathan Rees MP, , an Australian politician, was the 41st Premier of New South Wales and parliamentary leader of the New South Wales division of the Australian Labor Party from September 2008 to December 2009...
in 2007, who was, in turn, replaced by Kristina Keneally
Kristina Keneally
Kristina Kerscher Keneally MP, is an Australian politician and was the 42nd Premier of New South Wales. She was elected leader of the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales and thus Premier in 2009, but went on to lose government to the Liberal/National Coalition at the March 2011 state election...
in 2008. Two recent Premiers have been of non-British background: Greiner (Liberal 1988-92), who is of Hungarian descent, and Iemma whose parents are Italian. The current Governor of New South Wales, Marie Bashir
Marie Bashir
Marie Roslyn Bashir AC, CVO is the present Governor of New South Wales since 2001 and also the Chancellor of the University of Sydney since 2007. Born in Narrandera, New South Wales, Bashir graduated from the University of Sydney in 1956 and held various medical positions, with a particular...
, is of Lebanese origin and is the first woman to be appointed to the office of Governor. The current Premier of New South Wales, Kristina Keneally
Kristina Keneally
Kristina Kerscher Keneally MP, is an Australian politician and was the 42nd Premier of New South Wales. She was elected leader of the Australian Labor Party in New South Wales and thus Premier in 2009, but went on to lose government to the Liberal/National Coalition at the March 2011 state election...
, was born and raised in the United States and became the first female Premier when her party selected her as leader in 2008. Elections to the 55th Parliament of New South Wales
New South Wales state election, 2011
Elections to the 55th Parliament of New South Wales were held on Saturday, 26 March 2011. The 16-year incumbent Australian Labor Party government led by Premier Kristina Keneally was defeated in a landslide by the Liberal-National coalition opposition led by Barry O'Farrell.New South Wales has...
are fixed to be held on Saturday, 26 March 2011.
Most commentators predict that Sydney and the coast areas of northern New South Wales will continue to grow in the coming decades, although Bob Carr and others have argued that Sydney (which by 2006 had over 4 million people) cannot grow any bigger without putting intolerable strain on its environment and infrastructure. The southern coastal areas around Canberra are also expected to grow, although less rapidly. The rest of the state, however, is expected to continue to decline, as traditional industries disappear. Already many small towns in western New South Wales have lost so many services and businesses that they are no longer viable, causing population to consolidate in regional centres like Dubbo and Wagga Wagga.
See also
- Governor of New South Wales
- History of SydneyHistory of SydneyThe History of Sydney begins in prehistoric times with the occupation of the district by Australian Aborigines, whose ancestors came to Australia between 45,000 and 50,000 years ago...
- History of NewcastleHistory of Newcastle, New South WalesThis article details the history of Newcastle, New South Wales from the first human activity in the region to the 20th century.-Pre-European Settlement:...