New Australia
Encyclopedia
Utopia
Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...
n socialist settlement in Paraguay
Paraguay
Paraguay , officially the Republic of Paraguay , is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to the east and northeast, and Bolivia to the northwest. Paraguay lies on both banks of the Paraguay River, which runs through the center of the...
founded by the Australian New Australian Movement. The colony was officially founded on 28 September 1893 as Colonia Nueva Australia and comprised 238 adults and children.
History
The New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association, known in short as the New Australia Movement, was founded by William LaneWilliam Lane
William Lane was a journalist, advocate of Australian labour politics and a utopian.-Early life:Lane was born in Bristol, England, eldest son of James Lane,from Ireland a Protestant Master Gardener , and his English wife Caroline, née Hall...
in 1892. Lane was a prominent figure in the Australian labour movement
Australian labour movement
The Australian labour movement has its origins in the early 19th century and includes both trade unions and political activity. At its broadest, the movement can be defined as encompassing the industrial wing, the unions in Australia, and the political wing, the Australian Labor Party and minor...
, and had founded Australia's first labour newspaper – the Queensland Worker in 1890. A split in the Australian labour movement between those who went on to form 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...
spurred Lane's intent to found a socialist utopia outside Australia. Lane's ideal was to build a society based on:
- A common-hold, rather than a common-wealth
- A brotherhood of English-speaking Whites
- Life marriage
- Preservation of the 'Colour-Line'
- Teetotalism
- Communism
His concept of 'common-hold' was that each member of a society should be able to withdraw their proportion of the society's wealth if they chose to leave.
Lane's was not the only influence urging Australians at the time towards a socialist community; utopian Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.-Early life:...
's Looking Backward was also popular with socialists and led many urban followers of Lane to expect that they would live in luxury in a socialist commune like that of Bellamy's fiction.
Paraguay was chosen as the site of the settlement. Lane recruited many and the first ship left Sydney in July 1893 for Paraguay, where the government was keen to get white settlers and had offered the group a large area of good land. There were some able settlers, but New Australia has been described as a Cave of Adullam
Cave of Adullam
The Cave of Adullam was originally a stronghold referred to in the Old Testament, near the town of Adullam, in which David, already anointed to succeed Saul as king, sought refuge from the latter . The word "cave" is usually used but "fortress", which has a similar appearance in writing, is used as...
to misfits, failures, and malcontents of the left wing of Australian democracy. Notable Australian individuals who joined the colony included Mary Gilmore
Mary Gilmore
Dame Mary Gilmore DBE was a prominent Australian socialist poet and journalist.-Early life:Mary Jean Cameron was born on 16 August 1865 at Cotta Walla near Goulburn, New South Wales...
, Rose Summerfield
Rose Summerfield
Rose Anna Summerfield also known as Rose Cadogan or Rose Hummer, was a radical Australian feminist and labour activist....
, and Gilbert Stephen Casey.
The founding of the settlement was of interest to left wing thinkers worldwide; of the settlement Peter Kropotkin
Peter Kropotkin
Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin was a Russian zoologist, evolutionary theorist, philosopher, economist, geographer, author and one of the world's foremost anarcho-communists. Kropotkin advocated a communist society free from central government and based on voluntary associations between...
said,
"The fact that men and women, who have made Australia what it is, are compelled to migrate from it, speaks volumes in itself. 'Make the land, be the dung which renders it productive, build the centres of civilisation which render it valuable – and go away!' That is the true picture of modern capitalist management. The same here, the same at the antipodes – always the same!"
Some colonists founded communes elsewhere in Paraguay, others went home to Australia or on to England; some descendants of the New Australia colonists still live in Paraguay.
The 1997 book Paradise Mislaid by Anne Whitehead is about the colonists and their descendants today. There is also a fictional retelling of the story by Michael Wilding, called The Paraguayan Experiment. The classic account is historian Gavin Souter
Gavin Souter
Gavin Geoffrey Souter AO is an Australian journalist and historian.He was born in Sydney and educated at Kempsey High School, and Scots College in Warwick, Queensland and then graduated BA from the University of Sydney...
's A Peculiar People, written in 1968.
From time to time Australian tourists visit Nueva Australia and make contact with locals, or visit the local school.
The town had about 300 residents in 2007, and is only a few hours bus ride from Iguazu Falls
Iguazu Falls
Iguazu Falls, Iguassu Falls, or Iguaçu Falls are waterfalls of the Iguazu River located on the border of the Brazilian State of Paraná and the Argentine Province of Misiones. The falls divide the river into the upper and lower Iguazu. The Iguazu River originates near the city of Curitiba. It flows...
.
The Melbourne-based Australian Folk Punk
Folk punk
Folk punk , is a fusion of folk music and punk rock. It was pioneered in the late 1970s and early 1980s by The Pogues in Britain and Violent Femmes in America. Folk punk achieved some mainstream success in that decade...
band The Currency have a song called "Paraguy" which tells the story of New Australia.
Graeme Connors, Australian country singer-songwriter, wrote a song called "Boomerang in Paradise", a nostalgic, sympathetic retelling of William Lane and the New Australia colonists. The Weddings Parties Anything
Weddings Parties Anything
Weddings Parties Anything were an Australian folk rock band formed in 1984 in Melbourne and continuing until 1998. Their name came from The Clash song and musicologist Billy Pinnell described their first album as the best Australian rock debut since Skyhooks' Living in the '70s.-Formation and...
song "Drifted Away" is also about the New Australia experiment.
Personalities
- William LaneWilliam LaneWilliam Lane was a journalist, advocate of Australian labour politics and a utopian.-Early life:Lane was born in Bristol, England, eldest son of James Lane,from Ireland a Protestant Master Gardener , and his English wife Caroline, née Hall...
(1861–1917, founder, journalist) - Gilbert CaseyGilbert CaseyGilbert Stephen Casey was a trade unionist, agitator of the early Australian labour movement and a utopian socialist.- Personal life :...
(1856-1946, co-founder, chief of police) - Robin WoodRobin Wood (comics)-Biography:Of Paraguayan-Australian origins, Wood spent his childhood between Paraguay and Argentina with his mother, before leaving to do various jobs, such as dishwasher, truck driver, salesman, wood chopper, journalist and factory worker in those two countries as well as in Brazil...
(b. 1944, comic writer)
Further reading
- A Peculiar People – Souter, GavinGavin SouterGavin Geoffrey Souter AO is an Australian journalist and historian.He was born in Sydney and educated at Kempsey High School, and Scots College in Warwick, Queensland and then graduated BA from the University of Sydney...
– 1968 - Paradise Mislaid – Whitehead, Anne – 1997.