The Big Book of Australian History 0642278326, 9780642278326

Citation preview

Peter Macinnis

The

BIG BOOK

cbca awa r d winning a u t h or

of

AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

The

BIG BOOK of

AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

Published by the National Library of Australia Canberra ACT 2600 © National Library of Australia 2013 Text © Peter Macinnis Books published by the National Library of Australia further the Library’s objectives to interpret and highlight the Library’s collections and to support the creative work of the nation’s writers and researchers. Every reasonable endeavour has been made to contact the copyright and rights holders. Where this has not been possible, the copyright and rights holders are invited to contact the publisher. Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander communities should be aware that this book contains images and names of people who are now deceased. This book is copyright in all countries subscribing to the Berne Convention. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Author:

Macinnis, P. (Peter), author.

Title:

The big book of Australian history / Peter Macinnis.

ISBN:

9780642278326 (paperback)

Target Audience:

For upper primary school age.

Subjects:

Australia—History—Juvenile literature.



Australia--Social conditions—Juvenile literature.



Australia--Discovery and exploration—Juvenile literature.

Other Authors/Contributors: National Library of Australia, issuing body Dewey Number:

994

Commissioning Publisher: Susan Hall Editors: Stephanie Owen Reeder and Joanna Karmel Designer: Susanne Geppert Image coordinators: Jemma Posch and Kathryn Ross Production coordinator: Melissa Bush Indexer: Joanna McLachlan Printed in China by Everbest Printing Co. Ltd Find out more about National Library Publishing at http://publishing.nla.gov.au. The National Library of Australia would like to thank Debra Dank of the Indigenous Literacy Project, Fred Ford, Michael McKernan, George Nichols, Glen Rose, Roslyn Russell and Mary Webb for their help with this book.

For teachers’ notes, go to http://publishing.nla.gov.au/pages/teachers-notes.do

Peter Macinnis

The

BIG BOOK

of

AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

NLA PUBLISHING

Contents Preface 6

Ancient Australia 9 Creating an island continent 10, An ancient land 12, The age of giants 14

The Dreaming 17 The first people 18, A surviving culture 20, Aboriginal artists 22

Voyages of Discovery 25 Early explorers 26, Mapping the coast 30

Founding Colonies 33 The First Fleet 34, The convict system 36, Aboriginal resistance 37, Settling Tasmania 39, The Rum Rebellion 41, Macquarie’s legacy 44, Establishing Brisbane and Perth 46, The making of Adelaide and Melbourne 48

Exploring the Land 51 Conquering the Blue Mountains 52, Searching for the ‘Inland Sea’ 53, Following the rivers 55, Reaching westward 57, Criss-crossing the country 59, Travelling south to north 61, Exploring the interior 62, Crossing the continent 64, Colonial science 66

The Lure of Gold 69 The gold rushes 70, Immigration 73, The Eureka Stockade 74

Settling the Land 77 Raising sheep 78, The life of a settler 79, Australian agricultural inventions 82, Bushrangers and outlaws 83, Boom and bust 86, Looking after the workers 88

The Growth of Cities 91 City life 92, Education 94, Catholics and Protestants 96, Communications 97, Steam engines 100, Transport 102, Electrification 104, The world’s first feature film 107

Federation 109 Moving towards Federation 110, Celebrating the new nation 112, The first Federal Parliament 113, Women gain the vote 115, Restricting immigration 116, Providing social welfare 118, Selecting a capital city site 120, Travelling south with Mawson 122

Becoming Anzacs 125 Supporting the British 126, Who was in the Great War? 128, Raising an army 129, Australian ‘firsts’ in the war 131, The Gallipoli campaign 132, Animals at war 134, Three Australian generals 136, The Western Front 138, War in the air 140, The desert campaign 142, A respected enemy 144, The home front 146, Wartime leaders 148

Modern Times 151 Turning the radio on 152, Scientific advances 154, Government comes to Canberra 156, Motoring across Australia 158, Aviation takes off 160

The Sporting Life 229 The Melbourne Olympics 230, Cricket 232, Tennis 235, Swimming 236, Surfing 239, Athletics 241, Aboriginal athletes 243, Football 244, The America’s Cup 246, Sailing solo around the world 247, Other sporting highlights 248

Embracing Multiculturalism 251 The Great Depression 163 The dream fades 164, The Sydney Harbour Bridge 166, Doing it tough 168, The mighty Phar Lap 170, Bodyline bowling 172, Aboriginal Day of Mourning 173, Australia at war again 174

Defending Australia 177 Training aircrew 178, Campaigning in North Africa 179, Looking to the USA 182, War comes to Australian shores 183, The attack on Sydney 187, Women at war 188, Rationing 190, Fighting in Korea 192

Building for the Future 195 Helping refugees 196, Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme 198, Australia’s own car 199, The Menzies era 201, Expansion of the suburbs 202, Television comes to Australia 204

Controversial Issues 207 The Vietnam War 208, Dismissing a government 210, Conserving the Tasmanian wilderness 212, Aboriginal land rights 214, Fighting overseas 216, Saying sorry 218, Vying for the leadership 220

Dealing with Disasters 223 Droughts and flooding rains 224, Cyclones 225, Fighting fire 226, Transport and other disasters 227

Abandoning the White Australia Policy 252, Refugees in Australia 254, Chain migration 256, Multicultural Australia 258, Reconciliation 258

On the World Stage 261 Entertaining abroad 262, Winning the Nobel Prize 263, Sharing Australia’s stories 266, Making music 269, Picturing Australia 272, Australian dance 274, Capturing Australia on film 276

You Are a History Maker 278 List of Illustrations 280 Index 284

Preface This book provides a broad overview of the history of Australia from its earliest geological formations to the present day. The framework that underpins the narrative was developed in consultation with teacher-librarians and specialists in specific subject areas. The lively and engaging text by award-winning writer Peter Macinnis and illustrations from the National Library of Australia collections make the historical narratives in The Big Book of Australian History accessible to young readers. The diversity of the Australian experience—from the culture of the Indigenous people to the contributions made by waves of settlers from countries around the globe— is captured in the book. There are no lists of colonial governors or prime ministers, but there are many stirring stories about well-known (and not so well-known) people, all of whom have contributed to our national story. There are also stories about how Australians have dealt with the challenges of living in this country in times of drought, flood, bushfire and other disasters. As the centenary of the World War I approaches, the impact on the national consciousness of Australia’s involvement in foreign wars is an essential component of the book. No history of Australia could fail to mention our sporting achievements and the centrality of sport in the nation’s life. The book also examines Australian contributions in science and the arts, from our Nobel Prize winners to singers, dancers, actors, filmmakers and visual artists who have created imagery that conveys the distinctive qualities of Australian life, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous.

Rosyln Russell, Consultant Historian

ABOVE: Caption to come

Ancient Australia Australia is an ancient land. Some Australian fossils are around 3.5 billion years old. Some of its surface rocks are about two billion years old, while one Australian plant, the Wollemi pine, belongs to a family that has been growing on the continent for about 200 million years. And the history of modern humans inhabiting Australia goes back tens of thousands of years.

BELOW: Australia has unique animals and plants, including the platypus and the waratah.

LEFT: A rainforest in ancient Australia would have looked much like this.

Creating an island continent Inside planet Earth, everything is so hot that even the rocks melt. The heat comes from radioactive atoms breaking down, and it makes the liquid rock move around like boiling water in a saucepan. Luckily, melted rock moves much more slowly than boiling water. The Earth’s crust, the solid rock we live on, floats on this hot liquid rock. Sometimes the molten rock breaks through, making a volcano, but mostly it spreads out sideways under the Earth’s surface. Then the molten rock gets cooler and sinks again. A hundred years ago, some people noticed that, on maps, South America and Africa looked like they fitted together, just like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That made them think that the seven continents—Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia, Antarctica, North America and South America—must have moved around. And so they came up with the idea of ‘continental drift’. They could also see patterns in the way certain animals had lived in certain places—especially monkeys, camels, horses and birds. These patterns made sense only if the continents had moved. The problem was that nobody could explain what made them move.

A platypus that bites! There is an opal in the Australian Museum in Sydney that, around 110 million years ago, was the jaw of an animal like a platypus. This little animal had teeth, but adult platypuses do not have teeth now. The jaw was found at Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. It came from a relative of Australia’s modern monotremes—echidnas and platypuses.

About 50 years ago, scientists realised that the pieces of the Earth’s crust, called plates, can move. They get pushed along by currents in the molten rock below them. That gave rise to the term ‘plate tectonics’. Today, the big plate that includes all of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea moves north at about 67 millimetres a year. The plates are huge, but so are the forces moving them. These forces can cause earthquakes, and they

Two members of the protea family: an Australian waratah (left) and a South African Protea (right).

10

ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

T H E CON T I N EN T

1

A L DR I F T

2

PANGAEA

3

T R IA S S IC

4

CRETACE

/J U R A S S IC

OUS T O D A Y ’S

These maps show how scientists believe the present-day continents formed over time.

C O N T IN E

NTS

can also rip plates apart. Luckily, Australia is in the middle of a stable, single plate, and so it does not have many earthquakes.

grevilleas—were found all over Gondwana, they are also related to other members of the family in southern Africa and in South America.

The supercontinents divide We now know that once, very long ago, there was just one large area of land called Pangaea. The plants and animals on Pangaea could live anywhere around the land, and so they either evolved, by slowly changing to suit their surroundings, or they died out. Pangaea then split into the supercontinents, Laurasia and Gondwana, and different groups of plants and animals evolved separately on each one. Then, when Gondwana split into separate continents, including Australia, lots of evidence was left behind. For example, while Australian plants from the family Proteaceae—which includes banksias, waratahs and

Similarly, most people think marsupials like kangaroos, possums, koalas, bilbies and Tasmanian devils are found only in Australia, but the American opossum evolved from the same animals found on Gondwana that became Australia’s marsupials.

Today, the big plate that includes all of Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea moves north at about 67 millimetres a year.

Flightless birds, called ratites—like the emu, the cassowary, the African ostrich, the South American rhea and the now extinct New Zealand moa—were also found on Gondwana. Around 220 million years ago, in what is called the Late Triassic period, the supercontinents began to separate. Gondwana later broke up, and the Australian continent drifted south. As the plates moved, the animals and plants that lived on them were carried along with them. Fossils were formed in the rocks, and by studying them we can work out what once lived there. People who study fossils and the rocks in which they are found are called palaeontologists. They are like

ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

11

detectives searching for clues. By examining minerals called zircons in New Zealand rocks, they can actually detect that those rocks formed from sediments that came from rocks in New South Wales and Queensland over 150 million years ago! Australia and its animal and plant life are the way they are because of how our continent formed and changed.

An ancient land Australia and its story have been shaped by rocks, and some of those rocks are amazingly old. When people began studying rocks some 200 years ago, the oldest rocks they discovered were in Wales, in the United Kingdom, so geologists called them ‘Cambrian’, from an old name for Wales. Scientists now think that the Cambrian period dates back to 542 million years ago. They used to think that was when the first fossils were formed. Planet Earth is almost nine times older than that, and all the rocks older than 542 million years old are called Pre-Cambrian. In Australia, some of those older rocks contain fossils.

t? me firs a c o h W

at the ouch th p f o e p s e ty suggest ION: Th ach has e QU E S T t a b first? wom evolved nd the o a h a w l a t o u k lated, b y are re e h t t a h t species of both s le a m e f ards (or R: The s backw A N S WE e c a f t a h s dirt pouch t his stop T . ) a have a l a he ko rds in t is very downwa h. That c u o p e e the into th imal lik n a getting g in rrow an or a bu ful for useful f less use is w it t t, bu at is ho womba ees! Th r t s b that clim st have bat mu animal m o w e that th we know st. come fir

12

ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

Life has existed on the continent of Australia for a very long time, and the rocks and soil are also very old.

Fascinating fossils In Western Australia, there are fossils of stromatolites— a very basic form of life—that are at least 3.46 billion years old! Living stromatolites can be found near Shark Bay, while some of the world’s oldest fossils (that we recognise as animals) have been found in the Ediacara Hills in the Flinders Ranges of South Australia. Life has existed on the continent of Australia for a very long time, and the rocks and soil are also very old. In Europe and North America, glaciers in each ice age stripped all the surface rocks away, leaving fresh rocks that made new soil when the ice melted. However, very few glaciers have formed in Australia in the past 100 million years, and so there is very little new soil. New soil also comes from volcanoes, especially at the edges of a plate. Our continent is a long way from the plate edges, and Australia has only a few small volcanoes.

Fossil fish discovered in an ancient, dried-up billabong near Canowindra in New South Wales.

Because of this, most Australian soils are old and worn out. They lack certain minerals, such as phosphate, that plants need to thrive. The lack of minerals in our soil has affected the evolution of life in Australia. Biodiversity—having lots of different species— is important for the future of life on the Earth. Most people think the greatest biodiversity is found in rainforests, but Australia’s greatest biodiversity is found in some of Western Australia’s sand hills, where everything plants need to live on is in short supply. That means that the species that live there have had to evolve just to survive.

Almost every species of Australian plant and animal has characteristics that help it live in the Australian climate. In such a dry land, bushfires occurred even before humans came. To survive bushfires, animals must be able to find shelter, and plants must be able to grow back after a fire has passed through. That is why Australian native plants often have woody fruits that protect the seeds and open up only after a fire. The early settlers were disappointed to find no beasts of burden in Australia—no horses, mules or oxen—

and very few trees that produced good timber to use for building houses. That was because the animals and plants that lived here had to concentrate on one thing: survival. Scientists can learn about ancient times from old emu eggshells around Lake Eyre in South Australia. They analyse them and, from some of the atoms in the shells, they know what the climate was like when the eggs were laid. Then, carbon dating shows how old the shells are, so we can tell what Australia was like 50,000 years ago. From fossil remains, scientists have also worked out that about 360 million years ago there was a drought just outside the present-day New South Wales town of Canowindra. We know it was a savage drought because we have evidence that many fish huddled together for safety in one billabong. Then the drought got worse and all the fish died, taking their last breath in the sticky mud. Not long after that, the rains came again. The dead fish were covered with a layer of sand that pressed them down into the mud. That was the start of the process that made them into the fossils that can be seen in Canowindra today. In many ways, fossils can teach us a lot about the history of our land.

ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

13

A hippopo tamus?

When white settlers began farming in Australia, they sometimes found bones like these.

The age of giants The ice ages caused glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere, but there were few glaciers in Australia, where it got colder and drier instead. The sea levels dropped as well, so the whole of Bass Strait was dry land. Tasmania and Kangaroo Island, as well as many smaller islands, were part of the mainland. The Torres Strait was also dry land, which is why gum trees, wallabies, cuscuses and even echidnas are found in Papua New Guinea. After the last ice age, the sea level rose again, and that is when many of Australia’s best harbours were created. Magnificent megafauna The cool, dry climate may have had an even bigger effect. Today, the biggest animal in Australia is probably the saltwater crocodile, but in the past there were many larger animals on our continent. Some of them died out

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ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

The Diproto don, an an cient relati wombat, w ve of the as the size o f a h ip p opotamus. So explore r William Dampier w the mark as closer to than he kn ew when h e thought h had found the remain e s of a hipp inside a sh opotamus ark at Sha rk Bay in Western Australia— although th e D ip rotodon wa definitely e s xtinct by th e ti m e Dampier arrived in 1699! From Dampier’s description , it was pro bably a du gong’s jaw.

a long time ago, like the dinosaurs whose fossils can be found at Dinosaur Cove in Victoria, Winton in Queensland and other sites. In the middle of the nineteenth century, members of the British public were very excited about dinosaurs. The white people living in Australia knew nothing about our fossil dinosaurs, but they did know that some very strange animals had once lived in Australia. Sadly, they knew them only from their bones. The story begins with several explorer-scientists, especially Major Thomas Mitchell. These explorers visited caves in the Wellington Valley near Dubbo in New South Wales. What they discovered amazed them, because they thought they had found elephant bones.

Today, the biggest animal in Australia is probably the saltwater crocodile, but in the past there were many larger animals on our continent. Mistakes like that are easy for untrained people to make. When navigator and explorer William Dampier cut open a shark he had caught at Shark Bay in Western Australia in 1699, he found a jaw that he thought belonged to a hippopotamus. However, it was more likely to have come from a dugong—a large sea mammal. Added to this, in the mid-1800s, scientists had been finding bones in Europe and North America which really had come from animals that were either elephants or their relatives—the mastodons and mammoths. That is why they were not surprised to find what they thought were elephant bones in Australia. Even experts could be fooled. The first of those bones was found by a wealthy squatter named George Ranken who had discovered the Wellington Caves by falling into one! While he was there, he retrieved some bones. He gave them to politician and clergyman John Dunmore Lang, who took them to Edinburgh in Scotland. From there, they went to French naturalist Baron Cuvier in Paris, in around 1830. Cuvier also thought the bones were those of an elephant. In fact, what they had found was even more exciting. The bones came from a giant relative of the wombat called a Diprotodon. However, opinions varied. William Sharp Macleay, a trustee of the Australian Museum in Sydney, was one of the experts who looked at the bones in 1859. He called the animal a ‘gigantic species of native bear’— a giant koala.

The bones of an even more amazing animal were found in the Wellington Caves and several other places around Australia. This one was also a larger relative of the wombat and the koala, but it was probably a meat-eater. London palaeontologist Richard Owen gave it the name Thylacoleo, which means ‘pouched lion’. Some people did not agree with Owen. Macleay thought it was descended from plant-eaters. Today, the animal is regarded as a meat-eater, although there is still no agreement about whether it hunted live prey or just scavenged off dead animals. Perhaps the most spectacular of the ‘megafauna’, as these huge animals are called, was a giant monitor lizard related to the Komodo dragon and the goanna. Megalania prisca was six metres long—as long as a large car—and eight times the mass of an adult Komodo dragon. These reptiles will attack children and weak adults, so just imagine what the Megalania could do! The giant predators probably ate herbivores, or planteaters, like the Procoptodon, a giant kangaroo. The megafauna certainly lived in balance with each other and their environment over much of Australia for a long time. Then, mysteriously, they died out at around the time the first humans arrived. Some people think these giant animals died out because Aboriginal people hunted them, but that is unproven. One proof would be discarded megafauna bones with cut marks from stone blades and scrapers, but nobody has found any as yet. Besides, a number of giant animals like the Dromornis stirtoni, or Thunder Bird, and the Bullockornis planei, or Demon Duck of Doom, died out before humans arrived in Australia. So it might have been hunting by humans, but it could also easily have been climate changes that killed off the megafauna in Australia. An artist’s impression of Megalania prisca, a 6-metre-long relative of the goanna.

ANCIENT AUSTRALIA

15

The Dreaming Aboriginal people have lived on the continent of Australia for at least 40,000 years, and probably even longer. The arrival of white people disrupted Aboriginal culture, but aspects of their way of life, their laws and the way in which they relate to the land have survived, often through their art and their stories of ‘The Dreaming’.

ABOVE: An Aboriginal spear, and Tommy McRae’s drawing of Aboriginal men hunting kangaroos, a goanna and a possum.

LEFT: William Barak’s drawing of Aboriginal dancers.

An Aboriginal camp in South Australia in the 1840s, with traditional shelters.

The first people Humans first came to Australia from Asia at least 40,000, or possibly 60,000, years ago. A few people have even set the entry date at 125,000 years ago! How can we date their arrival in Australia? One problem is that sea levels were lower when the first people came, so any campsites by the shore are now under water. Still, we do occasionally find evidence. All wood and animal material contains carbon, and anything under about 50,000 years old can be dated by a method called carbon dating. The problem is that these materials get eaten by animals or burned in bushfires, and the method does not work on things that last, like stone tools. The solution comes from the way the mineral quartz, in grains of sand, changes when it is buried. Alone, in the dark, natural radiation makes electrons jump into crystal defects or ‘traps’ at a regular rate. If the sun shines on the quartz, the electrons bounce right back again but, in buried quartz, the number of trapped electrons builds up. So, when we dig up a stone axe, for example, the

Humans first came to Australia from Asia at least 40,000, or possibly 60,000, years ago. A few people even set the entry date at 125,000 years ago!

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THE DREAMING

sand grains that lie on top of it will be a bit younger, and those below will be a bit older, and we can date them by something called luminescence—the light they give off. Other clues come from pollen deposits. Although Aboriginal people did not grow crops, they did practise firestick farming. They managed the land by burning it so that useful plants, like grasses, would grow and attract the animals that they hunted for food. This could change the types of plants that were most common in an area. And so, because pollen grains are all different, we can sometimes work out when humans entered a particular area. Modern humans It was only about 32,000 years ago that ‘modern humans’—Cro-Magnon people—reached Europe from Africa. From scientific evidence, we know that, soon after that, ‘Mungo Man’ settled in western New South Wales, a long way away from the probable entry point of his ancestors in northern Australia. Even when sea levels are low, to cross from Indonesia to Australia you need a boat—not a raft, not a log: it has to be a boat. Building boats requires complex thought, planning and language skills. The people who arrived here 40,000 or more years ago were modern humans. They were smart, and they knew how to adapt and survive.

To survive, they observed nature carefully. Even now, Aboriginal people in some areas of Australia recognise many more than four seasons. They know

when a particular food will become available, and that when that happens everybody needs to move to the new feeding place. Because no Australian native plants produce good crops, agriculture was of little use to Aboriginal people. That is why they chose a nomadic lifestyle. They went to where the food was, rather than staying where the food might be. The first inhabitants also had a strong sense of community. Resources and food were shared with other groups and other tribes. When groups met, they traded, they shared food and they generally got along well. Sometimes there might be a fight, but there were no wars lasting years and years, like there were in Europe. After a fight, Aboriginal people would make peace and get on with living. They also used ‘ritual spearing’ as a way of punishing wrongdoers. Contact with Europeans The original inhabitants of Australia were open to new ideas. Soon after white people arrived, the local Aboriginal people in the Sydney region worked out that glass bottles could be used to make spear-tips and knives. And, in 1896, explorer-prospector David Carnegie saw a hatchet

Firestick farming Aboriginal people tightly managed the bush by using firestick farming. It kept the land accessible and prevented huge wildfires, as well as encouraging the growth of plants that attracted animals such as kangaroos. Fire management tools, including controlled burning and fuel reduction, which are used by members of bushfire brigades today, are based on Aboriginal firestick farming.

made from half a horseshoe that had been ground to a sharp edge. He also reported that iron was being traded by Aboriginal people over ‘hundreds of miles’. Ever since the first contacts between Aboriginal people and Europeans, white people’s perceptions of the Aboriginal people have often been shaped by ignorance and bias.

Aboriginal hunters used fire to force animals into the open, and also for firestick farming.

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19

Explorer and mariner William Dampier called them ‘the miserablest people in the world’. Because they lived in a land that was hot and dry, without trees he considered worthy of the name and without houses, he thought the Aboriginal people were ‘uncivilised’ and ‘primitive’. Dampier should have thought about how they managed to survive in such a hostile land. He was obviously asking the wrong questions. In the early nineteenth century, people knew enough about the past to understand that races of people and whole civilisations sometimes disappeared. However, these ideas were based on very few facts, and little or no knowledge or understanding. Thus, there was a common belief among white people that the Aboriginal race was ‘dying out’. When Lieutenant Phillip Parker King was sent to map Australia’s coasts in the 1820s, the British had already been in Australia for more than 30 years, and yet King was asked to report on how the local people lived, including how much they relied on ‘fishing, hunting, feeding sheep or other animals, by agriculture or by commerce’. The assumption by the British Government that Aboriginal people would feed sheep or practise agriculture was based on what is called their Eurocentric view of the world. They did not consider that there might be other ways of doing things that were more suited to a particular place. They just presumed that because Aboriginal people had not discovered metals or invented wheeled vehicles they were ‘primitive’. We now know better. Slowly, various clues have been revealed about how Aboriginal people lived in Australia before white settlement, and they all tell the same story.

Traditional Aboriginal hunting implements and weapons.

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THE DREAMING

Myths and legends Many cultures and religions have legends that transmit their stories. While the Aboriginal people have the Dreamtime legends, the Greeks have Aesop’s fables, the Zen Buddhists the koan, the Native Americans the coyote tales, the Jews the Elijah stories, and the Christians and the Sufis their parables.

A surviving culture Any human culture that survives for 40,000 years or more must be based on sensible, intelligent ideas. In modern Australian society, we have written laws to tell us what we must and must not do. Aboriginal society was based on accepted traditions that were passed down from generation to generation through the myths and legends that were taught to the young people. For example, the story of Tiddalik the frog has a buried message about the value of sharing. From the earliest contacts with Aboriginal people, Europeans failed to understand that Aboriginal culture was based on sharing. In their huntergatherer society, the daily gathering of food by the women kept everyone alive, while the men’s hunting produced food on a less regular basis. Meat did not keep for long, and so, when an animal was killed, people shared it.

When white people arrived, they had no idea about this. Most of them did not even consider that other cultures might have different ways of doing things and different values which were as good as, or perhaps even better than, their own. The arrival of Europeans caused massive social disruption to Aboriginal culture. The first problem was that they took over Aboriginal land. They chopped down trees, they put out the fires the original owners used to manage the land, and they brought diseases with them. While white people were often immune to these diseases because they had had them as children, diseases like measles and even the common cold were

deadly to Aboriginal people who had no resistance to them. There were several early reports of what people thought was smallpox. Large numbers of Aboriginal people died suddenly and unpleasantly from such diseases. Others died from alcoholism, some were shot, and others starved because their food supply had been reduced. In Aboriginal culture, children and young people were introduced to their lore—traditional knowledge—and their laws throughout their lives. The initiation of young men was a way of formalising their transition from child to adult status, step by step. Rock art, and even the arrangements of stones, provided the ‘notes’ that some ‘teachers’ worked from. When the older men died suddenly—many from European-introduced diseases—often nobody was left who could interpret the notes. In some cases, too, children were taken away by white people. The result was that, for many Aboriginal groups, the transmission of their culture was broken. Sharing stories Much Aboriginal culture died out at that time, but a lot still survived. And even if some of the stories were lost, the ideals lived on, passed on in one way or another. For a while, white people did not care about Aboriginal legends, because they thought the culture was primitive and inferior to their own. But that began to change when white children were born in Australia and grew up with Aboriginal companions. Also, some people thought that, because the Aboriginal race was dying out, it would be a good idea to write down their myths and legends. That is part of the reason why today we know about Tiddalik, the Rainbow Serpent and other Aboriginal myths and legends. However, contrary to what people thought then, Aboriginal people were not dying out. A culture that has survived for 40,000 years or more is tough and adaptable, and the descendants of the original custodians of the Australian continent still keep their sense of Aboriginality. Aboriginality is not just about skin colour. It involves ways of thinking, ways of living and ways of understanding the land. It is about caring for the land and, most of all, it is about sharing. That goes much

The arrival of Europeans caused massive social disruption to Aboriginal culture.

Traditional Aboriginal dance being used in a modern setting at the Bangarra Dance Theatre in Sydney in 1998.

further than things like ‘bush tucker’, although that is part of it as well. In many parts of Australia, Aboriginal people provide guided tours of the traditional artwork in their area. Even those who do not know the stories behind the art can still admire the pictures. Art changes over time as new methods and new materials become available. Thus, many modern Aboriginal artists paint on canvas, board or paper, or they make videos or interactive displays. Even though they are not painting on rock or bark, they are still making Aboriginal art and reflecting an underlying and undying Aboriginal culture. Today, traditional corroborees are still held on bare earth. But traditional dance moves are also used in performances in grand theatres around the world by companies such as the Bangarra Dance Theatre. Aboriginal people did not die out, and neither did their culture.

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Aboriginal artists Soon after the first settlement in Sydney, the new arrivals realised that the Eora people had artistic traditions. Given the lack of paper or suitable bark, most of their art was carved into the flat surfaces of a rock called Hawkesbury sandstone. By European standards, this was not representational art, but Aboriginal rock engravings were not meant to inspire the viewer with their beauty. They were teaching aids, designed to illustrate parts of the rich culture that held the Aboriginal community together. Rock art was more library than art gallery. Myths, legends and teaching stories of many sorts were contained in the grooves carved into the stone. The same can be said of the intricate paintings found in rock overhangs in other parts of Australia: the art represents a preserved and unique culture. Several European artists visiting the colony, including Conrad Martens and George French Angas, found the Sydney

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Long before ‘dot paintings’, and well before Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira created his watercolour paintings of Central Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, three Aboriginal artists were using new materials to depict what they knew and understood about their land, people and culture. engravings interesting. Likewise, many Aboriginal artists found European art styles just as interesting. Long before ‘dot paintings’, and well before Aboriginal artist Albert Namatjira created his watercolour paintings of Central Australia in the first half of the twentieth century, three Aboriginal artists were using new materials to depict what they knew and understood about their land, people and culture. Mickey of Ulladulla’s drawing of a corroboree.

o cultures Bridging tw

s red Howitt’ ation in Alf rm fo in e th Much of th East Tribes of Sou e v ti a N e h book T Aboriginal came from 4) 0 9 (1 a li Austra k, who had Barak. Bara m a li il W t of artis the leader stian, was ri h C a e becom nderrk ent at Cora m le tt se l a o the Aborigin fe bridged tw While his li . a ri to ic V in d that he ings reveale w ra d is h cultures, mon view of ept the com did not acc boriginal time that A e th t a en white m ing race. ged to a dy people belon

Celebrating culture Mickey of Ulladulla was of the Dhurga people. He was born around 1820. Mickey probably worked for white people on the south coast of New South Wales, where he lived. In 1875, he was described as an ‘old crippled blackfellow’, and it appears he sold sketches to earn a living. He drew himself in many of these sketches wearing European dress and standing with the help of two sticks. Rather than using art to depict the preserved culture of his people, Mickey recorded their changing culture. Rather than traditional foods and activities, he showed Aboriginal people working for white people’s rations. He depicted corroborees, but they had probably been put on for white audiences. And, among echidnas, goannas and kangaroos, he also drew horses. Mickey died, probably of influenza, in 1891. It is thought that artist Tommy McRae had two traditional names: Yackaduna and Warra-euea. White settlers found it easier to give names they were familiar with to Aboriginal people, and most Aboriginal men can be identified in lists from that time because they have ‘junior’ names like Billy, Jimmy or Jacky. Tommy was probably of the Kwatkwat people, who were based south of the Murray River, near the Goulburn River, but he lived mainly between the towns of Albury and Yarrawonga.

William Barak’s drawing of Aboriginal dancers.

McRae’s illustrations show traditional scenes of hunting and corroborees, but there are also European-style houses in his pictures. One of his surviving works shows squatters in top hats, and also Chinese people. He used pen and ink, often drawing silhouettes of figures. He showed the world as he saw it.

William Barak was born into the Yarra Yarra tribe somewhere near modern Melbourne in about 1824. He would have been about 12 years old when large numbers of white settlers arrived in the Port Phillip Bay area in 1835 and 1836. That broke up his tribe’s society, and so he was never fully initiated. That meant he did not learn the traditional lore and laws of his tribe that were normally taught at his age, but he did have some grounding in his culture. He clearly valued what he did know, because he set down some traditional practices in his drawings. An early Victorian squatter, Edward Curr, described knee-length possum cloaks, worn fur-side in and painted in ‘carpet-like patterns’. Barak’s art brought these and many other facets of Aboriginal culture to life. He also drew corroborees and hunting scenes with ochre and charcoal. While Albert Namatjira’s landscapes were very European in material and style, artists like Mickey of Ulladulla, Tommy McRae and William Barak had a much more important cultural message to pass on to the future.

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Voyages of Discovery Aboriginal people were the first to inhabit the continent of Australia. However, in the 1600s, European sailors explored what they called the Great South Land or New Holland. They drew maps and navigational charts, collected plants and animals, and wrote reports. They then let the rest of the world know about what they had found. LEFT: The title page of a 1649 book about the ship Batavia. BELOW: A page from James Cook’s journal.

LEFT: A 1731 globe showing Australia joined to Papua New Guinea.

Early explorers Early explorers sailed to Australia to discover whether the country’s Indigenous people had any useful goods for trading. Some early European visitors might have found nothing they were interested in and simply sailed away. But, if they planned to try again, they would probably have kept their maps and reports secret. On the other hand, some of those early visitors might have been wrecked, either on the Australian coast or on their way home, again depriving us of any hint of what they saw. Later on, ships and navigation improved, so people were more likely to arrive home safely and be able to describe what they had found. The Dutch lead the way The first European ship that we know sailed into Australian waters came from the Netherlands. Dutchman Willem Janszoon’s Duyfken had taken part in battles against Portuguese ships in 1601 in what is now Indonesia. By 1602, the Dutch controlled part of what would later be called the Dutch East Indies, but the fighting continued. Any European ship in the area was likely to be attacked by someone—the Dutch, the Spanish, the

The risks were worth it, because the spices of the East Indies brought fabulous prices— and people were prepared to take risks if they thought they could get rich. Portuguese, the English, or even local pirates. There was no law to stop them and the profits were high, so only the lucky ones who were good fighters lived to tell their tales. In early 1606, Janszoon dropped anchor at what is now called the Pennefather River on the western side of Cape York in far north-eastern Australia. He was looking for trading opportunities, but the local Aboriginal people defended themselves and ten of Janszoon’s men died in the fighting. While he was in the area, he mapped some 300 kilometres of the coastline. He thought it was part of New Guinea. A few weeks later, Luis Váez de Torres sailed all the way through what is now called Torres Strait, so he knew that New Guinea was separate from Cape York. While Torres was Portuguese, he sailed under a Spanish flag, and any reports of his voyage, if they reached Europe, would probably have been stored in an archive in Spain. However, we know that there were copies of his reports in Manila, the centre of the Spanish holdings in the Philippines. Before long, the Dutch dominated the islands north of Australia. The Spanish held onto the Philippines, and Portugal kept half of Timor, but most of the visitors to Australia for a century and a half were Dutch.

Trading ships from the Netherlands followed a standard path. They sailed down through the Atlantic

In 1606, Spanish explorer Luis Váez de Torres sailed through the strait that now bear his name.

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A seventeenth-century Dutch map of the Indian Ocean and the route to the East Indies.

Ocean, and then turned east just past the Cape of Good Hope on the southern tip of Africa. After 1652, when they established the Cape Colony, most ships stopped there to take on stores and food. After passing or leaving the Cape, they drifted south to catch the high-speed westerly winds called the Roaring Forties. Then, when the time seemed right, the ships turned north into warmer waters and on to the East Indies. If they were lucky and had calculated correctly, they passed Western Australia, which they called New Holland, without even seeing it. If they were unlucky, they ran ashore and died, either rapidly or slowly. Very occasionally, people survived a shipwreck and were able to tell their story. The risks were worth it, because the spices of the East Indies brought fabulous prices—and people were prepared to take risks if they thought they could get rich.

Shipwreck, mutiny and murder In 1629, the ship, the Batavia, was wrecked on a reef in the Houtman Abrolhos Islands in the Indian Ocean, just off the coast of Western Australia. Many people made it safely to shore. Some of the sailors made a 33-day boat trip to Batavia (now Jakarta) to get help. Meanwhile, a mutiny broke out onshore. When the rescue ship finally arrived, more than 100 of the shipwreck survivors were dead. Many of the mutineers were executed, but two were deliberately left behind as punishment, becoming the first Europeans to live in Australia.

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Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, his second wife Jannetje and his daughter Claesgen.

Stepping on Australian soil The first known landing in Western Australia came in 1616. Dirk Hartog’s ship, the Eendracht, almost sailed past Australia’s north-western tip, where what is now called Dirk Hartog Island forms the western edge of Shark Bay. On 25 October, Hartog nailed a pewter plate to a pole, with a message on it to show that he had been there. But he found nothing of interest to him, so he left. In 1619, Frederik de Houtman found the coast somewhere near Perth, and then sailed north, before landing near Shark Bay. Abel Tasman came next. He went around Australia, New Zealand and New Guinea, so he knew there was a limit to the size of the Great South Land, as Australia was then called. Nobody knew what lay inside his outer boundary—a lot of land or a lot of ocean with a few islands. In 1642, Tasman sailed from Batavia (now Jakarta) to Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Then, in early September, he headed south, until he picked up the Roaring Forties. When the ship encountered snow and hail, he turned north and finally saw the west coast of what is now

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Tasmania, somewhere north of Macquarie Harbour. He sailed south around the island. Then, on 3 December, he sent his carpenter ashore on the east coast to plant a Dutch flag and to claim possession. He named it ‘Van Diemen’s Land’, after the Dutch governor in Batavia. Tasman then sailed up the west coast of New Zealand—which he thought was South America. After that, he headed north-east and sailed to Fiji, where he was nearly shipwrecked. He then sailed across the top of New Guinea and back to Batavia in June 1643. In 1644, Tasman undertook another expedition. This time, he sailed east to New Guinea, down into the Gulf of Carpentaria and then west, mapping the Australian north coast to Exmouth Gulf. After that, he returned to Batavia. That left a few gaps, like the Tasman Sea, Bass Strait and Torres Strait, which Tasman had narrowly missed discovering. In 1688 and 1699, Englishman William Dampier made two visits to the area, landing first near Broome and later at Shark Bay in Western Australia. In between Dampier’s two voyages, Dutchman Willem de Vlamingh

was the first to visit the Perth area, when he was looking for shipwrecked sailors. He caught three black swans on the Swan River, which he hoped to take back to Batavia. Unfortunately, the swans died, but de Vlamingh landed on Dirk Hartog Island. He took Hartog’s plate and put up a replacement. Both Dampier and de Vlamingh took back specimens and descriptions of the wildlife. They saw no reason to claim the area: they thought it was too poor to be of interest. James Cook takes a look The collection of ideas that we now call science developed slowly during the period of exploration in the 1600s, but it really took off in the 1700s. By 1769, Europe’s scientists were excited by a rare event called the transit of Venus, which happens when the planet Venus moves between the Earth and the Sun. Astronomers knew the relative distances of the different planets from the Sun, but they had no idea how many kilometres (or miles) that was. The calculations are complicated, but when the transit of Venus is observed from different places on the Earth, Venus appears to follow different paths across the Sun. The astronomers realised that if they made observations in different places then, if they knew how far apart those places were, they could work out the size of the solar system. The transit of Venus is believed to be the main reason why Englishmen James Cook and Joseph Banks, together with scientists and artists, sailed for Tahiti in 1769 on HM Bark Endeavour. The scientists took the sightings on Venus from Tahiti. Cook later sailed to New Zealand, and then on to Australia, starting at the south-eastern corner. The Endeavour anchored at Stingray Harbour, and Banks and his companions began collecting the plant specimens that later persuaded Cook to call it Botany Bay. They then sailed right up the coast until, at Cape York, Cook claimed the whole land for Britain, calling it ‘New South Wales’. When they returned to London, Banks was knighted by King George III, and he became a royal favourite. Not long after, Banks was elected President of the Royal Society, the greatest scientific body in the land. He was now perfectly placed to promote one of his favourite schemes: founding a colony at Botany Bay. The stage was set.

A page from James Cook’s journal, describing the transit of Venus.

James Cook’s navigational instruments, including a compass and a sundial, dating from about 1750.

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Mapping the coast Once people knew about the Australian continent, they had to map it carefully so other ships could visit safely. Mapping the coast was also a good way to find any rivers that might lead into the middle of the continent. Unlike other countries, Australia had few rivers that made paths into the interior. The Hawkesbury River near Sydney went inland for some kilometres, but even that did not help explorers get past the Blue Mountains. Bass, Flinders and a very small boat Surgeon George Bass explored some of Sydney’s rivers. He had brought a small boat with him from England. It was tiny—just 2.4 metres long and 1.5 metres wide—which is why he called it Tom Thumb, after the boy in the English fairytale. In 1795, with Lieutenant Matthew Flinders and a servant boy named Martin, Bass used the boat to explore the Georges River, as far as what is now called Bankstown. In 1796, they gave the same name to another boat, which was a little bit bigger, and with it they reached Lake Illawarra, just past present-day Wollongong. In 1797, Bass took six men in an open whaleboat from Sydney almost to Port Phillip, where Melbourne is now, and back again. He said the tides and ocean swell suggested a passage between Victoria and Tasmania, but he needed a larger vessel to test

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The evolution of Darwin In 1839, John Wickham, captain of HMS

Beagle, named Port Darwin to celebrate the naturalist and geologist Charles Darwin who, on an earlier voyage, had sailed on his ship. Darwin later became famous for his theory of evolution, but he never visited the place that was named after him.

his theory. And so, in 1798, he and Flinders sailed around Tasmania in a small sailing boat called the Norfolk. They proved that Van Diemen’s Land, as Tasmania was known until the 1850s, was an island.

They also mapped the estuary of the Derwent River, where Hobart was established in 1803. By then, Flinders was back in Australia commanding HMS Investigator on a detailed hydrographical survey, mapping the coasts, reefs and shoals around most of Australia. His work covered Moreton Bay, where Brisbane now lies, and a great deal of the South Australian coast. A twentieth-century poster showing Bass, Flinders and Martin in their boat, Tom Thumb, in 1795.

Charting the coast Other mapping work in South Australia was done on board two French ships commanded by Nicolas Baudin. He was in South Australian waters at the same time as Flinders, and Baudin named the Fleurieu Peninsula—the tongue of land on which Adelaide is now sited. As more and more ships came to Australia, more were wrecked, and so there was an even greater need for good navigational charts. Phillip Parker King—the son of New South Wales Governor Philip Gidley King—spent much of the 1820s charting the northern coasts of Australia in small vessels that could get close to shore. Later, King also mapped South America’s coasts when HMS Beagle was there with young scientist Charles Darwin on board. After the Beagle had dropped Darwin

A map of Bass Strait and Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania, left), as surveyed by explorer Matthew Flinders (right).

back in England, the ship returned to Australia, mapping its coasts for some years but never finding any major rivers that gave access to the inland. Thus, before about 1840, people knew much more about Australia’s coasts than they knew about its interior.

As more and more ships came to Australia, more were wrecked, and so there was an even greater need for good navigational charts.

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Founding Colonies There were no detailed plans for most of the Australian colonies. New South Wales began as a place to send convicts. Other parts of Australia were settled to provide somewhere for Britain to send the worst convicts. Others were started to provide a port for farmers, or to stop the French from settling on the continent. Every Australian colony had a different story.

ABOVE: Convict John Appleby. LEFT: A map of Van Diemen’s

Land (Tasmania) in 1822.

LEFT: Hoisting the British

flag at Sydney Cove in 1788.

The First Fleet On 14 September 1786, The Times in London reported a plan for a colony (in what was then called New Holland) at ‘Botany Bay, on the west side of the island’. People soon sang songs about Botany Bay, but no judge actually mentioned the place ‘Botany Bay’ in his sentencing of a prisoner until June 1791. By then, people knew that Botany Bay was actually on the eastern side of New Holland, but there was no settlement there in 1791. Nobody really cared where it was, so long as felons were being punished and sent somewhere far away from England. The plan was for the fleet of ships to leave London in December 1786, but there were delays. On 10 January 1787, judges at the Old Bailey courthouse sentenced 15 women prisoners to be transported. Two of the women sentenced that day would become the oldest and the youngest female convicts in the First Fleet. Elizabeth

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The First Fleet finally left on 13 May 1787. There were 11 ships carrying around 504 men and 192 women convicts, guarded by 212 marines, plus 136 ‘free’ people—a total of 1,044 people. Hayward was in her early teens, and Elizabeth Beckford was probably in her late 70s. The jails of Britain were filled with deadly diseases like tuberculosis (a lung disease) and ‘jail fever’ (typhus), and so the two Elizabeths were probably fortunate to escape that fate. They both sailed on the Lady Penrhyn, which carried women convicts and their children. On that same day in January 1787, a number of other prisoners were also lucky, as their death sentences had been changed to transportation. The First Fleet in Sydney Cove on 27 January 1788, painted in 1938 for Australia’s 150th birthday.

The journey The First Fleet finally left on 13 May 1787. There were 11 ships carrying around 504 men and 192 women convicts, guarded by 212 marines, plus 136 ‘free’ people—a total of 1,044 people. The ships also had on board tools, equipment, tents and enough food to last for two years. It took more than eight months to reach Botany Bay, with three stops at ports along the way to take on supplies. The 11 ships in the First Fleet included: two navy ships, Sirius and Supply; the store ships Fishburn, Golden Grove and Borrowdale; and the convict transports Alexander, Scarborough, Charlotte, Prince of Wales, Lady Penrhyn and Friendship.

The fleet called in at Tenerife in the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean to pick up missing supplies like musket balls—ammunition for their guns. The ships crossed the Equator on 14 July and reached Rio de Janeiro in Brazil on 4 August. The fleet’s commodore, Captain Arthur Phillip, who had served at one time in the Portuguese navy and spoke the language, was made welcome in Portuguese-speaking Brazil. While in Rio, the people on board the ships were given fresh food, including vegetables and fruit. (By then, many sailors knew that fruit and vegetables prevented scurvy, a disease caused by a lack of vitamin C.) Records show that they also bought coffee, cocoa, cotton and some medicinal plants. The First Fleet reached Cape Town in southern Africa on 13 October. There they bought figs, bamboo, sugarcane, vines, quinces, apples, pears, strawberries, oak and myrtle trees, rice, wheat, barley and corn. In addition, they purchased cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, poultry and other stock for the new colony. And, once again, everyone was given fresh food. On Christmas Day 1787, the First Fleet was sailing south of Perth. By 3 January, the fleet had passed Tasmania and turned north. Ten days later, they sailed into Botany Bay. Within a few days, on 26 January 1788 all the ships moved to Sydney Cove. Over the next few days, the convicts who had survived the journey came ashore. Some of them, like the elderly Elizabeth Beckford, had died on the way, while a few babies had been born. Some of those who landed that day would die in Australia, but others would later return to Britain. Many people on the First Fleet found a new and better life in what was to become Australia.

A portrait of Captain Arthur Phillip, as he appeared in 1788.

A teenage convict Some of the convicts on the First Fleet were sent halfway across the world to the penal colony in Botany Bay for what would now be considered petty crimes such as theft. For example, teenager Elizabeth Hayward had stolen a gown, a bonnet and a cloak, with the total value of about 7 shillings. She was an apprentice who was accused of taking the items from her master, Thomas Crofts, and selling them to a pawn shop.

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The convict system Over the next 80 years, from 1788 to 1868, some 162,000 convicts were sent to Australia. A few were innocent, a number were petty criminals who stole because they were poor and desperate, and some were real villains. In history, there are many reasons why things happen, but often one cause may be more important than others. In the 1780s, England’s jails were overcrowded, and that was one of the main reasons for setting up a new penal colony in Botany Bay. There were several other reasons, as well. The new country of the United States of America (USA) did not want Britain’s convicts. The courts in England were full of people who had been charged with thieving, poaching or doing something else that meant they would spend time in jail.

The distinctive clothing some convicts wore (right) and portraits of convicts (below).

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In the 1780s, England’s jails were overcrowded, and that was one of the main reasons for setting up a new penal colony in Botany Bay.

A hard life Teenage apprentice Elizabeth Hayward stole 7 shillings worth of clothing and was sentenced to seven years in jail. The elderly woman Elizabeth Beckford got the same sentence for stealing cheese worth just 4 shillings. At that time, there was no free education, making it hard for poor people, however clever they were, to escape poverty. Young people could be apprenticed to a tradesman at about the age of 12, but their families had to pay the master a fee called a ‘premium’. An apprenticeship usually lasted for five years. For the first year or two, apprentices often just did menial tasks like sweeping and cleaning. They lived in their masters’ houses and were fed by their masters, but there was often very little joy in their lives. It was even harder for older people. There was no old age pension, so an old man or woman with no family and no savings had little choice but to steal or to go into the workhouse. In such institutions, the inmates were not fed well, they were often mistreated and they were exposed to all sorts of diseases. Nobody lasted very long in a workhouse. And so the jails were full mainly because of poverty and the very harsh laws that imposed severe sentences even for petty crimes. Working for freedom As a rule, once they arrived in Australia, convicts were set to work doing useful things, especially if they had a trade. Some worked on farms, or caught fish, or built roads and bridges. Others were what were called ‘assigned servants’. They were allocated to free settlers as unpaid labourers. If they behaved well and worked hard, they could be granted their freedom.

A real survivor Robert Johnston Batty showed how ‘old lags’, or convicts, could be real survivors. Born in 1796, he was orphaned at a very young age. When he was a small child in London, a gang of burglars made him crawl through windows to open

Convict leg-irons.

Transportation to New South Wales ended in 1840 and to Van Diemen’s Land in 1853. The Swan River settlement (now Perth) began as a free settlement in 1829, but later accepted convicts as labourers. Transportation now seems very cruel, but back then people thought it was an acceptable form of punishment.

the doors of the houses they were robbing. He was transported to Australia for life in 1811 when he was just 15. He was assigned to Solomon Wiseman, of Wisemans Ferry, in New South Wales. Robert lived a long life, dying in December 1899 at the age of 103!

Once their 7- or 14-year sentences expired, the convicts were then free to do as they wished. They could return to England; but, as that required a great deal of money, many of them settled in Australia. Even those with a life sentence could gain their freedom through a ticket-of-leave. With a ticket-ofleave, convicts were still convicts, but they could work for wages or at a trade—unless they committed another crime. Some convicts were given a conditional pardon. That meant they could not return to Britain, but they were otherwise free to live in Australia. An absolute pardon gave the lucky owner freedom to work anywhere, even back in England. Many ex-convicts—or ‘emancipists’, as they were called—were not very successful in later life. This was because the ‘exclusives’ or the ‘pure merinos’— people with no convict connections—looked down on them. For example, scientist William Sharp Macleay resigned from the Board of National Education because the attorney-general suggested that Dr William Bland, who had once been convicted for fighting in a duel, should be appointed to the senate of the proposed University of Sydney.

People were not always negative towards ex-convicts. Although explorer and scientist Major Thomas Mitchell once paid a fine rather than sit on a jury that included emancipated convicts, he also believed that convicts were the best people to take on an expedition.

Aboriginal resistance Most Aboriginal people in the southern part of Australia tolerated the presence of the white people who had invaded their lands. Perhaps one of the reasons for this was their belief that white people were the spirits of their relatives who had died and had now returned. In 1790, for example, when John Tarwood and four other convicts found refuge with the Aboriginal people at Port Stephens, north of Sydney, their Aboriginal hosts treated them as returning dead spirits and took them in. They lived in freedom for five years, before the four who were still alive gave themselves up. It was different in northern Australia, where the Aboriginal people were more likely to attack the foreigners, perhaps because they had already had problems with the fishermen who sometimes visited from Indonesia. Or perhaps Aboriginal culture and beliefs in northern Australia did not include the idea that the newcomers were dead family members. Ritual spearing One of the earliest recorded cases of Aboriginal resistance happened near Manly, on the north side of Sydney Harbour, in September 1790, when Governor Arthur Phillip was speared. By 1790, the Aboriginal people were annoyed with the white men because, if the white men found spears or nets on a beach, they would steal them. This was against Aboriginal custom. Historian Inga Clendinnen says that everything in the accounts of the spearing of Governor Phillip points to a ritual spearing, in which Phillip was being punished for crimes committed by members of his ‘tribe’. Phillip may not have understood this, but it is interesting that he did not order any retaliation after he was wounded. Soon after, one of Phillip’s game hunters, a convict named John McEntire, was speared by an

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Some of Burke and Wills’ party of explorers at Bulla, fighting a group of Aboriginal warriors.

Aboriginal warrior named Pemulwuy. This was almost certainly in retaliation for McEntire’s attacks on the Eora people of the Sydney region. Unaware of what McEntire had done, Phillip sent out 50 marines, with three days worth of rations, to capture six members of Pemulwuy’s tribe. They took no captives then or in a second attempt, probably because the Aboriginal people in Sydney had sent out warnings about the expedition to those in the bush. Some six weeks after he was speared, McEntire died. In May 1795, Pemulwuy speared a convict ‘within half a mile of the brickfield huts’—800 metres from where Sydney Town Hall stands today—and got away. Soon after, a convict known as Black Caesar claimed to have killed him. However, in March 1797, Pemulwuy was shot and wounded. He was put in hospital, recovered, and then escaped with an iron shackle still on his leg. Pemulwuy now believed that muskets could not kill him, so he led even more attacks, mainly to steal corn from the fields. This suggests that he was not a bloodthirsty killer but a man concerned with providing food for his people, in accordance with their customs.

Yagan’s head has since been returned to Australia and buried, but nobody has been able to find the heads of Pemulwuy or Jandamarra.

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In 1802, Pemulwuy was ambushed and killed. His head was cut off, preserved and sent to London. Massacres and murders As white settlers moved over the Blue Mountains, they encountered resistance from the original inhabitants. Sheep were kept out in the open in flocks of 400 or 500. Not unreasonably, the Aboriginal people whose land the sheep were on believed they were entitled to spear a few to eat. As the shepherds could be punished for losing sheep, they often retaliated with gunfire. The Aboriginal people then ambushed the shepherds and speared them. That often led to one-sided war, where white men with guns would wipe out as many Aboriginal people as they could. In the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, an unknown number of Aboriginal people—possibly as many as 30—were killed near Bingara in the New England region of New South Wales. There were 12 attackers. The leader, John Fleming, disappeared, but the other 11 were arrested and put on trial. A jury of white men found them not guilty, but the law was not finished with them. Seven were put on trial again and, at the end of 1838, they went to the gallows. The other four were not tried a second time. There were other massacres before and after Myall Creek. There were also some spearings, but through all the killings of Aboriginal people, only a few white men were ever charged and found guilty.

Aboriginal fighters were often killed. Yagan, a Noongar man from near Perth, robbed and killed settlers for several years after the Swan River settlement was set up. He was shot and killed in 1833. The man who killed him cut off Yagan’s head so he could claim a reward, and the head was later sent to England, just like Pemulwuy’s. Jandamarra was a police tracker in the Kimberley region of Western Australia in the 1890s. After a white policeman arrested some of his Bunuba people, Jandamarra shot the policeman. He then waged a guerrilla war for several years before a tracker from another tribe was forced by the police to hunt him down and kill him. The police then hacked off Jandamarra’s head, leaving his body for his people to bury. His head was also sent to England as a trophy.

Yagan’s head has since been returned to Australia and buried, but nobody has been able to find the heads of Pemulwuy or Jandamarra. This was a shameful part of Australia’s history.

Settling Tasmania The authorities in the colonies feared Britain’s traditional enemies, the French. The Peace of Amiens ran from March 1802 to May 1803 but, long before it ran out, the British knew war would return. Worse, while French navigator and explorer Nicolas Baudin and his ships had left Sydney in November 1802, it was rumoured that one of his crew had boasted, while drunk, that the French were planning to found a colony in or near Tasmania. Governor King sent a small vessel to shadow the French ship, and to raise the British flag on King Island, off the north-western tip of Tasmania. Even so, the British still feared that the French would claim part of Australia. English naval officer and explorer John Hayes mapped the Derwent River in 1793 while on a private exploration paid for by merchants from Calcutta, India. He formally claimed what he called New Albion, but could not get his journal published in India, so he took it to London. His ship was captured by the French, who may have seen his journal. Even if they had not, Frenchman Joseph-Antoine Raymond Bruny d’Entrecasteaux had already visited the Derwent just before Hayes. In wartime, scientific expeditions were protected, thanks to Sir Joseph Banks, but it was not unreasonable to suspect that some of the French scientists were also looking for places to set up a colony. So action was needed! Claiming territory In September 1803, a party of 50 men, under Lieutenant John Bowen, landed at Risdon on the Derwent River, where they struggled to establish a settlement. A few weeks later, Lieutenant-Governor David Collins landed at Sullivan Bay on Port Phillip in Victoria. His party included marines, free settlers and convicts.

Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur used these pictures to show Aboriginal people how to live peacefully with settlers.

In wartime, scientific expeditions were protected, thanks to Sir Joseph Banks, but it was not unreasonable to suspect that some of the French scientists were also looking for places to set up a colony.

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The Port Phillip settlement had problems and, in January 1804, Collins took a group to the Derwent River, realised that Risdon was unsuitable and, instead, settled at Sullivans Cove, naming the town Hobart. A second group followed, crossing Bass Strait in May 1804. In November 1803, The Sydney Gazette reported that war with the French had broken out again, but it was not until December 1804 that Colonel William Paterson settled at Port Dalrymple, near the mouth of the Tamar

River in the north. In 1806, Launceston was established further up the Tamar. The Bass Strait area was now fairly safely marked out as British. Population growth was slow at first, and there were only 1,500 non-Aboriginal people in Van Diemen’s Land (now called Tasmania) in 1816. This figure would have been lower if the settlement at Norfolk Island had not been closed down, with more than 600 people moving from the island to Van Diemen’s Land. ‘Pleasant’ Van Diemen’s Land Van Diemen’s Land was a pleasant place where villainy was normal. Even the chaplain was a heavy drinker who ‘played around with the ladies’ and was probably involved in smuggling rum into the colony on the ship Argo. The pleasantness did not last. Over half a century, Van Diemen’s Land received more than 70,000 convicts, and it became the place where secondary offenders—convicts who had committed another crime after being transported to Australia—were sent. Some 72 such convicts were transported to Van Diemen’s Land from New South Wales in 1845 and 1846. A place was needed where such villains could be punished harshly. The first place in Van Diemen’s Land to receive convicts was Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour, on the west coast, in 1822. Between then and its closure 11 years later, about 1,200 prisoners served there, building boats from Huon pine. There are stories of convicts committing another crime in order to be sent there, where they could at least learn a trade.

A convict being flogged in the 1850s (above left) and Aboriginal people attacking a settler’s hut in the 1860s (left).

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A ‘scientific curiosity’ In what is now regarded as a very disrespectful act, after the Tasmanian Aboriginal woman Truganini (right) died and was buried in 1876, her body was dug up. Her skeleton was given to the Royal Society Museum in Hobart, and later displayed there as a scientific curiosity. In 1976, Truganini’s remains were finally given back to her descendants, who had her cremated and scattered her ashes.

In 1833, the remaining Sarah Island convicts were transferred to Port Arthur, where conditions were savage. Maria Island on Tasmania’s east coast was intended as a place for rehabilitating convicts, but those prisoners were also sent to Port Arthur. In most people’s minds, ‘Van Diemen’s Land’ meant ‘vicious convicts’. Aboriginal ‘extinction’ Convicts were not the only people who were ill-treated in the early days of white settlement in Van Diemen’s Land. Aboriginal people fought the white settlers who were taking over the land where their people had been hunters and gatherers for many thousands of years. They raided white settlements, often in search of food. Many white settlers retaliated by killing or wounding them. After many years of such guerrilla warfare, martial law was declared between 1828 and 1832 to deal with the ‘black problem’. This period, and the years leading up to it, is often known as the Black War, during which, according to some accounts, many Aboriginal people were massacred. In 1830, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided that the only way to stop Aboriginal raids on settlers’ huts was to round up the remaining Aboriginal people and resettle them in one area. Using the same method as for hunting and trapping animals, over 1,000 soldiers and armed settlers swept across the settled areas in what was known as the Black Line. They moved south and east

for several weeks in an attempt to herd the Aboriginal people onto the Tasman Peninsula. While this action was not a great success for the colonists, with only two Aboriginal people captured and three killed, it had such a negative effect on the Aboriginal population at large that many of them later surrendered to Aboriginal ‘protector’ and ‘pacifier’ George Augustus Robinson. They were then taken to a new Aboriginal settlement called Wybalenna, on Flinders Island in Bass Strait. One of the Aboriginal people who helped Robinson was a Palawa woman known as Truganini. However, she soon realised that this sort of resettlement was not the best thing for her people, and she watched with great sadness as their numbers slowly diminished, with many succumbing to Europeanintroduced diseases such as influenza. When Truganini died in 1876, the government of Tasmania claimed that she was the last full-blooded Aboriginal person in Tasmania. They officially declared the Aboriginal people of Tasmania ‘extinct’ and no longer a ‘problem’. It is now acknowledged that some Aboriginal people from Tasmania, including those who had moved to other colonies, outlived Truganini. Many of their descendants, as well as the descendants of Aboriginal people from the Wybalenna settlement, still live in Tasmania today.

The Rum Rebellion Governor Arthur Phillip arrived in Australia with 696 convicts and 212 marines, including officers. The marines guarded the convicts until 1791, when many of them sailed away and were replaced by an army unit, the New South Wales Corps, better known today as the ‘Rum Corps’. The Corps’ officers were on half-pay. Like many members of the British army at that time, they were typically trouble-makers, men on parole from military prisons and other undesirables. Three companies came

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seek Hide and

marched m Corps u R e th f They bers o st Bligh. e r The mem r a to ouse acked nment H r, who att te to Gover h g u a d his at they dered by is said th were hin It . a ll e r b laimed h her um bed. He c them wit is h r e d n d Bligh u y have then foun e. He ma r e th s r e iding pap e could he was h ture so h p a c e d a g to ev ose who been tryin port of th p u s e th icture d seek ever, a p w escape an o H . s p Cor Bligh the Rum cowardly a opposed d e w o h es t the tim (above) a ed. der his b hiding un

from the army, many arriving as guards with the Second Fleet, and a fourth company came from marines who wanted to stay. When Governor Phillip left the colony, Major Francis Grose took over. He started changing Phillip’s fair rule. He favoured the Corps and so, by the time Governor

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John Hunter arrived, the soldiers were in control. Hunter and his successor, Philip Gidley King, were both naval officers, and the army officers of the Corps chose which orders from the governors they would accept and which they would ignore, arguing that naval officers had no authority over them. When the governors contested this, the Corps’ officers complained about them and had them recalled to England. The members of the Corps kept building up their monopoly control on trade, taking first choice of ships’ cargoes and selling the goods later at a far higher price. They also took over the rum trade and began making rum, distilling it locally—in those days, just about any alcoholic drink was called ‘rum’. They also insisted on paying for goods with rum. No wonder they were later called the Rum Corps. Breaking Governor Bligh William Bligh was the next governor of New South Wales. He had clear instructions to break the Corps’ monopoly, because its members were getting rich while the settlers were falling into poverty. Bligh had been a

naval captain for about 25 years, and he had been praised by Admiral Lord Nelson for contributing to Britain’s victory in the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801. Bligh came up against John Macarthur, the son of a draper—a seller of clothing material—from Portsmouth, who bought a commission in the army. Macarthur wanted to be someone important, but he was the sort of person who fought with almost everybody. He went too far when he wounded his commanding officer in a duel, and so he was sent to England to stand trial. After the convenient ‘disappearance’ of all three sets of official papers, the charges against him were dismissed for lack of evidence. Macarthur resigned his army commission and returned to Australia. But, even as a civilian, he was the one who led the people who controlled trade—the monopolists. The Corps set out to break Governor Bligh as they had broken the previous governors, Hunter and King, but he was ready for them. He visited the settlers, with whom he was popular, and arranged for them to get what they needed from the government stores on credit against the beef, pork, wheat or corn the settlers would later deliver to the stores. Prices at the stores were about a quarter of those charged by the monopolists, and no payments were made in rum. Macarthur was both cunning and vindictive. He tried to illegally import stills for making alcohol. When they were seized, he had the man who was

The Corps set out to break Governor Bligh as they had broken the previous governors, Hunter and King, but he was ready for them. sent to seize them, Robert Campbell, charged with theft. Tried under a court made up of Rum Corps officers, Campbell was found guilty. Clearly, this was a challenge to see whether the governor would pardon Campbell, who had been carrying out a legal order. Bligh bided his time.

Then Governor Bligh impounded a ship owned by Macarthur because a convict had escaped on it. Legal wrangling followed, but Macarthur finally went to trial, created an uproar and walked out, thus breaching his bail conditions. He was arrested, but Major Johnston of the New South Wales Corps ordered his release, signing the release papers as ‘Lieutenant-Governor’—a position that he did not hold! After Macarthur was freed, Johnston moved, on 26 January 1808, to depose Governor Bligh in order to ‘restore law and order’. Bligh was placed under house arrest and ordered to leave for England, which he at first refused to do. In the end, he was allowed to leave on HMS Porpoise, but he had gone only as far as Hobart when the next governor of New South Wales, Lachlan Macquarie, reached Sydney. A new age had begun.

John Macarthur (right) and Governor William Bligh (far right).

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Macquarie’s legacy Governor Lachlan Macquarie came with an advantage that the naval governors lacked. He commanded the 73rd Regiment and his soldiers came with him, so he had complete control of law enforcement. As well, John Macarthur had been sent to England for trial and did not return to Australia until 1817, and without Macarthur—or ‘the Perturbator’ as he was called—to lead the monopolists and the Rum Corps who backed them, Macquarie was able to make changes. Macquarie’s towns The colony was growing and, until a way was found over the Blue Mountains, Macquarie concentrated on settling the Cumberland Plain in the western area of Sydney. In particular, he set up the five ‘Macquarie towns’ in 1810: Windsor, Richmond, Wilberforce, Pitt Town and Castlereagh. The towns were all on high ground as a response to a serious flood in the Hawkesbury area in late May 1809. No lives had been lost, but the water had risen 34 feet (10 metres), and an even worse flood had been experienced earlier, so new higher locations were established and laid out. The towns of Newcastle and Parramatta were realigned and expanded during Macquarie’s rule, but his greatest contributions were establishing the town of Bathurst and Sydney’s Macquarie Street precinct. Bathurst proudly describes itself as Australia’s oldest inland settlement. Its name commemorates the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Bathurst. Few buildings survive from that time, but the overall city plan can still be seen. Building for the future After 1814, Macquarie had the help of an architect, Francis Greenway. Greenway had been convicted of forgery and given a sentence of death, which was commuted to 14 years transportation. Within a month of arriving in the colony, Greenway had a ticket-of-leave and was hard at work designing Sydney buildings like the Hyde Park Barracks and St James Church, as well as the Supreme Court just across the road. Greenway would have loved to have designed a new government house, but Macquarie and his family lived at Government House in Parramatta. Still, Greenway created magnificent stables for the original Sydney Government House, on Bridge Street.

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The towns of Newcastle and Parramatta were realigned and expanded during Macquarie’s rule, but his greatest contributions were establishing the town of Bathurst and Sydney’s Macquarie Street precinct.

Those stables ultimately contributed to Macquarie’s downfall. Macquarie also influenced the colony of Van Diemen’s Land. David Collins, the island’s first lieutenantgovernor, died in March 1810 and his successor did not take up duty until 1813. In 1811, Macquarie arrived on a tour of inspection. He ordered James Meehan, the deputy surveyorgeneral, to lay out a street plan. This covered an area bounded by Sullivans Cove to Liverpool Street, and from Harrington Street to the City Hall. Within this area, buildings still exist in Hobart that were built in Macquarie’s time.

An etching of Governor Lachlan Macquarie.

Just as John Macarthur’s wife, Elizabeth, supervised much of the breeding of merino sheep that her husband claimed to have done, so too Lachlan Macquarie’s wife, also Elizabeth, contributed a great deal to buildings like the Greenway-designed stables for Government House, which are now part of the much-admired Sydney Conservatorium of Music. This building has crenellations—the feature on castles that provide archers with shelter while they are shooting at attackers.

Judge John Bigge was sent from England to look into Macquarie’s greatest gift to the colony—his humane approach to convicts. Macquarie gave convicts a chance to prosper when they had finished their sentences, rather than grinding them down as the ‘pure merinos’, or free settlers, wanted. In other words, Bigge was sent to destroy Macquarie’s reputation, which he did very well. Little-known architect Henry Kitchen denounced the stables as an ‘egregious folly’—an extremely silly mistake—in his evidence to Commissioner Bigge. Bigge used a number of complaints of this sort to recommend Macquarie’s removal from office. However, while Bigge is forgotten today by most Australians, Macquarie’s name endures.

The old Government House stables, now the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.

Saved for posterity! There was a scheme in the 1930s to replace the Macquarie Street precinct in Sydney with a modern building that would loom high over the city. Popular legend says that the razing and rebuilding was repeatedly delayed by an unnamed civil servant, who used delaying tactics such as losing the file. Later, World War II made such an ambitious project impossible. So, luckily, we can still admire the beautiful lines of the old ‘Rum Hospital’, the New South Wales Parliament and the Mint.

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Establishing Brisbane and Perth Two new colonies that were later to become state capitals were established in the 1820s, but for very different reasons. As more convicts arrived, new settlements were needed. Some were required to house convicts who had committed extra offences. Ideally, these settlements needed to be far away from other settlements so escapees could not rob free settlers of food and supplies. Newcastle, called ‘the Coal River’ at first, was set up as a punishment place for secondary offenders but, as settlers moved into the Hunter Valley, the convicts had to move on. In 1823, Moreton Bay was identified as a penal colony but, like ‘Botany Bay’, this was more a label than a location.

A cruel commandant Francis MacNamara—‘Frank the Poet’— wrote about cruel Commandant Patrick Logan in the song, Moreton Bay. The ‘triangle’ mentioned in the lyrics is the frame used to hold convicts while they were being flogged.

For three long years I was beastly treated, And heavy irons on my legs I wore, My back with flogging is lacerated, And often painted with my crimson gore; And many a man from downright starvation, Lies mouldering now underneath the clay, And Captain Logan he had us mangled At the triangles of Moreton Bay.

Representatives of the British Empire had now grabbed all the best ports and established enough settlements to stop any other European power moving in.

Building Brisbane The original 1824 colony was indeed on Moreton Bay, at Redcliffe but, in 1825, it moved to a site on the Brisbane River, now the city of Brisbane. The commandant until 1830, Patrick Logan, was extremely cruel, and the convicts were very relieved when he was killed by Aboriginal people. Moreton Bay remained a penal colony until 1839 but, by then, the settlers were closing in again, and the town was opened for free settlement in 1842. Convicts continued to be sent there until 1850 and, in 1859, Queensland became an independent colony. Preparing for Perth On the other hand, the Swan River colony in Western Australia was free of convicts for two decades. Some convicts had been sent to Albany in 1826 but, like Adelaide, the settlement that would become Perth was intended to be ‘free’. The French had been interested in the area. Louis de Freycinet had visited the coast with explorer Nicolas Baudin in 1802 and, in 1818, he was back on the coast of what was then called New Holland. He landed at Shark Bay and took away the plate which Willem de Vlamingh had put up (to show that he had been there) in place of Dirk Hartog’s plate. The expedition’s papers claimed that it was a purely scientific visit but, even without knowing about the theft of the plate, the British Government suspected the worst and wanted to make a territorial claim. Further south, King George Sound was a known safe harbour, so Albany was established there first, but it often appears in the records under the older name of King George Sound.

A panorama of the first white settlement in Western Australia, at King George Sound (now Albany).

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A panoramic view of the city of Brisbane in 1888.

Too many settlers at the Swan River wished to be masters, and too few cared to be servants working for others, so every ship that arrived was met by would-be employers, who usually went away disappointed. Those who settled further down the coast near Margaret River had even more trouble finding people to work for them.

The small colony struggled along, even with a lack of labourers. However, in the 1840s, they asked for convicts as a solution to the labour problem and, between 1850 and 1868, about 9,700 of them reached the colony. By 1868, the eastern colonies thought themselves ‘pure’. Novelist Anthony Trollope reported that, when

he sailed from Fremantle in the late 1860s, he needed to have a certificate, issued and signed by a resident magistrate at the cost of one shilling. Without it, he could not enter South Australia. The certificate read: I hereby certify that the bearer, A. Trollope, about to proceed to Adelaide per A.S.S. Co.’s steamer, is not and never has been a prisoner of the Crown in Western Australia. Representatives of the British Empire had now grabbed all the best ports and established enough settlements to stop any other European power moving in. There were unsettled places, but no good sites for colonies.

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The making of Adelaide and Melbourne Two future state capitals seem to have been started without any real intention of marking out territory as British. Adelaide was started to make a dream come true; Melbourne was started by people who just decided it would be a nice place to live. Both towns began in the mid-1830s, and both were surveyed and planned before any real development happened—unlike Sydney, which just grew in an unplanned way and so stayed crooked, or Hobart, which

had to be realigned in 1811. Aside from that, Adelaide and Melbourne were very different. Laying out Adelaide Adelaide could have missed out on being South Australia’s capital, because the first governor, naval officer John Hindmarsh, wanted the new town to be on the coast, in an area that would have been flooded regularly. Luckily, a practical man was on the spot. Colonel William Light had travelled widely and seen a great deal. Appointed as surveyor-general by Hindmarsh, Light gave the city its neat and tidy layout. He selected the Adelaide site because it had running water. When the landholders were called on to vote, Light’s choice won.

William Knight’s painting of Collins Street, Melbourne, in 1839.

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Those migrants who arrived in Adelaide knew nothing about Victoria but, logically, nobody should have gone to Adelaide when land was available at Port Phillip because it was far cheaper there—in fact, often land was just being taken and not paid for. Light had once seen the city of Catania in Sicily. It was beautiful, with broad streets at right angles to each other. Light’s chosen site, while high enough to be safe from flooding, was flat enough to allow a similar layout, with parkland along the River Torrens forming a green belt around the city area. South Australia was planned to be free of convicts, and it was. Later, it was proud of its ‘stainless’ foundations. But knowledgeable outsiders grinned at this because the inventor of the whole idea, Edward Gibbon Wakefield, was in jail when he devised his plan.

The colony was established in late December 1836, and by mid-1837 people began to notice that ex-convicts were reaching Adelaide, one way or another. So much for social theory and grand plans! In the 1850s, Chinese gold-seekers arrived in South Australia to avoid a head tax by landing there and walking to the Victorian goldfields. Former convicts from Western Australia, who were barred from entering Melbourne, followed the same route. Wakefield’s idea (which did not work) was to survey the land and then sell it at a price that was too high for labourers to afford. The labourers would not totally lose out as they would be given a free passage so they could work hard for the gentry, who could afford to buy the land. That way, after three or four years, the ‘deserving’ among the workers would be able to buy land, while the less ambitious would keep labouring.

When Thomas Henty arrived in Launceston and learned this in 1832, he asked for 20,000 acres at Portland Bay, across Bass Strait. When he got no answer, he set off across the strait and squatted there in November 1834. Others, including Melbourne’s founder John Batman, followed and settled on the same bay that LieutenantGovernor David Collins had tried to settle in 1803, but this time on the Yarra River, where Melbourne is today. By Christmas Day 1836, there were a few slab and weatherboard buildings, some turf huts and many, many tents. That day, the first overlanders brought stock from north of the Murray River into Toorak. The 180 settlers called their settlement Glenelg, Dutigalla, Beargrass or Bearbrass. The advantage of a private settlement was that you could call it what you liked! In Sydney, Governor Richard Bourke called it illegal, but he sent a small army detachment to Port Phillip, including a surveyor, Robert Russell. Russell drew up a city plan that took no note of existing dwellings, which were then demolished. The City of Melbourne was named by Governor Bourke in 1837 after the British Prime Minister at the time, Lord Melbourne. In London, the intention was that Port Phillip should be free of convicts, but by the time that news reached Australia, it was far too late. Aside from unofficial convict arrivals, Bourke had sent a five-man convict road-gang to Port Phillip. In late 1838, the population of Melbourne was more than 2,000, and it was 3,000 by 1839. The number of sheep rocketed from about 300,000 in 1838 to 800,000 in 1840. Australia was growing.

A convicted planner When Edward Wakefield devised his plan for Adelaide, he was in jail for what was then regarded as the ‘genteel’ crime of attempting to abduct an heiress. He had abducted an heiress before and only got

Making Melbourne Those migrants who arrived in Adelaide knew nothing about Victoria but, logically, nobody should have gone to Adelaide when land was available at Port Phillip because it was far cheaper there—in fact, often land was just being taken and not paid for. The settlement of Victoria began because there were no more free land grants on offer in Van Diemen’s Land.

away with it by marrying her. When she died, he tried again. People hinted that he may also have forged documents and perjured himself, but he was never charged with those offences. He was, however, undoubtedly a convict.

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Exploring the Land Explorers were sent out to explore the land and make maps that showed where people could farm, cut timber, dig up minerals, build telegraph lines and start a settlement. Many explorers hoped to find the fabled ‘Inland Sea’ or to be the first to cross the continent. The most effective explorers were often bush trained. They knew how to follow the faint paths, or ‘native roads’, created by the Aboriginal people who had lived on the land for many thousands of years.

ABOVE: The Bathurst Cataract on the River Apsley in New South Wales in 1824.

ABOVE LEFT: A cartoon from 1860 of ‘The Great Australian Exploration Race’ between explorers Robert O’Hara Burke and John McDouall Stuart. BELOW LEFT: Explorer Charles Sturt leaving Adelaide in 1844.

RIGHT: Doomed explorer Ludwig Leichhardt.

Conquering the Blue Mountains Botany Bay was chosen for the first settlement in Australia because Joseph Banks was impressed with the number of new plant species there. He also thought he saw green fields in the distance. Unfortunately, what he saw were useless swamps on sandy soil. Worse, there was no good supply of fresh water around Botany Bay. Sydney Cove was a better site because it had water in the Tank Stream and a large safe harbour, but the soil there was just as poor. The first farms at Farm Cove, where Sydney’s Botanic Gardens are today, failed because no introduced plants did well in such sandy soil.

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Better soil was found near Rose Hill and Parramatta. Later, people found a few high hills with a cap of shale that made good soil and grew crops there, but many farmers chose to farm on the Hawkesbury river flats. There was just one problem: between 1795 and 1809, four serious floods hit the valley. Away from the flood plains, there was not much good land, but more free settlers were coming to Australia so more farmland was needed.

Along with old settlers and convicts who had served their time, these new settlers wanted farms and land for running sheep and cattle. There was not enough land close to a port where food could be loaded on ships and sent to Sydney. The Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, provided both challenges for explorers and spectacular views for artists to paint.

Climbing, crossing and colonising To the west of Sydney, the Blue Mountains were an impenetrable barrier. When people tried to find a way over them, they were always stopped by towering cliffs. Three settlers—Gregory Blaxland, William Wentworth and William Lawson—are said to have followed the spurs and ridges up to the high ground in the mountains. However, it is more likely that they and their convict servants followed the faint tracks made by Aboriginal people. While Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson reached the top of the Blue Mountains in 1813, they did not go down the other side, so they never actually crossed the mountains. The first explorer to cross the Blue Mountains was George Evans, in late 1813. On the orders of Governor Macquarie, he explored the land until early 1814. Evans was a good bushman and he found a way down the far side of the mountains. Settlers soon poured over the Blue Mountains. The first road (called the Big Hill) down the other side was fearfully steep. Carts and drays had to tow a tree trunk behind them to stop the animals from being run over by their own wagons. Later, Major Thomas Mitchell improved the road. By 1815, there was a town at Bathurst. Soon, more explorers followed, and behind them came wave after wave of settlers—and then came those seeking gold.

Searching for the ‘Inland Sea’ John Oxley John Oxley had been a naval officer, so he had been trained to use navigational instruments and draw maps. He was appointed surveyor-general of New South Wales in 1812 which, in those days, included all of Australia, except ‘New Holland’ (now Western Australia). Oxley had been in Australia mapping the coastal areas several times before his appointment, and he turned

Gangs of convicts built roads over the Blue Mountains to provide better access for settlers.

out to be highly competent at surveying and mapping areas previously unknown to Europeans. After five years in New South Wales, Oxley was sent out to find the fabled ‘Inland Sea’. People said it had to exist because west of the Blue Mountains there were many rivers running west, but ships sailing around the coast could find no large rivers flowing into the sea. They thought that meant the rivers must all run into a large lake or sea somewhere in the middle of the continent. People thought that once boats and ships had access to this sea, most of Australia would be within easy reach, so search parties were sent out to find the Inland Sea. Oxley spent four months going down the Lachlan River from Bathurst in 1817. He returned to the same area past Bathurst in 1818 and headed downriver again. Making discoveries Oxley’s second expedition was a complete failure in one sense. He was supposed to find where the Lachlan and Macquarie rivers went, and he did not discover that. On the other hand, he did find plenty of excellent agricultural land. Oxley was lucky that his party included George Evans, his assistant, the first man to cross the Blue Mountains and reach the Western Plains. At times, the party would divide in two, and Oxley’s and Evans’ parties would meet up again later. He also had with him a volunteer surgeon, or doctor, called John Harris, who came in handy later on.

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An 1820 painting of what explorer John Oxley called Arbuthnot’s Range, now the Warrumbungle Range.

Oxley’s expedition left on 6 June 1818. At the end of the month, they climbed a small granite hill poking out of the flat plain. Oxley named it Mount Harris, after the surgeon. From there, he saw some mountains that he called Arbuthnot’s Range, now called the Warrumbungle Range. Later, after Evans found the Castlereagh River, he decided to visit this mountain range.

On 8 August, Oxley climbed Mount Exmouth and saw the Great Dividing Range far away to the east. On 18 September, they were on the Apsley River, somewhere near modern Walcha. Oxley wrote that the river was running to the east, and he knew there was a harbour on the coast at about the same latitude. The entry was marked on naval charts as a ‘bar harbour’, meaning a port where a bar of sand or gravel could be dangerous for shipping, but Oxley knew the marking might have been made only because a bar could be there, and that closer inspection might reveal no bar at all. They were almost 1,000 metres above sea level, and they had to get their horses down steep slopes but, by 11 October, they had mapped the entrance to what is now Port Macquarie. A few days later, they were travelling along the coast to Newcastle. One man,

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William Blake, was speared by an Aboriginal man, but surgeon Dr Harris saved Blake’s life. Oxley and his party were hindered by the many rivers that ran into the sea along the coast, but they found a wooden boat which had survived a wreck and carried it with them, using it to cross the rivers. Eventually, they got to Port Stephens where, on 5 November, Evans and three men went off in the boat to fetch a larger vessel from Newcastle. While Oxley did not find out where the western rivers flowed to, he added a great deal to the map. In May 1819, Oxley sailed to Port Macquarie in the Lady Nelson, a small vessel well suited for the task. He made a detailed survey of Port Macquarie. Then, in 1823, he was sent out on the Mermaid to examine northern ports, including Port Bowen, Port Curtis (now Gladstone) and Moreton Bay. The report he wrote when he returned led to the creation of the city of Brisbane. While Oxley died a poor man, he was a successful explorer.

One man, William Blake, was speared by an Aboriginal man, but surgeon Dr Harris saved Blake’s life.

Following the rivers Charles Sturt Charles Sturt was an army captain when he reached Sydney in 1827. He arrived in charge of a group of convicts, and was made the military secretary of the colony of New South Wales in September of that year. Sturt had served in Spain in 1813 against the French and in the USA against the revolutionary army in 1814 but, by 1827, there were few opportunities for army officers to win glory. The world was at peace, so Sturt decided to try to be the first white person to reach the fabled Inland Sea. Unfortunately, he was no bushman, but he got around that by inviting Hamilton Hume to go with

him. Hume had been born in Australia and, as a child, his playmates had included Aboriginal boys. They had run around in the bush together, and so Hume felt at home there. Heading west Sturt knew that Oxley’s expedition had been beaten by the swampy ground of the marshes, so he headed out into western New South Wales during a drought. The drought had begun in 1826 and, by the time Sturt left in November 1828, he expected the marshes to have dried out. On the way west, he visited Dr Harris to learn more about the conditions John Oxley had faced. In December, Sturt, Hume, two soldiers, eight convicts, 13 horses, ten bullocks and one boat travelled down Portrait of Captain Charles Sturt.

Explorers measuring the land and taking sightings in Central Australia in the 1840s.

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An 1849 map showing various expeditions undertaken by Charles Sturt over about 20 years.

the Macquarie River to Mount Harris. Where Oxley had avoided a swollen river, Sturt found no water. The other rivers were just chains of ponds. There were enough waterholes for the party to reach the Darling River in February 1829. They discovered that the water in the river was too salty to drink, but Hume found fresh water nearby. Sturt wrote that Hume’s friendly manner with the Aboriginal people helped them but, further out, the Darling area was deserted. The Aboriginal people who lived there had moved, probably down towards the Murray River where there would be more food. By late February, Sturt and his party were back at Mount Harris, low on supplies and short of water. They collected fresh supplies there, and then, in late March,

The glass water bottle, with fibre covering, used by Charles Sturt when he went exploring.

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they crossed the Darling River, found a ‘dismally brown’ plain, and turned back. Rowing to South Australia In Sydney, Sturt prepared to head out again. There had been rain, so the rivers were now flowing. Hume did not come, as he had to look after his farm, but Sturt had already learned bushcraft from him. He took a whaleboat that had been taken apart, planning to put it back together later and row down the Murrumbidgee River to find out where it went. On the way, they called at Hume’s station near Lake George and then crossed the Yass Plains. In early December, they re-assembled the whaleboat and also built another smaller boat from local timber. Sturt sent some of the men back with the drays and then headed down the Murrumbidgee.

In December, Sturt, Hume, two soldiers, eight convicts, 13 horses, ten bullocks and one boat travelled down the Macquarie River to Mount Harris.

Reaching westward Surprise! Sturt discovered that an ‘acid berry’ eaten by Aboriginal people was very useful for protection against scurvy. That knowledge helped keep Sturt and the members of his party alive when everyone thought they had perished. Even Sturt’s wife believed he was dead and so, when he walked into their house after 17 months away, she was so surprised to see him alive that she fainted, and he had to help her up off the floor.

Edward John Eyre In 1833, an 18-year-old named Edward Eyre slept in the open on his first night in the Australian bush. He had only basic food to eat, but it was enough, and it was more than he would have on many nights to come over the next eight years. New colonies meant new farms, and farms need animals. When the settlements of Melbourne and Adelaide began in 1836, the men of the Yass Plains knew the lay of the land, thanks to Charles Sturt and Major Mitchell. They started ‘overlanding’—taking stock to the new colonies, trampling down the bush and making tracks that others could follow.

Sturt and his party had many adventures. They found another river, which Sturt called the Murray. They followed that river to the Darling River junction, and then down to the river’s mouth in Lake Alexandrina in South Australia in early February 1830. They walked over sand hills to the sea, swam in the ocean and collected shellfish to eat. The easy part was over, and now they had to row back up the Murray, past the Darling, then up the Murrumbidgee to where they had begun. It took them almost three months. After that, it took another month to get to Sydney, where they arrived on 25 May 1830. They had reached the ocean, and so they had shown that the main rivers drained into it and not into an inland sea. Desert disaster Sturt waited until August 1844 before trying again to find a way through Central Australia. He took a boat, just in case there really was an inland sea that had not as yet been discovered. Instead of finding glory or wealth, he walked into a trap, as a vicious drought began to bite. Trapped in the desert, Sturt and his party dug an ‘underground room’ and sheltered there until December 1845. Then, even though no rain had fallen, they fled, relying on finding small amounts of water along the way. It was a do-or-die effort, but it worked.

Sturt was one of the great explorers of Australia’s river systems.

Edward John Eyre’s photographic ‘visiting card’ from the 1860s.

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Eyre became an overlander, developing his skills on a trip to Port Phillip. He returned to Sydney, hoping to be the first to move stock overland to Adelaide but, because he could find no water, he arrived second, after Joseph Hawdon and Charles Bonney. He went back to Sydney and took 600 cattle and 1,000 sheep across with him. He might have become rich in that way but, instead, he chose to go exploring in 1839, looking for useful land. Unfortunately, he had little luck. In 1840, he took sheep and cattle by ship to King George Sound (now Albany), and then overlanded them to the Swan River settlement. Go west, young man Eyre took a King George Sound Aboriginal man named Wylie back to Adelaide with him. Eyre wanted to open up an overland route from Adelaide to the west, but Governor George Gawler wanted an expedition to go north, looking for more farming land and a way north out of Adelaide. Working his way up through the Flinders Ranges in the winter of 1840, Eyre discovered what he took to be a ‘horseshoe lake’ blocking any travel north. He was, in fact, seeing separate lakes but, from a distance, they appeared to be continuous. He could see no sign of fresh water or grass, so it seemed there was no hope of finding a way through. Eyre then said he would go west and try to find a way north around the outside of the lake. Luckily,

On 7 July, Eyre and Wylie walked into King George Sound, where they found they had long since been given up for dead. the governor agreed that he should go west. Eyre had commanded a large party in the Flinders Ranges, but now he reduced it to just John Baxter, his overseer; two Aboriginal men from New South Wales called Joey and Yarry (or Cootachah and Neramberein); and Wylie. Eyre had become good friends with Sturt, and he must have learned from him about getting on with Aboriginal people, because he certainly got a lot of help from the people he met along the way. He met quite a few because he followed ‘native roads’—welltrodden tracks along the coast.

The local Aboriginal people showed him where to dig for water in the sand dunes. Eyre commented that their ‘language was nearly the same as that of Port Lincoln, intermixed with a few words in use at King George’s Sound’. Obviously, he had come prepared. As the party of five made their way along the coast, problems developed with the two Aboriginal men from New South Wales. They knew that Eyre had left stores buried at places behind them but, as strangers in that land, they would still have been worried about what lay ahead. Local Aboriginal people had told Eyre about water supplies, but perhaps he did not explain this well enough to his Aboriginal assistants. Something went wrong and, on 29 April 1841, the two Aboriginal men killed Baxter and then fled with some stolen items. Eyre and Wylie were left to push on alone. Two days later, Overlanders like these moved stock from station to station over huge distances.

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Eyre saw a Banksia species which he recognised as one that grew at King George Sound. They might not have made it but, on 2 June, close to Esperance, they came across French whalers who were anchored in Thistle Cove. The whalers looked after them for several days and gave them stores to help them on their way. On 7 July, Eyre and Wylie walked into King George Sound, where they found they had long since been given up for dead. Eyre, who later became a colonial administrator in South Australia, New Zealand and Jamaica, never went exploring again.

Criss-crossing the country Thomas Livingstone Mitchell There are many reasons why we should remember Major Sir Thomas Mitchell. He was an inventor, famous for making a propeller for ships that was based on the shape of a boomerang. He also invented the canvas waterbag. He was a scholar and translator who spoke fluent Portuguese, which he had learned while fighting against Napoleon’s armies in Portugal. He was also a scientist who found amazing fossils in the Wellington Caves, not far from Dubbo in New South Wales. He was a surveyor who made roads and bridges for the colony. And he gave his name to Mitchell grass and Major Mitchell’s cockatoo. However, he is probably best known in Australia as an explorer. When Mitchell arrived in Sydney in 1827 as assistant surveyor-general of New South Wales, he was authorised to succeed John Oxley, and so, when Oxley died in May 1828, Mitchell was ready to take over. Because Oxley had been an explorer, Mitchell was keen to go exploring as well. As an ex-soldier, Mitchell ran his exploration parties along military lines, which made good sense when going out into strange territory. He undertook two minor expeditions and two major ones. Following ‘the Major’s Line’ In 1831, a runaway convict known as ‘Clarke the Barber’ was captured after having lived for some years with the Kamilaroi people in northern New South Wales. Clarke had a tale to tell. It involved a river called the ‘Kindur’, a fine broad river that flowed to the north-west all the way to the sea. Ships could sail on it, he said.

The pink cockatoo, Lophochroa leadbeateri, often called Major Mitchell’s cockatoo after the explorer.

A navigable river would be better than an inland sea, so Mitchell set off to find the Kindur. He failed, of course, as Clarke had made the whole thing up in an attempt to get a lighter sentence for escaping. Still, Mitchell found some interesting country and filled in some blank areas on the map. Mitchell’s next expedition was in 1835. He went out to the Darling River and down to somewhere near Menindee. When he clashed with the Aboriginal people there, he backed off.

Misleading information When explorer Thomas Mitchell reached the junction of the Darling and Murray rivers, he said that he recognised the place right away from an illustration in Sturt’s journal. Interestingly, in 1848, Sturt confessed that he had been almost blind from disease and the illustration was done by a friend based on Sturt’s description. Later, when his eyes were cured, he saw that it looked nothing like the real thing.

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On reaching the Victorian coast in 1836, Major Mitchell found the Henty family already settled there.

In 1836, Mitchell began his first major expedition. Starting at Menindee, he planned to go down the Darling and on to either the Murray River or the sea. Because the Darling River was almost dry, he went down the Lachlan River to the Murrumbidgee River. He reached the Murrumbidgee on 12 May and followed it to the Murray, and then on to where the Darling joined the Murray at Wentworth. Mitchell was now supposed to return, but instead he chose to cross the Murray River because the country looked promising. He found an area that he called ‘Australia Felix’—‘Fortunate Australia’. Even after Port Phillip became a separate colony, it often carried that name. Continuing on down to the coast, Mitchell was surprised to find the Henty family, who had been living there for almost 20 months.

By the time Mitchell returned to Sydney in November 1836, settlers were already landing at Port Phillip and the first overlanders were headed for Melbourne with stock. Soon new arrivals started to go north following Mitchell’s tracks, which were known for many years as ‘the Major’s Line’. Mitchell went on one more long trip. Like Eyre, he wanted to lead the expedition to Port Essington that was

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being planned, but Ludwig Leichhardt had beaten him into the field. Instead, Mitchell explored the area near the Maranoa, Warrego and Belyando rivers, hoping to find a good way to Port Essington, some 300 kilometres from modern-day Darwin. He probably still hoped to find Clarke’s imaginary Kindur River. He did not find either Port Essington or the Kindur River. In many ways, Mitchell was an unusual man. His men probably killed more Aboriginal people, especially near Mount Dispersion, than any other party of explorers, and yet he preferred to use Aboriginal placenames on the maps he drew. It is hard for us to judge whether the killings were Mitchell’s fault, but he was blamed for them in an inquiry that was completed just after he died.

In 1831, a runaway convict known as ‘Clarke the Barber’ was captured after having lived for some years with the Kamilaroi people in northern New South Wales. Clarke had a tale to tell. It involved a river called the ‘Kindur’, a fine broad river that flowed to the north-west all the way to the sea. Ships could sail on it, he said.

Travelling south to north Ludwig Leichhardt Ludwig Leichhardt arrived in Sydney in 1842. In a technical sense, he was a fugitive from justice because he had not done military service in his native Prussia, as Prussian law required. After his first expedition, he was given a royal pardon by the King of Prussia for serving science so well. The news of this pardon arrived too late, because Leichhardt had gone into the wilderness again and he never returned. Ludwig Leichhardt and a map of his 1844–45 route from the Darling Downs to Port Essington.

Leichhardt spent two years studying Australian plants, animals and geology—he had previously studied science in Berlin, Paris and London. He learned how to live in the bush, and he wanted to be the first person to find a way from the southern colonies to the small settlement at Port Essington in what is now the Northern Territory.

Heading north Experienced explorers Sturt, Eyre and Mitchell were all possible leaders of the proposed expedition, so inexperienced Leichhardt had no chance of getting government funding. Instead, he managed to arrange a team of volunteers, funded by private citizens. Leichhardt’s party left Sydney in August 1844.

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Leichhardt’s party included a convict, a teenage boy, a bird collector, two Aboriginal men, as well as an African-American and a squatter. While Major Mitchell was planning to leave from Bourke in New South Wales, Leichhardt made his way from Brisbane through settled districts in the Darling Downs to Jimbour in what is now Queensland, and he left from there in October 1844. Leichhardt took just enough equipment, using bullocks to carry the load and then eating the bullocks when their cargo was used up. He started with one cart, but it was a nuisance, and when it was damaged in an accident he swapped it at an outstation for three bullocks. He had a compass, a sextant to calculate latitude and a one-page Arrowsmith’s Map. This simple map was enough, because it gave an accurate depiction of the coastline, mapped from ships by experts. Once he had measured the latitude, he just had to look at the map to see what rivers, mountains or bays were in that latitude, and then he knew where he was. Leichhardt’s party included a convict, a teenage boy, a bird collector, two Aboriginal men, as well as an AfricanAmerican and a squatter. The last two turned back soon after they started, but the rest—except for the bird collector, John Gilbert, who was speared to death in an attack by Aboriginal people—reached Port Essington.

What’s for dinner? Leichhardt and his party ate ‘iguanas, opossums and birds of all kinds’, including rainbow lorikeets. They put the lorikeets in a pot with dried emu, cockatoos and an eagle-hawk. Leichhardt described flying foxes as ‘most delicate eating’, and he also enjoyed eating the feet of young emus. By the end of the journey, they had lost most of their packhorses and so they could no longer carry the botanical specimens they had collected. Leichhardt dumped them but, because they were so desperately hungry, the members of the expedition ate the greenhide case that had contained the specimens!

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The attack on John Gilbert was later the subject of gossip among explorers. John Macgillivray, a zoologist, said he had been told that ‘a gross outrage had been committed upon an aboriginal woman a day or two previously, by the two blacks belonging to the expedition’. We will never know the truth, but Leichhardt usually got on well with Aboriginal people. His party once found themselves among 200 men, women and children, and felt no fear. The Aboriginal people were equally accepting of the strangers, and the key, it seems, was that Leichhardt respected them. The public had given his party up as lost before news of their success reached the southern colonies. By the time he arrived on 17 December 1845, Leichhardt had travelled around 4,800 kilometres from Brisbane to Port Essington. On their return to Sydney, Leichhardt and his party were cheered loudly and later rewarded. This determined Prussian adventurer headed out again, this time to cross Australia from east to west. After a false start, he set off once more, but he was never seen again.

Exploring the interior Burke and Wills Most explorers knew what they were doing and planned well. However, the people behind the Victorian Exploring Expedition were not well prepared. Today, we call their exploration the ‘Burke and Wills Expedition’, but that is only because William John Wills’ father called it that in a book he wrote after most of the party had died or were scattered across the country. William John Wills was a competent scientist but he was no bushman, while Robert O’Hara Burke was a police inspector. The planning committee was made up of prominent Melbourne citizens—businessmen not bushmen—who wanted a telegraph line built to link Melbourne to northern Australia and undersea cables to connect Australia to the rest of the world. Businessmen make profits based on information. The committee wanted a telegraph line built far from either Sydney or Adelaide so that commercial news would go to Melbourne first. Unfortunately for them, the land the Victorian Exploring Expedition had to cross was unknown, and the expedition was competing with the party of John McDouall Stuart, who was seeking a route that ran to Adelaide for Adelaide businessmen. Most explorers read each other’s published journals and looked at each other’s maps, and many of them knew

Aboriginal people discovering the body of explorer William John Wills. The ill-fated explorers, Robert O’Hara Burke (left) and William John Wills (right).

each other. That was how new explorers learned what to take with them and what to watch out for. There is no evidence that Burke did any of this. Wills might have done so, but he was not involved in the planning. The committee of businessmen made the plans. A doomed expedition Burke was told to head north-west from Melbourne and set up a base at Cooper Creek, and then head north, deliberately avoiding country that was already known. The instructions even included a suggestion that the expedition might go right across Australia to the west coast and down to Perth! These orders were completely impractical, and an experienced explorer would have refused to accept them. However, Robert O’Hara Burke was not experienced and did accept them.

These orders were completely impractical, and an experienced explorer would have refused to accept them. However, Robert O’Hara Burke was not experienced and did accept them.

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Rewriting history Despite the fact that the Burke and Wills expedition was largely a disaster, Wills’ father, William, edited and published a one-sided version of his son’s notes and journals as the book, A Successful

Exploration through the Interior of Australia (1863).

When they set off on 20 August 1860, it was quite a spectacle, with camels, horses, overloaded carts and people everywhere. And, before long, their troubles began. The expedition had too many supplies, so Burke threw a lot of things away, including the lime juice that would have prevented scurvy. Then his deputy, George Landells, resigned because of Burke’s bad decisions. Wills now became Burke’s deputy.

Burke left half his party behind at Menindee, telling them to take their time moving up to Cooper Creek, where they were to wait. The lead party now had too few competent men in it, but they continued on. They set up a base camp at Cooper Creek, just over the New South Wales border in Queensland.

Then, on 16 December 1860, four of them—Burke, Wills, John King and Charles Gray—moved north with six camels, one horse and three months worth of provisions. They pushed on into dry country, but luckily found water and met Aboriginal people, with whom they exchanged beads for fish. Somewhere near Normanton in Queensland, Burke and Wills left Gray and King at camp 119 and went north until they found a tidal creek. Satisfied that they had found the sea, they turned back. On 13 February 1861, the men headed south. By 6 March, all four were feeling ill and their food was running out. They began eating the camels, but on 17 April Gray died. The other three all had scurvy, and so did those in the party at Cooper Creek. On 21 April, the men waiting in the base camp at Cooper Creek packed up and left. That very same evening, Burke, Wills and King arrived at the camp and found it deserted. Burke and Wills died in late June, and only King was alive when a rescue party finally arrived. He lived until 1872. Burke and Wills had failed to find a good route for a telegraph line, and many men had either died or damaged their health in the attempt.

Crossing the continent John McDouall Stuart John McDouall Stuart learned the art of exploring during Charles Sturt’s 1844–45 expedition. Sturt had learned from others, including his good friend, Edward John Eyre. From working as a surveyor in the outback, Stuart knew how Aboriginal people caught different animals and which desert plants they ate. Clearly, Stuart was well prepared to survive in harsh conditions. Reaching the north coast Every year from 1858 to 1862, Stuart probed northwards, identifying routes and water supplies in six attempts to find a way to the northern coast of Australia.

Stuart planting the British flag on top of the mountain closest to the middle of Australia.

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Portrait of John McDouall Stuart.

On his fourth try, he reached what he believed was the centre of Australia in April 1860. He named a nearby mountain ‘Central Mount Sturt’ after his old leader, but it is now called ‘Central Mount Stuart’. This was caused by a mix-up—a parliamentary paper gave the name as ‘Stuart’ in 1861, but the explorer’s notebooks show that he wrote the name ‘Sturt’. Stuart was extremely loyal, and he received the same loyalty from those who went exploring with him, especially on his last two journeys after he had learned more about selecting the right people. One man, William Kekwick, accompanied Stuart on his last four expeditions, and he was second-in-command in the last three. On 11 July 1861, Stuart and his men reached the furthest point in their travels so far. They were only about 600 kilometres from the sea to the north of Australia. Stuart had an idea of where he might head, but no time and no supplies to get there. Their clothes were in tatters, their boots were worn out, and they were running out of tarpaulin to repair their bags.

Stuart had begun his journey with 30 weeks worth of flour. He now had only four weeks worth left, and it was a ten-week long trip to get back to the nearest station in South Australia, Moolooloo. So he had gone two-thirds of the way but had to turn back. He did so knowing where to find water all the way to the northern coast, and which tracks not to follow. It took eight weeks to get back to Moolooloo. After a short rest, Stuart and his men rode on to Port Augusta and took a steamer to Adelaide, arriving there on 23 September. Just four weeks later, they headed north again. The trip was not easy for Stuart. He tried to help a horse that had been choked by a rope but the frightened animal reared, knocking him unconscious and crushing

The trip was not easy for Stuart. He tried to help a horse that had been choked by a rope but the frightened animal reared, knocking him unconscious and crushing his hand.

his hand. The pain in his hand dogged him throughout his travels. Worse, he knew the symptoms of scurvy and, in late June, it struck him on the Roper River. But the prize was so close that they pushed on despite it. On 24 July 1862, the front member of the party saw the sea. Stuart had known they were very close but had said nothing, wanting the others to get a nice surprise. Now they had it! Later that day, they were on the beach at Chambers Bay, east of where Darwin is today, at the very top of the Top End, about 12 degrees south of the Equator. It was low tide, but Stuart walked out to the water. ‘I dipped my feet, and washed my face and hands in the sea, as I promised the late Governor Sir Richard McDonnell I would do if I reached it,’ he wrote in his journal. They gathered a few shells, looked for and failed to find any seaweed, and then turned around and headed back to Adelaide. They had found a route that provided trees for making telegraph poles and springs for providing water for telegraph stations. Stuart had succeeded in crossing the continent from south to north.

Read this! Stuart left a notice in a sealed tin, buried near a marked tree. It said:

The exploring party, under the command of John McDouall Stuart, arrived at this spot on the 25th day of July, 1862, having crossed the entire Continent of Australia from the Southern to the Indian Ocean, passing through the centre.

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Botanist Joseph Banks, before he set out for Australia.

Colonial science Botanists and bird collectors When HM Bark Endeavour dropped anchor in what James Cook later called Botany Bay, there were two botanists on board. They collected plants and animals, including a kangaroo that they shot later in Queensland. One of Cook’s botanists, Joseph Banks, became President of the Royal Society when he returned to England. He was a powerful man who could get his ideas carried out. As one of his ideas was to settle New South Wales, we could say that Australia was founded on the science of botany! Banks was aided by naturalist Daniel Solander, but most of the early collectors were medical men (only men because women were not allowed to study medicine at that time). These men knew something about identifying plants and animals, but they were not experts.

In 1836, Charles Darwin was the first wellknown scientist to reach Australia, although his visit was not noted at the time because it was not until 1859 that he published his iconic book on evolution, The Origin of Species, and became famous.

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There were no scientists in the First Fleet but, as happened during the years of exploration by sea, quite a few people collected specimens. The first real scientist to come to Australia was Robert Brown, a botanist who was sent out to Australia by Banks to go exploring with Matthew Flinders in July 1801. He reached Western Australia in December 1801, and stayed in Australia until 1805. During his stay, Brown collected around 3,400 species of plants, some 2,000 of which were new to European botanists. He collected plants in many parts of Australia, including Tasmania. He was the first scientist to describe a koala, which he did in a letter to Sir Joseph Banks in 1803. He also took home a live wombat and collected or studied fish, crabs, birds, the platypus and lizards. In 1836, Charles Darwin was the first well-known scientist to reach Australia, although his visit was not noted at the time because it was not until 1859 that he published his iconic book on evolution, The Origin of Species, and became famous. Then, in 1837, bird enthusiast John Gould reported to the Zoological Society in London on the finches that Darwin had collected in the Galapagos Islands. These finches were to become the cornerstone of Darwin’s groundbreaking explanation of how species evolve. By 1838, John Gould and his wife Elizabeth were in Hobart. They collected birds themselves, as well as hiring other people to collect birds for them. Gould stuffed the dead birds and sketched them, and then his wife painted pictures of them. Elizabeth Gould was the first of a long line of women painters of Australian animals and flowers. Exploring caves Around 1826, artist Augustus Earle painted a picture of the entrance to what he called Mosman’s Cave. It was actually Cathedral Cave, one of the Wellington Caves in the Wellington Valley, New South Wales, named by explorer John Oxley after the Duke of Wellington. Two years later, in 1828, Hamilton Hume, who went exploring with Charles Sturt, wrote a description of the caves and, in 1831, Major Mitchell was in London showing off the bones he had collected in those same caves. The limestone of the Wellington Caves is from the Devonian period, about 400 million years ago. The stone has only a few fossils in it, but the caves held the bones of many animals that had fallen or wandered in over the last 40,000 years and had not been able to get out. Many of these animals are now extinct, like the marsupial lion, the giant kangaroo and a large relative of the wombat called the Diprotodon.

Bunyips!

William In 1866, the first aturalist n d n a r 1839. chola proper scientific ydney in English s S in d e iv r acleay ar study was made cientific Sharp M y great s n a e k a of the caves. It did not m id prove While he alia, he d tr s u A in took Gerard Krefft s while othing discoverie ull was n k s ip y n u from the Australian lleged b kull of that an a ally the s tu c Museum seven days a s a rt: it w some of the so pite this, s to ride there from e D . e s r ed ho t the a deform Sydney in a horse and lieve tha e b to d e ntinu people co cart. It was hard and isted. bunyip ex dusty work in the caves. mythical Krefft’s candles were sometimes smothered by the the choking dust ‘Bunyip’ bones, as depicted in The Sydney Morning Herald in 1847. that filled the air, but he still managed to retrieve many fossils. Others followed Krefft, and 58 species have now Animals laying eggs been found in the caves. Of these, 30 are now extinct Bennett was a very good friend of Sir Richard Owen, and another 12 are no longer found in the Wellington the man Krefft accused of engineering the plot against area. Krefft was also the first to describe the Queensland him. Bennett had come to Australia in the 1830s and, lungfish. And, because he was bitten so often, he became for almost 50 years, he tried to establish the truth of something of an expert on the symptoms of snakebite. something that many colonists already believed—that Krefft was unusual among Australia’s biologists and monotremes, the platypus and the echidna, laid eggs. naturalists in the 1800s because he accepted Darwin’s In 1883, a young Scotsman, William Hay Caldwell, theory of evolution. Other biologists were still able to do came to Sydney. He planned to unravel the mysteries of good work collecting and dissecting new species without the lungfish, discover if monotremes laid eggs, and find accepting the new theory. out how marsupials like the kangaroo reproduced. Any When the board of trustees of the Australian Museum one of these would have been enough to make a scientist sacked Krefft, he said it was a plot by the anti-Darwinists, famous, and yet Caldwell achieved all three—though but anti-Darwin trustee Dr George Bennett resigned to two of them attracted little interest in Australia. protest against the way Krefft had been treated. In 1884, Caldwell proved that monotremes laid eggs. Some people just nodded and said that the Aboriginal people had been telling them that for ages. Caldwell also confirmed what Krefft said about the lungfish, and he added some extra details. It was his explanation about how marsupials reproduced that really upset people then. He said that a baby kangaroo was born as a tiny embryo. It then made its way into the mother’s pouch, attached itself to the teat and grew there. Bushmen were outraged. They said that the joey began as a bud on the teat. The scientists disagreed with the bushmen, and the scientists were right. From 1850, Australia started establishing its own universities and, as time went by, training its own scientists. So, in the nineteenth century, Australia not only had biologists, but also chemists, physicists, geologists, engineers, veterinarians and members of all the branches of science that the new nation, which was A kangaroo and her joey from The Mammals of Australia founded in 1901, would need to prosper. by Gerard Krefft, published in 1871.

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The Lure of Gold When it was announced that gold had been discovered in two Australian colonies in the 1850s, the rush was on. Large numbers of people arrived in Australia, with many believing that finding gold would be as easy as digging up potatoes. Some were lucky. They became rich and took their wealth back home. Others found enough gold to buy a farm and settle down in Australia. Others lost everything, but soon found jobs and stayed on. Australia’s economy boomed, and life in the colonies changed forever.

LEFT: Diggers working with a cradle to find gold. BELOW: Excited diggers celebrate finding a gold nugget.

LEFT: News of good finds kept diggers rushing to join in the gold rush.

The gold rushes The gold rushes in Australia began in 1851, but people had often found gold before that time, so why did it take so long for a gold rush to begin? Early discoveries The first gold ‘discovery’ was faked by a First Fleet convict called James Daley in August 1788. The convicted burglar made his ‘gold’ with filings from a brass buckle and a gold coin. He was flogged for this, and after that people were suspicious of every ‘find’. In 1824, legend says that an unnamed convict found a gold nugget on what was called the Big Hill—the steep slope on the western side of the Blue Mountains. He was flogged as well (people would have assumed the nugget was made artificially from stolen gold).

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In the 1840s, a shepherd named Hugh M’Gregor often sold gold in Sydney. Most people knew he got it from the Wellington Valley, which was on the western edge of where the gold rush would eventually begin. Gold was found in South Australia in 1843, and it was being mined by 1846. Though the find was not large, it might have started a gold rush but it did not. Neither did an 1847 report by a Cornish miner named John Phillips, who found more gold in South Australia. In 1849, a shepherd found a large lump of gold, worth two years’ pay, in the Pyrenees Ranges near Melbourne. People rushed off to look for more, but they did not know how to find gold and the police chased them away. The government did not want a gold rush in 1849, but by then news had reached Australia about the gold rush in California, and many adventurous people from Diggers rushed to buy this 1852 map of the ‘Gold Field’ announced by Edward Hargraves.

Australia sailed off to America. They came back knowing how to look for gold and how to find it. One of those people was Edward Hammond Hargraves. He had a friend who knew all about the shepherd M’Gregor and his gold. Hargraves had also heard about how the Californian gold rush had started. When a few nuggets were found on the American River in California, an old miner made a device used to separate gold from dirt. It was called a ‘cradle’, and he showed other people how to make and use it. Some months later, a merchant bought up all the equipment that gold diggers would need. He rode through the streets of San Francisco waving a bottle full of gold shouting, ‘Gold! Gold from the American River!’ The rush began and the merchant made a fortune. Rushing to the diggings Many Australian and English geologists knew there was gold in Australia. They even said so, but still there was no gold rush here. Hargraves knew where the gold was because others had found it. He knew that people coming back from California knew how to use a cradle to get gold. So the trick was to get people excited, and then to stop the government from blocking a gold rush, as they had done in Victoria. He also wanted the credit and any rewards for ‘finding’ gold.

Hargraves wrote a letter to the colonial secretary in April 1851 about his ‘discovery’ of gold between Wellington Valley and the Big Hill but, on the same day, his friend Enoch Rudder wrote to the newspapers declaring that Hargraves had found a large goldfield.

Globetrotters People rushed to the Australian goldfields from almost every land on the Earth. There are accounts of life on the goldfields from Poles, Americans, Danes, Germans, Italians and Frenchmen. And they all mention seeing people from a multitude of nations, ranging from China to India, New Zealand, Scotland and Africa.

Edward Hargraves, who was celebrated as a hero for ‘finding’ gold.

Now everybody knew, and a few people set off for Bathurst, hunting for gold. The area covered in Hargraves’ letter was too large for the government to be able to stop prospectors. By early May, the first gold hunters reported finding gold, and so the rush began. By mid-May, Sydney’s merchants were clamouring to sell diggers everything they needed. Like the Californian merchant, they knew an easy way to get rich from gold. In Melbourne, the government was worried about losing workers. They sent a scientist to look for gold in the Pyrenees Ranges, in the central highlands of Victoria. Soon there were goldfields everywhere. In those days, news spread slowly. A very fast ship might make a one-way trip between Australia and Europe in three months, but four was more usual, and six months was not uncommon. So people in England first heard about the Australian gold rushes in The Times newspaper on 2 September 1851.

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Everyone in the family worked hard on the goldfields.

Searching for gold There are two kinds of gold. The easy-to-find gold is loose alluvial gold that has come out of weathered rocks. Alluvial gold gets trapped in creek and river beds, because even a small piece of gold is very heavy. While sand and mud wash away in running water, even tiny bits of gold are left behind, and even tiny bits are worth money. This sort of gold goes quickly in a gold rush. After that, gold diggers need to crush rocks to get the gold out of them, which is much harder work. That is why people rushed to get to the goldfields quickly. Families headed to the goldfields, often towing a heavy cart loaded with tools, food and possessions. Each family member was eager to work hard together to win a fortune—or at least to get enough money to buy a farm, animals and seed, with some left over to live on until the farm got going.

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Some gold diggers succeeded, some lost all their money, some caught diseases in the unhealthy conditions on the goldfields, and some died of those diseases or were crushed when holes caved in. Most of the gold was under the soil in old, buried creek beds, and so they had to dig down to get it. The only ones sure to make a profit were storekeepers and sellers of ‘sly grog’—illegal alcohol—along with butchers, bakers, blacksmiths and people who sold ‘medicines’ that claimed to cure everything but usually cured nothing. And bushrangers did very well too.

Some gold diggers succeeded, some lost all their money, some caught diseases in the unhealthy conditions on the goldfields, and some died of those diseases or were crushed when holes caved in.

Immigration Between the start of 1842 and the end of 1851, immigrants and immigration were the subject of numerous articles in Australian newspapers. Sydney stopped receiving convicts in 1840—although one more convict ship, the Hashemy, arrived in 1849 amid great protests by people against transportation. While the other colonies were still getting fresh convict labour, squatters in New South Wales knew that the supply of cheap labour was drying up. People tried bringing in ‘coolies’—indentured labourers from China and India who were contracted to work for an employer. In South Australia, some German settlers imported indentured workers from Germany, but this did not work particularly well. Attracting migrants Some of the squatters wanted to bring back the convict system, but the anti-transportation people had the upper

hand. The only solution was to get more immigrants to come to Australia, mainly from Britain. However, Australia was competing with America and Canada, which were closer to Britain, and so the ocean voyage for immigrants was cheaper and shorter. And, if people were going to travel all the way to Australia, they could also go on to New Zealand, which had a cooler climate.

Streets lined with gold In an article in his newspaper, The Empire, Henry Parkes welcomed the discovery of gold in Australia as a way of stopping the transportation of convicts. He argued that the politicians in Downing Street in London would not want to send burglars and highwaymen to a land full of gold!

Many people braved the long, tiring and sometimes dangerous voyage to Australia.

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This helps to explain the glee with which the start of the gold rush in Australia was greeted. The hope of many colonists was that people would come to dig for gold, and either do well and buy a farm here, or do poorly and settle in Australia anyway to work as labourers. They were right.

Australia benefited from the bad luck of poorly prepared diggers. These people not only found very little gold, but they also had to pay high prices for everything on the goldfields—butchers, bakers, publicans, doctors, blacksmiths and bullock drivers all made huge profits from selling their goods and services. People who had had a bad experience during their voyage to Australia were also tempted to settle. Between 1851 and 1860, more than 600,000 people reached Australia, with most of them ending up in Victoria. Some of the gold diggers kept on mining, working underground in the hard-rock mines that replaced alluvial mining. By the time that gold started to run out, many of them were too used to living in Australia to ever want to go back home. The cities and towns which had been briefly drained of their populations during the gold rushes grew even larger than would have been dreamed of in 1851—and the colonies were also far more democratic, because Australia had the highest quality of life of any nation and, in prosperous times, nobody minded giving the vote to more citizens. Thanks to the gold rushes, Australia would never be the same again.

The Eureka Stockade There had been successful revolutions in America and France in the later 1700s and, by the 1840s and 1850s, more people could read, paper was cheaper, printing was faster, and steam transport enabled ideas to spread more quickly. Soon, telegraph wires would link nations and ideas would spread even faster. The desire for change was in the air. Europe had had a number of failed revolutions in 1848, and refugees had scattered, some of them to the goldfields of Australia. The Victorian colonial government had heard about these revolutions, and Victorian Lieutenant-Governor Charles La Trobe feared what he called the ‘red republicans’. The wise move would have been to avoid repression, but the squatters wanted the gold diggers back at work on low wages. They wanted to increase the fee for the miner’s licence that everyone on the goldfields had to have—even storekeepers and blacksmiths. Stoking the fire In June 1852, La Trobe doubled the licence fee from 30 shillings a month to £3 a month, arguing that it had to go up because of an increase in the cost of administration. But because people were refusing to pay for their licences, the police were sent on ‘digger hunts’. They often robbed their prisoners, and new gold diggers were arrested as they reached the fields, before they could even get a licence. When a drunken Scot called James Scobie offended publican James Bentley on 7 October 1854, Bentley and his henchmen chased the Scotsman and beat him to death. A corrupt magistrate let Bentley off. On 17 October, a crowd of about 10,000 miners gathered and, in the presence of troopers and a goldfields’ commissioner named Robert Rede, they burned down Bentley’s Eureka Hotel. Bentley had already fled.

On 18 November, Bentley and two accomplices were sentenced to three years of ‘hard labour on the roads’ for Scobie’s death. This might have helped settle things down, but Charles Hotham, who had replaced La Trobe

Back home, the families of gold diggers hoped for good news from Australia.

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Diggers fighting government soldiers on the goldfields at the Eureka Stockade.

as lieutenant-governor, wanted the ringleaders who burnt down the hotel arrested, and some of them were. There were more digger hunts, and John D’Ewes, the corrupt magistrate, was dismissed. Then armed troops were sent in. The diggers stopped one group of troops and tipped their carts over. The troops’ drummer boy, John Egan, was shot in the leg. In the commissioner’s camp, people believed Egan was dead, so the soldiers went looking for revenge. The authorities were alarmed by the demands of the diggers’ Ballarat Reform League. The League wanted things that we now take for granted, such as everyone having the right to vote but, in 1854, that was regarded as a dangerous notion. Flying the flag On 30 November 1854, Commissioner Rede sent troops out to check licences, but the diggers had voted not to show their licences, and the troopers were jeered at and

A few years later, Victoria was a democratic colony, and two of the Eureka Stockade leaders had become members of parliament.

stoned. Some arrests were made, but more diggers gathered, the Eureka flag appeared and, beneath it, the diggers swore to uphold their rights and liberties. They started erecting a stockade—a small wooden fort. A replica of the Eureka On Sunday 3 December, flag, which features the Southern Cross. thinking there would be no attack on the holy Sabbath, many of those in the stockade drifted away. At 3 am, the troops moved in and, when a shot was heard, their commander, Captain Thomas, shouted: ‘The Queen’s troops have been fired upon. Fire!’ Six troopers and 22 diggers died, and several of those diggers were deliberately murdered, perhaps as revenge for the drummer boy, John Egan. Another 12 diggers were wounded. Out of 120 prisoners, 13 were charged with high treason, but they were all found not guilty. A few years later, Victoria was a democratic colony, and two of the Eureka Stockade leaders had become members of parliament. The gold diggers won in the end.

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Settling the Land As more convicts and free settlers arrived in Australia, more of everything was needed. Most free settlers and freed convicts dreamed of owning land, and many thought it was there to be taken. This was not good for the Aboriginal people who inhabited the land. Many of the new farmers also suffered, as they did not know how to work their farms. When they failed, they either worked for wages on the land or drifted to the cities to find work. Australian society changed.

LEFT: A romanticised image of Alexander Riley’s farm in Raby, New South Wales, in the 1820s.

ABOVE: Sheep shearers in front of a woolshed

in the 1870s. The shearers’ fight for better conditions led to the formation of the Australian Labor Party. LEFT: The political platform of what would

become the Australian Labor Party.

Raising sheep Australia’s first sheep were bought in Cape Town in South Africa in 1787. There were 44 of them. After 11 weeks at sea, just 29 made it ashore from the First Fleet. A week later, some of them were killed by a lightning strike. Others ate poisonous plants, and convicts stole two and ate them in the bush. One way and another, Australia did not start out looking like a good place to raise sheep! Sheep are usually chosen for wool or for meat, although you can get wool from a sheep grown for meat and you can eat a sheep that is bred for shearing. The Cape sheep had hairy rather than woolly fleeces, but they tasted good. During the 1790s, John Macarthur imported Irish and Bengal sheep. Then, in 1797, a ship arrived with 13 merino sheep from Cape Town and John Macarthur took six of them. The breeding of sheep that took place on the Macarthurs’ farm at Camden, New South Wales, over the next 20 years laid the foundation for the Australian wool industry. However, it was mostly Elizabeth Macarthur who bred the sheep, as her husband, John, was out of the colony for almost half that time. Others helped as well, especially the Reverend Samuel Marsden, who some said was more devoted to his woolly flock than the human ‘flock’ in his church. By 1813, most of the suitable paddocks on the coastal side of the Blue Mountains were full of animals. As soon

Keeping up appearances In the late 1860s, English novelist Anthony Trollope noted the pretensions of the ‘squattocracy’—the wealthy landowners. He said that 100,000 sheep ‘require a professed man-cook and a butler to look after them; forty thousand sheep cannot be shorn without a piano; twenty thousand is the lowest number that renders napkins at dinner imperative’.

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Later, as stations got bigger, more shearers were hired, shearing sheds were built to at least provide some shelter for the men while they worked, and rough huts were put up. as a way west was found, sheep, cattle and their attendant humans poured onto the Western Plains. Before refrigeration made it possible to freeze meat, the big profit was in wool, which could be baled up and taken to market in wagons hauled by bullocks. Meat sheep were driven to the city to be slaughtered, with the waste going into Darling Harbour in Sydney and, later, into the Yarra River in Melbourne, with other cities acting in a similar way. A tough job A sheep farm needed at least 2,000 sheep if it was to make a profit. A grazier with sheep on unfenced country with trees needed workers. One shepherd could mind 500 sheep and, with no fences, shepherds were essential. So were shearers, although at first some of them were drawn from the station staff, with others being hired for the ‘shearing season’. Shepherds usually used bark huts for shelter, although early Victorian squatter Edward Curr often made his shepherds stay with the sheep overnight. He gave them tarpaulins and forked sticks with which to make tents. Later, as stations got bigger, more shearers were hired, shearing sheds were built to at least provide some shelter for the men while they worked, and rough huts were put up. The profits poured in and the sheds got bigger. So did the pride of the graziers. And yet it was not all profits. There could also be disasters, such as when bushfires swept through paddocks or dingoes took the sheep. And, in the early years at least, ‘wild blacks’—who were entitled to be upset at the sheep eating the kangaroos’ fodder—speared the sheep. On the Murray River, the Aboriginal people gave this new food a name—‘jumbuck’. Then there were the diseases a sheep could get, like catarrh, which was a type of pneumonia caused by a virus. This caused a discharge from the eyes and nose, and later the sheep’s wool fell out. The only treatment was to kill the infected sheep and burn its carcass. The disease they called ‘scab’ was caused by a mite that burrowed under the skin of the sheep. It made them so itchy that they scratched themselves on

A shepherd’s well-built hut in South Australia in the 1860s.

rocks, bushes, fences or each other, thus spreading the mites. Some graziers tried killing the sheep and burning their carcasses, but that did not work. Others tried a mercury-and-arsenic-based sheep dip, which poisoned the mites but also killed the sheep. From the 1860s, a solution of tobacco and sulfur was used to kill the mites. The graziers also had to deal with footrot, flystrike and other parasite infestations.

In the 1840s, there was a bad drought and graziers began ‘boiling down’—killing their flocks and boiling them down to get the fat. Sheep fat, called tallow, cost £28 a ton in London. That meant every sheep was worth seven shillings, which was better than nothing. The good news was that fleeces were getting thicker—in the early 1800s, the Macarthurs got about 1.1 kilograms of fleece per sheep but, by the 1890s, the fleeces weighed about 3.2 kilograms. That was just as well, because the price of wool was falling.

The life of a settler Finding land In the 1860s, some of the many land-hungry people who came from the goldfields were allowed to select small portions of a squatter’s run—a part that was leased but not purchased. They were known as ‘selectors’. Where they could, settlers took up land along rivers, so they had water for themselves and their stock and, later on, for limited irrigation. Many of these small farms failed because of the poor, phosphate-deficient Australian soil and so, at the end of the 1800s, many people moved back to the cities. Building shelter The first thing any settler did was to build a shelter. Rich settlers might have a tent to sleep in, but putting up a bark hut came high on their list. This involved cutting

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A selector’s bark hut in Gippsland, Victoria, in the 1880s, made from bark sheets and rough timber frames.

two zigzag lines around the trunks of a number of trees. The lines were as far apart on the tree as the cutter could reach with an axe. They then used a spade to peel the bark off each tree in a sheet, which they dried over a fire, then laid on the ground under logs to flatten it. The settlers attached the bark to a framework of posts and poles with whatever was handy: wire and greenhide—animal skin—were common. The door might be a flap of canvas or an old sack tacked to the frame, while more bark made a roof. Clearing the land Trees close to the hut were cut down to make a firebreak. The land was usually covered in trees or bushes that shaded it and stopped crops or grass from growing. If the farm was a cattle or sheep station, the trees would

Many of these small farms failed because of the poor, phosphate-deficient Australian soil and so, at the end of the 1800s, many people moved back to the cities.

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be ringbarked—deeply cut around the trunk to cut off the water and food supply. This killed them, thus letting sunlight onto the ground beneath. If the settler wanted to plant crops, the trees were cut down and the roots dug out. Even those who had stock still needed five acres or so of wheat or maize to provide flour and horse feed. Five acres was two hectares— equivalent to the area covered by 20 Olympic swimming pools—so there was a lot of clearing to do. During the first year or more, the settler needed enough cash to buy food and feed. The alternative was to go into debt with the local storekeeper. If the settler failed, the storekeeper then took the land as payment and so grew rich. The Squatting Act of 1836 set a licence fee of £10 to hold a run, added to which was an annual fee of a halfpenny for each animal pastured. Later, the rules became more complicated and the charges went higher. Surviving in the bush There were very few doctors then. They were expensive and often not very well trained, and it was only midwives who made urgent house calls to deliver babies. Most householders relied on a book with lists of symptoms and

Hot remedies People relied on patent medicines like Davis’ Pain Killer and Porter’s Family Aperient Antibilious Pills. A lady travelling in remote parts of New Zealand was told that if there was no Davis’ Pain Killer, the men used

specifications for a paddock for the teacher’s horse and the amount of quicklime to be shovelled into the school’s pit toilets. Moving produce Settlers on the Hunter and Hawkesbury rivers sent produce, including perishables like butter, to large markets by boat in the 1830s. In the early 1850s, a couple of paddle-steamers appeared on the Murray River, and then more entered the Darling and Murrumbidgee rivers.

Worcestershire sauce mixed with cayenne pepper. They said it burned just as much, so it had to be doing them good!

suggested remedies, along with helpful advice on how to pull out an aching tooth or treat a broken bone. Bush people had hundreds of simple solutions to everyday needs. An early Victorian squatter, Edward Curr, described a ‘fat lamp’. It was an old dish with clay in the bottom. The wick was a stick poking out of the clay, with a piece of shirt wrapped around it, and the wick sat in mutton fat from the frying pan. Schools were scattered around to meet local needs, and children often rode, with several on the same horse, to school each day or walked, barefoot, long distances. The regulations issued to teachers included the

Australian river boats usually towed one or more barges. When the towing vessel stopped, the heavy barges would often run into the back of the vessel while going downstream or on still water. That is why Australian river boats were usually side-wheelers, not the stern-wheelers used on the Mississippi River in the USA. Wheat and wool used to be taken to Sydney and Melbourne, but now the paddle-steamers took it to Goolwa and then overland to Adelaide to be sold.

Once Sydney and Melbourne realised that their profits were being ‘stolen’ by Adelaide, they quickly built railways to open up the more isolated parts of their states. The Lady Augusta and the Eureka, the first two vessels to work on the Murray River, in 1854.

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Australian agricultural inventions British soil had been ploughed for hundreds of years and so there were usually no underground surprises in British fields. Australian paddocks were different. Even after the ground was cleared for the plough, even when all the tree stumps had been pulled, burned or blasted out, there was often a tangle of fragments, roots and even rocks lurking in the soil.

The horse-drawn plough was like a spike that was pulled, point-first, through the soil, opening up the ground so seeds could be dropped in. The ploughman walked behind, holding a handle that kept the plough on line next to the previous furrow and stopping it from tipping forward.

The horse and the operator were both strong and, unless the operator was careful, the plough could break when it hit an obstacle. It was easy to repair, but time was lost, trudging back to the shed—and time was something farmers could not spare during the sowing season. With a horse ploughing a single furrow, breakage could usually be avoided but, by the 1870s, steam power was replacing horses. Ploughs could now dig multiple furrows, but the operator had lost the ability to stop the plough getting damaged. The stump-jump plough Farmers knew it was often just one bolt that broke on a plough, and many must have wondered if the bolt could be replaced by a spring. In 1876, a South Australian named Richard Bowyer Smith worked out a system of weights and levers which allowed a plough to ride up over a rock or a root, and then return to the ploughing position. Most farmers rejected Smith’s stumpjump plough, saying farmers ought to clear their fields properly in the first place! Richard Smith took out a provisional patent in South Australia for his invention, but he wilted under the criticism and let the patent lapse. Others took up his invention and made a fortune from it, An 1860s plough (above left) and a family putting a harvester into storage in the 1890s (left).

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In 1876, a South Australian named Richard Bowyer Smith worked out a system of weights and levers which allowed a plough to ride up over a rock or a root, and then return to the ploughing position.

as farmers finally realised they were wrong. In September 1882, Smith was given a £500 ‘bonus’ by the South Australian Legislative Assembly for inventing the stumpjump plough. The Ridley stripper At the same time, a Mr J.W. Bull was awarded £250 for ‘improvements to agricultural machinery’. This was for what is often called the ‘Ridley stripper’, because a man called John Ridley made it using Bull’s design. In the 1840s, labour was scarce and wheat was harvested by cutting the stalks with a handheld scythe, loading it on wagons and hauling it away for threshing— removing the wheat grains from the stalk. With a scythe, a skilled worker could clear an acre of wheat in a day. The Ridley stripper was a lot cheaper to use than employing workers, but it took off the whole head of wheat, so it still needed to be threshed. The combine harvester When H.V. McKay developed his combine harvester in 1884—which threshed as well as stripped the wheat—the entire wheat-harvesting process went from costing 14 pence a bushel to just 4 pence. That meant a big profit for the farmer. Sadly, it also meant less work for labourers, and so many of them drifted to the city. It also meant farms needed to be larger to justify the cost of buying the machinery, and so many of those on smaller farms also moved off the land.

Bushrangers and outlaws In the early days of the colony, Governor Philip Gidley King sent men out to find a way over the Blue Mountains. In a report sent to London, he said that they were known locally as ‘bushrangers’. These men were usually not thieves, but just people who ‘ranged’ the bush. When convicts escaped, a few were cared for by Aboriginal people, but the rest either had to learn how to feed themselves or else rob people. Robbery was easier, and soon many of those who ranged the bush really were thieves. Black Caesar Some said bushranger John Black Caesar came from the West Indies, while others said he was born in Madagascar, but nobody really knew. He was transported in the First Fleet for theft, and everybody called him Black Caesar because of his skin colour. Caesar was a big man who needed more food than he could get from his rations. When he was working, he would steal food and run off into the bush to eat it, and then stay in the bush to avoid punishment. He tried to join Aboriginal groups, but they did not trust him, so he stole food from people’s gardens at night.

When he was caught, he told stories of seeing Aboriginal people herding lost cattle. He also claimed to have killed the Aboriginal warrior Pemulwuy.

A horse saves the day Sometimes bushrangers did not always get the gold. A man was carrying 800 ounces of gold in his saddlebags when he was bailed up near the Black Forest in Victoria. There was a struggle, and he was dragged from his horse. The horse bolted back to the inn where it was normally stabled. The robbers searched the man and let him go. When he got

Bushranger ‘Mad Dog’ Daniel Morgan, who was shot dead in 1865.

back to the inn, he found both his horse and his gold safe and sound.

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An 1879 ‘wanted’ poster for the Kelly gang, with two pictures of Ned Kelly.

But this could not have been true because Caesar was shot by a reward-hunter called John Wimbow in 1796, while Pemulwuy was killed in 1802. Bold Jack Donohoe Caesar was never regarded as a hero, but Bold Jack Donohoe was well regarded by other convicts. When he was shot in the forehead and killed in 1830, Major Thomas Mitchell did a delicate pencil drawing of him as he lay in the morgue. Such drawings of dead people were quite common then. A Sydney tobacconist even sold clay pipes with the bowl of the pipe modelled on Donohoe’s head, bullet-hole and all! Bold Jack was probably also the inspiration for the popular song, The Wild Colonial Boy. Convicts and exconvicts liked to sing such songs in shanties and pubs, but the owners were warned that they could lose their licences if they did not stop the singing. Bushranging on the goldfields Bushrangers were often seen as heroes because they robbed the rich, but they became less popular in the gold-rush days, when even a poor man might have

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enough gold to be worth robbing. Many people on the Victorian goldfields were rich, and there were good places on isolated Victorian roads for bushrangers to rob them. Other bushrangers worked the lonely track that went through dry, scrubby bush to Adelaide. The colonial governments created gold escorts— groups of armed men in blue uniforms, usually retired soldiers, who accompanied sturdy carts filled with gold. On each trip, they were usually joined by a number of armed gold diggers, who saved money by riding with them and not having to pay for the gold escort. Few bushrangers were as unlucky as the man they called Sam Poo, Australia’s only Chinese bushranger. He started a life of crime in January 1865, but by March of that year he had been shot in the thigh and his skull had been fractured by a blow to the head. He had recovered by year’s end, but he was hanged at Bathurst on 19 December. In April 1865, ‘Mad Dog’ Daniel Morgan was shot from behind. Many people had worked as his informants, who were able to tell the bushranger which gold diggers were carrying money. On one occasion, when a victim claimed he had no money, bushranger Frank Gardiner, who knew for a fact that he did have money, told him that he had received so-much in so-and-so’s bar and had put it into such-andsuch a pocket. Gardiner was one of the few bushrangers to die peacefully as a free man. He was given a pardon on the condition that he left Australia and never returned. He sailed to America and opened a bar in San Francisco, before dropping out of public view. Ned Kelly Australia’s best known bushranger, Ned Kelly, dropped from view in a different way in June 1880—through the gallows’ trapdoor and into an unmarked grave. His body, minus its skull, has since been identified and reburied. The Kelly gang understood technology enough to know that the telegraph was its enemy. The gang’s exploits marked the end of bushranging, because now police reinforcements could be called in by telegraph and they could arrive by train. The gang planned to derail a police train coming to Glenrowan, but a schoolteacher called Thomas Curnow signalled the train to stop outside the town. The police left the train and surrounded the hotel where the members of the Kelly gang were holed up. Three gang members died in the shootout and in the fire that followed. After that, thieves looked for safer ways of robbing people. The bushranging era had ended.

Bushrangers were often seen as heroes because they robbed the rich, but they became less popular in the gold-rush days, when even a poor man might have enough gold to be worth robbing. A tracker and a policeman arresting bushrangers.

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Boom and bust The boom of the 1880s In the 1880s, Australia developed a sense of national pride. In Melbourne, in particular, an economic boom saw the rise of many grand buildings. The standard of living was higher in Australia than in most other countries in the world. There was low unemployment, wages were rising and many Australians owned their own homes—or hoped to do so before they died. In 1880, The Bulletin was first published. This was a journal that author Joseph Furphy described in 1897 as ‘temper, democratic; bias, offensively Australian’. It featured Australian writers like Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson, Mary Gilmore, Breaker Morant and C.J. Dennis. Known as the ‘bushman’s bible’, it was the sort of publication that could only have started in prosperous times. Busy Collins Street, Melbourne, in the 1880s.

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The financial scene was dominated by men who were mostly the sons of gold-rush immigrants, and their success was fuelled by suburban train and tram lines, which opened up new suburbs for development.

Melbourne held international exhibitions in the new Royal Exhibition Building in 1880 and 1888. Life was good. By 1890, most of the colonies wanted a federated nation, and Melbourne hosted the Australasian Federation Conference in that year. Money was available to erect many other buildings and, once Ned Kelly was dead, citizens slept soundly at night. There was a drought in 1883, but in Melbourne things went on as usual. Everybody was sure land prices would keep rising forever, even in 1889 when blocks of land in central Melbourne were nearly the same price as similar blocks in London.

An engraving of an aerial view of Melbourne in 1882.

The depression of the 1890s Ordinary people and investors got caught up in the excitement of prosperity and began putting their money into building societies and investment companies that offered high interest rates. They did not heed the old warning that when something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. The financial scene was dominated by men who were mostly the sons of gold-rush immigrants, and their success was fuelled by suburban train and tram lines, which opened up new suburbs for development. Everybody was supremely confident. But, as victims can always see after the event, there came a time when a few people started to lose confidence and, when that happened, the whole boom collapsed like a house of cards. That happened in late 1891. The result was a depression that hit hard and lasted for a long time. Most of the investors lost everything, and the people who had caused the depression took refuge in bankruptcy. Some even escaped the embarrassment of bankruptcy by coming to arrangements that were approved by the courts. They paid off their debts at the very low rate of a halfpenny in the pound, which was equivalent to giving creditors $1 for every $480 that they owed them. The ‘boomers’ were free to go on trading through any other firms they happened to own.

Iron lace A lasting feature of the boom of the 1880s was the cast-iron decoration on many of Melbourne’s buildings. British art critic John Ruskin denounced ‘iron lace’ as cheap and vulgar, but nobody in booming Melbourne cared.

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Looking after the workers In the nineteenth century, even ‘free’ workers had little freedom. The Master and Servant Act let an employer make complaints against employees and have them sentenced to jail for three months. There were few chances for employees to charge an employer, and the magistrates, appointed for their wealth, were unlikely to listen anyway. In theory, the Act was about both sides honouring a contract, but in practice there was little that was honourable. The thinking of the 1800s is shown by businessman James Macarthur, who told a parliamentary select committee in 1847 that high wages would unsettle the workers, making them less steady and more extravagant. This, he stated, would be against the ‘natural order’. The solution was to bring in more workers, the employers said. Another witness called for 20,000 extra immigrants to be brought to Sydney to bring wages down.

The name ‘Australian Labor Party’ came after policies such at these below had been developed to help the workers.

Soon after, Governor Frederick Robe in South Australia gave low-paid work to starving Irish migrants. Employers were furious because they wanted the migrants to be desperate, so they would have to accept much lower pay than the governor was offering. The rise of the unions In a British law passed in 1861, any attempt on the part of workers to form an ‘unlawful Combination or Conspiracy to raise the Rate of Wages’ was an offence, with a penalty of two years in jail. The Combination Act of 1825 was also used to convict and send a group of unionists, known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, from Dorset in England to Australia in the 1830s. In Australia, workers wanted things to be different. There were craft unions covering bootmakers, bricklayers, plasterers, qualified butchers, stonemasons and other craftsmen. These unions had achieved an eight-hour day in some trades in both New South Wales and Victoria in 1856. It took longer to achieve in the other colonies, but the bargaining power of the unions was clear to all. The problem for employers in Australia was that they were faced with all men—but not women—having the vote after 1856. In Britain, the workers most likely to join unions did not get the vote until 1918, so it was easier to pass laws there to stop unions acting effectively.

Members of the Shearers Union in the 1890s.

Striking shearers The eight-hour day gave city-based unions a better basis on which to negotiate overtime rates. However, workers in the bush were too scattered to organise. Wool prices fell by half from 1875 to 1893, and squatters started cutting shearers’ pay, often by devious means. These included marking sheep with dye to indicate that they had not been properly shorn, or claiming that a shearer’s work was below standard. The ‘boss’ had the final say. Any shearer who objected and walked off was in breach of his contract and was at the mercy of the law. Under the contract, shearers could be dismissed but they could not leave. Worse, if there was a strike, all the shearers in that shed lost their money. The troubles that led to the Shearers’ Strike of 1891 began in Victoria in 1886, when some squatters reduced the rate per 100 sheep by about a third. A union was formed and there were several years of skirmishes. While the scab disease was once the sheep farmers’ enemy, farmers now relied on ‘scabs’—non-union labourers. The skirmishes became rougher as unionists began to use force to discourage non-union workers. By 1889, the Amalgamated Shearers Union had 20,000 members and controlled 2,500 sheds. The pastoralists stood up to the union at Jondaryan on the Darling Downs in Queensland, but they backed down when Rockhampton waterside workers agreed to declare the wool ‘black’ and not load it. Now the police and troops entered the fray.

Twelve union leaders were arrested, charged under the 1825 Combination Act, and sent to jail for three years. In the end, the strikers failed, mainly because their opponents controlled the parliaments, made the laws and decided how to apply these laws. The Australian Labor Party is born However, by 1889, a number of union-oriented candidates had stood for parliament, and moves were under way for more to join them. Then, under the ‘Tree of Knowledge’ at Barcaldine in Queensland, a meeting was held that is regarded as the first meeting of the Australian Labor Party. Soon the other colonies formed branches of the Labor Party. In the middle of 1891, 35 Labor candidates held the balance of power in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly. In 1898, in Queensland, a Labor government held office for one week and, in 1904, there was a Federal Labor government. The political game had changed.

The pastoralists stood up to the union at Jondaryan on the Darling Downs in Queensland, but they backed down when Rockhampton waterside workers agreed to declare the wool ‘black’ and not load it.

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The Growth of Cities A number of factors drove the growth of Australian cities. More industry meant more jobs in the cities, and farmers were employing fewer workers. Better transport meant that city workers could get to and from their homes faster and that fresh food could be brought to the cities to feed them. Hygiene was also improving, which meant that cities were becoming healthier places to live in.

BELOW: The arrival of

the first Sydney train at Parramatta in the mid-1850s.

LEFT: A birds-eye view of Sydney as it

was in 1879, with Circular Quay at the bottom of the page, in the middle.

City life The first town-planning regulations were introduced in 1829 in New South Wales by Governor Ralph Darling, and most other colonies followed the same pattern. While the majority of Australian towns were laid out by surveyors, others probably just grew by chance. A hotel would be built where a road crossed a river and water was available. A blacksmith would then set up a forge, or a store would open to sell food, nails, tools, cloth and other necessities, and a town would grow. In the 1800s, Australian cities housed government departments, jails, churches, banks, ports, shops and factories. They also had newspapers, theatres, libraries, bookshops and schools. Later on, they had universities. The future state capitals—Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Perth and Brisbane—were all built near good water supplies, or at least the supplies were good at first. So the location of the Tank Stream and the Yarra, Derwent, Torrens, Swan and Brisbane rivers influenced where these settlements sprang up. When they were first established, few people imagined that the population would ever be greater than a few thousand. In country towns, rich people built grand homes on hills, away from the dust of the main road and the noise of the local hotel while, in cities, the rich often lived far away from the rush, bustle and smells of inner-city life. Animals in the city In 1803, people in Sydney were warned not to let pigs ‘run without being ringed, as they destroy the road’, as a pig cannot dig up the ground with a ring in its nose. In 1809, Sydneysiders who lived near the Tank Stream had to keep their fences repaired so their cattle and pigs

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In 1840, only people wearing high boots could cross Melbourne’s Collins Street, while Sydney’s natural drainage patterns washed everything from the streets down into the Tank Stream, thus polluting the water supply.

would not dirty the water. And nobody was allowed to clean fish or wash in the stream—but they often did. In small towns, garbage was either burned, with the smoke blowing away into open country, or it was hauled out of town and left to rot. Human waste was dropped into pit toilets, where the liquids drained away and the solids slowly rotted. In the end, the hole would be filled in with the soil dug from a new pit. This was harder to do in a crowded city—and cities were always crowded, because people crammed into an area small enough for them all to get to work easily each day.

The pigs in the city streets ate some of the waste, and goats and stray dogs cleared away more of it. Then things slowly got better. By 1848, the Police Act in South Australia made it a crime to let pigs or goats stray, or even to tether them on public streets. With no refrigeration, people often kept a cow for milking, but anyone with three cows or more had to be registered as a dairy. Others preferred to keep goats and, in Melbourne in the 1850s, there were even goat dairies. The Tank Stream, initially a source of pure water for Sydney Town, quickly became a stinking drain.

Professional rat catchers in 1900 could earn up to sixpence per dead rat.

Providing goods and services Those who did not own a milking animal relied on visits from the milkman’s cart. Milkmen collected large cans of milk from the dairies outside the city. In 1859, milkmen in Sydney were sometimes seen topping up the milk cans with ‘water taken from that filthy pond … at the junction of Newtown and Parramatta Roads’. Not surprisingly, Sydney had 124 deaths in November that year, and 75 of the dead were less than five years old. A parliamentary inquiry in 1859 heard of houses in Woolloomooloo in Sydney where only one out of a hundred had a drain or a sink. Street drainage was another problem. In 1840, only people wearing high boots could cross Melbourne’s Collins Street, while Sydney’s natural drainage patterns washed everything from the streets down into the Tank Stream, thus polluting the water supply. Melbourne’s drains fed into the Yarra River. Carters made money bringing clean water into the towns. In Sydney, Busby’s Bore delivered swamp water to Hyde Park, where water carts filled their containers by driving the cart under a spout. In other towns, carts were driven into a stream until the containers on the back went under the water and filled up. Horse-drawn trams and omnibuses were slow, which limited how far a town could spread. However, once railways started running in the 1850s, people were able to move further out of town and escape the crowded and diseased city centres, where diphtheria, typhoid, scarlet fever, tuberculosis and gastric illnesses killed many people. Steam ferries ran in Sydney and, late in the 1800s, electric trams in the main cities helped people escape from the smells, the foul air, the unsanitary conditions and the filthy water.

Diseased rats often escaped from ships and spread out. When they died, their fleas moved to other rats. While many of the infections came from docks and warehouses near the wharves, other cases were found in distant suburbs. Nobody was safe, but everybody knew that the bubonic plague had come, indirectly, from unsanitary areas. Infection spread all along the coast but, in Sydney, the government worried about the effects on the coming Federation celebrations. They quickly took over large areas of the dockland, demolishing, clearing and burning down slums and old buildings. Like other growing Australian cities, Sydney had to clean up its act.

Dealing with disease Patent medicines called Vitadatio and Dr Williams’ Pink Pills for Pale People were advertised as cures for the plague.

Spreading disease Getting away from unhealthy areas was no help when bubonic plague reached Australia early in 1900, first in Adelaide and a few days later in Sydney. Most of the cases occurred in Sydney over the next seven years. Scientists knew in 1899 that people caught the plague when infected rats died and the fleas on them, which carried the disease, moved onto humans and bit them.

And, in an effort to fight disease, colonial governments bought all the bleaching powder they could find and spread it around as a ‘disinfectant’. In those days, ‘disinfection’ meant mainly getting rid of the bad smells!

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for children Useful facts ey lighted? How is Sydn QUE STION: made at gas, which is al co y B : R ANSWE pany. a private com the works of settlement ere was the h W : N IO ST QU E made? dney Cove on the head of Sy t A : R E SW AN ircular e the semi-C er h w , am re the Tank St ands. Quay now st s Johnson’s ers from Mis sw an d an Questions the Junior ful Facts for se U h it w hy Geograp hools, 1859. Classes in Sc

Education Solomon Wiseman, of Wiseman’s Ferry, near Sydney told Judge Roger Therry that he had given one of his sons a herd of cattle and another a flock of sheep. In five years, said Wiseman, who was a cunning but uneducated man, both boys were rich, and ‘that’s what I call education, for by it they acquire means to live’. However, by the time Therry left the colony, Wiseman’s four sons were bankrupt—they had nothing left. In the mid-1830s, Judge Therry supported Governor Richard Bourke’s proposal for state schools. In 1850, the

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By the late 1800s, children went to schools like Couria Creek School in New South Wales (left), while others learned to read and write at home (right).

judge was one of the original 16 members of the Senate of the University of Sydney. Things improved slowly but, for a long while, working in the real world was often the only sort of ‘education’ some children experienced. Formal schooling In the early years of settlement, there were some church schools and a few small private schools but their students were the lucky ones whose parents could afford to pay for the privilege. By the 1840s, the first education acts were passed in some colonies. Under the right conditions, a teacher could get a salary from the government, but, in some areas, parents had to pay. The school syllabus included basics like reading, writing and

The main aim of education then was ‘moral improvement’. The idea was that, if the children of convicts were educated, they would make more of themselves than their parents had done.

arithmetic, but girls spent 80 minutes a day learning needlework—patching, darning and sewing. During that time, the boys learned geography, geometry and more advanced arithmetic.

Attendance at school was often unreliable. In South Australia, one teacher said in 1848 that, with days off to help on the farm, on average, children attended school for only about 14 days a month. This often meant that there was not enough money to pay the teacher. The main aim of education then was ‘moral improvement’. The idea was that, if the children of convicts were educated, they would make more of themselves than their parents had done. Most schooling involved the students memorising lists of things like rivers, towns, monarchs or times tables. In 1872, the wealthy colony of Victoria led the way to something much better, calling for ‘free compulsory and secular’ education. While the education was nonreligious, members of the clergy were allowed to enter schools and instruct children in religion. In 1880, New South Wales followed Victoria’s lead, with a legal minimum requirement for attendance at school between the ages of 6 and 14. By then, few children were being born to ex-convicts, so there was less need for ‘moral improvement’, but people had started to care about nation-building and planning for the future. Education mattered. The skills taught were fairly basic and sometimes not very relevant to children living in Australia. In the secondlast year of school in 1885,

geography included knowing the chief towns of North America and outlines of the geography of Africa, South America and the West Indies. In the first five years, pupils were allowed to write only on slates—small hand-held blackboards. Later, children learnt to write neatly with pen and ink on paper, because employers expected it. Australian literacy rates were on the rise, and literacy could open the door to all sorts of achievements.

Newspaper illustrations showing children attending state schools in 1878.

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Catholics and Protestants

Cardinal versus archbishop In 1901, Catholic Cardinal Patrick Moran

Catholic convicts When the First Fleet sailed for Australia, there was a lot of religious hatred in Britain. Most people from Ireland were Catholics, known as ‘Roman Catholics’ or ‘RCs’. Most Englishmen and Scotsmen were Protestants of one sort or another, and they made life difficult for the Catholics. Until 1791, Catholics could not practise law in Britain. Before 1829, they could not be members of parliament and, before 1871, only Anglicans could study at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. But the Catholics were not alone, as Jews, Hindus, Muslims, plus some other Protestant denominations such as Baptists and Congregationalists—known as ‘Dissenters’—were also barred.

Some 23 per cent of the convict population of the First Fleet were Catholics, but very few of them were Irish. It is possible that, for transportation, the authorities deliberately selected Catholics, Jews, members of Protestant minorities and people of African descent, because all these groups were over-represented among the convict population, as compared to the general population in England. After 1800, many Irish Catholic convicts were transported. Even though they were Catholic, they had to attend Anglican Divine Service, as there were no priests and the only clergymen in the colony were Anglican.

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argued that a cardinal outranked an archbishop, and so he should ride in front of the Anglican Archbishop of Sydney in the parade celebrating the inauguration of Federation. The authorities in London agreed, but the New South Wales Premier, William Lyne, refused to allow it. Cardinal Moran withdrew from the ceremony. But he did arrange for a choir to appear outside St Mary’s Cathedral to greet the procession with patriotic songs and cheers as it passed by.

The first Catholic priest to arrive in 1800 was Father James Dixon. He was one of a small number of Irish convicts sent to Australia on political charges after an attempt by the Irish to rid themselves of English control in 1798. Father Dixon was probably convicted because the authorities confused him with his brother, who was definitely a rebel. After he gained a conditional pardon in 1803, Father Dixon was allowed to hold a Catholic religious service each Sunday in Sydney, Liverpool or Parramatta. An 1834 painting of the Roman Catholic Chapel in Sydney.

This was stopped after ten months. Irish convicts rebelled at Castle Hill in Sydney in 1804 and, after they were defeated, Governor Philip Gidley King forced them to attend Anglican services again, even though Father Dixon had willingly asked the rebels to lay down their arms. The first official Catholic priests arrived in Sydney in 1820, but by then dislike of Catholics was well in place. The jostling and squabbling between Protestants and Catholics carried on into the twentieth century, although it is rare now. Politics and religion Partly because of their origins, either as convicts or as poor immigrants, most (but not all) Irish Catholics were working class, so a large number of the members of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) were Irish Catholics. The party also had quite a few Protestant members, along with agnostics and atheists—people who doubted or did not believe in the existence of God. In 1916, just as the ALP became used to being in government, its members split over the question of military conscription during the Great War (World War I). Religion also played a part in that division. An Irish rebellion in Dublin in Ireland in April 1916 had been brutally crushed by the British, and so people in Australia with Irish-Catholic roots were unwilling to agree to conscripting soldiers to help the British Empire. The pro-British, pro-conscription members of parliament walked out with Prime Minister Billy Hughes, leaving behind left-wing activists and conservative Irish Catholics. Soon, the two factions of the ALP fought, and they kept on fighting for most of the twentieth century. Finally, in the 1950s, some of the more extreme Catholic conservatives left the ALP and formed the Democratic Labor Party, which supported the Liberal–Country Party Coalition in successive elections. The conservatives feared that communists, who held power in a number of key unions, would become stronger. The ALP had lost the one thing that its founders knew a party of mixed religious background had to have— solidarity. Today, religion usually plays little part in Australian politics.

Some 23 per cent of the convict population of the First Fleet were Catholics, but very few of them were Irish.

Miss Douglas ‘plants’ the first pole for the Overland Telegraph in September 1870.

Communications Until about the 1880s, most educated people living in Australia called themselves ‘English’ or ‘British’. Even in the 1940s, some Australians saw their country as a ‘branch office’ of England—or, if they had Scottish or Welsh ancestry, as a branch office of Great Britain. The readers of early Australian newspapers often hungered for news of ‘Home’. Writing in the 1890s, journalist Nat Gould told how, before the telegraph cable, pressmen would row down Sydney Harbour to meet the ships, jostling to be first on board to snap up any newspapers. American Samuel Morse invented the telegraph code in the 1840s and, by 1850, a cable under the sea linked Britain to France. Some fishermen damaged it, but it was soon replaced. By 1858, a cable joined Britain and America. It failed before long, but it was replaced as well. Communicating across Australia In 1852, an American writer predicted that undersea cables would one day reach Europe, China and Australia—but, first, telegraph lines were needed in Australia itself.

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An 1882 map featuring the route of Australia’s Overland Telegraph.

On 29 October 1858, explorer William Hovell sent the first telegram on the new Sydney-to-Melbourne line. Hovell lived to see Australia’s telegraph system linked to London, but sending a message cost a lot of money. Getting messages to London involved many people and constructing the telegraph line had been very expensive. By 1855, Britain decided to connect the members of its Empire. A telegraph link from London to India began then, but when what the British called the ‘Indian Mutiny’ and Indians called the ‘First War of Indian Independence’ broke out in 1857, news of the fighting took a long time to reach London. The link between India and London was finally completed in 1859, running sometimes through overland wires on poles and sometimes through undersea cables. Melbourne was linked by telegraph to Williamstown and Geelong in 1854, and to the main Victorian goldfields by 1857. By 1858, Sydney, Melbourne and

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Adelaide were all connected. Soon, the workers who strung the wires were back adding more lines to the poles. A second line soon went from Sydney, through Deniliquin, to Melbourne and Adelaide. In 1859, a cable under the sea from Cape Otway linked Victoria to Tasmania. Communicating with the world Overseas news often spread fast once it got to Australia, but it usually took a while to get here. In fact, it could take nearly three months for important news from Europe to reach Australia. By 1859, international agreements were in place. Britain would run a cable from India to Singapore. Then the Dutch, who controlled Indonesia, would lay a line from Singapore to Banyuwangi in eastern Java, just across the water from Bali. The Australian colonies would pay for the next link to the Australian coast, and also for the

‘The cable flashes the latest intelligence from one side of the world to the other, and anything of importance that has taken place in the old world is soon learned in the new.’ wiring to hook up with the Australian system. However, first they needed a route for what became known as the Overland Telegraph. The Overland Telegraph In 1859, the South Australian Government offered £2,000 to the first person to cross the continent and reach the north coast. John McDouall Stuart took up the challenge and triumphed in 1862. His route passed through timbered areas where telegraph poles could be cut. It also went past water sources where telegraph stations could be set up, and where staff would receive and send on messages. It was also a route for supply parties to travel along. Until that was done, important news from ‘Home’—Great Britain—came very slowly. For example, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband, died of typhoid fever on 14 December 1861, but his death was not announced in the Australian newspapers until 28 February 1862.

half the time for news to come by ship from Britain. In January 1872, Australians received the alarming news via steamer that the Prince of Wales was dying of typhoid fever. Luckily, a cable linking Java to Port Darwin had been finished two months earlier, and so the cheering news that the Prince of Wales was recovering was received at almost the same time via a telegram from the Suez Canal. The good news was reported in The Illustrated Sydney News of 20 January 1872. Australia was still three or four weeks behind the rest of the globe in receiving news from Europe, but that would change once the colony of South Australia completed the link. The final work took longer than expected, but the first message was sent on 22 August 1872 by Charles Todd, who had directed the building of the telegraph lines. In 1896, journalist Nat Gould described the Overland Telegraph as a wonder: ‘The cable flashes the latest intelligence from one side of the world to the other, and anything of importance that has taken place in the old world is soon learned in the new’. Communication with the rest of the world was now a reality. News now took just hours to reach Australia.

By January 1872, a telegraph cable linked Britain to America, and cables crossed the USA, so news could come to Australia by steamer from San Francisco in barely six weeks, about

e news First with th o years, day, within tw is th e av h e W s two mmunication co of ne li a completed very centre through the g n lo es il m thousand o a Terra few years ag a il nt u a, li of Austra desert. eved to be a Incognita beli the aph sent on e first telegr th of ts en nt The co rles Todd, graph by Cha le Te d an rl ve completed O 72. 22 August 18

A party of Overland Telegraph workers, with Charles Todd second from right.

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Steam engines Obtaining sources of power was a problem for the early settlers. The First Fleet brought just seven horses and seven cattle so, in the first few years, all the pulling, hauling and timber-sawing was done by humans. Even in 1839, while Mr W. Cooper’s Brisbane Steam Mill did most of the flour-milling in Sydney, there was also a treadmill or ‘discipline mill’—a form of hard labour for convicts. Still, human labour had been replaced for most things by then. Harnessing steam power The first steam engine in Australia drove a flour mill, which was set up at Sydney’s Cockle Bay (now Darling Harbour) in 1815. Owned by John Dickson—whose name lives on, although misspelt, in Dixon Street in Sydney’s Chinatown—the mill could grind 10 bushels (272 kilograms) of wheat in an hour. The Sydney Gazette praised it because, unlike windmills, a steam mill could operate whenever it was needed. During the 1820s, a number of steam engineers arrived in Australia. They usually came when somebody

Stationary engines Many country museums today have at least one ‘stationary’ steam engine. Some of these engines could actually move around slowly, using steam power, while others were towed to where they were needed. They were used to operate sawmills, pull ploughs or run the machines in a shearing shed.

ordered a new steam engine from Britain. Each new owner imported one, or even two, engineers—two was better, just in case one got sick or died. Once they had completed their contracts, the engineers would look around for other work in the colony. Engineer Daniel Matthew was brought to Australia to set up merchant John Raine’s Darling Mill at Parramatta in 1826, close to George Howell’s watermill. Both these mills made flour, but the choice of power depended on

A stationary steam engine pulling a plough towards it across a paddock in the 1880s.

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A steam mill on the Torrens River at North Adelaide in the 1840s.

what was available. Horse, bullock, wind, human, steam and water power were all possible. People chose the most practical form of power available, and steam was not always the best answer. Daniel Matthew built a sawmill near the northern Sydney suburb of Pymble in 1827 and, even though he was a steam engineer, he used bullocks to power his sawmill to cut locally felled hardwood timber. This mill drove the saw teeth at around 95 miles (150 kilometres) per hour and it could cut 450 feet (140 metres) of floorboards in an hour. When Matthew offered the mill for sale in 1848, he said it could be run by either eight horses or eight pairs of bullocks. Matthew’s sawmill was a bit of a ‘fossil’, as forwardthinking people had moved on to doing everything by steam. In 1840, a long essay in The Sydney Morning Herald discussed using steam engines to irrigate farms. A 10-horsepower engine, working ten hours a day, could raise enough water some 40 feet (12 metres) to irrigate 60 acres (24 hectares) of crops. When it was not pumping, the engine could be used to power a flourmill, a sawmill or a machine that threshed wheat (separating the grains from the stalks). Knowledge of steam engines had also spread out into country areas, as steam engines were simple enough for most practical men to operate, and even to maintain and repair—in fact, in Adelaide, which was founded less than seven years earlier, young George Wyatt made a steam engine called Cyclops in 1843.

Although knowledge of steam engines was becoming common, it was not universal. For example, a Cornish mining engineer named John Phillips offered a quartz crusher for sale in 1855. He lived in Castlemaine in Victoria and he knew the goldfields well, so he chose horses to drive the crusher. He had made it very simple so that ‘the roughest hand of a carpenter and blacksmith could repair any part of it’. As far back as 1844, Australian newspapers wrote about a new invention called the ‘ignition engine’. This was probably one of the earliest references to the internal combustion engine that runs most vehicles today, but the first patents were still 15 years away.

In the cities, until electricity took over, many factories had a boiler-house where a steam engine drove a long shaft that machines could draw power from. That was the way things were done in the 1800s.

Knowledge of steam engines had also spread out into country areas, as steam engines were simple enough for most practical men to operate, and even to maintain and repair—in fact, in Adelaide, which was founded less than seven years earlier, young George Wyatt made a steam engine called Cyclops in 1843.

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An uncomforta ble journey German advent urer Friedrich Gerstäcker went from Sydn ey to Albury by mail cart in 1851. He then paddled a dugo ut canoe to a place near Ech uca, where the canoe sank. Next, Gerstäcke r walked most of the way to Adelaide, be fore riding in a cart on what he said was calle d the ‘nut-crack er road’ because, when a traveller with a nut in his pocket arrived at his destinatio n, he would find that the nu t had cracked. He also said that the passen gers on that roug h road did not speak for fe ar of biting thei r tongues!

George Lacy’s picture Nothing Like Opposition shows two coaches having a race.

Transport Sailing ships Until the 1850s, only sailing ships came to Australia. A steamship named the Sophia Jane arrived from England in 1831, but she was an auxiliary steamer which meant that she only used her engines when the wind was in the wrong direction. In the early days, no ship could carry enough fuel to steam all the way to Australia, but later engines got better and ships got bigger. Sailing ships could not go anywhere without wind and, if the wind blew in the wrong direction, they had trouble going against it. In open water, a ship could tack, zigzagging its way against the wind. This was a slow way to get to where you wanted to go. Sailing ships’ times were unpredictable. In the Tamar River in Tasmania or at Port Adelaide in South Australia, wind from the wrong direction could stop ships putting out to sea for weeks and weeks. The Brisbane River in Queensland twists and turns all over the place so, whatever direction the wind went, it always blew a ship backwards, somewhere on the river. In a narrow river, ships cannot tack, so some of the earliest steamers in Australian waters were steam-tugs that were used to haul sailing ships in and out of ports. Out at sea, ships could tack, but they could still be slowed down by headwinds.

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Steamships The first ship to steam from Europe to Australia was the P&O mail ship Chusan. It carried 40 passengers and took 80 days to get here in 1852. Sailing ships carrying the mail took about 120 days. Steamships could keep to a timetable. However, the design of sailing ships also improved and, in 1859, the clipper Lightning sailed from Melbourne to Liverpool in 63 days. In that year, the P&O shipping company signed a contract to deliver mail between Britain and Australia in 55 days. Before that, smaller steamers had worked along parts of the Australian coast. Most people travelled from Sydney to Newcastle and Maitland in the Hunter Valley by steamer. Steamers also went to Morpeth (also in the Hunter Valley) where, for a short while, they were met by the horse-boat Experiment, which began operating in 1832. This flat-bottomed river boat was powered by horses driving the paddlewheels by walking on a treadmill. Experiment took goods and passengers up into shallow waters. Experiment was towed to Sydney in 1833 and worked as a Parramatta ferry, but later the horses were replaced by a steam engine. By 1843, a steamer service connected Geelong, in Victoria, to Melbourne every day, and there were more steamers trading along the coast.

Travelling by road In the nineteenth century, people went from colony to colony by steamer. These were slow journeys, but they were more comfortable and faster than travelling by road. Road travel improved when Cobb & Co started a coach service. They used American ‘Concord’ coaches, which had leather straps instead of iron springs. This gave a softer, rolling ride, but it made some passengers seasick! Pulled by eight horses, the coaches often carried as many as 40 or 50 passengers, with 12 to 18 people inside and many more outside. With good horses and on a good road, coaches could reach around 12 miles (20 kilometres) per hour, but they often stopped to change horses and for passengers to take ‘comfort’ breaks, so coaches usually averaged only about 8 miles (13 kilometres) per hour. The coastal steamer made quicker progress and it was more comfortable, as long as you did not get seasick—but then that could happen on a coach as well!

On land, the horse was the main form of transport. In 1860, Australia had around 430,000 horses and, by 1900, there were about 1.6 million, with one horse for every two people. Horses pulled trams, omnibuses, carts, drays, ploughs, lawnmowers—almost anything that moved. However, over time they were replaced. The rise of the railway South Australia had a railway near the mouth of the Murray River in 1854. Horses pulled the wagons until steam took over in 1856. Victoria opened a short railway

between Flinders Street Station and Port Melbourne in 1854 and, in 1855, Sydney opened a railway line to Parramatta that was 13 miles (21 kilometres) long. The other colonies built railways a little later, but these small beginnings prepared the way for Federation in 1901, because train lines would spread and make travel between the colonies faster and easier. Some people reacted in odd ways to railways, according to Sydney solicitor Maurice Reynolds. The Commissioner for Railways, Captain Martindale, apparently worried that trains would disturb cattle and annoy sheep. Worse, Morris Pell, the University of Sydney’s Professor of Mathematics, recommended high train fares because ‘otherwise every man, woman, and child would lose all their time and money running up and down the line continually’. There would have been little chance of that, even in 1859, because just two morning trains arrived in Sydney, one at 8.30 and one at 9.30, while the afternoon trains left Sydney at 4.30 and 5.45. By 1872, railways reached out into rural areas, rushing fresh food to the city and fresh news to the country, thus bringing the nation together. And sick people in the bush could now travel more easily to the cities for treatment. More unusual forms of transport Out in the pioneering districts, other forms of transport were popular. It would have been a lot harder to build the Overland Telegraph and the Trans-Australian Railway without the help of the Afghans—who actually came from Pakistan—and the camels they managed and taught others how to use. By the 1880s, the Murray River was a busy waterway.

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Peirce marked dangerous snags and rocks with painted symbols on riverside trees, adding depth markers in a few places. He then made a continuous map ‘nearly an eighth of a mile long’ (200 metres). Copies were placed on rollers under glass on the paddle-steamers for the skippers to use. One way or another, Australians were finding it easier to get around.

Electrification

In the early 1900s, Francis Birtles, perhaps our last explorer, travelled around Australia by bicycle.

However, camels were slow and needed feeding so, on the eastern goldfields of Western Australia, bicycle messengers earned good money carrying telegrams out from Coolgardie. Except where the ground was sandy, hundreds of camel feet had made a firm, flat track, and so cyclists could easily cover 100 miles (160 kilometres) in a day. The cyclists travelled light, relying on the people to whom they took messages to provide them with food and a bed for the night. In the early 1900s, Francis Birtles crossed the Nullarbor Plain on a bicycle because he was surveying the ‘road’ for the first crossing by car, which he made soon after. Paddle-steamers Spare a thought, though, for the people who made paddle-steamer traffic possible on the Murray, Darling and Murrumbidgee rivers. One of these intrepid explorers was Friedrich Gerstäcker, who went down the Murray River in a dugout canoe. Another was an American named Augustus Baker Peirce, who took a 15-foot (5-metre) boat from Albury in New South Wales to Goolwa in South Australia, accompanied by a man who was a dancing master and fiddler, and an Aboriginal boy. They carefully mapped every feature on the river for paddle-steamer captains.

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Arc lighting In late 1858, the world’s first electric lighthouse was built in England. There were no light bulbs then, so the light came from a giant electric spark called an ‘arc’. Wires were attached to two pieces of carbon that were kept a specific distance apart, and electricity came to the wires from a generator powered by a steam engine. In June 1863, ‘electric light’ shone over Sydney. It was part of the ‘illuminations’ provided to celebrate the wedding of Edward, Prince of Wales, to Alexandra, which had happened three months earlier in England. The light came from two arc lamps on Observatory Hill—one red, the other white. These sorts of lights were not suitable for homes, partly because the light was too bright, but also because the power source consisted of 100 large ‘voltaic cells’, or batteries. Three things were needed to provide electricity to homes: a way of generating and delivering electricity; meters to measure the amount of electricity people used so they could pay for it; and a safe, gentle light source. Until then, people mainly used gaslights or candles. In 1879, the site of the new Garden Palace in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens had no gas supply, so the building work was completed in just eight months by workmen using arc lights until midnight each night. With no generators, the electricity again came from a large collection of batteries. Balls, parties and other social functions in the country were often held at full moon, so people could drive home by moonlight. However, there were kerosene or gas lamps in some streets in towns and cities to help people find their way around at night. There would be no electric cables until there were generators to feed them, and no generators until there were wires to carry the electricity, so how could electrification begin?

Turning on the lights Electrification began with electric street lights. In 1888, Tamworth in New South Wales lit its streets with newly invented light globes, plus arc lights powered by a local generator. It claimed to have ‘outstripped all competitors in the race for colonial progress’. In Tasmania, Launceston used hydro-electric power from the nearby South Esk River in 1895. Before long, a few households started to use electric current. Because electrification was used only in small areas, it could happen almost anywhere, even in outback areas—even out beyond the ‘black stump’!

Powerhouse By coincidence, the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, which is built around the Ultimo Power Station that used to power Sydney’s electric tram system, holds the parts of the Garden Palace exhibits which survived when the ornate palace in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, which the workmen had built using arc lights, mysteriously burnt down

About 300 kilometres east of where explorers Burke and Wills died is the Queensland town of Thargomindah. It lies in dry country, and water was hauled into the town from Bourke, in New South Wales, in old ships’ water tanks until a bore found water at a depth of 800 metres.

in 1882.

Thomas Carrington’s 1882 illustration of some of the ways to use electric lights.

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Balls, parties and other social functions in the country were often held at full moon, so people could drive home by moonlight. However, there were kerosene or gas lamps in some streets in towns and cities to help people find their way around at night. In 1893 or 1894, a Thargomindah sawmill owner set up a steam-powered generator, which the local council bought in 1898. Two tenders were submitted to operate the generator. The cheaper tender came from a local blacksmith, who mounted a waterwheel in a casing made from an old water tank. A waterwheel may seem unlikely in flat, dry country, but Thargomindah’s bore delivered hot water under such high pressure that, uncontrolled, the water spouted more than 20 metres into the air, and this pressure was enough to spin the wheel and generate electricity. Powering the nation By 1906, Australia had 46 power stations generating 23,000 kilowatts for domestic and industrial use.

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While dedicated generators delivered another 13,000 kilowatts for powering electric trams, electric trains were still years away. In Sydney, the Ultimo Power Station was built in 1899 to power Sydney’s electric trams. It is now the site of the Powerhouse Museum. By 1901, all six capitals of the new states had electric trams, and only Sydney and Hobart had no electric street lights. By 1927, a third of Australian homes had electricity, with lighting and electric irons using most of the current. Later, home appliances such as radios, toasters, electric jugs, power tools and radiators increased the demand for electricity. Large authorities were formed in each state to manage the electricity supply. Rather than set up more inefficient, small generators, these operators installed very large generators near the coalfields, with wires carrying high voltages across the country. The Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme began in 1949 and was completed in 1972, but ‘Snowy hydro-electricity’ has never kept up with Australia’s needs. The era of steam-driven power shafts, which ran through the centre of factories, was at an end. An electric tram in Perth in the 1890s, with a cowcatcher to protect pedestrians.

The world’s first feature film In the 1890s and 1900s, a stage play called The Kelly Gang toured Australia and New Zealand, where it was very popular. This play was probably one of the inspirations for the world’s first feature-length film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, which was made in Australia in 1906. The film was shown just 26 years after the death of Australia’s ‘last bushranger’, Ned Kelly. Kelly’s mother and brother Jim were still alive when the film was released. Created by theatre-owners the Taits, the 60-minute-long silent movie was filmed largely at the Chartersville estate at Heidelberg, which is now a suburb of Melbourne. The Story of the Kelly Gang was very much a family affair. John and Nevin Tait wrote the script, their brother Charles directed the film, and Lizzie Tait was a stunt double. John and Nevin produced the film in association with William Gibson and Millard Johnson. ‘The longest film ever made’ The Story of the Kelly Gang opened in Melbourne on 26 December 1906. It was shown there for seven weeks, before going on a long and very successful national tour. In 1907, it was screened in New Zealand and England, where it was billed as ‘the longest film ever made’. The film, which cost £1,000 to make, apparently made its producers £25,000—a very large sum in those days.

Bailed up! It is claimed that The Story of the Kelly

Gang inspired five children in Ballarat in Victoria to break into a photography studio and steal money. The children then bailed up a group of schoolchildren at gunpoint. No wonder that, in 1912, the Victorian Chief Secretary banned the film from being shown in towns, including Benalla and Wangaratta, that had a strong connection with the Kelly family.

A ‘magic lantern’, or slide projector (left) and an image of Ned Kelly in his armour, probably from the 1906 movie The Story of the Kelly Gang (right).

The film itself was silent, but a ‘lecturer’ explained what was happening while the film was being shown, and there were sound effects from behind the screen, including gunshots and hoof beats. Apparently, these were so loud at one screening that a film reviewer complained about the ‘Kelly Bellowgraph’! The Kelly gang From the fragments of film that have survived and from a copy of the program, we know that the film tells the story of the Kelly gang and its various run-ins with the police. The film ends with an image of Ned in full homemade armour, including his now iconic helmet, being repeatedly shot at by the police as he staggers towards them, guns blazing. The film was criticised at the time by some politicians and policemen for ‘glorifying criminals’. The producers also had to apologise to the public for a ‘lack of authenticity’ in the film, because it showed policemen wearing their blue uniforms in the bush— which they would not usually have done. However, such ‘artistic licence’ was necessary in the film so that viewers could tell who was who.

At that time, Australia might have gone on to develop a thriving film industry, but the pressure from overseas film distributors was too great.

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Federation By 1901, Australia was ready to federate, and so six squabbling colonies united to make one nation. While most Australians had a real sense of being part of a single nation, some politicians feared losing their power and influence. Petty rivalries between sectional interests sometimes got in the way of the national interest. Issues like the site of the national capital, customs duties, subsidies, social welfare and immigration often divided the new nation.

ABOVE LEFT: The results of the Federation

referendum in Western Australia. BELOW LEFT: Painter Tom Roberts captured the moment when the Duke of Cornwall and York, later King George V, declared open the first Federal Parliament, in Melbourne, on 9 May 1901.

ABOVE: An invitation for important citizens to meet the Duke and Duchess of York.

A certificate showing that the large majority of Victorians voted in favour of Federation.

Moving towards Federation The idea of a single Australian nation had been around for a long time before Federation. When Edward Trickett became the world sculling champion in 1876, Australian newspapers called him ‘the Australian Trickett’. They called a cricket match in March 1877 between an AllEngland team and a group of Victorian and New South Wales players ‘Australia v. England’ or ‘The International Cricket Match’. Irish-Australian politician Charles Gavan Duffy was already talking about an Australian Federation in 1857. By 1877, Perth was connected by telegraph lines to the other capital cities and, during the 1880s, all the mainland colonial capitals except Perth were close to being connected by rail as well. In 1871, six out of ten white Australians had been born in Australia and, by 1888, it was seven out of ten people. For and against In 1883, Sir Samuel Griffith, the Queensland Premier, proposed a ‘Federal Council of Australasia’. This was not achieved, but at least it got people thinking. However,

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a number of politicians disliked the idea of a federation, perhaps because they could see no personal benefit in it. New South Wales never joined the council, and South Australia joined but later dropped out. In 1889, Sir Henry Parkes, the Premier of New South Wales and a supporter of Federation since the 1850s, stopped at Tenterfield in northern New South Wales while riding the first train on a new line from Brisbane. He delivered what is now called the ‘Tenterfield Address’, calling for a conference to make Federation happen. That conference was held in 1890. It achieved one significant thing: the Australasian Federation Convention of 1891. The convention had seven delegates from each colony and three from New Zealand. New Zealand later withdrew for a number of reasons, including the geographical distance between the two countries and the fear that the New Zealand Maoris would not be well treated in a federation with Australia. This was based on the way Australia treated Aboriginal and other nonEuropean people at that time. When Parkes proposed a common navy and army for Australia and used the phrase ‘one nation, one destiny’, the other colonies finally came into line. This did not happen without the work of many dedicated people. For example, George Reid, premier from 1894

The parliament of Britain—ironically the only nation without a written constitution— passed the act that introduced the Australian Constitution. to 1899, was nicknamed ‘Yes-No Reid’ because of his balanced position on Federation, but he was instrumental in bringing New South Wales on board. Alfred Deakin, who would later be one of Australia’s prime ministers, was a very active supporter and promoter of Federation. His hard work helped to secure the series of miracles that made it happen. Developing a constitution All nations except one have a written constitution. The exception is Great Britain, which instead has a very large collection of traditions and legal decisions. An independent Australia needed a constitution to set down who could legally do what, how and when. One of the earliest and best-known written constitutions had emerged in 1787, after the USA had declared independence from Britain 11 years earlier. France adopted a constitution in 1791. The Australasian Federation Convention examined the Swiss and Canadian constitutions, and it also looked closely at the US constitution, but every part of the new document had to satisfy everyone.

The first referendum on the new constitution was passed in 1898 in New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, while Western Australia and Queensland did not vote. The New South Wales majority was narrow. It was not enough, because a rule had been brought in that at least 80,000 people had to vote ‘yes’. A second referendum in 1899 was passed in every colony except Western Australia, which still did not vote because Premier Sir John Forrest was still a ‘reluctant Federalist’. He had attended every convention held during the 1890s, each time arguing for greater concessions for Western Australia. He was keen to ensure that his state was not disadvantaged in any way. Then the goldminers of the eastern goldfields in Western Australia threatened to form a new colony called Auralia that would join the Commonwealth. The British Government told Forrest this would be approved unless he held a vote. Forrest knew there were very few women on the goldfields, where he presumed that everyone would vote ‘yes’. To influence the poll, he gave women the vote, hoping that people in areas other than the goldfields, especially women, would vote ‘no’. He was wrong. The parliament of Britain—ironically the only nation without a written constitution—passed the act that introduced the Australian Constitution. It was written by Australians, with Britain trying to ‘water it down’, but because Australia moved peacefully to independence, that is how it was done. The bill for the Constitution was passed on 5 July 1900 and the Western Australian

The constitution also had to set rules for dealing with new inventions, thus providing rules for changing the rules. For example, the list of powers given to the Commonwealth in the Australian Constitution included section 51(v), which referred to ‘postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services’. There was no radio or television in the 1890s, but this proviso in the Constitution allowed the High Court of Australia to look at the situation later and decide that ‘other like services’ included radio and television.

Tasmanian Andrew Inglis Clark, Queenslander Samuel Griffith and others looked at the Senate representation and then argued for the US model, in which each state had the same number of senators. That meant the smaller states could not be dominated by the larger ones. The main work on the proposed constitution was done during the three sittings of the second convention in 1897–98, in Adelaide, Sydney and Melbourne.

Pressure was placed on Western Australians to vote ‘yes’.

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‘yes’ vote took place on 31 July 1900. That is why, in the first few lines of the preamble of the Constitution of Australia, there is no mention of Western Australia. Forming a federal government There was one final step: the creation of a government to run the first elections. The new Governor-General of Australia, Lord Hopetoun, had to choose one of the colonial premiers to form a government. Hopetoun had been ill, which may explain why he agreed that Sir William Lyne of New South Wales, as premier of the senior colony, should get the job of selecting a cabinet. Alfred Deakin of Victoria called Lyne ‘a crude, sleek, suspicious, blundering, short-sighted, backblocks politician’! Everybody else refused to serve under him, as they knew that Lyne was a strong opponent of Federation. And so it was that Edmund Barton took the job and became Australia’s first Prime Minister on 1 January 1901. He did not win a majority in the elections in March 1901 but, with the support of the Australian Labor Party, he remained Prime Minister until 1903. Australia had become a nation.

Celebrating the new nation The Commonwealth of Australia began with a proclamation from Governor-General Lord Hopetoun on 1 January 1901—the first day of the twentieth century. The ceremony that made Australia an independent nation was enacted in Sydney’s Centennial Park. There was a grand parade featuring decorated floats, soldiers and marching bands. Eight days of official and unofficial celebrations followed, with church services, military displays, sporting carnivals, concerts, banquets, fireworks and illuminations. Recording the event Before 1901, many other nations had begun with a ceremony, and many more have done so since, but Australia was well placed for a ‘first’—the recording of the opening ceremony using a recent invention, the movie camera. Movies were so new that, when the plan was mentioned in September 1900, the film was referred to in The Sydney Morning Herald as a ‘living picture’. By 1901, there was just one well-known Australian expert

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There was a grand parade featuring decorated floats, soldiers and marching bands. Eight days of official and unofficial celebrations followed, with church services, military displays, sporting carnivals, concerts, banquets, fireworks and illuminations.

in making ‘living pictures’—Captain Joseph Perry of the Salvation Army’s Limelight Department—so he was given the task. Perry built high timber platforms at five vantage points and mounted a fixed camera on each one. On the day, Perry rushed from camera to camera on a horsedrawn fire-engine. Afterwards, footage from just three of the five cameras was used to make a 30-minute film, which had its premiere in Sydney on 19 January 1901. Unfortunately, the premiere was not a grand celebration of the emergence of a triumphant new nation. The film was sandwiched between Professor Godfrey’s ‘Wonderful Troupe of Trained Dogs and Monkeys’, a ballet, patriotic songs and a pantomime called Australis that offered views of Sydney in the far future.

The nation of Australia had been born, and there were ‘living pictures’ to prove it.

Crowds of people celebrating the beginning of their new nation in Centennial Park, Sydney.

The Duke and Duchess of York in a procession down Swanston Street, Melbourne, 1901.

The first Federal Parliament The Sydney–Melbourne rivalry continued. Australia may have been proclaimed in Sydney but, until a national capital was built, it was agreed that Federal Parliament would meet in Melbourne. The leading citizens of Melbourne were determined to outshine Sydney when the first Federal Parliament met in their city. Queen Victoria still ruled when the proclamation was read, but she died on 22 January 1901. The Queen’s grandson, the Duke of York, was asked to open parliament. By the time parliament opened on 9 May, he was the heir apparent, as his father was now King Edward VII. The Duke of York later became King George V. Now Melbourne could really shine!

Opening celebrations In 1901, it took a lot longer to travel to Australia than it does now, so the sovereign’s son was the best royal representative Australia could hope for, and so the Duke of York opened parliament. When the sovereign is not available, the Governor-General opens parliament because he or she represents the sovereign. In 1954, 1974, 1977 and 1988, Queen Elizabeth II was able to come to Australia to open parliament. Between March and July 1900, Britain’s Colonial Office fought hard to have the Australian Parliament made answerable to the British Parliament, with Britain controlling Australia’s foreign policy. The four representatives of Australia’s colonies— Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin, James Dickson and Charles Kingston—successfully defended Australia against this attack.

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Artist Norman Lindsay’s program for Federation events in Melbourne in May 1901.

The opening ceremony finished with the stirring sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus to general cheers, as ladies stood on chairs and waved their handkerchiefs.

Fighting for independence Some people in Britain did not like Australia being an independent country and making its own decisions. In 1908, Prime Minister Alfred Deakin invited the American ‘Great White Fleet’—a naval battle fleet that was circumnavigating the world—to visit Australia. British politician Winston Churchill tried very hard to have the visit blocked. Luckily, he was unsuccessful, and Britain did not formally object.

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The result was that the future king opened an independent nation’s parliament. However, the celebrations were muted because most people were still in mourning for Queen Victoria. Representatives of other nations came to the party. A fleet of British, American, German, Russian and Dutch warships was anchored in Port Phillip Bay. Foreign consuls, army and navy officers in uniforms with gold braid added some colour, and so did judges and church dignitaries dressed in their robes. Three of the Labor representatives chose to wear ordinary suits and ‘boxer hats’, making a small statement about ‘equality’. The Duke and Duchess of York drove past the cheering crowds, who were sitting on rough wooden seats, for which they had each paid 5 to 40 shillings. The royal couple drove through decorated streets to the Exhibition Building, which had the only hall large enough to hold all 12,000 guests. The senators-elect were in their seats and, at noon, the Duke of York arrived. The Usher of the Black Rod—the Senate official who keeps order in the Parliament—then brought in the members-elect of the House of Representatives. First, Letters Patent were read out. This document from King Edward authorised his son to open the Parliament. Then the Duke made a short speech declaring the Australian Parliament open, after which he withdrew to a fanfare of trumpets. The GovernorGeneral then administered the Oath of Allegiance to each member. Now they were real members and not just memberselect. The senators and representatives went off in coaches to meet at Victoria’s Parliament House to elect a President of the Senate and a Speaker of the House of Representatives. The opening ceremony finished with the stirring sounds of the Hallelujah Chorus to general cheers, as ladies stood on chairs and waved their handkerchiefs. The deed was done, and Australia was now an independent nation with its own parliament.

Women gain the vote As responsible government came to the older colonies in the 1850s, the principle of ‘one man, one vote’ was seen as fair and reasonable. Unfortunately, it only applied to men— but giving women the vote was really just a matter of time. Australian women, especially in rural areas, had to be tough. Most of them had large families, they often managed without servants, and even simple everyday chores like washing and cleaning were physically hard and time consuming. Many poor women were left at home for months while their husbands went shearing or droving to make money. Even educated women had to get their hands dirty, digging gardens, chopping wood, hauling water, and caring for their children and their farms. In the cities, conditions were not much better. South Australia leads the way Australian women lived in a country that valued democracy and championed democratic rights, and so their struggle to get the vote was in some ways easier than it was for women in Britain, America and other parts of the world. Australian suffragettes—women who actively campaigned for women to have the vote—used mainly persuasion, not demonstrations, to win their democratic rights. However, there were arguments and delays.

Newspapers reported on ‘women’s suffrage’ from about 1868 onwards, but it was not until the 1890s that women got the vote. The South Australian Government was the first in Australia, and the second in the world after New Zealand, to give women the right to vote. Even in South Australia, the Adult Suffrage Bill failed in 1893, but it passed successfully a year later after the Legislative Assembly was bombarded with petitions from women supporting the bill. The new law was passed in 1894, and women in South Australia voted for the first time in 1896. It was another milestone for democracy in Australia. The South Australian bill was a first in another way, by allowing women to stand for election. Catherine Spence stood for a place as a delegate to the Australasian Federation Convention in 1897. She was not selected, but at least she was able to try. Women were also missing out in Western Australia, where they had been able to vote in local council elections since 1876, but they lost the vote when Western Australia became self-governing in 1890. A bill to give women the vote in 1893 was opposed by the Premier, Sir John Forrest, who said that the proper place for a woman was ‘to look after her home and not be running all over the place’.

A cartoon celebrating women gaining the vote.

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Forrest gave women the vote before the constitutional referendum in 1900, but only because the eastern goldfields were very strongly in favour of a ‘yes’ vote, and he hoped that women would vote ‘no’ in the referendum. Forrest was wrong, but he did not dare to take away the right of women to vote once he had given it to them. Who could vote? Before Federation in 1901, women could vote in South Australia and Western Australia, while in the rest of Australia all male British subjects—including Aboriginal men—could vote. The 1902 Commonwealth Franchise Act gave women the vote throughout Australia but, at the same time, it took the vote away from Aboriginal people, with some complicated rules for those who were already registered to vote in the states. The clause, labelled ‘Disqualification of coloured races’ said:

No aboriginal native of Australia, Asia, Africa or the Islands of the Pacific except New Zealand shall be entitled to have his name placed on an Electoral Roll unless so entitled under section forty-one of the Constitution. Apart from that restriction, all British citizens could vote if they had lived in Australia for six months and had their names on the electoral roll, and if they were ‘not under twenty-one years of age whether male or female, married or unmarried’. In 1902, New South Wales also gave the vote to women over 21, and the other colonies slowly came into line. It took even longer for women to be allowed to stand for a Commonwealth election, and it was 1943 before the first woman, Dame Enid Lyons, was elected to the House of Representatives. In contrast, it took Great Britain until 1918 to give all men the vote, and even longer to give it to women. Australia was, indeed, a democratic country.

Enid Lyons, the first female member of parliament.

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What’s in a name? The word ‘Kanaka’ is now often regarded as offensive in Australian English. In Hawaiian, it means ‘man’, but in Australia it was used to refer to any Pacific Islander working in Australia. Most were Melanesian, some were Polynesian, and the more acceptable term today is ‘South Sea Islander’.

Restricting immigration When Salvation Army Captain Joseph Perry’s film of the inauguration of Federation was shown, together with dogs, monkeys, a ballet and a pantomime, there was one item on the bill that would be considered offensive today: ‘Dainty Irene Franklin in her Charming Coon Songs’. In those days ‘coon’ was a term used to describe an AfricanAmerican or, by extension, any dark-skinned person. This reflected the attitude of white Australians to other races in 1901, when The Bulletin newspaper had the slogan ‘Australia for the White Man’. However, while many workers feared losing their jobs to cheap labour from overseas, others were worried that foreign workers would be exploited and abused—and with good reason. Exploiting foreign workers In December 1837, 42 ‘hill coolies’ from India landed in Sydney. Two months later, 15 of them escaped from their employers and headed for the Blue Mountains. They were arrested near Wentworth Falls, taken to Sydney and charged with ‘absconding’—running away. The Indian workers had signed an agreement to work for five years, but they said they had not been given enough food or clothing and had not been paid. The contractor, a Mr Mackay, said that their pay was being used, under their contract, to pay for their fares to Australia. Before they arrived, Mackay had wrongly asserted that Indians ate the beef that Europeans refused to eat, only ate once every 24 hours, and wore little clothing.

Three Chinese farm workers harvesting tobacco in the 1880s.

The evidence in court showed that the Indians were being treated cruelly, but Mackay was never charged. In other words, those people were treated little better than slaves. In 1852, the citizens of the New South Wales town of Goulburn learned that 30 Chinese labourers were being made to walk from Sydney to Wagga Wagga. One man, who had a scalded foot, had been chained to a dray, dragged along and beaten. Their only food was about one cup of flour a day—far less than the standard issue for bush workers. Angry local residents complained, but they got little justice for the men.

It was clear that foreign workers were regarded as cheap labour. At the end of the nineteenth century, Chinese shearers were often used as strike breakers. No wonder some Australian workers thought that foreign workers were ‘bad news’. The Kanakas By the late nineteenth century, Pacific Islanders, known as Kanakas, were being brought to Australia. While many came as indentured labourers on contracts, some were brought to Australia by ‘blackbirders’—men who kidnapped people from the Pacific Islands to use as labourers in other countries. They were often brought to Australia to cut sugarcane on the Queensland cane fields. This was hot, dirty work, and the canegrowers claimed that it was ‘not suitable work for a white man’.

People from the New Hebrides on their way to Queensland to cut sugarcane in the 1890s.

Sugarcane had traditionally been cut by slaves because it was very hard work. After slaves in the USA were freed, they worked for wages in cotton fields, but many refused to cut cane and so America stopped growing sugarcane. In Fiji, Mauritius and the British Caribbean islands, Chinese and Indian labourers were brought in under contract, while Argentina imported Italian workers to cut cane. Some employers made good money from exploiting the Kanakas who came to work on contract in Queensland. Their contracts included payment for them

However, while many workers feared losing their jobs to cheap labour from overseas, others were worried that foreign workers would be exploited and abused—and with good reason.

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to be taken home again at the end of the job, but some of them decided to stay. Some concerned citizens campaigned against the ‘Kanaka trade’, describing it as ‘disguised slavery’. It is difficult to know now what was true and what was propaganda. It was certainly not always an easy issue, and many people in other parts of Australia joined together to stop these foreigners from ‘flooding Australia’. Chinese carpenters Woodworking tools are the same the world over and so, when the gold ran out, many Chinese gold diggers turned to making furniture. At times, they dominated the trade. Some people claimed that the workers were ‘sweated’—overworked and underpaid—but there was no real evidence of this. The furniture was well made, so the Chinese workers were seen as a threat to other woodworkers. In the late nineteenth century, laws required Chinese-made and ‘part-Chinese-made’ furniture to carry a stamp stating this. Some manufacturers went further, adding stamps stating that no Chinese labour had been used in the manufacture of their furniture. Introducing the ‘White Australia Policy’ This racial attitude shaped some of the negotiations about Federation. Section 51(xxvi) of the Australian Constitution originally gave the Commonwealth powers to make laws regarding the ‘people of any race, other than the aboriginal race in any State, for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws’. The part regarding ‘aboriginal race’ was repealed in 1967. Under that power, Federal Parliament passed the Immigration Restriction Act 1901. The main effect of the Act was to control further entry into Australia by certain races. For example, under the Act, Chinese-Australian import-export businesses could bring in Chinese workers to replace staff who died or left, but furniture factories could not. The Act also brought in a dictation test, which involved having a new arrival write down a passage of 50 words or more in any European language that the testing officer chose. This meant it could be in a language which the migrant was not familiar with. Officially, there never actually was a ‘White Australia Policy’. However, the dictation test was usually applied by officers who knew what was expected of them. The dictation test was abolished in 1958. The ‘nonexistent’ White Australia Policy largely faded away after that.

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Sick or injured people often died before help arrived.

Providing social welfare Advertisements for old age pensions appeared in Australian newspapers in 1856, but they were actually what are called ‘deferred annuities’—people bought an insurance policy that would give them a weekly payment (an annuity) until they died. Such pensions were fine for those who had the money to pay for the insurance, but this was not the case for people who were old, too worn-out to work and had no money. In Britain, even in the twentieth century, paupers were often put in a workhouse for the poor and left to die, but democratic Australia had no workhouses.

In 1891 and 1892, Europeans were talking about introducing old age pensions, and people in Australia and New Zealand were interested in the idea. In 1893, women in New Zealand had the vote, and people predicted that there would also be old age pensions there before long. Social conditions were changing in Australia. The economic depression of the 1890s meant there were fewer jobs and more poor people. But, public health services were getting better and so people were living longer.

Magistrates and state politicians threatened to take away the pensions of any pensioner who got drunk, but even a harshly controlled pension was better than no pension at all.

This created a growing demand for pensions. Between 1891 and 1901, the number of Australians aged over 65 increased by about 60 per cent. Introducing pensions In 1896, a parliamentary select committee in New South Wales recommended the introduction of an old age pension, but with a number of restrictions. However, nothing came of it. In January 1898, a South Australian delegate at the Australasian Federation Convention suggested giving the Commonwealth the power to pay age and invalid pensions. This was voted against, but it was later included as section 51(xxiii) of the Australian Constitution. In 1898, New Zealand introduced a pension. In September 1899, in New South Wales, William Lyne replaced Sir George Reid as Premier. Reid had already promised to bring in old age pensions, and Lyne said he would do the same, but the bill to make this law did not come before the New South Wales Parliament until November 1900. The new Act came into force on 1 January 1901, with the first payments made in July. Victoria’s Act was passed in the last days of 1900 and, on 5 January 1901, Victorian newspapers told would-be pensioners how to apply for a pension. The rate was the same as in New South Wales, but only a few Victorians received the full amount. The Queensland Government

brought in a pension soon after that, but at a lower rate of payment than in New South Wales. Magistrates and state politicians threatened to take away the pensions of any pensioner who got drunk, but even a harshly controlled pension was better than no pension at all. During the parliamentary debates, the opponents of pensions had argued that the pension was going to be a Commonwealth responsibility, but this showed that the opponents did not quite understand how the new Constitution worked. In areas where the Commonwealth had the power to do something, the states could still make laws, but section 109 of the Constitution said that, where state and Commonwealth laws disagreed, Commonwealth law overruled state law. On 10 May 1901, the first full day of federal parliamentary sittings, a Tasmanian member of parliament, King O’Malley, gave notice of a motion that would start the process to create national old age and invalid pensions. The laws were passed in June 1908, but pensions were only paid from July 1909 (old age) and December 1910 (invalid). A Commonwealth maternity allowance also began in 1912. Australia had really started to look after its people.

A poetic ending Australian nurse and poet Jennings Carmichael lived in poverty in a workhouse in England with her sons, after her husband deserted them. After she died of pneumonia in 1904, an appeal was launched by admirers of her poetry to bring her boys back to Australia, where they were looked after in private homes.

Life was hard for many old people, even in the early twentieth century.

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Selecting a capital city site Formulating the Australian Constitution was always a matter of compromise. After 60 years of sniping and squabbling, neither Sydney nor Melbourne would let the other be the national capital, so yet another compromise was needed. That is why section 125 of the Constitution reads: The seat of Government … shall be within territory which shall have been granted to or acquired by the Commonwealth … in the State of New South Wales … distant not less than one hundred miles from Sydney.

Behind the scenes, Victorian politicians were trying to get a national capital as close as possible to Melbourne, while New South Wales politicians wanted it to be as close as possible to Sydney.

‘Seat of government’ means capital city, and there was nothing to say it could not be a lot further from Sydney than a hundred miles. Many country towns and districts could see the excellent business prospects of having the capital city nearby. Possible sites The President of the New South Wales Land Appeal Court, Alexander Oliver, was appointed in October 1899 to assess the different possibilities. Offers poured in from Queanbeyan, Yass, Corowa, Albury, Nowra, the Dorrigo plateau, Orange, Bathurst, Armidale, Tumut, Delegate, Young, Bombala and Eden. Six months into his work, Oliver said he would select six sites and recommend three. In October 1900, Oliver explained that the capital city might have a population of 40,000. Based on figures he had gathered from the USA’s capital city, Washington DC, those people would probably need 150 gallons (about 700 litres) of water each day. Just three rivers could reliably deliver that much water—the Murray, the Murrumbidgee and the Snowy—as all received snowmelt water each spring. However, he thought the area around Orange might also be suitable.

Later, Oliver recommended that a choice be made between sites near Eden-Bombala, Yass and Orange. He added that the southern Monaro, the region near Yass and where Canberra is now, was the best choice. The politicians started to argue about it, and a Royal Commission in 1903 recommended Albury or Tumut. District Surveyor Charles Scrivener reported on the options and recommended Dalgety, about 22 miles (35 kilometres) from

A 1909 map of a proposed site for Australia’s capital, complete with ornamental lake.

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Jindabyne. In August 1904, the Seat of Government Act named Dalgety as the site for the federal capital. Behind the scenes, Victorian politicians were trying to get a national capital as close as possible to Melbourne, while New South Wales politicians wanted it to be as close as possible to Sydney. In the end, the New South Wales Government would have to agree to release the land, so New South Wales had an effective veto. Choosing Canberra By 1908, the choice was between Dalgety and Canberra. The supporters of Canberra called Dalgety ‘blizzardswept’. They were in a slight minority in the House of Representatives, but the Senate appeared to favour the Canberra site. There were, however, nine other sites still in the ballot on 6 October—Albury, Armidale, Bombala, Orange, Lyndhurst, Lake George, Tooma, Tumut and ‘Yass-Canberra’. Three of the 11 choices were close to where Canberra is today. In the final round of voting, the votes in the House of Representatives showed that the smaller states were worried about being dominated by New South Wales. A month later, the Senate was deadlocked at 18-all

A 1910 photograph including four of the surveyors who planned the site for the capital.

Capital names There must have been sighs of relief as Lady Denman, the wife of the GovernorGeneral, revealed that the name of Australia’s new capital city was ‘Canberra’. Suggestions had come in from near and far for names for the new capital. They ranged from the interesting—Shakespeare, Myola, Austral City—to the bizarre— Eucalypta, Kangaremu, Eros, Thirstyville and Cookaburra. And then there was Sydmeladperbrisho, which was obviously designed to try to keep all the states happy!

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An expeditioner working in an Antarctic blizzard to get glacial ice for drinking water.

between Tumut—which never got more than four votes out of 72 in the House of Representatives—and YassCanberra, until a Victorian senator switched his vote to support Yass-Canberra. The bill was passed, assented to, and the Yass-Canberra area was chosen. ‘Yass-Canberra’ was between Yass, Lake George, the current site of Canberra and the Murrumbidgee River. As one newspaper noted, Yass-Canberra was a district, not a site for a capital city. When surveyor Charles Scrivener examined the area in 1909, he recommended the Canberra valley as the best city site, partly because the Molonglo River could be dammed, making an ornamental lake, and also because it had a good water supply from the Cotter River. That recommendation was accepted. The Federal Capital Territory was created on 1 January 1911, on the nation’s tenth birthday. At the end of April 1911, a competition was launched to design the new capital. In May 1912, the design presented by American architect Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marian Mahony Griffin was named the winner. In February 1913, the Minister for Home Affairs, King O’Malley, drove in the first survey peg. A month later, O’Malley, Attorney-General Billy Hughes and Prime Minister Andrew Fisher laid the foundation stones, and Lady Denman, the wife of the Governor-General, named the capital Canberra. It is said that nobody knew how to pronounce the name until she said it, but Canberra had been on the map for many years. In 1927, the Federal Parliament moved to Canberra. The capital city was open for business.

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Travelling south with Mawson Australia has strong links to Antarctic exploration. James Cook visited Australia’s east coast on his first voyage in 1769–70, but he explored southern waters in his next two voyages. James Weddell, Charles Wilkes and James Clark Ross—after whom the Weddell Sea, Wilkes Land and the Ross Sea in the Antarctic were named—all visited Australia. These men usually visited the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, Sir John Franklin, before or after cruising in the Antarctic. Franklin was a famous polar explorer, who later died while searching for the Northwest Passage, north of Canada. By the beginning of the twentieth century, the mapping of Australia was almost complete, so anybody wanting to explore had to travel further south. And that is just what Douglas Mawson did. South with Shackleton People speak of those who travelled with Mawson as ‘Mawson’s young men’. But Mawson himself was also a young man when he travelled south with British explorer Ernest Shackleton as a geologist in 1907 at the age of 25. And, when he led his own expedition in 1911, he was only 29. Before he joined Shackleton’s expedition, Mawson had been appointed as a lecturer in geology at the University

of Adelaide. He had discovered tillite—a rock made of glacial sediments—near Olary in South Australia and Broken Hill in New South Wales. That set him thinking about icy conditions, which is one of the reasons why he joined Shackleton’s expedition. After the Shackleton trip, Mawson wanted to mount an Australian expedition, and so he helped to raise the large sum of £46,000 to fund it. That was a lot of money in those days—in comparison, the process of selecting the site for Australia’s national capital, which was described at the time as ‘a massive waste of money’, had cost £15,000. Surviving Antarctica Once they were ready, Mawson and his party of scientists sailed south. Then, using sledges pulled by husky dogs, they explored a lot of the ice. In December 1912, Mawson was out exploring with two other men, Belgrave Ninnis and Xavier Mertz, when Ninnis—along with his sledge, most of their food and some of their dogs— disappeared into a deep crack in the ice called a crevasse. Mertz and Mawson were 300 miles (500 kilometres) from their base, with enough food for themselves and their dogs to last just 10 days. The travel time back to base was about a month. As each dog weakened, they killed it and ate it, but the liver of huskies is dangerously rich in vitamin A, and Mertz died—most probably of a vitamin A overdose.

Mawson and his ‘young men’ performed important work in the areas of geology, biology, chemistry and physics. Mawson and his ‘young men’ performed important work in the areas of geology, biology, chemistry and physics. They extended our knowledge of Antarctica, that extreme and in many ways very non-Australian part of the world. After the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Mawson returned to Britain, where he was born, and worked on high explosives and chemical warfare. And then, in 1929, Mawson led another group of young men south. The tradition of Australian Antarctic research continues to this day. A portrait of Sir Douglas Mawson, similar to the one on the $100 note.

A map of Antarctica.

Mawson struggled on, hoping to get close enough to the hut at Adelie Land so his body and papers might be found later. Luckily, he found a food store left by a search party, and so he made it back to the hut. There, he and six other men waited out the winter before being rescued in the spring. The rescue ship had actually left, believing that Mawson was lost in the snow, but a radio message soon cleared that up.

Australians were pleased that Mawson and his men had survived. As happened to heroes in those days, he was knighted, and so he became Sir Douglas Mawson.

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Becoming Anzacs Some people regarded defence as a good reason for the Australian colonies to become a nation, and this could explain why Australia so wholeheartedly adopted the Anzac legend. The Great War (World War I) went badly for a long time and many thousands of young men died. Wars leave people hurt and scarred, and each war Australia has been involved in has led some people to ask whether it was worth it. There is no easy answer to that question, but the Anzac legend has endured.

BELOW AND RIGHT: Every effort was made through postcards and posters to persuade men to volunteer, even using May Gibbs’ gumnut babies.

LEFT: Wounded men at the Battle of

Passchendaele in 1917, photographed by Frank Hurley.

Supporting the British Australia has never started a war of its own, but it has frequently supported its allies and other friendly nations by sending troops to war. Troops from the Australian colonies fought in the New Zealand Wars—then known as the Maori Wars—in the 1840s, 1860s and 1870s, and in the Boxer Rebellion in China in 1900–01. Australian troops have been involved in many other wars and also in peacekeeping operations. Protecting the Suez Canal In the nineteenth century, Egypt was considered to be part of the Ottoman Empire (controlled by the Turks), but Egypt was largely independent of Turkey. Britain needed to protect the Suez Canal as a way to get to and from Australia, New Zealand, India and other Asian parts of the British Empire. The British Government and army closely supported the Egyptian Government, which invaded the Sudan in the 1820s. When the Sudanese tried to push the Egyptians out of the Sudan, the Egyptians asked for help from the British army. British General Charles Gordon took troops into

the Sudan, and they were besieged at Khartoum. The Sudanese forces of Muhammad Ahmad bin Abd Allah, known as the Mahdi, took the town in January 1885 and massacred all the defenders, including Gordon. A British relieving force reached Khartoum three days later. News of the fall of Khartoum appeared in Australian newspapers in early February and, by 12 February, it was reported that Gordon was dead. The same day, General Edward Strickland suggested sending an Australian force. Later that day, the Cabinet Council of the New South Wales Parliament offered a battalion of infantry, along with ten field guns, and this was accepted. The troops were drawn from the colony’s militia. Other colonies also offered to send troops, but Britain declined their offers. The 522 men, 24 officers and 212 artillerymen left Sydney on 3 March 1885. They reached Suakin, the nearest Sudanese port, on 29 March. They saw almost no fighting and spent most of their time building a new railway line. By 17 May, they were sailing home again. The troops reached Sydney on 19 June. They were placed in quarantine for five days because nine men had died of diseases on the return voyage or after reaching Sydney.

The departure from Circular Quay in Sydney of troops headed for the Sudan in 1885.

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Australia has never started a war of its own, but it has frequently supported its allies and other friendly nations by sending troops to war.

Fighting the Boers The next engagement for troops from the Australian colonies was the Boer War, which began in October 1899. It was a war of independence fought by the Boers—the long-established Dutch settlers of South Africa—against the more recently arrived British, who took over the colony in 1814. The Boers moved north, out of British territory, but the British followed them. On the surface, the Boer War was about voting rights for British subjects in Boer-controlled republics, but it was really about the gold and diamond mines in Boer-controlled territory. The Cape Colony and Natal were British, the Transvaal and the Orange Free State were ruled by the Boers.

Australians, as citizens of the British Empire, were enthusiastic supporters of Britain. In 1900, many Australians still called themselves ‘British’, and their flag was the Union Flag—the ‘Union Jack’. To complicate things, Germany also had colonies in southern Africa. Germany sided with the Boers, who spoke Afrikaans—a Dutch-Flemish language rather like German. In Britain and Germany, there were already ‘hotheads’ who wanted a war between the German and British empires.

‘Kangaroo’ feathers During the Great War—which is also known as World War I—the mounted soldiers of the Australian Light Horse were well known for wearing ‘kangaroo’ feathers—actually emu feathers—in their hats. In fact, the tradition of wearing the feathers began with the Queenslanders who served in South Africa in 1900 in the Boer War.

In 1900, the Boer War was ‘celebrated’ with a divertimento for piano.

The Boer republics declared war on Britain on 11 October 1899, but it came as no surprise. The day before, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Queensland had all offered to send troops. None of the colonies wanted their troops to miss out on the ‘adventure’. The New South Wales Lancers, who had been training in England, set off from England for South Africa and, on 22 November, they were the first Australians to fight in the war. Australia became a nation on 1 January 1901, and the colonial units were replaced by eight battalions of the Australian Commonwealth Horse of the new Australian army. The records suggest that 16,175 Australians served in South Africa in Australian units, but perhaps 10,000 more Australians served in British units. Some 267 died of disease, 251 were killed in action, and another 43 went ‘missing in action’, while 735 were wounded but survived. Six men were awarded the Victoria Cross medal for bravery. Australia was more than ready to play its part in the British Empire’s wars.

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Maps showing the German Empire in Europe in 1914 (left) and the countries that were part of the British Empire in 1925 (right).

Who was in the Great War? When the Great War—what we now call World War I —began in 1914, there were a number of large empires. These empires each included countries that were controlled by the ruler or government of one dominant nation. Some empires had colonies, others did not. There were also alliances between countries that had political or other connections. During the Great War, most countries belonged to, fought for or were allied with either the Triple Entente or the Central Powers, but some of these alliances changed as the war progressed. The Triple Entente The members of the Triple Entente, or the Allies, were Great Britain, France and Russia. They were later supported by the USA and its ‘overseas dependencies’, as well as Italy and a number of smaller states. The British Empire claimed support from India; British dominions such as Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa; and British colonies in parts of Africa, Malaya and the Caribbean. The total population was around 450 million, with about 45 million in Britain itself.

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France had colonies across North Africa and in West Africa, plus smaller colonies in the Pacific and the Caribbean, as well as in South America. The total population was around 90 million, with about 41 million in France. Russia had support from Finland and parts of modern Poland, with an overall population of 175 million. The Central Powers On the other side were the Central Powers. These included the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany and the Ottoman Empire. The Austro-Hungarian Empire encompassed modern Austria, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bosnia, Croatia, parts of Serbia, Montenegro, Poland, Romania, the Ukraine and (initially) Italy, with a total population of around 50 million people. Germany had colonised a number of countries during the nineteenth century, taking them from smaller colonial states. They included parts of South West Africa (now Namibia) and Tanganyika (now part of Tanzania), as well as part of New Guinea; Pacific Islands, including Samoa and Nauru; and a small colony in China. This gave Germany and its dependencies a total population of about 75 million people. The Ottoman Empire had the country of Turkey at its heart. It also covered Egypt, the Sudan and Arabia— modern Syria, Iraq, Jordan, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

Originally neutral, Turkey’s ships attacked Russian ports in late October 1914 and closed the Dardanelles, the narrow channel into the Black Sea that the Allies used to deliver arms to Russia. The population of the Ottoman Empire was around 23 million. Other participating countries The USA entered the war in April 1917 in support of the Triple Entente. It had overseas dependencies, including the Philippines, Puerto Rico and a number of Pacific Islands, and protectorates like Cuba. Altogether, it had a population of around 100 million. The Kingdom of Italy was still trying to win control of the Italian-speaking territories held by Austria when war began. Italy had minor colonies on some Greek islands, and in Eritrea and Libya in Africa. Originally a member of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austro-Hungary, after some hesitation Italy signed an agreement with Britain on 26 April 1915 to support the Triple Entente. Its population was about 35 million. A number of smaller nations also declared war on one or more of the Central Powers later in the war. About 100,000 Chinese worked for the Allies on the Western Front from May 1916, maintaining roads and railways, unloading ships and digging trenches. The population of China was over 400 million. Japan had annexed Korea in 1910 and, when war broke out in August 1914, it seized some of Germany’s Pacific Island colonies, while Australia seized others. Japan’s population was about 75 million. Spain and the Netherlands remained neutral, as did Sweden, Norway, Mexico and most of the countries on the Pacific Ocean side of South America.

A war to end all wars? The war between the Triple Entente and the Central Powers was called ‘The Great War’ in Australian newspaper headlines as early as August 1914. While English author H.G. Wells referred to it as ‘the war to end war’ in a 1914 article, soon after it ended a

Raising an army While the 1885 campaign in the Sudan had not gone well for Britain, few Australians died there. In 1914, people still remembered the Boer War, and that war had been more successful for the British Empire. Many Australian men and boys were eager to join up when war was declared in August 1914. Most people had known beforehand that war was coming. The Sydney Morning Herald made the position clear on 30 July 1914: ‘If Great Britain is drawn into the war which has broken out in Europe, Australia will by the law of nations be a belligerent’. When the same newspaper announced on 4 August that the Australian Government had offered 20,000 men, nobody was surprised. Many Light Horsemen, veterans of the Boer War, bushmen and rifle club members hurried to the nearest army barracks to offer their services. Riding with the Light Horse In Sydney, bushman and farmer Albert Facey, who later wrote about his experiences in his book, A Fortunate Life (1981), decided to join up, but first he sailed to Western Australia so that he could serve with men from his own state. While most men signed up for the infantry, Facey joined the Australian Light Horse. These soldiers were ‘mounted infantry’—troops who rode into battle, dismounted and then started fighting. Like the majority of troops in the infantry, Light Horsemen were foot soldiers; they were not cavalry, who would charge down an enemy on horseback and fight with sabres. However, members of the Australian Light Horse were issued with sabres in 1918, and they used them very effectively in their last few battles. Members of the Light Horse were mobile fighters who needed to be adaptable. This was exactly how the new nation of Australia wanted its soldiers to be: brave, fearless and swift winners of battles. Facey caught the measles and scarlet fever, but he still managed to sail for the Middle East in January 1915. On 18 April, he was sent as a reinforcement from his camp to the 11th Battalion, and then joined a ship. Like most on board, he had no idea where he was going.

few people called it ‘the First World War’, as they were already expecting another one. The term ‘World War I’ came into common use about 1942.

‘If Great Britain is drawn into the war which has broken out in Europe, Australia will by the law of nations be a belligerent.’

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The Cooee March During the Cooee March to drum up recruits for the war, a young man in Colyton in western Sydney stepped forward as the call went out for recruits. He was a member of the McGregor family, which had already given five sons to the British Empire’s cause. This young man was the sixth. A small family group bade him farewell as, with some determination, he took his place in the ranks.

Protecting the Suez Canal again The major battles in the Great War were fought in Flanders in Belgium, and in France, with minor fights in southern Africa against the German forces. There were also battles between Russian troops and the Central Powers. As well, strategic positions like the Suez Canal had to be held. All sorts of war supplies—from horses, to food, to troops—had to come through the canal.

When the Ottoman navy attacked Russian ports, the Turks joined the war. Their allies encouraged them to stop ships using the Suez Canal. Suddenly, there was a new ‘front’ in the war, because Turkish territory came right up to the canal and, if they could sink only one or two ships in the right places, they could block it entirely.

This is why the Australian and New Zealand troops went to Egypt first and then to Gallipoli to help open a shipping route through Turkish waters to Russia. The Australian public was shocked to hear of the huge number of deaths after Australian troops landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. Before long, the Australian Light Horse left their horses in Egypt to go to Gallipoli as ordinary infantrymen. Cooee! By the middle of 1915, the most enthusiastic men had already joined up and gone to war. Other recruitment tactics were needed. One was the ‘Cooee March’. It began in the New South Wales country town of Gilgandra and then made its way to Sydney, encouraging men to step forward and join the volunteers along the way. They marched 320 miles (500 kilometres), starting with 30 men and ending up in Sydney with 263—about the same number of men as in a quarter of an army battalion. As they marched, the volunteers chanted. A leader would cry out, ‘What do we want?’ The answer would come back, ‘More men!’ That was in 1915. The recruitment problems had hardly begun.

Two recruitment posters from 1915 and 1916 show an increasing desperation to find more troops.

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Australian ‘firsts’ in the war Australia did not declare war on Germany, but it was automatically at war because it was part of the British Empire. Australia’s war proper began when the GovernorGeneral, Sir Ronald Munro Ferguson, received a telegram from London. He then summoned Prime Minister Joseph Cook, and telegrams were sent to the state premiers telling them that a state of war existed between England and Germany. That was all that was needed. The first shot fired News of the war spread slowly, but German Captain Kuhlken of the Norddeutscher Lloyd Company’s ship Pfalz could see what was coming. He made a decision that put Australia in the record books as the place where the first shot was fired in the Great War. On the morning of 5 August 1914, Kuhlken cast off from the wharf at Williamstown near Melbourne and sailed across Port Phillip Bay towards the heads, hoping to escape from Australian waters. The pilot, Australian Captain Robinson, who was responsible for guiding the ship out of the harbour, saw nothing wrong until he heard a shot, and saw a splash some 50 metres behind the ship. Looking across to the signal station on the Queenscliff fort, the pilot saw a signal ordering the ship to turn around. There are various versions of what happened after that but, with or without argument from the captain, the pilot turned the ship around and steamed back to the wharf. The first military action Australia’s first military action also happened quickly, when Australia went after some of Germany’s nearby

The German ship Pfalz became Commonwealth property and, renamed the Boorara, saw service in the Great War.

colonies. The other Allies asked Japan to take over German-held islands like Yap and Pohnpei north of the equator. New Zealand took responsibility to take over what was then German Samoa. Australian forces went to take German New Guinea, and also the phosphate island of Nauru. Nauru later became a trust territory which, after the war, delivered all of its phosphate to Australia, New Zealand and Britain. There was a problem with what were then known as ‘wireless stations’—what are now called radio stations. These transmitters could send coded radio signals to German naval raiders. Near New Guinea, there was a wireless station on the island of New Britain. The station was close to Bita Paka, not far from Rabaul. Landing parties from ships of the Australian Squadron tried to destroy the wireless station after 12 August 1914 but they could not find it, as it was more than 19 miles (30 kilometres) from Rabaul. The Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force landed about 1,500 men at Rabaul on 11 September. They began to spread out. Warned by the earlier naval raid, the Germans had a number of lines of defence set up. There were trenches, explosives buried under tracks and concealed snipers in trees, but there were only 61 German officers and 240 Melanesian troops, so they were outnumbered by the larger Australian force. Six Australians were killed and five wounded before the German forces surrendered.

With this small number of casualties, some Australians were still convinced that overall victory would be fairly easy.

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Maps published in Farmer and Settler in 1915, with Gallipoli shown on the left of the main map.

The Gallipoli campaign

destroyer. Closer in, a motor boat towed rowing boats to the beach. Facey describes what happened next:

There were two ways to deliver war goods to the Russian Allies: through ports that were iced in for much of the year in the far north, or through ‘warm water ports’ on the Black Sea, which meant sailing through the Dardanelles. The Turks had now blocked that route with forts. The plan was to get the troops ashore without the Turks knowing where they would land. The attackers needed to cross the Gallipoli peninsula and capture the forts so that Britain’s Royal Navy could sail through the narrow waters of the Dardanelles.

Suddenly all hell broke loose; heavy shelling and shrapnel fire commenced … Bullets were thumping into us in the rowing-boat. Men were being hit and killed around me.

The ‘diggers’ Soldier Albert Facey wrote about his experiences during the landing at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915. He said the troops were on a ship which went as close as it could to land, while still keeping out of range of Turkish artillery. The men went over the side and down a rope onto a

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By noon, many men were dead. Facey noticed that most of the orders were being given by corporals and sergeants, and not by officers, and assumed that the Turkish snipers were deliberately targeting the officers. According to him, the attack broke down because the people who knew the plan were dead, or they were wounded and on their way back to one of the ships. Facey said later that he assumed the troops would ‘tear right through the Turks and keep going to Constantinople’. However, once the Anzacs (the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) had lost the advantage of surprise, their advance stopped and they were pinned

down, with the Turks above them, holding the high ground, and more Turkish troops behind the front line. They had no choice but to ‘dig’ in—they became ‘diggers’. The disaster To the south-west, British and French troops were also pinned down. Commonsense and two majorgenerals said that they should withdraw from Gallipoli immediately, but instead they were told to slog it out—to win at any cost. The advantage was very much with the Turks, who had short and secure supply lines to bring in food, water, ammunition and reinforcements. On 6 August 1915, the troops were told to advance from Lone Pine, an area where the Anzacs had become established by 27 April, after reaching it on 25 April. This whole attack was a diversion to distract the Turks while an even larger attack took place at Suvla Bay, further north. The attackers took the Turkish trenches opposite Lone Pine, but at a dreadful cost. Almost half the 4,600 men in the attack were killed or wounded, while Turkish losses were even higher. Seven Australian troops won Victoria Cross medals for bravery at Lone Pine. After four days, the Turks stopped trying to win their trenches back, and the Australians held the captured trenches until they withdrew in December.

Obeying orders? Soldier A lbert Fac ey, who la his exper ter wrote iences in about A Fortun told by h a te L if e , is comm was anding off on the be icer to lin ach at G e up allipoli a nd await orders. H further e recorde d in his b there wo ook: ‘I am uldn’t ha sure ve been o ne of us had obey left if we ed that d amn fool on the be order to line up ach’.

There was a second attack on the following day at the Nek, aimed at taking the hill dubbed ‘Baby 700’. The battle was over far more quickly, but it was just as bloody. It was a disaster. Another attack on Battleship Hill near Baby 700, mounted by New Zealanders, was delayed, and a third attack, made by Australians, also failed. Under the circumstances, there was no sense in attacking at the Nek, but New Zealand’s Major-General Alexander Godley gave the order anyway. Worse was to come. The artillery barrage that was to keep the Turks in their trenches stopped early. By A dramatic and unrealistic painting of troops landing at Gallipoli.

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Commonsense and two major-generals said that they should withdraw from Gallipoli immediately, but instead they were told to slog it out—to win at any cost. the time waves of men started running across the open ground, the Turks were ready for them. The first wave of 150 men was wiped out by machinegun and rifle fire. The second wave was also mown down, and the same happened to the third wave. Half of the fourth wave was stopped by officers; the rest died. Nothing was gained. In all, 8,709 Australians and 2,721 New Zealanders had died over a period of eight months, and nothing had been achieved. Thousands more were maimed for life. The retreat One task was left to be completed. If the remaining troops could somehow be withdrawn in secret, at least that could be presented as a sort of victory. To the Turks, these men were invaders, and so Australian generals believed that, if there was any hint that the invaders were fleeing, the Turks would show little mercy. The planning that went on for the evacuation of the troops was thorough, although it now seems likely that the Turks knew the evacuation was happening but chose to save the lives of their own troops as long as the invaders

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left. About twice as many Turks as allied troops had died or been wounded during the Gallipoli campaign. Families at home in Australia could be reassured that, by cunning and guile, our military leaders had got our ‘diggers’ away—even if it was only so they could fight and die in other battles.

Animals at war The sturdy Waler Back in Egypt, members of the Australian Light Horse were reunited with their friends, the Walers. These sturdy stockhorses were named after New South Wales, where they originally came from. By the 1850s, there was a thriving trade in selling the horses to the Indian Army as ‘remounts’. Between 1834 and 1937, more than 300,000 Walers were sent to India. More than 16,000 Walers went to the Boer War, but none of them came home. The Walers also went to the Great War. They might have been called the ‘Light Horse’, but a mounted infantryman with all of his equipment could weigh 120 kilograms, so the Walers had to be strong Walers being loaded on the SS Southern Cross at Circular Quay, Sydney, bound for the Boer War.

Medal-winning performance Soldier Albert Facey wrote in his book

A Fortunate Life: ‘One thing that made a big impression on us was ... ‘The Man With a Donkey’ ... I considered, and so did my mates, that he should be given the Victoria Cross.’

to carry them. Nobody knows exactly what went into breeding the Waler, but it was generally thought they had thoroughbred lines and a ‘touch’ of Timor pony. Australian poet Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson loved the Walers, and he wrote about them in his poem, The Last Parade. Paterson served in the Remount Service in the Great War, and he was deeply saddened that only one Waler made it back to Australia. The Camel Corps Horses were easy to get on and off quickly and so they were good for mounted infantry, but the Australian and British armies also used lots of camels. Some of the Gallipoli veterans were transferred to the Imperial Camel Corps in January 1916. They fought on camels in the battles of Romani, Rafa and Gaza in the Middle East. They later returned to the Australian Light Horse for the 1918 battles in the Middle East. Tradition says that the men in the Camel Corps were a tough bunch, as the Australian battalion commanders sent some of their ‘wilder’ soldiers to the Corps. The Australian army also used camels to carry water and food. There was even a Camel Field Ambulance, with a camel carrying two backward-facing chairs, each covered in white cloth to keep the sun off the wounded. Simpson and his donkey The icon of the Australian legend of Gallipoli was an Englishman called John Simpson Kirkpatrick. He arrived

There was even a Camel Field Ambulance, with a camel carrying two backward-facing chairs, each covered in white cloth to keep the sun off the wounded.

An Australian soldier riding a camel near Cairo, Egypt, in about 1915.

in Australia after deserting from his ship in 1910, and enlisted in the Australian army as ‘John Simpson’. Some people said Simpson was a larrikin who had enlisted under a false name to get closer to England before deserting and making his way back home. What we do know is that he went ashore at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915 and found a donkey near the beach. Simpson knew about donkeys because he had worked with them as a boy. He adopted the donkey—who was called ‘Duffy’, ‘Abdul’ or ‘Murphy’—and set to work carrying wounded soldiers down to the beach, where they could be taken to the hospital ships and then to hospitals on nearby islands. The Simpson that lives on in legend was disobedient. He worked long hours and slept where he lay, rather than returning to camp as ordered. He looked after the lightly wounded, and he made up to 16 trips a day getting men to treatment. In an age before antibiotics, even a minor wound could kill, so speed was vital. Less than a month after landing at Gallipoli, Simpson was killed on 19 May 1915. He was buried at the beach cemetery, where his grave is the most visited of all the Australian war graves.

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Major-General John Monash (far left) and Lieutenant-General Sir Harry Chauvel (left).

Three Australian generals In a war, soldiers must obey orders without question, kill without hesitation and, when deemed necessary by their officers, give up their lives to save those of others—or, as Australians would say, die for their mates. Soldiers need good leaders, and Australia had some notable generals during the Great War. However, like most generals, they were involved in both winning and losing battles. A promising career cut short William Throsby Bridges was born in Scotland and then lived in Canada for a while. He entered Canada’s Royal Military College, but moved to Australia in 1879 before he graduated. When the Sudan force was raised, he applied to go, but he was too late. Instead, he joined the local military force, which was formed to cover for the absent New South Wales troops. Bridges was an artillery officer, and he served as a major in the British army during the Boer War, before being invalided to England with typhoid fever. By 1902, he was back in Australia and had been made a lieutenantcolonel. Four years later, he was a full colonel and chief of the Australian general staff. He was then promoted to brigadier-general, with the job of setting up Australia’s Royal Military College (RMC), Duntroon, in Canberra.

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Bridges became the inspectorgeneral of the Australian army and then took command of the Australian Imperial Force—a name which he chose. In Egypt, he upset the troops by insisting on intensive training, but that training proved to be a wise move. After 25 April 1915, Bridges and his New Zealand counterpart, Major-General Alexander Godley, predicted disaster and recommended withdrawal from Gallipoli, but they were overruled by the British commanders. On 15 May, a Turkish sniper’s bullet hit Major-General Bridges in the right thigh, cutting his femoral artery. He came close to bleeding to death, and infection and gangrene set in. The doctors were unable to operate and Bridges died on 18 May 1915. Bridges’ body was returned to Australia and he was buried on Mount Pleasant above the Royal Military College, Duntroon. His grave is the only actual structure in Canberra designed by architect Walter Burley Griffin, who prepared the plans for Canberra. A desert commander Henry George Chauvel was born in northern New South Wales, where he learned to ride on his father’s cattle station. He wanted to join the British army but his family could not afford it because his father had lost money during a drought. In 1885, Chauvel joined the volunteers and was commissioned as an officer in the Upper Clarence Light Horse. Later, when his family moved to Queensland, he was commissioned in the Queensland Mounted Infantry, before joining the permanent forces in time to travel to Britain in 1897 to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Chauvel stayed on in Britain for training and served in the Boer War as a major. Back in Australia in 1901, he was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and became well known as a trainer of men. He arrived in London in 1914, just as war broke out, and was given command of the 1st Light Horse Brigade in Egypt.

After 25 April 1915, Bridges and his New Zealand counterpart, Major-General Alexander Godley, predicted disaster and recommended withdrawal from Gallipoli, but they were overruled by the British commanders. By May 1915, the Light Horsemen had left their horses behind and landed at Gallipoli as reinforcements. By November, Chauvel commanded a division and oversaw the successful withdrawal from Gallipoli. In December, he was made a major-general. Chauvel stayed in Egypt with the Light Horse when the rest of the Australian infantry went to France. He also took charge of the 1st Squadron of the Australian Flying Corps. In 1917, Chauvel became the first Australian to be made a lieutenant-general, the rank needed to command the Desert Mounted Corps, which included British, Australian, New Zealand, Indian and French units, some of whom were on camels. He achieved his greatest victories in the desert campaign. Major-General Bridges and other military personnel at RMC Duntroon in 1911.

A clever tactician General Sir John Monash is the best known of Australia’s three notable Great War generals. He held degrees in arts and law, but he was also an engineer who understood the need for planning. In his teens, he joined the Melbourne University Rifles and, by 1908, he commanded the Australian Intelligence Corps in Victoria. In 1913, he was the colonel commanding the 13th Infantry Brigade. When war broke out, Monash took the 4th Infantry Brigade to Egypt and Gallipoli, where he managed his troops well and made no mistakes. His true worth was revealed in France, where he ended the war as the commander of the Australian Corps. The Battle of Hamel in July 1918 combined tanks and aircraft with the more usual artillery and infantry. To complicate matters, the infantry included American troops. The shell craters had been mapped, so soldiers could use them for cover. Monash’s artillery fired both gas and smoke shells together for some days but, on the day of the attack, they fired only smoke shells. The attackers went in without gasmasks while the Germans, who were expecting a gas attack, wore masks, which slowed them down.

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Horse stories Even though Major-General Bridges died in Gallipoli, his horse, Sandy, survived and later was in the war in Egypt and France. In May 1918, the horse was taken to England. The animal had been gassed and

Then there were the usual dangers of war: being shot, gassed or blown apart in an explosion. There was also the shock of seeing people dying and being maimed and wounded all around you. Men were sent out across an ocean of mud to attack an enemy they could not see. Many ended up shredded by bullets or dangling from barbed wire. Few came away from the Western Front alive, uninjured, whole and unaffected by death and suffering.

was partially blind. In October 1918, Sandy returned to Australia, the only Waler to come home. A love of horses also ran deep in the family of Lieutenant-General Chauvel. His daughter, Elyne Mitchell, wrote the much-loved children’s books, the

Silver Brumby series.

On the ground, 60 tanks beat a path through the barbed wire, as well as carrying extra ammunition for the infantry. Overhead, bombers attacked the German lines and more than a mile (1,600 metres) of ground was gained. To finish off, aircraft dropped 100,000 rounds of ammunition for the machinegunners in forward positions. Monash’s battle plan was a success. More successes followed and the Germans never regained the initiative.

The Western Front The story of the Western Front, the battlefield in France and Belgium, is a tale of stalemate. In trench warfare, neither side could gain ground, because it was easier to defend trenches than attack them. Trenches, barbed wire, machineguns and artillery protected defenders, while attackers had to leave their trenches with only rifles. The story of the Western Front is a tale of mud. The land was mostly flat, so drainage was poor and shell craters filled up with rainwater. Trenches also caught the water, carried it along and held it. The story of the Western Front is a tale of disease. There was nowhere for human or animal wastes to drain away and nowhere for soldiers to wash their hands. There were no antibiotics, so a tiny scratch could become a fatal case of blood-poisoning. Constantly standing in mud and water caused ‘trench foot’, and infections like typhus were spread by the lice that infested everybody.

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There had been trenches in the Boer War, but that was in open country where attackers could go around the trenches and barbed wire was hard to get. In 1914, neither side thought a war of mobile armies and fast manoeuvres would leave them bogged down, but it did. So long as neither side could go forward, neither side needed to go back and neither side needed to admit defeat, so they just stayed there, year after year, killing each other, and then bringing in fresh troops to kill and be killed. It was a war where the morale of the soldiers, the morale of their families at home, and the supply of men and materials were vital. Each side told stories of their own heroes and of atrocities committed by the other side. Battling against the odds The Battle of the Somme in France went on from 1 July to 18 November 1916. It was a determined effort to break through the German lines. It began with an artillery barrage that was intended to kill the Germans in the forward trenches and to cut through the coiled barbed wire in no-man’s-land—the area between the opposing armies. The British troops moved forward, walking towards the German trenches carrying 66-pound (30-kilogram) packs on their backs. As they got close, German soldiers emerged from the dugouts where they had been sheltering. Most of the Allies’ artillery shells were made of shrapnel: pieces of metal that killed people but did not cut barbed wire. The German defenders mowed down the British attackers and, by day’s end, more than 20,000 were dead or missing. Almost twice as many were wounded.

The technology that would break the stalemate was emerging: tanks and aircraft would end the era of trench warfare.

Australian gunners moving through captured German lines in France, October 1918.

Anzac veterans from Gallipoli reached France between March and June of 1916. On 19 July, they fought at Fromelles, where the Australian 5th Division suffered 5,533 casualties in 27 hours. The next week, the 1st Division lost 5,285 men at Pozières. The 2nd Division was brought in to replace them and, in the next week, suffered 6,848 casualties. By the time the Somme offensive was called off, there were around 36,000 Australian casualties, including 8,200 dead. These were the sorts of losses that made Prime Minister Billy Hughes desperate to conscript men into overseas military service. However, the Central Powers were being slowly worn down. Once the USA joined the war in March 1917, the end was certain. And yet, from April to June 1917, two million French soldiers refused to take part in further offensives. They had been worn down as well.

Soldiers in a trench near Ypres, Belgium, in October 1917.

In June 1917, the Battle of Messines was fought to take a ridge held by the Germans. It began with huge underground explosions that killed or wounded about 10,000 German soldiers. It was followed by a ‘creeping barrage’—artillery shells were dropped deeper and deeper into German territory, as troops followed. This attack succeeded, but 6,800 Australians were killed or wounded.

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There was worse to come: around 38,000 Australians were killed or wounded at Passchendaele in October and November of 1917. The battle began with rain that bogged the tanks and later drowned many of the wounded where they lay. Some ground was gained, but the Germans took it all back in the Spring Offensive of 1918. Still, the German casualties at Passchendaele were about 400,000. This, with 200,000 German casualties in their Spring Offensive, cost them the war. Tanks and planes join in The technology that would break the stalemate was emerging: tanks and aircraft would end the era of trench warfare. In the summer of 1918, all five Australian divisions were combined under Major-General John Monash for the Battle of Hamel. Combining careful planning, tanks, aircraft and diversionary tactics, the battle to take Hamel was over in just 93 minutes. However, while the Allies were winning battles, the war was still not over. Two weeks after the Battle of Hamel, a major Allied attack began. The aim was to drive the Germans back to the fortified Hindenburg Line. On 31 August 1918, Australian forces took the bastion of Mont St Quentin near Péronne in northern France and, over the next few days, eight Australians performed feats of bravery that later won them the Victoria Cross bravery medal. Now the Allies were attacking everywhere and, by 4 October, the Germans’ fortified Hindenburg Line was taken. The war was as good as over but, in the next month, more men and animals would die in vain. The first captured German tank being taken to Paris in May 1918.

War in the air In 1909, a Frenchman named Louis Blériot amazed the world by flying an aeroplane from France to England. Some people then began thinking about how planes could be used in warfare. In 1911, a Colonel Bethell suggested that hydrogen balloons could be used to ‘spot’ for artillery on the ground. He also thought that powered balloons, called dirigibles, could fire rockets at each other—although he did wonder if the rockets’ flames might set the attacking balloons on fire! Flying corps In 1912, Britain’s Royal Flying Corps was set up and, in 1914, Australia’s Central Flying School was started at Point Cook in Melbourne. Australia was now ready to form the Australian Flying Corps. By 1914, aircraft design had improved to the point where planes could be used for observation and scouting. This was what cavalry often did, so the new air service was attached to the cavalry. Even today, the Royal Australian Air Force uses cavalry ranks such as ‘squadron leader’ and ‘wing commander’. At Gallipoli in 1915, the Germans used Taube aircraft to spy on the Anzac trenches and to occasionally drop explosives on ammunition dumps. Luckily, their primitive bombs usually missed. British ships offshore also sent out Royal Naval Air Service seaplanes to spy on the Turkish lines. Then, in August 1915, the seaplanes chased away a German plane. Aerial warfare had begun.

By October, the Anzacs had machineguns rigged up on the ground to attack aircraft. In December, Captain Ivor Williams reported that the German planes were dropping both bombs and steel darts, which he suspected were poisoned. In late 1916, the Australian Flying Corps supported a failed campaign in Mesopotamia (now Iraq) and, before the year’s end, the Corps’ aircraft had photographed the towns of Magdhaba, Rafa and Beersheba, all of which would be taken by the Desert Mounted Corps in 1917. During 1917, an arms race developed in Europe. Aircraft hunted each other and bombing was more effective. The ‘aces’, the more experienced pilots, hunted down new pilots and shot them out of the sky before they had learned the art of the dogfight—warfare in the air at close quarters.

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A Bristol F2B fighter.

However, the aces often showed respect for each other. One German pilot, Ernst Udet, told how, after a long fight, his guns had jammed and so he prepared to die. His opponent saw what had happened, turned his plane upside down, saluted, and then flew back to the allied lines. The Red Baron The greatest German flying ace was the ‘Red Baron’— Manfred von Richthofen. He was a hero to the Germans, having brought down 80 enemy aircraft. With his easily identifiable red aircraft, he was also well known to the Allied forces. In April 1918, von Richthofen was hunting an inexperienced Canadian pilot who was flying close to the ground. Another Canadian flew at von Richthofen, and he was later credited with bringing down the Red Baron. Von Richthofen was killed by a .303 bullet that came from the side as he was flying over an Australian troop position. The bullet could not have come from the Canadian plane, as it entered the Red Baron’s aircraft at the wrong angle. While the evidence suggests that the Red Baron was shot down by an Australian soldier on the ground, we will never really know. The Australian Flying Corps gave him a full military funeral.

A dangerous job Flying a plane in the Australian Flying Corps was dangerous work. During the war, author Banjo Paterson’s wife, Alice, was a nursing aide at Ismailia in Egypt. Paterson told how his wife was kept very

The ‘aces’, the more experienced pilots, hunted down new pilots and shot them out of the sky before they had learned the art of the dogfight— warfare in the air at close quarters.

Australian Flying Corps planes between 1918 and 1919.

busy making shrouds for the bodies of the pilots in the Flying Corps. They were often killed during their first solo flights in their primitive aircraft.

Pipped at the post! When Major Harry Olden and the Australian Light Horse galloped into the city of Damascus, they infuriated British military adviser Colonel Thomas Edward Lawrence—better known as the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’. He had planned to be the first to enter the city, but he arrived two hours after the victorious Australians.

Two weeks later, in January 1917, they fought the Battle of Rafa and took another Ottoman stronghold, but in March and April the Imperial Camel Corps was defeated in two attacks on Gaza. Then came the battle for Beersheba.

Australians of the Imperial Camel Corps on the march, 1917–1918.

The desert campaign Between January 1915 and October 1918, the Central Powers—Germany, Austria and their Ottoman Turk allies—hoped to shut down the Suez Canal to stop supplies and troops from Australia, New Zealand and India reaching Britain. Australian troops resumed defending the canal after they withdrew from Gallipoli in December 1915. Their first major battle came in August 1916 at Romani in Egypt. The Battle of Magdhaba in December 1916 saw mounted Anzac forces and the Imperial Camel Corps win the day, helped by aircraft flying over and spying out the enemy’s positions.

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The last great cavalry charge English General Edmund Allenby took command of the Allied troops for the battle for the desert town of Beersheba, near Gaza. Because Beersheba had a railway and wells full of water, it was an important target. Aerial photographs showed that the trenches around the town were hard to see as attackers rode in, but were not protected by barbed wire or pits. By 1917, Australian General Harry Chauvel had taken command of the Desert Mounted Corps. He sent in the 4th and 12th regiments of the 4th Australian Light Horse to force the Turks out of Beersheba. The Australian Light Horse consisted of mounted infantrymen with rifles and bayonets; they were not cavalrymen. Mounted infantry ride to a battle, dismount and then fight: they do not charge down a powerful enemy. At least, that was what everybody thought, but this time the Australian Light Horse did just that!

On 31 October 1917, the Light Horse formed three lines about 400 metres apart. At 4.30 pm, with sharpened bayonets as their weapons, they began to trot, then they galloped towards the enemy. Facing machineguns, rifles and modern artillery, this frontal assault should have failed. At first the Turks held

their fire because they were waiting for the mounted infantrymen to stop and dismount. When the Turkish defenders realised that the Light Horsemen were still charging, they used rifle fire to try to bring down some of the riders and their horses. However, the Light Horse moved in so fast that the Turkish soldiers had no time to change the sights on their rifles. They were set for long-range shots, so most of their bullets went over the heads of the Australians. The 4th Regiment crossed the first shallow trench and the second, then turned, dismounted and attacked the defenders. Confused by the speed of it all, the Turks lost the will to fight and surrendered. Some of the 12th Regiment entered other trenches and fought the defenders, while most of the force galloped through. There were no more trenches, so they rode on into the town of Beersheba, taking it and its precious wells. Five of the seven wells had already been destroyed. Normally, the defenders would have blown up

When the Turkish defenders realised that the Light Horsemen were still charging, they used rifle fire to try to bring down some of the riders and their horses. all the wells before fleeing, but they had not had time to destroy the last two. The Australians’ horses had gone a long way without a drink but, only an hour after saddling up, they were able to drink in peace. By nightfall, almost 60,000 men and 100,000 animals had entered Beersheba. It was probably the last great cavalry charge in history, performed against the odds by mounted infantry. Most of the Australian casualties happened in the trenches, with 31 killed and 36 wounded. Some 738 Turks had been captured and nearly 100 were killed. It was a massive blow to Turkish morale, and it allowed

Units of the Australian Light Horse on the move in Palestine during the Great War.

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General Allenby to attack Gaza again, coming from the east as well as the south. Gaza fell just a week later, opening the way to Jerusalem. The Australians were in the Battle of Megiddo in September 1918 and, on 1 October 1918, Major Harry Olden and some of the Australian Light Horse chased the retreating Turks into Damascus. The victory was won and, on 30 October 1918, the Turks signed an armistice. Some 12 days later, the rest of the Central Powers surrendered. By doing something that was not usually done and acting like cavalrymen, the Australian Light Horsemen helped to bring an end to a war that many people had thought would never end.

A respected enemy We should never forget that, even in the heat of war, there can be human decency. The Mehmetçiğe Derin Saygı Anıtı (Respect for Mehmetçik monument) at Gallipoli reminds us of that. While fighting a war, soldiers often give themselves and their enemies familiar names. The Australians called themselves ‘digger’ and their Turkish opponents ‘Abdul’, or sometimes ‘Jacko’. The Turkish soldiers called themselves ‘Mehmet’, while their opponents were called ‘Johnny’.

Australian Light Horsemen watering their horses in the Middle East in October 1917.

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We should never forget that, even in the heat of war, there can be human decency.

Compassion and bravery In 1967, Lord Casey, Governor-General of Australia, told the story of how, while he was serving in Gallipoli, he had seen a large Turkish soldier, obviously sickened by the suffering, stride out into no-man’s-land to where a British soldier lay screaming in pain. The Turk picked up the British ‘Johnny’, carried him carefully to the trenches of the British invaders, laid him gently down where his own people could care for him, and then returned to his own lines. An undeclared ceasefire must have held until the Turk was safely back in his trench, because it is said that he survived that day.

lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land, they have become our sons as well. Atatürk’s words are displayed in both Turkish and English on two large monuments on the battlefield at Gallipoli, and also on the Atatürk Memorial on Anzac Parade in Canberra. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and the Turkish flag.

Respect and forgiveness Respect also applies in another way to a man called Atatürk. When the Australians first encountered him, he was Lieutenant-Colonel Mustafa Kemal, commander of the Turkish 19th Infantry Division. This division occupied the part of the Gallipoli Peninsula nearest to the place that the Turks later agreed to call Anzac Cove. It is important to remember that, while the Ottoman Empire was defeated in the end, Gallipoli was a major military victory for the Turks, and they hold their own commemorative service on what Australians call Anzac Day. As a matter of courtesy, they hold their service over the ridge and across the Dardanelles at Çanakkale.

After the Great War and the end of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal founded the Republic of Turkey and became its first president. In 1934, he was given the title Atatürk—‘Father of the Turks’—by the Turkish parliament. He wrote this moving tribute to those who fought at Gallipoli: Those heroes that shed their blood and lost their lives ... You are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side now here in this country of ours ... you, the mothers, who sent their sons from faraway countries wipe away your tears; your sons are now

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Recruitment posters from the Great War played on people’s emotions.

The home front At home in Australia during the Great War, people tried desperately to support our troops. There were campaigns to encourage men who had not yet enlisted for the war to do so as soon as possible. Red Cross auxiliaries were formed in every town and suburb. Women organised cake stalls, rolled bandages, and knitted and sewed presents to send to the soldiers in the trenches. One way that people could ‘do their bit’ was by remembering Anzac Day. The very first Anzac Day was a fundraising event for the Wounded Soldiers Fund in Adelaide in October 1915. Unfortunately, it was spoiled by drunkenness and a riot in King William Street. By January 1916, plans were under way in Brisbane to mark Anzac Day on 25 April, and the idea soon spread across Australia and New Zealand.

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What’s in a name? Another way in which people ‘did their bit’ was by removing ‘names of enemy origin’ from Australian maps. This rather petty scheme was popular in South Australia and Queensland—two states which, in the nineteenth century, had welcomed many refugees from harsh conditions in Germany. Most of the people whose names were removed from the map had been loyal citizens of Australia. One target of the map purge was Ferdinand Bauer, who had sailed on a Royal Navy ship with Matthew Flinders, painting pictures of Australian wildflowers. Another was Sir Ferdinand von Mueller, who had been knighted for his loyal service to Australian botany. Germanton, a small town north of Albury, changed its name to Holbrook, in honour of a submarine captain in the Royal Navy who had been awarded a Victoria Cross for sinking a Turkish destroyer under challenging conditions. That name change, people told one other, would teach the ‘Vile Hun’—the Germans—a lesson!

The Australian Government tried twice to get a referendum passed to allow conscription, but each time the Australian public refused to agree to it.

Conscripting more soldiers On the Western Front, mainly on the Somme, the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) suffered 16,301 casualties in July of 1916, with another 13,482 casualties in August. After those losses, recruitment fell away. As time went on, things got worse, and the war became a test of which side could keep up morale and accept losing more of its young and not-so-young men. The Australian army needed an extra 5,500 men every month to replace those injured or killed. In early 1916, a law was passed in Britain to conscript the unwilling into the army so they could enter the killing fields. In Australia, a combination of antiBritish feeling, a sense of national independence and other emotions meant that many people opposed the introduction of such conscription laws. The Australian Government tried twice to get a referendum passed to allow conscription, but each time the Australian public refused to agree to it. The AIF remained a volunteer army for the rest of the war. It was the only totally volunteer army on the Western Front. Just six months before Australia’s 1916 referendum on conscription, an Irish Republic had been declared by a small band of revolutionaries who set up a base in the Dublin Post Office on Easter Monday. The rising was savagely crushed by British forces. This is partly why conscription was opposed by many Irish-Catholic Australians, who did not have any great love for ‘Mother England’ even before the terrible events of that Easter Monday. In Melbourne, Catholic Archbishop Daniel Mannix criticised conscription, and he

was supported by largely working-class Catholics. On the other side, the Protestant middle classes denounced the Dublin rebels as traitors, and worse. Members of the Australian Labor Party strongly disagreed over conscription. In 1916, Prime Minister Billy Hughes and his followers stayed in government with the support of opposition Liberal Party members who, as conservatives, also favoured conscription. The wounds of the split would take a long time to heal. Military training had been compulsory for all males aged 18 to 60 since 1911, so the referendum was trying to make those in the various militia units eligible for service overseas. The arguments on each side were often on a purely emotional level. Supporters of conscription wanted men to ‘do a man’s job’. Their opponents asked: ‘Where will all the husbands and fathers, sons and brothers end up?’ The supporters countered by asking: ‘Where will we all end up if we don’t support Britain?’

The vote in the 1916 referendum was close. Voters were asked if ‘in this grave emergency’ the Commonwealth should be allowed to force men to serve overseas. The answer was ‘no’ by a small majority, with 1,160,033 against and 1,087,557 in favour. Now Britain asked for another Australian military division for active service, which meant providing even more men—7,000 every month. In a second referendum in 1917, Hughes proposed that the government continue

Anti-conscription posters also played on people’s emotions.

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A happy ending Soldier Albert Facey received hand-knitted socks from the Red Cross while he was serving in Gallipoli. Later, when he was wounded and invalided home, he met the girl who had knitted those socks, and he later married her!

to accept volunteers but be able to make up any shortfall through a ballot. Single men, widowers and divorcees without dependants, and aged from 20 to 44 years, could be selected for such service. This proposal was also defeated, but by a bigger majority. Looking after the diggers It seems that very few people thought about how the returning soldiers would cope when the war ended. There were pensions and a few benefits for some, including ‘soldier settler blocks’. However, the soldiers were given mainly poor land, and only a few managed to farm successfully. The price they had paid in advance (in blood) for these privileges was huge. The signing of the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919.

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Many soldiers had been wounded or had lost limbs, while the lungs of others had been damaged by gas warfare. Others suffered from ‘shell shock’, which affected their mental health. Also affected were the women who lost their husbands, the children who lost their fathers, the parents who lost their sons, and the young women who lost their fiancés and boyfriends, and so never married or had children of their own. They were all victims of the war, but there were no pensions or help for most of those who had not actually gone to war.

Wartime leaders Australia had three prime ministers during the Great War. The first, Joseph Cook, lost an election on 5 September 1914, just weeks after the war began. Leading Australia into war Andrew Fisher took over the post of prime minister on 11 September 1914. Fisher was born in Scotland and came to Australia in 1885, aged 23. He was a former coalminer and a self-educated man who joined the Labor movement in Queensland. He opposed Australian involvement in the Boer War, but supported Federation. He became the first member for Wide Bay in the

Cheering soldiers carrying Billy Hughes on their shoulders, 1919.

Australian Federal Parliament as a member of the Labor Party, and he rose rapidly through the ranks. By 1909, Fisher was the prime minister. He introduced a compulsory military training scheme for boys under 20 years of age. The Labor Party was defeated in parliament soon after, when the other parties combined against him, but he won an election in 1910, only to lose again in 1913 and then to win again in 1914. While one faction of the Labor Party had misgivings about the war, Fisher promised at Colac, Victoria, on 31 July 1914, when war was a few days off, that Australia would defend the British Empire against Germany and its allies to ‘the last man and the last shilling’. That same night, nearby at Ballarat, Liberal leader Joseph Cook made a similar promise, which meant that Australian involvement in the war was not an issue in the 1914 election. Britain often assumed that it could do what it liked with Australian troops, so the first time that Prime Minister Fisher heard about Gallipoli was when the landings were announced. In October 1915, he resigned, supposedly due to ill health. ‘The Little Digger’ William Morris Hughes, better known as Billy Hughes or ‘The Little Digger’, took over the reins. Hughes was born in London of Welsh parents but, from the age of seven to 19, he lived in Wales and spoke Welsh. At the age of 22, he migrated to Australia and went from being a union organiser to a cabinet minister, and later a prime minister. He was also a lawyer. Hughes was fiery, determined and far less concerned than others about people’s liberty, given the need to win the war. Over the many years that he served in the Australian Parliament—from 1901 to 1952—he was expelled from three political parties and represented four electorates in two states, changing parties a total of five times.

US President Woodrow Wilson encountered Hughes’ savage style at the Treaty of Versailles meetings in 1918, when Wilson failed to agree to Hughes’ demands. Referring to the Australians who had died in the Great War, Hughes famously said to President Wilson: ‘I speak for 60,000 dead. How many do you speak for?’ Hughes always backed the soldiers, which explains why the talkative and tiny Welshman was known as ‘The Little Digger’. Fighting for those diggers, as he saw it, Hughes first caused a split in the Labor Party in 1916, over conscription. He and 24 other pro-conscription Labor members formed the National Labor Party. Then Hughes split the nation with his two conscription referenda. He lost both, but a majority of Australians still voted for him in elections. There is a famous photograph of Billy Hughes being held aloft by cheering diggers. Clearly, despite his chequered career and fiery temperament, the man had something special.

The Little Digger’s chair Billy Hughes always watched the Anzac Day march, at first standing and, as he grew older, sitting on a chair. For a long time after his death in 1952, his chair

Britain often assumed that it could do what it liked with Australian troops, so the first time that Prime Minister Fisher heard about Gallipoli was when the landings were announced.

was put in the same place each year at the Anzac Day march in Martin Place in Sydney, with a digger’s slouch hat and a sprig of rosemary on it.

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Modern Times In the 1920s, the Western world started to get back on its feet after years of war-time suffering. For many reasons, it was a different world to the one people knew in 1914. Women had been doing ‘men’s work’ on Australian farms since European settlement but, once the men went to war, women all over the world began working in offices and factories. It was also a much more connected world, with radio messages flashing around the world, and aircraft and motor cars linking distant places. Science and technology had taken off as well.

LEFT: The wonders of the ‘wireless’ brought radio sets powered by pedalling to remote homesteads.

BELOW: Australians took to the skies.

LEFT: The 1920s saw the building of Australia’s own national capital, located between Sydney and Melbourne, the two biggest cities in the country.

Turning the radio on Around 1900, radio waves were called ‘Marconi waves’, after Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi, who worked out how to use them to send signals. The term ‘wireless telegraphy’ was then adopted because Morse signals were used as they were in a telegraph, but without wires. There were no voices, like on a telephone, just ‘dots’ and ‘dashes’. The British army used radio signals in 1900 during the Boer War, and radio was first used in Australia to signal to ships at sea. That is why, when the Great War (World War I) broke out in August 1914, the Australian Government ordered all ‘wireless equipments’ to be dismantled and handed over to the navy. Just a week after the Great War started, an officer raided premises in Melbourne and used wire cutters to

In 1932, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons started the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), which was funded by the government and had no advertising. destroy the large aerials—the long wires strung across high vantage points. Even radio receivers had to be handed in, in case spies found ways to use them. Radio technology improved quickly. In September 1918, Australian businessman Ernest Fisk arranged for test transmissions to Australia from Prime Minister Billy Hughes, who was in Britain. After the war, amateurs and those who had learned about wireless technology during the war started experimenting again. In September 1922, listeners in England heard a music concert from The Hague in The Netherlands. On 23 November 1923, Sydney radio station 2SB (later 2BL) broadcast the first music ever heard ‘over the air’ in Australia. Another Sydney station, 2FC, started two weeks later, and other radio stations soon followed around Australia. Entertaining households Until about 1939, the wireless used lots of stage and concert performers. Stage performers read scripted serials like Dad and Dave. This popular serial began in 1937 and was based on Steele Rudd’s On Our Selection, which was first published in 1899 in The Bulletin. Based on the story of a family living on the land, these entertaining serials celebrated Australianness.

Stars like singer Gladys Moncrieff (far left), known as ‘Our Glad’, could be heard on the ‘wireless’. Radios were huge, and owners had to buy expensive licences to use them (left).

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In 1918, the first direct wireless messages travelled from England to Australia. Unlike ‘cables’, messages reached their destination almost immediately.

Only a small number of performers could broadcast at one time, because they all had to stand very close to just one microphone. Families would also sit close to the wireless receiver in their lounge rooms at night to listen in. In 1932, Prime Minister Joseph Lyons started the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), which was funded by the government and had no advertising. The ABC took over existing radio stations, including 2FC and 2BL in Sydney. It started broadcasting on 1 July with 12 stations—two each in Sydney and Melbourne, one in each other state capital, and four regional stations. Originally, they all ran their own programs, but they were soon relaying programs by cable from one station to another (because only cable carried clear signals over long distances).

Synthetic cricket In 1934, the ABC developed ‘synthetic cricket’. While it was possible to broadcast from England to Australia by ‘short wave’, the signals were often poor, so the ABC used coded telegrams to let commentators in Australia give a ball-by-ball description of the game over the radio. They used sound effects to simulate the sound of bat on ball or the applause of the crowd. Everybody knew they were simulations, but people still listened in all night, each night.

By 1933, the ABC had created The Children’s Session, with its very popular Argonauts Club, which by 1950 had 50,000 dedicated and enthusiastic members. The program lasted until 1972.

The ABC also started broadcasting cricket matches, and it was immediately caught up in the controversy over the bodyline-bowling test cricket series that Australia played against the Marylebone Cricket Club (England) in 1932–33. The ABC commentary helped stir up Australian outrage at this sometimes dangerous variation on the game. One important radio invention was the ‘pedal wireless’, which allowed people in remote parts of Australia to call the Flying Doctor in an emergency and to get education in remote areas through the School of the Air. In many ways, access to the radio changed Australia forever.

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! situation y l k c i r Ap

rought nt was b la p r a e p to breed t prickly st Fleet The firs ir F e h t n tralia o on it. into Aus at lived h t s t c e s ineal in at was a dye th the coch d e c u d o sects pr worn by These in d coats e r e h t prickly colour 20s, the 9 used to 1 e h t . By n acres soldiers 0 millio 6 British d e t s infe d in New ctus had s) of lan e pear ca r a t c e nh ’s 4 millio he CSIR (about 2 sland. T n e e u Q ales and efinitely South W s were d r la il p r stis cate his pest! Cactobla ipe out t w lp e h to needed

Scientific advances

A cartoon about prickly pear taking over the land.

Breeding wheat Englishman William Farrer came to Australia after contracting the lung disease tuberculosis (TB). Back then, people thought that Australia’s warm, dry climate was better for people who had TB. In Australia, Farrer worked as a surveyor, but then he became interested in breeding wheat that was resistant to ‘rust’ and other diseases that destroyed wheat crops. In 1900, Farrer developed what was called ‘Federation wheat’. It resisted rust and gave a high yield. Three years later, enough seed had been produced to distribute to farmers. Over the next 20 years, Federation wheat trebled the Australian wheat harvest. With that advance, and the massive increase in the size of the wool yield due to advances in sheepbreeding practices during the nineteenth century, many Australians were beginning to appreciate what science could do for them.

In May 1916, the ACSI advertised in the newspapers for a ‘Science Abstractor’. An abstractor read through the world’s scientific literature looking for reports that council researchers could use. Applicants needed to be able to read French and German, and the position was ‘open to women as well as men’. The world was definitely changing. In 1920, the ACSI became the Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry. Then, on 14 October 1926, the three members of the new Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) were announced. In November, the members of the state committees were named and, by March 1927, CSIR investigators were studying the underground grass grub, pea diseases, ‘sheep troubles’ and the shale-oil business. By July 1927, they were seeking ways to deal with salt blooms in irrigation areas.

Groundbreaking research In 1916, the Advisory Council of Science and Industry (ACSI) was set up in Australia as part of producing a national laboratory. Wartime developments in explosives, gas warfare, radio, submarine-detecting hydrophones and army tanks had demonstrated the importance of scientific research.

Researchers had been trying to control Australia’s rabbit plague for many years. They had thought about using chicken cholera to kill rabbits, but that scheme had been dropped because it was too dangerous.

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Soon after, the CSIR played a part in using a moth from Argentina called Cactoblastis to control prickly pear—a noxious weed. The work was directed at agriculture, which was one of Australia’s main industries in the 1920s. The CSIR’s program expanded during the 1930s and 1940s, with plant and animal pests and diseases still the main concern of its scientists, and their attention also going to fuels, the cold storage of food and forestry. During World War II, radar was important, so the CSIR hired physicists and technicians. After the war, as well as agriculture and forestry, efforts were concentrated on new scientific areas like building materials, atmospheric physics (weather), metallurgy and land resources. During the 1940s, the CSIR’s achievements included developing an insect-repellent, investigating cloud-seeding to produce rain, and building Australia’s first computer, CSIRAC. The CSIR became the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in 1949.

During the 1950s, Australia became a world leader in radio astronomy—a term coined by CSIRO scientist Joe Pawsey. The CSIRO also pioneered solar hot water; developed Siroset—a way of getting permanent creases in wool fabrics; built the Parkes radio telescope, better known as ‘the Dish’; and developed atomic absorption spectroscopy. In the 1960s, CSIRO researchers worked out how to wipe out a forest pest called the Sirex wasp. They also introduced dung beetles to control bushfly populations. The 1970s saw work on the greenhouse effect and climate change, and the Interscan aircraft landing system, while the 1980s brought polymer banknotes, the wireless internet and gene shears (a way of ‘snipping’ a gene out of a chromosome). Their important work continues. One thing is certain: CSIRO research has helped to improve the quality of life in Australia and the world.

Researchers had been trying to control Australia’s rabbit plague for many years. They had thought about using chicken cholera to kill rabbits, but that scheme had been dropped because it was too dangerous. From 1919, people wondered whether a Brazilian rabbit disease called myxomatosis might reduce the number of rabbits (it did, for a while). In the last days of the CSIR, plans were put in place, and the first major achievement of the new CSIRO was the release of the myxoma virus in 1950.

Since a movie was made about it in 2000, the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales has been called ‘the Dish’.

Australia’s first electronic computer, CSIRAC, was used by scientists from 1949 to 1964.

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Government comes to Canberra It took nine years, from 1899 to 1908, to choose a site for Australia’s new capital, and another four years to choose an architect and start a survey of the area. It was another 14 years before Canberra was established enough for at least some public servants to move there from other parts of Australia. Accessing Canberra In the 1920s, a telephone call from one capital city to another went from a local exchange to a ‘trunk line’, and then to an exchange near the person being called. Trunk calls were very expensive, and this made communicating with places like Canberra difficult. Airmail deliveries were rare, so mail communication was slow. All transport was slow as well, including air travel, which was also very expensive. This made getting to Canberra difficult. Progress on the site itself was even slower. The main delay came from bureaucrats interfering with the plans of architect Walter Burley Griffin, and his wife and partner, Marion Mahony Griffin. By December 1913, the Griffins

At a royal commission in 1916, Walter Burley Griffin complained that protecting his reputation and position against attacks by ‘Federal officers’ had wasted nine-tenths of the time he had spent in Australia.

had amended their award-winning design slightly, but people were already questioning it. In July 1914, Walter Griffin said that the families of officials who were expected to live in the capital could start ‘packing their trunks’ in about three years time. Bureaucratic wars Then came two wars—the Great War and a bureaucratic war. The Town Planning Association of New South Wales called the bureaucratic war an ‘attempt to sidetrack the plan of Mr. Walter Burley Griffin and substitute the discredited departmental plan’. This departmental plan was mainly the work of surveyor Charles Scrivener. Called The Design of the Layout of the Federal Capital City of Australia as Projected

The Canberra Federal Capital of Australia Preliminary Plan. The architects who created the plan—Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin.

Too many pie s!

The opening ceremony for the original Parliament House took place in 1927.

by the Departmental Board, the departmental plan was attached to the program for Canberra’s naming ceremony on 12 March 1913. The plan was a combination of some of the design entries, plus a few of the Departmental Board’s own ideas, and it was said to be cheaper. Luckily for Griffin’s vision, an election came soon after and the new government, led by Prime Minister Joseph Cook, dismissed the board. However, that did not bring an end to the fighting. At a royal commission in 1916, Walter Burley Griffin complained that protecting his reputation and position against attacks by ‘Federal officers’ had wasted ninetenths of the time he had spent in Australia. In late 1920, an advisory committee was appointed to supervise the work, but it contained some of the troublemakers. And so, in January 1921, Griffin walked away from the project. Earlier delays could be blamed on wartime problems, but those which came later were mainly caused by the committee’s decisions. Providing a home for Federal Parliament One of the major projects that did go ahead at this time was the building of what was called the Provisional Parliament House. This ‘temporary’ building, now known as Old Parliament House, housed Australia’s Federal parliaments from 1927 until 1988, when it was replaced by the present Parliament House. The Provisional Parliament House was designed by the Commonwealth’s Chief Architect, John Smith

To celebrate the opening of Parliamen House, an of t ficial lunch was held for the Duke an d Duchess of York and oth dignitaries. T er hey dined on tu rt le so up , poached salm on and ‘Can berra puddin The large cr g’. owd outside was not forg otten, and they lun ched on mea t pies and sc ones. However, th e organisers had over-cat ered, and so two tr uckloads of meat pies, sa rolls, prawn usage s and fish w ere later buri ed at the nearby Q ueanbeyan ru bbish tip.

Murdoch, and his advisers in a style known as ‘stripped classical’ or ‘modern renaissance’. Building began in 1923, when a large group of tradesmen converged on Canberra to construct the parliament and other public buildings. They lived in tents, huts or cottages provided by the government. The building site was supplied with material by trains running on two railway tracks—one to Kingston Railway Station and the other to the Commonwealth Brickworks at Yarralumla. The grand opening of Parliament House was held on 9 May 1927. In preparation, fully grown trees were cut down from surrounding areas, carried to the site on horse-drawn wagons, and then planted to give the building an instant garden. The flags of the United Kingdom and Australia hung side by side on the building, along with brightly coloured bunting. Royal Australian Air Force planes performed a flyover, although their timing was apparently a little out, and so they drowned out the sound of Dame Nellie Melba

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singing the national anthem, God Save the King. Sadly, one of the pilots died in an air crash later that day.

The Duke and Duchess of York arrived in an open carriage, and they were greeted by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce and other dignitaries, as well as by four-yearold Gwen Pinner, who presented the Duchess with a bouquet of flowers. Some 15,000 members of the public attended the celebrations, with many camping in tents or sleeping in their cars in the empty paddocks that surrounded the new building. The Duke of York opened the doors of Parliament House with a key made of gold, and then presided over the first parliamentary sitting in the new Senate Chamber. When the Great Depression hit in 1929, Canberra had a population of 7,000 people. Building work in the capital had stopped, but Federal Parliament now had a permanent home.

Francis Birtles and his dog camped beside their car in Arnhem Land in the Northern Territory.

Motoring across Australia Early attempts In 1900, Herbert Thomson and E.L. Holmes had an incident-free drive from Bathurst to Melbourne in a Thomson steam car. They spent a total of 56 hours and 36 minutes on the road, at an average speed of about 14 kilometres per hour—about the same as a horsedrawn Cobb & Co coach. Back in Melbourne, Holmes commented that the rise of the motor car would surely lead to better roads—and it eventually did. The car could get faster, but the Cobb & Co coach could not. In late 1901, a motor car made the trip from Sydney to Broken Hill, taking a month to get there. The longest day’s travel by car was 80 miles (130 kilometres) from Euston to Wentworth in south-western New South Wales. That took six hours, and the average speed was over 20 kilometres per hour.

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Living off th e land Like the earl y explorers, Francis Birtl lived off the es land on his jo u rn ey s around Australia by bicycle and m ot or vehicle. His bicycle was fitted with a holster to ca rry his hunting rifle, and so on m an y of h is trips he shot and ate rabbits. He ev en fo u n d them on the treeless Nullarbor P lain.

Driving further and faster The headstone on the grave of Francis Birtles at Waverley Cemetery in Sydney describes him as an ‘explorer and photographer’. After serving in the Boer War, Birtles returned to Australia and began adventuring. In 1907, he rode a bicycle from Sydney to Charters Towers, Darwin, Adelaide and Melbourne, and then back to Sydney. In 1908, Harry James and Charles Kellow completed a Sydney to Melbourne drive in a car in 25 hours and 40 minutes. Then, in 1909, Birtles rode his bicycle from Perth to Sydney to check if it was possible to drive a car across Australia. He decided to use a car with wooden axles so that when they broke—as they surely would—he could make new ones. He drove across the Nullarbor about four years later. Then, in 1917, Birtles, his brother Clive and historian M.H. Ellis drove from Brisbane to Sydney in 29 hours and 10 minutes. Cars were getting faster.

There had been another development well before World War II—the invention of the ‘ute’, or utility vehicle.

In the 1920s, the motor vehicle was still a luxury item, but as roads got better and time became more precious, people welcomed the independence that motor vehicles brought them. In country areas, the dray and the lorry pulled by horses were replaced by ‘motor lorries’—trucks. Crops and produce were soon taken to market on trucks, not trains. Developing the Aussie ‘ute’ There had been another development well before World War II—the invention of the ute, or utility vehicle. The Ford Motor Company is said to have received a letter from a country woman in Gippsland, in Victoria. As the banks would lend money for farm vehicles but not for private vehicles, she asked:

Why don’t you build people like us a vehicle to go to church in on a Sunday, and which can carry our pigs to market on Mondays?

According to Ford, motoring engineer Lewis Bandt then designed a vehicle with a tray that could carry a 550-kilogram load, but also had a weatherproof cabin. It went on sale in 1934. Others had already thought of such a design. The Willys Utility Truck was available in 1913, but it did not have a weatherproof cabin. And James Freeland Leacock had patented a similar design to Ford’s in 1930. However, it was the Ford utility truck, or ute, that was available for people to buy. Cars for the masses World War II was the first war in which armies did not rely mainly on horses. After 1945, ordinary people wanted motor vehicles, so a new mass market developed. It was a mass market that in many ways changed Australia. On average, small towns had been settled around 60 miles (100 kilometres) apart. They needed to be close enough for farming families to get to them, do their shopping and get home, all in one day. Later, the introduction of motor vehicles meant that farmers could now drive past small towns to get to larger regional towns. A number of small towns lost shops, then banks, then the post office and the doctor, and soon some of those towns were no more.

John Flynn (known as ‘Flynn of the Inland’) travelled the outback in northern Australia in a ute, often filled with passengers.

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In the cities, suburban areas had ‘corner shops’— family-run businesses that sold milk, bread and other essential food items. After the war, shopping centres and supermarkets were also established, and they forced many corner shops out of business. Many people now had refrigerators and freezers at home, so they could buy larger amounts of food. But that meant they needed a car to carry it home. In the end, the motor vehicle significantly changed life as it had existed before World War II.

Aviation takes off Many young Australian men had learned to fly aeroplanes during the Great War and, before long, some Australian women also learned those skills. Australia is a land where distance can be the great enemy, but such distances can be overcome using aircraft. In 1859, Maurice Reynolds claimed that railways would make it possible for a city to have suburbs 100 kilometres from its centre, but people now realised that planes would make even the Australian outback more accessible.

Nancy Bird went on to fly an air ambulance in outback New South Wales and to set up the Australian Women Pilots Association, while Lores Bonney flew solo from Brisbane to London in 1933.

Establishing Qantas Paul McGinness and Hudson Fysh both transferred from Australian Light Horse regiments to the Australian Flying Corps. They flew together in No. 1 Squadron as pilot and observer. After the war, Fysh got his pilot’s wings, qualifying in February 1919. In August and September of 1919, the two men surveyed part of an air race route from Katherine in the Northern Territory to Longreach in Queensland. They did this in a Model T Ford—the first mass-produced motor car. McGinness and Fysh realised that air transport would be much quicker, so they started a company called Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd—QANTAS—in 1920. Racing through the air Prime Minister Billy Hughes had organised a prize of £10,000 (equal to about $2 million today) for the first Australians to fly in less than 30 days from England to Australia—around 8,400 miles (13,500 kilometres). The winners of the race were brothers Captain Ross Smith of the Australian Flying Corps and Lieutenant Keith Smith of the Royal Air Force, along with two of their sergeants, Walter Shiers and James Bennett. The Smiths were knighted, and the sergeants were both made air force officers for their efforts.

This song celebrated Amy Johnson, Bert Hinkler, C.W.A. Scott and Charles Kingsford Smith.

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Some other Australians missed out because the race was held under the rules of the Royal Aero Club in Britain. Aviator Bert Hinkler, who had been flying with the Royal Naval Air Service, wanted to fly in the race alone. The Aero Club decided that was unsafe. Charles Kingsford Smith had a team of four, but they were not allowed to take part because none of them was a good enough navigator. Most pilots navigated by following roads, rivers or railway lines, but for travelling long distances, especially over the sea, somebody on the plane had to be able to navigate by taking sightings from the stars or the Sun.

Harry Lyon (navigator), Charles Ulm and Charles Kingsford Smith (aviators) and James Warner (radio operator) in front of Southern Cross, Los Angeles, California, 1928.

The Smith brothers made it from London to Darwin on 10 December 1919, after flying for just over 27 days. One expert said that, if they used teams of crews and planes, the flight could be done in five days, but that never worked. Even in 1938, Dutch airline KLM took seven days to get from Sydney to Amsterdam. Bert Hinkler resented missing out on the race. He bought an Avro Avian aeroplane and, in 1928, he flew the same route as the Smiths, reaching Darwin in just 15½ days, flying solo. Flying into history Australian Charles Kingsford Smith had flown with the British Royal Flying Corps and, like Hinkler, he wanted to set a record. He decided to fly a plane across the Pacific Ocean, so he teamed up with another Australian aviator, Charles Ulm. In an attempt to attract sponsors, they set a record for flying around Australia, taking 10 days and 5½ hours in 1927. The New South Wales Premier, Jack Lang, offered them £3,500 (equal to about $700,000 today) towards their trip across the Pacific. Lang lost an election just after that and the sponsorship fell through, but Kingsford Smith and Ulm found another sponsor. They selected a ship’s captain to be their navigator, and took on a radio operator from Kansas in the USA. On 31 May 1928, ‘Smithy’ and his crew left Oakland near San Francisco in California in the three-engine Fokker the Southern Cross. They flew first to Hawaii, then Fiji, then Brisbane, making the trip in a flying time of just over 83 hours. In October 1930, Smithy flew solo from London to Australia in 9 days and 22 hours and, in 1934, he and P.G. Taylor flew from Sydney to San Francisco. Then in 1935, Smithy and a copilot crashed in a storm over the Bay of Bengal. Parts of their plane were found, but there was no trace of either man. Daring women pilots By 1934, when another London to Melbourne air race was being planned, several women pilots were likely starters. Nineteen-year-old Nancy Bird (later Nancy Bird Walton) wanted to participate but, at that time, lacked

the experience, and Lores Bonney (who preferred to be called Mrs Harry Bonney) had plenty of experience but did not have the right plane. Nancy Bird went on to fly an air ambulance in outback New South Wales and to set up the Australian Women Pilots Association, while Lores Bonney flew solo from Brisbane to London in 1933. One way and another, Australia produced some very resourceful pioneering aviators.

Family connections Lores Bonney—who flew as ‘Mrs Harry Bonney’ because she wanted her husband’s name to live on after he died—was taken on her first flight by her cousin, aviator Bert Hinkler. He also bought her a plane. When she flew solo from Brisbane to London in 1933, she was photographed looking down her nose at something. She explained: ‘The man asked me where I was from, and I was thinking, “Don’t you know that VH on the fuselage means Australia?”’

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The Great Depression Through the 1920s, everything was going well, but the rich got greedy and the greedy got rich. People made the classic mistake of assuming prices would keep rising, but prices never do. Even before the Wall Street stock-market crash of 1929, the economies of the Western world were going sour. Wartime damage to economies, wartime debts, a welfare bill to care for widows and orphans, and the lack of fit working men all helped to make the inevitable Great Depression. BELOW: In much of Australia,

men went ‘on the wallaby’ (wandering the bush) because they could not find work.

FAR LEFT, ABOVE: People made homes where they

could, even under rock overhangs. FAR LEFT: The opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in

1932 was a symbol of national hope. LEFT:

LEFT: The news was grim, all over the world.

The dream fades Australia’s economy was at risk after the Great War. Some 60,000 young men had died and many Australians were unemployed. That caused unrest, and extremist groups formed. Their opponents called the left-wingers ‘Communists’, but they had no descriptive name for the right-wingers until later when they called them ‘Fascists’. The extremists were mostly ex-servicemen who wanted somebody to blame for the state of the world and its economy. Nothing seemed to be getting better, so some people lost confidence in democracy and were attracted to more extreme views of the world.

The markets crash The Great Depression was triggered by a stock-market crash on Wall Street, the centre of stock-market trading in New York in the USA. Unemployment was already going up in Australia before 24 October 1929, when the US market dropped by 11 per cent in one day. The depression in the USA spread across the world. When the stock market crashed, unemployment in Australia was already at around 10 per cent. By the middle of 1930, 21 per cent of the workforce was unemployed. By the middle of 1932, it was one-third. Things slowly got better, but some Australians remained out of work until 1939. After the stock-market crash, the US Government needed money, so it asked Britain to pay its debts from the Great War. To raise money, the British Government then asked Australia to repay its loans. Some of those loans had funded Australia’s war effort—a war fought largely for the benefit of Britain. Other loans were the result of often irresponsible borrowing during the 1920s. Australia’s debts were so high that even paying the interest owed on them became difficult. Niemeyer lays down the law Australia wanted to delay paying Britain back for the war loans for the time being. On 14 July 1930, Otto Niemeyer of the Bank of England arrived in Australia. He had come to ‘examine’ Australia and its financial situation. Niemeyer said Australia was overconfident and living beyond its means. He declared that Australia must accept a lower standard of living and do its duty as an obedient colony by supplying Britain with raw materials and goods, and buying British goods in return. He demanded that the Australian Government meet its loan obligations to Britain. Niemeyer had supposedly been invited to Australia as an observer by Labor Prime Minister James Scullin, but that did not stop him commanding

People could cheer themselves up by buying this song as a gramophone record or as sheet music.

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James Scullin, Labor Prime Minister, 1929–1931 (left) and Joseph Lyons, who became Prime Minister in 1931 (right).

the state premiers to balance their budgets immediately. This caused a lot of argument. The views of the conservative side of politics were summed up by Robert Menzies, a Victorian Nationalist politician, in an address on 3 May 1931 as part of the ‘A Pleasant Sunday Afternoon’ series of talks. He praised traditional British standards of honesty, justice, fair play and resolute endeavour, adding that, rather than give that away, ‘it would be better for Australia that every citizen within her boundaries should die of starvation’! Most of the premiers agreed with Menzies. On 25 May, they and the Commonwealth Government agreed to the ‘Premiers’ Plan’, which ordered higher taxes and a 20 per cent drop in government spending, including all wages, salaries, pensions and awards controlled by governments. Prime Minister James Scullin and Treasurer Edward Theodore—who was known as ‘Red Ted’—wanted to print more money and spend it on public works to create jobs. The scheme put forward by Labor’s deputy leader, Joseph Lyons, was closer to the Premiers’ Plan. By the middle of June 1931, the federal Labor government was falling apart due to arguments within its ranks. In the election on 19 December 1931, the United Australia Party—which later re-formed as the Liberal Party of Australia—won in a landslide, with

former Labor deputy leader Joseph Lyons as prime minister. He had resigned from the Labor Party in March 1931. One act in this drama was still to be played out. In New South Wales, Premier Jack Lang, a firm social reformer, would have nothing to do with a scheme that he thought deprived widows and orphans just to help rich English bondholders. Lang also wanted to reduce the interest on loans in Australia to a low 3 per cent.

The right-wing New Guard was plotting to depose Lang, the communists were making a noise, and Lang held the state’s Treasury, as cash, at the Trades Hall to stop the Commonwealth Government seizing it. In the end, Governor of New South Wales Sir Philip Game dismissed Lang as premier, the opposition won the following New South Wales election, and austerity was enforced. The Great Depression deepened.

Niemeyer said Australia was overconfident and living beyond its means.

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The two arms of the Sydney Harbour Bridge reach towards each other as the arch is being built.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge Brisbane, Perth, Hobart and Sydney were all built beside bodies of water. In each case, that created problems as the small settlements became large cities. Sydney had the worst problems because the harbour, a drowned river valley, is shaped like a fern leaf.. At the end of the last ice age, the glaciers in the Northern Hemisphere melted, the melt-water ran into the oceans and sea levels rose. The ocean pushed up along river valleys and flooded across coastal plains, but it did not rise high enough to cover the tough sandstone ridges of Sydney. To cross the drowned river valley, Sydneysiders needed lots of bridges—even more than the other state capitals. In 1815, Governor Lachlan Macquarie’s architect, Francis Greenway, suggested building a bridge from the south shore to the north shore of Sydney Harbour, but there was no real need for one then. Later, when all the good farmland at Parramatta had been taken up, a few

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people discovered that the sandstone ridges running north had small caps of shale that made the soil good enough for market gardens, and so settlements developed along what is now the North Shore railway line. That railway line opened in 1890. As soon as it did, people began building houses along it. After 1893, they could catch a train to Milsons Point and cross the harbour by steam ferry. People began talking about having a harbour crossing. In 1900, a group of politicians tried to get agreement to a proposal that the Duke of York would lay the foundation stone for a harbour crossing while he was visiting Sydney for the inauguration of Federation, but the proposal was not successful. The talk in Sydney in 1900 was mainly about a railway bridge, high enough so that ships could go underneath it. A plan was in place by 1911, and John Bradfield was appointed chief engineer of the project

‘In the name of the loyal and decent citizens of New South Wales, I declare this bridge open!’

An impressive construction The Sydney Harbour Bridge was known as the ‘Iron Lung’ during the Great Depression, because it kept so many people in work. Its ‘curved’ arch is actually made from straight pieces of steel. It took nine years to build and cost over half a billion dollars in today’s money. The four pylons, which do not actually support the structure of the bridge, are covered in 40,000 pieces of granite from Moruya on the New South Wales South Coast. Almost six million rivets hold it together.

in 1912. By 1916, his design was ready, but it was the middle of the Great War, so the work was delayed. From 1900 on, motor cars, motor lorries and motor omnibuses had all become important forms of transport, as had trams. It was decided that the new bridge needed two train lines, two tram lines, and as many lanes for road traffic as possible. In the end, Bradfield allowed for what then seemed like the huge number of six traffic lanes!

The two arms of the bridge’s arch began to move out over the water in March 1929, with an arm coming from each side of the harbour, reaching towards each other across the gap. Until the two sides met in August 1930, hidden cables stopped them from crashing down into the water.

While the bridge was being built, 16 workers were killed on the job or died later as a result of their injuries. The bridge was finally opened to great fanfare in March 1932, with a parade and much celebration. A grand opening The one event most people still know about from the day the bridge opened was completely unofficial. Some conservative people were offended that Premier Jack Lang was opening the bridge rather than a member of Britain’s royal family or the king’s representative, New South Wales Governor Sir Philip Game. On 19 March 1932, as Premier Lang stepped forward to cut the ribbon, Captain Francis De Groot, a member of the right-wing New Guard, rode forward on horseback and slashed the ribbon with his sword, shouting: ‘In the name of the loyal and decent citizens of New South Wales, I declare this bridge open!’ De Groot was arrested, the severed ends of the ribbon were tied back together, and Lang performed the official opening ceremony.

Building begins Parts of The Rocks area in Sydney had been torn down in the cleanup after the plague epidemic of 1900. Another 800 homes were demolished to make way for the bridge. However, between April 1923 and when the bridge opened in March 1932, its construction kept many Sydneysiders in work. During the Great Depression, a time of great misery for many people, the Sydney Harbour Bridge was a symbol of hope.

Everyone who crossed the bridge on its opening day in 1932 received this special certificate.

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Doing it tough When people are out of work and barely have enough money to buy basic food and clothing, paying the rent comes low on their list of priorities. During the Great Depression, landlords wanted to be paid first. When they were not paid, they evicted the tenants from their houses. In some cases, people banded together to fight the police who came to force the tenants out but, in the end, the tenants had to go—the landlords had the law on their side. Those who were evicted accused the landlords of being greedy, and perhaps some of them were. However, some landlords were retired people who had put their savings into buying a house and so, when the rent was not paid, they did not have enough money for food or clothing. Scraping a living When money was tight, people often lived on bread and ‘dripping’—the animal fat that their grandparents had burnt in lamps. Others ate food like damper and ‘cocky’s

‘Roof rabbits’ During the Great Depression, people bought rabbits from the ‘rabbitohs’—street vendors. But they made sure the rabbitohs had skinned and dressed the rabbit carcasses with the paws still in place, because a cat without skin or paws looks very much like a rabbit, and nobody wanted to eat what they called ‘roof rabbit’!

joy’—golden syrup. Rabbits were also very welcome when they were available. Some people went fishing, while those with fruit trees in their backyards made sure none of the fruit was wasted. They would scrimp and save to buy enough sugar to make jam with the fallen fruit.

Sydney’s sandstone cliffs offered dry shelters that people could enclose, like this one at Kurnell.

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In winter, those who were lucky enough to have a wood stove would burn anything they could find. People also put sheets of newspaper between their blankets and sheets to help them keep warm. Young people left school as early as they could because it was easier for 14-yearolds to get jobs because they were paid less. Sadly, when they got older, they were sacked because they then cost too much. On the wallaby track Men trudged the city streets looking for work, but those who went ‘on the wallaby’ had it hardest of all. ‘On the wallaby’ probably originally meant living on wallaby stew, but it came to mean walking ‘on the wallaby track’— the faint paths made by animals hopping through the bush. These men went from farm to farm, hoping to get work, or at least a feed. In country areas, food was easier to get, even if money was short, so country people did not usually go hungry. However, when they went to the dentist or the doctor they had to pay with eggs or a leg of lamb.

In the cities, some out-of-work and homeless people moved into caves, or nearby bush or paddocks, where they set up tents or rough huts made from any building materials they could find. A glimmer of hope With gold at £5 an ounce, all the state governments, except that of South Australia, provided assistance to experienced prospectors—usually £2 a week for married men and £1 for unmarried men. In South Australia,

In winter, those who were lucky enough to have a wood stove would burn anything they could find. People also put sheets of newspaper between their blankets and sheets to help them keep warm.

Men headed for farming areas, hoping to get work, if only to earn their ‘tucker’. Others fished for their supper.

one lucky worker at a married men’s relief camp found a nugget worth about £60 while planting pines for the government. In 1931, 2,000 men were prospecting in Queensland alone. The gold hunters were encouraged by the tale of the ‘Golden Eagle’—a gold nugget worth almost £6,000—found by Jim Larcombe and his son near Kalgoorlie in 1931. A few prospectors in Queensland found deposits of tin or silver, but gold was the main target because, even in a depression, there was always a market for gold. Gold brought hope and, during the Great Depression, people welcomed even the faintest whiff of hope.

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Phar Lap after winning the Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico in 1932.

The mighty Phar Lap Many Australians love their sporting heroes, and one of the greatest in the 1930s was Phar Lap, a chestnut gelding foaled in New Zealand. Phar Lap began racing in Australia in January 1929, and he was a symbol of hope in hard times. The horse cost American businessman David Davis less than he expected, but he bought the horse based on its pedigree. However, when Davis saw the gangly horse with warts on its face, he refused to pay for its training. Harry Telford, the trainer, offered to lease and train the horse in exchange for two-thirds of any winnings. For a while, it looked as if Telford had the bad end of the deal, but he had faith in the ugly horse. That faith contributed to the legend that grew up around Phar Lap.

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Phar Lap after winning the 1930 Melbourne Cup.

Phar Lap had his first win in April 1929. He was then spelled, before winning again in September. Racing journalists were now taking notice of the horse, and he was soon the favourite for the 1929 Melbourne Cup, which was run in November. He came third.

Phar Lap raced in the Melbourne Cup again in 1930 and won—his 14th win in a row! In the 1931 Melbourne Cup he came eighth, but he was carrying the very heavy weight of 68 kilograms.

Toxic tonics

A suspicious death Telford’s lease on the horse ran out, so he used some of his winnings to buy a share in Phar Lap, and thus became the horse’s joint owner. Davis insisted on taking Phar Lap to America by ship and, on 20 March 1932, Phar Lap won North America’s richest race, the Agua Caliente Handicap. Then, on 5 April 1932, the magnificent horse collapsed and died in California.

It seems strange to use poisons like

In 1930, just before the running of the Melbourne Cup, a car with paper covering its numberplates had narrowly missed hitting the horse as it walked along a road. A few days later, two men in a car tried to shoot Phar Lap. They missed and drove away at high speed. People remembered these attempts to kill the horse and so, when Phar Lap died in the USA, people thought the worst. The rumour quickly spread that ‘our horse’ had been ‘poisoned by the Yanks’.

was to use very small doses—but, if they

strychnine and arsenic in medicinal tonics, but in the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century they were thought to be good for the blood and the heart. As well as being used as a tonic for racehorses, sportsmen such as marathon runners used tonics with strychnine in them. The trick got the dose wrong, they died.

Many Australians already believed that the Americans had poisoned champion Australian boxer Les Darcy in 1917. Darcy did indeed die in the USA and, in a sense, he was poisoned, but it was by bacteria. He was suffering from bacteraemia, or blood poisoning, which was caused by an unknown bacterial infection. However, he probably actually died from pneumonia. Phar Lap’s death may have been accidental. People who claimed to be ‘in the know’ said later that the horse was regularly dosed with a ‘medicinal’ tonic which contained either strychnine or arsenic. Parts of Phar Lap are now held in museums. His heart is in Canberra, his skeleton is in New Zealand and his stuffed hide is in Melbourne. Forensic examination of the hide recently showed that Phar Lap was given a large dose of arsenic 30 to 40 hours before he died. We do not know if that was what killed him, and we probably never will. But that did not matter to Australians during the Great Depression. As far as they were concerned, Phar Lap—their hero, their hope— had been ‘poisoned by the Yanks’.

Phar Lap raced in the Melbourne Cup again in 1930 and won—his 14th win in a row!

Although the first Melbourne Cup race was in 1861, the actual trophy (the ‘cup’) was not awarded until four years later.

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Bodyline bowling People often describe unsporting behaviour as being ‘not cricket’, but high-level cricket has always been about winning. The England–Australia test matches, known as ‘the Ashes’ series, were played in the 1930s in the summer in England, then two summers after that in Australia, then 18 months after that in England again. so there were two series every four years. In mid-1930, a young cricketer called Donald Bradman played a major part in defeating the English team based at the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) in England. As they prepared for the 1932–33 season in Australia, members of the English team were worried because they thought England would not be able to win until Bradman retired. The Australian crowd, who were well known for their barracking, did not like the new MCC captain, Douglas Jardine—and he probably did not like them. The Australians thought he was ‘posh’. Once, as he came in to bat, a barracker shouted, ‘Where’s the butler to carry the bat for you?’ Not surprisingly, Jardine thought the rude colonials did not show him the respect he deserved, so he was very keen to captain a winning MCC team. Beating Bradman After watching film of Bradman batting in the previous Ashes series, Jardine thought he had found a way to beat him. The aim was to use ‘leg theory’. When a batsman faces up to bat, the way he stands defines the ‘leg’ and ‘off’ sides of the pitch—the leg side is where his legs are and the other side is the off side. Leg theory requires the bowler to aim at the leg stump. This makes it hard for a batsman to hit scoring strokes to the off side of the field, so more fielders are placed on the leg side. This slows down the run rate, and so most batsmen will take risks. It is legal, but it sometimes produces boring cricket. Jardine observed that Bradman appeared uncomfortable with fast-rising balls ‘The Fighting Kangaroos’—caricatures of Australia’s 1932 test cricket team, a symbol of hope for Australia.

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After watching film of Bradman batting in the previous Ashes series, Jardine thought he had found a way to beat him. down the leg side. He summed this up by saying, ‘He’s yellow!’—a coward. So Jardine had his bowlers aim the ball, hard and fast, at the body or the head of the batsman rather than at the wicket. The Australian press called this approach ‘bodyline bowling’ According to them, it was intimidation, not leg theory. Batsmen did not wear helmets then, and the skull of Australian cricketer Bert Oldfield was fractured during one game. To be fair, the ball had come off his bat. However, bodyline bowling had been used to unsettle the batsmen and make them use their bats to protect themselves, so it was probably bodyline tactics that caused Oldfield’s injury.

Our Don Bradman After the bodyline series, Don Bradman went on to become one of Australia’s greatest cricketers. He collected an impressive list of achievements, including:

• averaging a test batting score of 99.94 runs

• scoring 500 or more runs in seven test series

• scoring 309 runs in a single day’s play.

One of our greatest batsmen, Don Bradman, in 1934.

Many Australians had listened to the game on the wireless and they were outraged. One delegate to the Australian Board of Control for International Cricket wanted to appeal to the MCC to act ‘in the best interests of the game’. Other delegates argued that the captain and team managers should deal with it. In the end, no action was taken. After the next West Indies tour, when the English players had bodyline bowling used against them, the laws of cricket were changed by the MCC to make sure that nobody ever again used the tactics that Jardine and his team had used in Australia. Many Australian sporting fans saw this as evidence that the English could dish it out but could not take it. Some members of the Australian public were now a little less impressed with everything British.

Aboriginal Day of Mourning Because the Rum Rebellion happened on 26 January 1808, people talked about that day long afterwards. So we know that the colony’s birthday was celebrated with a holiday, but nobody knows when that habit had begun. By 1818, the 30th anniversary of settlement, 26 January was a public holiday. For a long time it was known as ‘Foundation Day’ or ‘First Landing Day’.

Celebrating ‘Australia Day’ By 1826, the 38th birthday of the colony of New South Wales, a toast was made to ‘Australia’ at the anniversary dinner, but it was a long time before it was officially called Australia Day. In 1837, for the 49th birthday, a small regatta was held, with races for yachts, whaleboats, rowing boats called ‘gigs’, and ‘watermen’s sculls’—small racing boats. There were money prizes for first and second placegetters. That set the scene for future Australia Days as a day of celebration and fun, although complaints in the newspapers about drunkenness were a feature of the day as far back as 1808. There was a bigger celebration in 1888, when the settlement reached its centenary, and it was even bigger for the sesquicentenary in 1938—the 150th anniversary of the first landings of white settlers. Aboriginal concerns People had been questioning the celebrations for some time. An official, Rudston Read, noted a conversation that he overheard in 1853:

I heard a native in the town of Sofala … chaffing a sergeant of mounted police … asking him what business had he or any other white fellow to come and take his land, and rob him of his gold? What would he … say, if black fellow went to England and ‘turn em Queen out’? Read said this caused plenty of laughter from the gold diggers who were listening. Obviously, none of them took it seriously but, by 1938, some Aboriginal people had decided it was time to get serious. Rather than joining in the sesquicentenary celebrations, they said that on 26 January 1938 they wanted a national Day of Mourning. Jack Patten, President of the Aborigines Progressive Association, put it well: [W]e mourn over the frightful conditions under which the aboriginal has existed and is existing to-day in the continent which once belonged to our forefathers. We want ordinary citizen rights— old-age pensions, the maternity bonus, relief work when unemployed, and full rights to education for our children. We do not want to be herded in Government reserves and treated as a special class … we do not forget the bad deal we have had from the white man.

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thought the Day of Mourning was a bad idea because things were improving. It is likely that his disapproval may have been intended to make people think about the issue, and the Day of Mourning debate certainly raised awareness about the treatment of Aboriginal people in Australia. However, while Unaipon mentioned the improvements in conditions that he saw coming for Aboriginal people, there were actually very few improvements over the next 30 years. Aboriginal groups gained the right to vote at different times, but all Aboriginal people had gained this right, in both state and federal elections, by 1965. In 1967, Australians voted overwhelmingly in a constitutional referendum to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws to help Aboriginal people and prevent discrimination. Australians also voted to finally count Aboriginal people in the official census.

Australia at war again

There are few accounts of the 1938 Day of Mourning and Protest, but it was remembered in 1998.

On 1 January 1938, anthropologist Professor Peter Elkin praised the Day of Mourning, saying that a great deal needed to be done. ‘All who are familiar with the history of the contact of black and white in Australia must sympathise with both the protest and the appeal,’ he said.

Members of churches and teachers of Aboriginal people related how the ‘natives’ often had trouble accessing their own money, did not have the vote and were sometimes refused permission to marry. Aboriginal author and journalist David Unaipon, whose image adorns Australia’s $50 note, wrote that he

In 1967, Australians voted overwhelmingly in a constitutional referendum to give the Commonwealth the power to make laws to help Aboriginal people and prevent discrimination.

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From about 1936 onwards, a number of people realised that Germany was rebuilding its armed forces and so they began speaking about ‘the coming war’. Some preferred a policy of ‘appeasement’. They said that Germany had been harshly treated after the Great War and that anything was better than another war like the Great War. Others thought there was no threat at all, including former President of the United States of America Herbert Hoover. ‘Statesmen are more generally alive to the dangers than they were in 1914,’ he explained. As he was a former US President, some people took notice of his words. By January 1939, the New South Wales Government introduced planning and training for ‘air raid precautions’. In Adelaide, the Defence Society offered lectures on the care and use of gasmasks. In February, The Courier-Mail in Brisbane ran an article on gasproof kennels because, it said, gasmasks did not fit dogs. Australia and the world were getting ready for the war that they knew was coming. A ‘melancholy duty’ Because Australia followed Britain’s lead, with no questions asked by either our leaders or the Australian people, World War II began for us in the same way as the Great War had. Prime Minister Robert Menzies addressed the nation on 3 September 1939:

Fellow Australians, it is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that, in consequence of the persistence of Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her, and that, as a result, Australia is also at war. Earlier in 1939, Menzies still did not think there was any threat to Australia. While other Australians were worried about Japan, Menzies had approved the sale of scrap iron to Japan in 1938. His opponents nicknamed him ‘Pig Iron Bob’. Five days after the war started, the British Government asked for Australian troops to help defend Britain. As a very ‘British’ Australian, Menzies drew up plans to send Australian forces, including aircrew, to Singapore and North Africa to support Britain. A very different war World War II was a very different war to the Great War. Air power changed everything. People understood this when they read how German pilots used dive-bombers to destroy cities and blast troops. There would be no trench warfare this time: bombers in the air as well as tanks

Prime Minister Robert Menzies in a broadcast to the Australian people, announcing that the nation was at war.

Because Australia followed Britain’s lead, with no questions asked by either our leaders or the Australian people, World War II began for us in the same way as the Great War had.

on the ground meant there would be no getting bogged down in trench warfare as the armies had been in the Great War. The new war was also a very different war because almost no horses were used. A few horses and mules carried supplies up the Kokoda Track in Papua New Guinea, where vehicles could not go, but that was unusual.

It was a very different war because women played a larger part. In the Great War, women had worked as nurses, but in World War II they also did clerical work and drove trucks, as well as many other tasks. And it was a very different war because the Australian mainland came under direct attack. The first page of the broadcast—it was three pages long.

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Defending Australia Once again, Australia was at war. We did not seek the war, but found ourselves caught up by events. This war lasted even longer than the Great War. Even though there was no risk of Australia being invaded, many people were convinced that we would be. While invasion did not happen, Australia was attacked in this war—a number of times by submarines and by bombers. War had come to us.

LEFT: In 1941, when this map was printed, all the fighting was far from Australia.

LEFT: In December 1941, Japan

attacked Hawaii and many Asian nations. ABOVE: An RAAF pilot near a Bristol

Blenheim bomber.

Training aircrew In 1939, Australia planned to support Britain with an air ‘expeditionary force’. It was to have six squadrons— a total of 96 aircraft. Because Australia had no suitable planes, the aircrew (pilots, gunners, navigators and wireless operators) who had been trained in Australia, were to be sent overseas to fly British Royal Air Force (RAF) aircraft. In Australia, this was called the Empire Air Training Scheme, although it had different names in the other participating countries. Paid for by Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, most of the training was going to be undertaken in Canada, where the trainee pilots would be safe from enemy attacks. By 1945, about 27,000 men were actually trained in Australia and then sent to Britain, while only 10,000 trained in Canada, and 700 went to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Squadrons of Australians Air war involved many losses. Aircrew were killed or taken prisoner when their planes were shot down, so replacements were continuously needed. By the end of World War II, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) had enlisted about 217,000 men and sent 40,000 of them to Britain. Of the 6,500 RAAF crew who died during the war, 5,400 were flying for the RAF, and 3,500 of those died while flying bombers over Europe.

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New RAAF pilots received their basic training on Tiger Moth biplanes, designed in 1931, before moving on to other planes.

The British had promised that the Australians would fly together, but the Australian flyers in the RAF were not allowed to form Australian squadrons, even though the squadrons numbered 450 to 467 were called ‘Royal Australian Air Force’. In fact, when 462 Squadron was formed in September 1942, it had only one Australian aircrew member. At the end of the war in Europe, thousands of Australian flyers were scattered across 220 different RAF squadrons.

Many people think the British Air Ministry saw Australia as a source of ‘cannon fodder’—colonials who could be sent wherever they were needed. Most Australians were not happy with this. The Australian Labor Party always insisted on the squadrons remaining Australian, and even conservative politician Robert Menzies spoke of the ‘surrender’ of RAAF personnel to Britain. The Canadians seem to have been treated better. In January 1943, the Canadian bomber squadrons were formed into No. 6 Group, which was commanded by a Canadian air marshal. For the most part, the Australians put up with it, but sometimes they protested when junior RAF officers were given command of the ‘RAAF’ squadrons. However, in the end, the young men from the other end of the world just got on with the job and did their bit.

Campaigning in North Africa World War II involved just as many countries as the Great War (World War I) had, but fighting happened in many more parts of the world. There were several enemies who operated independently but in collaboration with Germany. Of these, Italy was the weakest because its troops were largely poorly equipped and trained, and they were poorly motivated. The soldiers of the 2nd Australian Imperial Force (AIF) who were sent overseas in 1940 were Australia’s best and fittest troops, but they were still not particularly well trained. However, they had signed up to fight, and they regarded themselves as crack troops, well able to cope in all sorts of places. Training in Palestine When the first AIF troops reached Egypt in February 1940, they went to Palestine—a dry, arid place where

they were trained to fight in desert conditions. Luckily, some of their more senior officers had been in the Middle East during the Great War, and these officers passed on their World War I skills. The troops could have been sent into battle at any time but, until they were needed, they worked on developing their fighting skills. They trained and then trained again, waiting to be called for duty. Then Italy declared war in June 1940 and invaded Greece in late October. The Greek army chased the Italians out of Greece and into Albania, capturing a lot of Italian guns, tanks and trucks. There was talk of sending Australian troops to the Greek island of Crete, but this was soon dropped. Meanwhile, the Italian army had moved out of Libya, east into Egypt. As in the Great War, the enemy wanted to block the Suez Canal. In December 1940, the Allies began to push back. The army units included Indian, New Zealand, Australian and British troops. On 3 January 1941, the AIF entered the Libyan town of Bardia and, two days later, they had taken 45,000 prisoners and 130 tanks, at a cost of 500 casualties.

Allied soldiers, mounted on camels at Barqah in Libya. In army terms, the camels are ‘at ease’.

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The Australians made fun of being called ‘rats’, even making medals that starred a rat.

The Rats of Tobruk The Australian soldiers who defended Tobruk, digging a maze of tunnels like rats in a nest, proudly took on the name that German propaganda broadcasters used to belittle them, describing them as ‘caught like rats in a trap’. The Australians used the term ‘Rats of Tobruk’ as a badge of pride. They even made themselves ‘medals’ featuring a rat. The medals were made from metal from a German bomber that the Rats had shot down using captured German guns.

Besieged at Tobruk On 7 January, the Allies surrounded the coastal town of Tobruk in eastern Libya. It took two weeks for British and Australian forces to enter the town. They captured 25,000 Italians, 208 guns and 87 tanks, with about 450 casualties. In February, the AIF took Benghazi, but then the Germans came to help the Italians. On 12 February, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, known as the Desert Fox, arrived with German troops and the Allies were pushed back towards Egypt. In April 1941, Rommel’s forces took Benghazi and Bardia, and the 9th Division of the AIF and British units retreated to Tobruk on 10 April. On 16 May, they were still there. Rommel was ordered to leave the town for the Italians and to invade Egypt. In June, an operation to rescue the besieged Australian troops failed. In July, the Germans bombed Tobruk and, in August, one Australian brigade was evacuated by sea, with the rest leaving in September and October. The Australian force was 14,000 strong but, by the time they left, around 3,000 had been killed or wounded The area around Tobruk under siege.

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and 941 had been taken prisoner, partly because they had often made night patrols into the lines of the besiegers. They proudly called themselves the ‘Rats of Tobruk’, after a German propaganda broadcaster described them as being ‘caught like rats in a trap’. Defending the Suez Canal While the ‘Rats’ were holding out in Tobruk, an Anzac Corps had been created, using Australians, New Zealanders and a British brigade. They were sent to Greece, which was now being attacked by the Germans. The Anzacs found themselves outnumbered and outgunned, so in late April 1941 they left at night on ships to fight another day. In May 1941, Australian troops reached Crete, although only for a short time. This long, narrow island lies between Greece and Libya in the Mediterranean Sea, making it an excellent base for attacks on the Suez Canal. On 20 May, a force of 9,500 German airborne troops attacked. The first arrivals were mauled by the Allied defenders but, once the Germans managed to take control of Maleme airfield, it was easy for them to bring in more troops. German bombers forced British warships out of the area, more German reinforcements came in by sea, and the Allies withdrew from the island of Crete. They left behind 1,742 dead and 2,225 wounded soldiers. Another 11,370 men were taken prisoner. Nine warships were lost and about 2,000 sailors killed. More than 7,000 Germans had died, but Germany could now easily attack the Suez Canal.

The AIF also fought the Vichy French—the French Government—who had kept some of France’s possessions, including Syria. The Allies wanted to stop the Germans setting up bases there. They did not realise that the Germans had lost interest in Syria because they were planning to invade Russia. Battling for El Alamein Three battles were fought in Egypt in 1942 at El Alamein. The town was situated in a gap between the Mediterranean Sea and the Qattara Depression—

Dawn and ready for battle: tanks at El Alamein, where Rommel’s advance was stopped.

a wasteland of marshes and dunes. The gap was the only easy route into Egypt. Rommel was turned back at El Alamein by an army of British, Australian, New Zealand, South African and Indian troops. The Australian 9th Division played a key role in two of the three battles. The 2/28th Australian Infantry Battalion (part of the 9th Division) was almost wiped out when it was surrounded by German tanks on the night of 26 July 1942. They lost 65 men and 490 were captured in an attack at a place called Ruin Ridge, but that was the end of Rommel’s advance. From July to November 1942, the Australian 9th Division suffered nearly 6,000 casualties defending Britain at a time when Australia was itself being attacked.

From July to November 1942, the Australian 9th Division suffered nearly 6,000 casualties defending Britain at a time when Australia was itself being attacked.

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Looking to America Menzies versus Churchill In 1939, at the start of World War II, Prime Minister Robert Menzies offered Australian troops to defend Britain. The members of the opposition Labor Party were worried that this left Australia undefended. However, until Australia was actually attacked, Menzies’ approach made sense, even if most people thought Japan was a real threat. They also knew that Australians would suffer if Britain was defeated by Germany. During 1941, Menzies spent three months in Britain arguing for a ‘Dominions man’—someone from the former British colonies—to be in the British War Cabinet. It would seem Menzies wanted to be that man. Some think he even hoped to replace Winston Churchill as prime minister. Churchill seems to have disliked Australia. This may have started when he was a war correspondent during the Boer War. A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Australian poet and war correspondent, described Churchill as ‘a man to be feared if not liked’, aggressive and swaggering.

A few weeks later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the USA entered the war, and Australia was suddenly under threat because the Japanese had invaded Malaya and Indonesia.

In 1908, Churchill had tried unsuccessfully to stop the US Great White Fleet from visiting Australia, and the Gallipoli campaign in the Great War had been his idea. If Menzies was indeed conspiring against Churchill, it would have made him less fond of Australians. When Menzies returned to Australia, his party forced him to resign as prime minister. His government depended on two independent politicians. They now supported the Labor opposition, making John Curtin the Prime Minister. A few weeks later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, the USA entered the war, and Australia was suddenly under threat because the Japanese had invaded Malaya and Indonesia. Australia was in danger of being cut off from the rest of the world. A changing relationship When two powerful British battleships—the Prince of Wales and the Repulse—were sunk by Japanese aircraft on 10 December 1941 off the coast of Malaya, Curtin realised that Britain would probably never be able to defend Australia in the same way that Australia had helped Britain. Curtin was being realistic: Britain needed the former colonies—and many people in Britain still regarded Australia as a colony—to provide support to the ‘Mother Country’, but the British could not help Australia. Britain was short of everything, and it was getting supplies from America. That was the background to a New Year’s message released by Prime Minister John Curtin on 28 December 1941, in which he said that Australia could no longer rely on Britain for its defence.

Prime ministers Robert Menzies and Winston Churchill at Downing Street, London, 1941.

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Australia had sent its fittest and best-trained soldiers to fight overseas, leaving just new recruits and the poorly trained and poorly equipped militia to defend Australia. Curtin wanted the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) to come back home, and so he refused Churchill’s demand that the Australians defend Burma to help stop the Japanese taking India.

Changing allegiances In a statement on 28 December 1941, Prime Minister John Curtin made it very clear where Australia’s new allegiances lay:

Without any inhibitions of any kind, I make it quite clear that Australia looks to America, free of any pangs as to our traditional links or kinship with the United Kingdom.

John Curtin, Prime Minister, 1941–1945.

The Australian army used Winston Churchill’s face on a poster to recruit new soldiers.

Curtin insisted that the AIF return to Australia. Churchill again asked Curtin to give him troops for the Burma campaign and, without waiting for an answer, ordered the troopships to go to Burma. Curtin must have made some serious threats, because Churchill gave in and the AIF 7th Division came home. Six weeks later, the Japanese army controlled Burma, but at least Australia had a reserve of trained and experienced troops at home. If Churchill had won the argument, they would probably have become prisoners of war. Australia’s relationship with Britain had changed.

War comes to Australian shores The Japanese army had been fighting in China long before World War II started. At the same time that Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Japanese troops started invading Thailand, Malaya, Singapore, the Philippines, many Pacific islands and Hong Kong. In January 1942, the Japanese landed in the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia), before taking over islands close to Papua New Guinea and landing troops near the town of Lae. It seemed to the Australian public that Japan planned to invade Australia. However, the Japanese had realised how hard it would be to manage a continent the size of Australia if they invaded. Apparently, rather than invade, they wanted to isolate Australia so they could claim it later as their territory during peace negotiations. Papua New Guinea invaded Part of the Japanese strategy was to deny Australia any military bases outside the mainland. This made Port Moresby in Papua New Guinea a target. If the Japanese came by sea, they would find only a few militia battalions. These were poorly trained men and boys who had signed up to serve ‘in Australia’—a term which included Australian territories such as Papua New Guinea. These troops were not there to fight; they were there to work on improving airstrips and other facilities. Most people assumed the Japanese would come by sea, and that was the Japanese plan, but it came unstuck. While the army codes used by the Japanese were hard to break, decoders in Melbourne were able to break the Japanese fleet’s code. When the decoders read the Japanese naval messages about transport ships being sent to a certain place, it was not hard to guess that they would be carrying troops. The battle of the Coral Sea On 4 May 1942, a fleet of ships carrying Japanese troops left Rabaul in Papua New Guinea. They were protected by destroyers, cruisers and an aircraft carrier. The theory

Part of the Japanese strategy was to deny Australia any military bases outside the mainland.

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was that off Port Moresby the carrier’s planes and the cruisers’ guns would ‘soften up’ the town before the troops stormed ashore and took it. The battle of the Coral Sea changed all that. US Admiral Chester Nimitz’ ships attacked the Japanese fleet in the Coral Sea. It was a first in naval history, because the opposing ships never saw each other. They fought using aircraft launched from aircraft carriers. The result was a costly victory for the USA, as they lost more ships than the Japanese. However, the Japanese lost their only aircraft carrier, which meant they had no air cover. They had to turn back, and the Japanese navy then decided that helping the army make landings was probably not a good idea. Defending the Kokoda Track The Japanese army thought again and, just as Australian General Sydney Rowell had predicted in February 1942, they found a line on the map: the Kokoda Track. They thought there was a road across Papua New Guinea.

Lines on a map can be deceptive. People like Bert Kienzle, who had developed a goldmining industry at Kokoda, knew that there was no single track, no clear path to follow. It was just a network of paths through the jungle, maintained by the tread of bare feet as people moved from village to village. These paths made a sort of rollercoaster ride of desperate climbs and terrifying drops, over and over again. The network was no road and it never would be.

‘Track’ or ‘trail’? After the first known crossing of Papua New Guinea in 1905, the 96-kilometre-long route from the north coast to the south coast was called a ‘track’. Soon, people knew there was a network of narrow paths, and ‘the track’ was just one of many ways through. When fighting began, it was called ‘the track to Kokoda’ or just ‘the track’. When American General MacArthur took over the command of all of the Allied forces, his American publicity machine, based in Melbourne, used the American word ‘trail’, instead of ‘track’. Australians still called it a track, but ‘Kokoda Trail’ became the name of an Official Battle Honour for units of the Australian army.

Australian troops on the Kokoda Track—in the jungle (left) and on the coast near Port Moresby (above).

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The bombing of Darwin in 1942—USS Peary burns behind HMAS Katoomba in Darwin Harbour.

Perhaps by chance, some Australian militia were told to walk for eight days up the track and guard an airstrip at the village of Kokoda. Once they got there, they were to walk down to the north coast, just three days away, and collect extra stores brought in by a lugger—a trading boat. They and their stores could have been flown in on a 20-minute plane ride, but everything was in short supply, including planes and fuel. The troops were taken out of Port Moresby in trucks on 7 July and, after travelling for about 60 kilometres, they walked on from where the road stopped. On the night of 22 July 1942, an Australian patrol found Japanese troops landing on the northern coast. On 23 July, some members of the patrol fought a much stronger Japanese force before slowly moving back. They radioed Port Moresby to report what was happening. From then until late September, the Australians, with reinforcements trickling in, fought a vicious war, slowly wearing down the Japanese forces. Finally, the Japanese got close enough to see the lights of Port Moresby, but they were now in reach of the Australian artillery. The Japanese troops were blasted, they retreated, and the Australians chased them back along the track. On 2 November, the first Australian troops re-entered Kokoda village. By January 1943, with help from American troops, the Japanese had been driven off.

There had been other fighting in Papua New Guinea: in August and September, a Japanese attack on a new military base at Milne Bay was defeated. Once again, the codebreakers knew the attack was coming, so there were many troops in place and the attack failed. Technically, both Milne Bay and the Kokoda Track were in Australian territory, but there was worse to come for Australia. Many parts of northern Australia were within flying range of Japanese bombers. While strategic targets were few, any bombing of Australia would damage morale. Darwin is bombed The most spectacular Japanese bombing raid was on Darwin, but Townsville, Katherine, Wyndham, Derby, Broome and Port Hedland were also attacked. The attack on Broome left 70 people dead. Other targets were Milingimbi, an island off the coast of Arnhem Land, and Horn Island just north of Thursday Island. The raid on Darwin came on 19 February 1942. Nearly 200 Japanese aircraft flew 300 kilometres from four aircraft carriers. By the end of the 40-minute-long raid, about 250 Australians had been killed and 400 wounded. Because of wartime censorship, accurate figures are hard to find. If the Japanese were aware of the likely effect on morale of

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A Japanese view of the South Pacific Ocean and the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 1944.

their bombing, so were the Australian authorities, and the versions of the event that were allowed to appear in the press were carefully managed.

The attack came as a surprise in Darwin, even though missionaries on Bathurst Island had seen the raiders flying over them and had sent a warning by radio. The news of the attack was not delayed too much, but the number of ships destroyed was hardly mentioned in the news, even though 10 ships were sunk and many more of the 45 ships in the harbour were damaged. There were reports of people fleeing south, but again the numbers were understated. The authorities did not want people to panic. The Japanese commander of the attack on Darwin, Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, had led the raid on Pearl

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Harbor in Hawaii six weeks earlier. The mass of bombs used on Darwin was about 80 per cent of the amount used at Pearl Harbor, so it was a very strong attack. It would have been a very frightening experience for those on the ground, especially the civilians. Almost half the population of Darwin headed south in cars, trucks and on motorcycles, and even on foot, after the bombing. Three days later, 278 servicemen were still missing, but they eventually reappeared. Obviously, Australians were not ready for this sort of war. In the southern states of Australia, newspaper articles suggested that the Japanese raid on Darwin was in preparation for an invasion of the country. So when midget submarines attacked Sydney at the end of May 1942, people feared the worst.

The attack on Sydney After the Darwin bombing, many Australians were worried about the Japanese invading Australia. While Allied codebreakers would have had early warnings of Japanese fleets preparing to invade Australia, attacks on key sites like ports were more likely and harder to predict. In May and June 1942, the American battle cruiser USS Chicago was in Sydney Harbour. It was partly protected by a boom-net near the harbour entrance, stretching from near Watsons Bay to Middle Head. Some parts of the net were kept up by buoys, while other parts were strung between timber piles driven into the seabed. The boom-net had sections that could be swung open to let ships in and out. These floating gates were pulled aside and back again by an old ferry. Midget submarines The gates and the gaps they left presented a problem, as did the fact that the work was not finished. Work on the boom had started in January 1942, and it was not finished until August. When the Japanese midget submarines arrived on the night of 31 May, it was therefore easy for them to get into the harbour. There was another problem: when the submarines were spotted, it took two hours before anybody in charge would believe that there were submarines in Sydney Harbour! ‘Midget submarines’ had been used unsuccessfully by the Japanese in the attack on Pearl Harbor, so the authorities knew that they existed. When one of the submarines

There was another problem: when the submarines were spotted, it took two hours before anybody in charge would believe that there were submarines in Sydney Harbour!

surfaced near Dobroyd Head, it was seen by a fisherman. He ran about 5 kilometres to the nearest police station to report it, but nobody would believe him. The most reliable report came from a boom watchman who heard the Japanese crew talking while they were trying to free the first submarine, which was tangled in the boom-net. He radioed in a report. The submarine’s crew realised that they could not get free and so they blew up their vessel with demolition charges. It was only then that the Australian navy finally accepted that something was wrong!

When a searchlight operator on USS Chicago saw the second submarine, the gunners opened up with machineguns and cannons, but their guns could not be tilted down far enough to hit the submarine. At least one

A damaged Japanese midget submarine being raised (above) and one of the torpedoes from the submarines on display (left).

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of the cannon shells bounced off the water and hit Fort Denison—a small fortified island in Sydney Harbour near Circular Quay. Other shell fragments were found later in the suburbs of Cremorne and Mosman. The submarine submerged and moved to a point where it could see Chicago in silhouette, backlit by construction lights on Garden Island. The Japanese crews were on what was probably a suicide mission, and yet for some reason they did not immediately launch a torpedo at Chicago. The lights on Garden Island stayed on for over an hour and the submarine would have had a clear view, but it fired its torpedoes five minutes after the lights went out. Both torpedoes missed Chicago, but one sank the ferry HMAS Kuttabul, which was being used as a floating dormitory for sailors. In all, 21 sailors died and ten were wounded. Small vessels rushed around, dropping depth charges, and making and losing contact with the submarines. In the process, they damaged a third Japanese submarine, and so it could do no harm. The Japanese midget submarines had failed in their main mission of sinking a major warship, but they certainly succeeded in their second aim of bringing alarm and despair to Sydney. Many people fled to the Blue Mountains, far from the sea. And, not surprisingly, in the winter of 1942 there were spectacular falls in property prices in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, which faced the harbour. The massive battleship, USS Chicago, docking at Woolloomooloo Bay, Sydney, between 1941 and 1943.

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Women at war Britain had led the way in the Great War by using women in wartime jobs as munitions workers, bus drivers, porters, postmen, Land Army workers, WAACs, WRNSs (pronounced ‘wrens’) and VADs. WAACs belonged to the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps, and the WRNSs to the Women’s Royal Naval Service, both of which were founded in 1917. The Voluntary Aid Detachment was founded in 1909, and VADs were civilian women who were Red Cross nurses with basic medical training. They carried out low-grade and often menial work, at least officially. In a crisis, they often did much more. Women’s military services Australian VADs were not allowed to travel overseas during the Great War, so some of them went to Britain as civilians and joined up there. Later, Australia let its VADs travel to war zones. In World War II, they were given more medical training, but they mainly treated soldiers who were convalescing in hospitals and on hospital ships. They also drove trucks and ambulances. The Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) was formed in March 1941. It was designed to free up men to serve overseas, and it became the largest of the women’s services. The WAAAF was disbanded in 1947, but it was revived in December 1950 during the Korean War as the WRAAF. The WRAAF later merged with the RAAF, with the first women pilots graduating in 1988.

Women at a Small Arms Ammunition Factory checking cartridges, Australia, 1944.

The Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) began in April 1941, mainly to provide land-based telegraph operators. Like the WAAAF, it was disbanded after the war, and it started up again in 1951. Women were allowed to serve on navy ships after 1983. The Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS) was created in August 1941. Then, in 1944 and 1945, some of them served ‘in the islands’—in Australian and Dutch New Guinea. This service was disbanded in 1947. The Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC) was started in April 1951, and women have been part of the Australian army ever since. Working on the land The Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) was regarded by some as the ‘poor relation’ of the other women’s services, but it was essential to the war effort. Officially, the AWLA was only formed in July 1942, but it had been functioning for two years before that in Hobart and Launceston. In October 1940, Australia set up the Department of Labour and National Service, with Harold Holt (later prime minister of Australia) as its minister. The department was based on the department of the same

The cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 14 June 1941.

The Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA) was regarded by some as the ‘poor relation’ of the other women’s services, but it was essential to the war effort.

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The uniforms worn by members of the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS) in 1943.

name in Britain, and it quickly acquired significant powers. The department could ‘manpower’ people, making them work where they were needed. The national arm of the AWLA handled policy, and the rest of the organisation was state based. By 1942, the government had moved a lot of men off farms and into the armed services and war industries. The women of the AWLA were aged between 18 and 50 years old, and they had to be British subjects or immigrants from Allied nations. Some were full-time workers who volunteered for 12 months service at a time. They received a uniform, as well as work clothes and equipment. Others, called ‘auxiliary members’, got a badge, work clothes and essential equipment on loan. The auxiliary members worked for shorter periods. Women in the AWLA worked a 48-hour week, and they were paid 30 shillings a week—far less than male workers were paid for the same work. The women usually worked growing and picking vegetables and fruit, raising pigs and poultry, and working with sheep.

To boost recruitment, moves were made to give the AWLA workers the same status and rights as the other three women’s services. The regulations were still not complete when the war ended, 30 months after the decision was made. This meant that the members of the AWLA were thanked nicely by the government, but were then sent on their way without receiving the benefits that women in the other services got. More than 40 years

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later, many of them were finally declared eligible for the Civilian Service Medal. Outside of the services, women worked in a number of areas that had been regarded as ‘men’s work’. Western Australian Premier John Forrest had learned the hard way when he gave women the vote that a right, once granted, is very hard to take away. However, it was not until the 1960s that the daughters of women who had worked in the four services or had driven and repaired buses, trams and trucks were ready to stand up and be heard. The Great War was called either ‘the war to end wars’ or ‘the war to make the world safe for democracy’, but it had proved to be neither. A wiser world gave no brave names to World War II: it was just called ‘the War’. In the end, in many ways it proved to be the war that paved the way for women in Australia to gain some gender equality.

Rationing By January 1938, the British Government had printed 40 million ration cards, one for every Briton. These were to be used when war came, and the main aim was to prevent the profiteering that had happened during the Great War. Australia was slower to bring in rationing, with regulations for food and clothing rationing coming into effect on 14 May 1942, although petrol rationing had been introduced earlier.

Everybody assumed that rationing would end when the war did, but the sugar ration was the first to go, and that was not until July 1947.

Colouring the petrol In 1939, Australia imported all of its oil, and usually had enough petrol in storage tanks to last for only three months. There were only two oil refineries in Australia, and they both closed in 1942. There had been no petrol rationing in Australia during the Great War, although it had been considered towards the end. In April 1939, The Cairns Post told its readers that petrol rationing was likely, mentioning the possibility of running cars on ‘producer gas’ (carbon monoxide) made from charcoal. Similar stories soon appeared in other newspapers from as far away as Geraldton in Western Australia, so somebody, somewhere in the government must have been thinking about the issue. On 23 August 1939, just ten days before World War II began, the Minister for Supply, Richard Casey, said that there would soon be plans in the ‘War Book’ to cover petrol rationing. The first draft of the Commonwealth War Book was started in 1938, and it would have gone through regular revisions. The War Book simply said that ‘on the threat of war’ a plan for rationing petrol should be prepared— it did not provide detailed plans. On 5 September, just after the war began, Australia was told that petrol rationing would start on 16 September 1939. People immediately started buying and hoarding petrol. The government tried to encourage the use of producer gas, but supplies of the gas-making apparatus, and even supplies of charcoal, had to be found. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) was called in to help. The tax on petrol was increased, and colouring was added to petrol. Red petrol was for private cars, while cheaper blue petrol was for commercial vehicles. Inspectors could hand out heavy fines for anybody using the wrong petrol. The public complained about the new tax, and rationing was delayed until after the 1940 election. In June 1940, petrol rationing got the goahead to start on 1 September, a year after

the war began. The aim was to cut petrol use in half, but this quickly became a cut of one-third. Ration coupons were designed. They had to be signed when petrol was bought and they expired after two months, with different coloured coupons for each period to beat counterfeiters. In June 1941, the private motorist’s ration was cut from enough for 2,000 miles per year to half that amount. Black markets sprang up. People complained about having no petrol to get to church, or to go fishing or to visit relatives. A few bakers and milkmen went back to using horses and carts. Food and clothing coupons Food and clothing were also rationed. Everybody assumed that rationing would end when the war did, but the sugar ration was the first to go, and that was not

A pamphlet giving planning tips (above right). Each family had numbered ration coupons and knew which numbers could be used each week (right).

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until July 1947. Butter and tea purchases were restricted until 1950. For a week, the tea ration for an adult was about 45 grams, sugar was 450 grams and butter was 225 grams. Meat rationing, which began in early 1944 and lasted until 1948, was for 1 kilogram each week. The idea was to make sure food and clothing were shared fairly, but there was another side to it: if people could not spend they would save more, and members of the public were asked every week to put more of their money into war loans. These loans, women were told, would bring their loved ones home sooner. When eggs and milk were in short supply, they were also rationed, but many suburban backyards had a ‘chook run’ with several laying hens. Anybody with fewer than 20 fowls could sell their eggs as they liked without any restrictions.

Cloth was rationed, so people had to re-use old clothes.

Censoring the mail In April 1944, two women in Parkes in New South Wales were fined 28 shillings each for a ‘rationing coupons offence’. The evidence was found in a letter that one of the women had written to her husband, who was serving in the military in Papua New Guinea. One of the women had given the other 20 clothing coupons and received ten shillings as payment. The person censoring the letter reported them. The women pleaded guilty, but one complained that the soldiers had been cheered as they marched off to war, but now their relatives were being prosecuted for ‘trivial offences’.

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Control of rationing was managed by coupons. An adult got 112 clothing coupons a year. Advertisements for clothing had to show how many coupons were needed, as well as the price. The idea was that the retailer would pass the coupons up the line to their suppliers, thus keeping everybody honest. However, a letter-writer warned readers of a Perth newspaper to take scissors when they went shopping and cut out the required number of coupons themselves to stop the shopkeeper cutting out a few ‘spares’.

Information was also rationed. The press was censored to stop information getting out that might ‘help the enemy’, and people’s mail was also read and censored. Some people were even convicted of rationing offences based on information they had shared in letters to family members. There were other unexpected victims as well. In January 1944, as meat rationing was about to start, the King Edward Home for Dogs in Sydney reported that they were putting down 50 pets a day, all surrendered by owners who could no longer feed them.

Fighting in Korea The ‘threat’ of communism After World War II, one of the biggest winners was international communism. This was based on the idea that individual nations would be replaced by communities in which the wealth belonged to the

workers. The communists believed that, in time, the different governments would wither away and everybody would live in peace. Some people were frightened by such ideas. German Chancellor Adolf Hitler tried to enrol Western Europe in a coalition against the United Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)—communist Russia. When that did not work, Hitler signed a peace treaty with the USSR and attacked the rest of Europe in 1939. Then, in June 1941, he attacked the USSR. In May 1945, Russia dominated most of Europe, as far as Germany. In the Far East, the Chinese nationalists and communists had ‘mopped up’ the Japanese forces, but then the communists turned against their nationalist allies and beat them in 1949. Suddenly, a big block of the world was communist. The Korean War At this time, the ‘domino theory’ emerged. People feared that, just as the Japanese had poured down through Asia and attacked Australia, the communists were now poised to rush through Asia, taking nation after nation, and finally invading Australia. So, when the communist Chinese helped the North Korean communists against the non-communists in the south of Korea, the world’s non-communist nations moved in to help.

People feared that, just as the Japanese had poured down through Asia and attacked Australia, the communists were now poised to rush through Asia, taking nation after nation, and finally invading Australia.

The result was a vicious war which is officially still going on across a ‘temporary’ armistice line on the 38th parallel of latitude. To the north, there is the communist state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and to the south there is the democratic capitalist state of the Republic of Korea.

Just as Europe had divided up Germany’s territories between the West and the USSR, Korea, which had been occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945, was now divided up between the USSR, which controlled everything north of the 38th parallel, and the USA, which controlled everything to the south. In some ways, the Korean War was good for Australia’s postwar economy. The armies fighting in Korea required warm uniforms, and that meant that Australian wool was needed. The fighting began in June 1950, when North Korean forces invaded South Korea. It ended in July 1953. After the North Koreans had taken most of the south, a force of 21 nations, which had a United Nations (UN) mandate, forced them back again. The UN force included an Australian army battalion and an RAAF squadron, but it was commanded by General Douglas MacArthur from the USA. The UN troops pursued the North Koreans through North Korea and into Manchuria in China. Thirtyeight Chinese divisions then entered the fight and pushed the UN forces south, before the UN armies pushed north again. In the end, a settlement was negotiated and they were basically back where they had started. A peace accord has never been signed between North and South Korea, and so a state of war still officially exists. Troops on patrol, somewhere in Korea, in 1951. There was no jungle fighting in this war!

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Building for the Future During the Great War, the only thought was to win but, in World War II, the government talked about what a postwar Australia should be like. It developed plans in many areas, such as education, employment, social welfare, health, conservation, industry organisation, town planning and regional development, and immigration—all to build a better Australia. In the years after the war, some of our dreams became real— we finally starting manufacturing an Australian car; we welcomed migrants from many lands, making Australia’s culture richer; we started constructing the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme; television arrived; and almost everyone who wanted a job had a job.

ABOVE: Italian migrant market

gardeners near Adelaide in 1960. LEFT: Teaching materials used LEFT: Main

Tunnel T2 under construction at the Snowy Mountains Scheme in 1957.

in 1949 to teach English to the people we now welcomed as ‘New Australians’.

Helping refugees By the end of World War II, much of Europe was in chaos. Hundreds of buildings, towns, cities, railways and roads had been destroyed, and refugees were everywhere. Displaced persons In late March 1945, five weeks before the war ended on 8 May, the Adelaide Advertiser reported that Europe had eight million ‘problems’—displaced persons. During the war, many of them had gone voluntarily to Germany seeking better pay, but others had been forced to go there. After the war, those from Belgium, the Netherlands and France were sent home so their police forces could work out who had collaborated with the Germans and punish them. However, the Russians and the Poles had all been forced to work in Germany.

In late March 1945, five weeks before the war ended on 8 May, the Adelaide Advertiser reported that Europe had eight million ‘problems’—displaced persons. Once Germany collapsed, Russian displaced persons could be sent home, but many of them did not want to live under Russian dictator Joseph Stalin. So, once the war ended, they sought safety in Western countries, such as Australia. Sadly, some of the Allies behaved treacherously, sending war heroes back to Russia, where many innocent people ended up in Russian prison camps. Many of the survivors of the Polish air force had fought gallantly in other countries against Germany throughout the war. They did not want to return to Poland, which was now controlled by the Russians. This couple arrived in Australia in 1948 on the Norwegian ship, the Svalbard.

A program for a concert at Bonegilla, Victoria, a hostel for newly arrived migrants, 1949.

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A costly trip Travel to Australia by steamship was cheaper than by aircraft. Today, a return flight to Europe costs about two weeks pay for an average worker, but in 1946 it cost more than two years pay! No wonder most migrants opted for the much longer and more uncomfortable sea voyage. But, even with the cheaper option, to help pay for their fare, migrants agreed to work for two years wherever they were sent to in Australia.

Migrants used to come to Australia on large ships.

The British Government did not want the Poles to stay in Britain, so they tried to persuade Australia to take some of them. A new word had come into popular usage in Australia during the war—‘reffo’. Short for ‘refugee’, it was not an offensive term when Australian poet Leon Gellert used it in a newspaper article in April 1945. However, by January 1947, politician Jack Lang clearly meant to be offensive when he referred to Arthur Calwell, the Minister for Immigration, as the ‘Minister for Reffos’. On the surface, the governments in Canberra and London both emphasised the need to bring people to Australia from Britain but, while politicians said one thing, the planners said another. Australian politicians, from Joseph Cook onwards, used the catchcry ‘populate or perish’, but planners knew that Australia needed skilled people, not just people who could dig, cut and carry. Australia was moving into a world where machines did much of the hard work, and so the country needed people who could design and make machines, as well as people who could use, mend and repair them.

Engineers, scientists, machinists and other people with technical training were taken in, as Australia welcomed skilled workers from around the world—so long as they had ‘white skin’. The government thought that, coming from warmer places, southern Europeans would be able to work in the hotter parts of Australia, so Yugoslavs, Greeks and Italians were also welcomed. Settling in Australia Travel to Australia was as unpleasant for many of the migrants in the late 1940s as it had been in the 1800s, but at least steamships got to Australia faster than sailing ships. They found that the ships were still crowded and noisy, and food that suited migrants from one nation often did not suit those from another. So migrants suffered on the trip out to Australia and, when they arrived, they often suffered even more in the ‘migrant hostels’ where they were housed. The biggest hostel was at Bonegilla, near Wodonga in Victoria. More than half the postwar migrants—around 300,000 of them—spent some time there. They learned to speak English, and they also gained a new name—‘New Australians’. On the other hand, migrants from Britain were labelled ‘Ten Pound Poms’ because they paid £10 each to migrate to Australia.

Once the migrants left the hostels, an ABC radio program called English for New Australians broadcast lessons for them. Bernhard Hammerman, a prewar refugee, played the part of ‘Paul’, a foreigner whose mistakes were corrected by the other radio actors. Hammerman lost the role when his pronunciation became insufficiently ‘foreign’! The new arrivals did not have a lot of choice as to which jobs they worked in, and their qualifications were often ignored. Those who refused jobs were pressured until they accepted whatever was offered. After two years, the migrants and their children were free to make their own lives, and many of them did very well. Migrants have made Australia a more diverse, richer and more interesting place.

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The Snowy Mountains Hydro-electric Scheme opened up the high country for all Australians to enjoy.

Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme ‘Endless’ resources Most of the first white settlers in Sydney regarded the land as a resource to be used. If it could not deliver a profit in some way then they thought it was being wasted. They cut down trees to build huts and quarried stone to make larger buildings. Clay was dug to make bricks, and the brick ovens were fired with local firewood. On a new farm, trees were cut down for timber or firewood, or for bark to make huts, or to clear the ground so grass could grow. Rivers running down to the sea were dammed to supply water in times of drought, or used to

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turn millwheels, or channelled across paddocks to make crops grow. Rivers could also be stocked with fish to provide food. People believed that the sand could be removed from beaches and dunes because more sand would wash in. They thought clay and mud from gold dredging could be dumped in rivers because the constant flow of water would carry it away, sooner or later. In The West Australian newspaper in 1905, a scientist visiting Australia spoke of the ‘somewhat new science known as ecology’. However, it took the public a while to understand how species and the environment interact with each other, how cycles of floods and droughts affect the Murray Valley, or how dead trees in a forest are important parts of the natural ecosystem. They did not understand that, in nature, nothing is wasted. Harnessing the mighty rivers Australians had barely recovered from the shock of the Great War when the Great Depression arrived. Then came World War II, and even after the war they still had to put up with rationing and hard times. In the late 1940s, Australians needed some good news, and the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme looked like a positive plan towards recovery. Each spring, melting snow in the high country of the Australian Alps, the Snowy Mountains, fed into the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, then finally

Each spring, melting snow in the high country of the Australian Alps, the Snowy Mountains, fed into the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, then finally flowed ‘unused’ into the Southern Ocean.

flowed ‘unused’ into the Southern Ocean. When people recognised this in the early 1900s, blocks of irrigated land were opened up near the Murrumbidgee River. There was just one problem: in some years, there was not enough water during summer. Even in a drought, some water trickled out of the mountains, all summer. It flowed north and then west in the Murray and Murrumbidgee rivers, or down the Snowy River, south to Victoria’s Gippsland region and into Bass Strait. The water came from a giant mountaintop ‘sponge’ of sphagnum moss. People thought dams in the high mountains could hold the spring floods, and release the water when farmers needed it. Then engineers asked about all the ‘wasted’ water in the Snowy River. They dammed the Snowy and sent its water north through tunnels to the Murray-side of the alps where it could be used for growing crops and generating clean, free hydro-electricity. Once a project has begun, a new government cannot usually stop it completely. On 17 October 1949, just eight weeks before the December federal election, the Labor government began work on the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme. They probably wanted to lock the project in place, as well as wanting to be seen to be doing something positive. When a new government was elected, the work continued. And it kept going throughout the 23 years of Liberal Party rule, finishing on time and on budget in 1974 under the Labor Party government of Prime Minister Gough Whitlam.

snowboarding. In summer, many tourists also arrived, keen to walk or mountain bike in the high country. Others rode the chairlifts to the ridges, before following level walking tracks. The Snowy River Hydro-Electric Scheme proved that Australia was a ‘can-do’ nation. However, there were environmental costs. Many animal breeding cycles are triggered by floods but, with dams, floods are rare, and today there are still discussions about the importance of environmental flows (the amount of water rivers need to stay healthy). Even the carbon cost of such a project is now thought to be higher than people expected. On average, it takes about 400 years for a hydro-electric scheme to cover all of the carbon costs associated with its development. Despite this, the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme was a significant achievement.

Australia’s own car Originally, motor vehicles were entirely made and assembled in Australia, like the Thomson steam car. Then vehicles were imported whole, but later the main parts—engines, chassis and wheels—came by ship and the bodywork was made in Australia. The car bodies were done by people already familiar with making vehicles— carriage-makers. Car bodies being made at the Holden and Frost Motor Body Works, Adelaide, about 1925.

More than 100,000 people from 30 countries, living in over 100 camps and seven new towns, completed 1,600 kilometres of roads and tracks, 145 kilometres of tunnels, 16 dams and seven hydro-electricity stations. Over 25 years, 121 workers died building the project.

Then, as the last workers moved on, the area was opened up for a new Australian winter pastime—snow sports, mainly skiing and later

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Driving a Boomerang? Among the names which were considered for Australia’s first car were ‘Melba’, ‘Emu’, ‘GeM’, ‘Austral’, ‘Woomerah’, ‘Canbra’ and ‘Boomerang’! The name finally chosen was ‘Holden’, after the founder of the company that developed it.

The Holden company James Alexander Holden sold harnesses and saddles in Adelaide in 1856. In 1885, he joined forces with Henry Frost, a carriage-builder. In 1905, James’ grandson Edward joined the firm of Holden and Frost and, by 1908, the company was involved in repairing the upholstery in motor cars. During the Great War, German submarines tried to sink as many cargo ships as possible. So, to reduce the number of ships sailing, overseas car-makers started sending just chassis and engines, instead of whole cars, to Australia. The local importers needed people who could make car bodies on a large scale. Holden and Frost took up the challenge, and kept going after 1918. The company changed its name to Holden’s Motor Body Builders (HMBB), and it was making 12,000 car bodies a year in 1923. In 1924, HMBB began making car bodies for General Motors—an American company which bought HMBB in 1931, thus creating General Motors Holden (GMH). During World War II, the company’s factories switched to war work. Then, towards the end of the war, the government started looking around for somebody to make an all-Australian car. In November 1944, both Ford and GMH were interested in the idea. By March 1945, discussions were getting serious and the government had received proposals from both companies. It also expected to get at least one proposal from a British manufacturer. By the 1950s, people began to fly to their holiday destination and then rent a car.

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The GMH plan assumed a delay of about two years after the war finished. As that was promised in March 1945 and the war looked like ending soon, it was accepted. In May 1945, just days before the Germans surrendered, GMH said that the delay would now be a mere six months. On 8 May, the day the Germans surrendered, laws were passed to make an Australian car possible. An opposition speaker in the Federal Parliament said that he hoped the result would be tractors costing just £200 and cars and utilities costing £300. Soon after, GMH went back to predicting a likely delay of two years. By late July 1945, overseas companies Chrysler-Dodge and Nuffield were interested in making an Australian car as well but, a year later, only GMH was still in the race, and the company was ‘tooling up’. In April 1947, newspapers reported that the cars were being secretly road-tested. By February 1948, the promise was for ‘late this year’ and, on 2 September, a completed model was finally shown to the press. It was to be named the Holden and would probably cost £600 (nearly twice the annual basic wage for men and three times for women).

It had been 92 years since James Holden had started his business, 43 years since the company started working on cars, and three-and-a-half years since the idea was first floated for an Australian car, but Australia now finally had its very own car.

Robert Gordon Menzies (later Sir Robert), Australia’s longestserving prime minister. He stayed in power because he was a very skilful politician who knew how to deliver a simple message.

The workers wanted more money to compensate for their dangerous jobs. Because their work was vital, their strikes were effective. Not surprisingly, people were fed up with the shortages caused by strikes and rationing. They were ready for a change, and they thought a new government would make a difference.

The Menzies era Striking workers By 1949, Australia was ready for political change. The British Government had demanded that Australia keep rationing petrol to help Britain’s economy. At the same time, Australian unions were getting ‘Bolshie’—a British term, based on the word ‘Bolshevik’, the old Russian name for communists. There were communists in many of Australia’s unions, but they were in a minority. Saying ‘the unions are getting Bolshie’ was a way of attacking the unions. Coalminers went on strike in the winter of 1949, at a time when people relied on coal fires, gas made from coal, and electricity generated by steam, in turn made by burning coal. On the docks, waterside workers went on strike without warning, holding up the mail and the delivery of goods. In fairness to the strikers, coalmining was a difficult and dangerous job, and many miners died of ‘black lung’ from coal dust, or in explosions or cave-ins. It was hard, physical work. Working on the wharves was just as dangerous. Most goods were in bales or boxes that had to be hauled by hand or using small cranes.

Menzies takes control Led by Menzies, the Liberal Party swept into power in 1949 and immediately abolished petrol rationing. The United Australia Party (UAP) had collapsed in 1941 after Menzies was deposed as leader, but he was re-elected as leader after Labor’s landslide win in 1943. He reconstructed the UAP as the Liberal Party of Australia in 1945, but lost the 1946 election and considered leaving politics altogether. Then Ben Chifley, who had become prime minister when John Curtin died in July 1945, decided in 1947 that the government should take control of the banks. Menzies, who was against this, had found a cause to fight for, and so he stayed in politics. Menzies had been in Europe, where the Cold War between Russia and Western Europe had started and another real war seemed likely to break out. He argued that the Labor Party’s union allies were sympathetic to the communist Russians and that the government taking over the banks was a socialist act—and communists liked socialism! His logic was poor, and the members of the left-wing parties said he was ‘kicking the Commo can’, but the tactic worked. Once he was prime minister, Menzies introduced a bill to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia. Labor still had a majority in the Senate and so they amended Menzies’ bill but, with the Korean War under way, Menzies put the bill forward again.

Once he was prime minister, Menzies introduced a bill to outlaw the Communist Party of Australia.

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If Labor had rejected the bill twice, Menzies would have gone to an election and probably won again, so the Senate passed the bill and it became law. Then, in March 1951, the High Court declared the law unconstitutional and, in September, the Australian people narrowly defeated a referendum to amend the Australian Constitution to make banning the Communist Party lawful. So, the Communist Party still legally existed.

Australians survived with the Communist Party in their midst, although there were ongoing effects such as the ‘Petrov Affair’, when two Soviet diplomats defected to Australia. Later, the Democratic Labor Party was formed by those who split from the Australian Labor Party, because right-wing union organisations in the Labor Party thought that there was undue left-wing influence from communist union leaders. A consummate politician Menzies probably believed all the scare stories about international communism, but he was also a very astute planner. At that time, politicians who were good orators and could deliver a convincing speech were admired. People said that Menzies responded to interjectors with quick, witty answers. His replies were certainly clever, but they were not necessarily quick. When he was interrupted, he would stop, begin the sentence again, finish it, and then respond to the interjector. To deter competition, Menzies found ways to remove rivals for the prime-ministership. He offered them high offices so that they would no longer be competitors. For example, Sir Garfield Barwick became a chief justice and Richard (Lord) Casey became governor-general.

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Menzies was lucky to lead Australia in a time of growth and prosperity. One of his greatest achievements was creating the Murray Committee. Its 1957 report recommended opening new universities and granting more scholarships so that many young Australians could be the first in their families to get a university education. Menzies had always cared passionately about Australian education. Even when his party’s fortunes were at their lowest, in 1944, he argued that Australia needed more universities.

Expansion of the suburbs In the early days of settlement, the size of a city or town was limited by the need to get supplies of food and water in and waste out. On top of that, everybody needed to live near where they worked, so people packed in close together. Unfortunately, this meant it was easier for diseases to spread. When modern forms of transport were developed, people could live further away in what are called suburbs. Living on a quarter-acre block At the end of World War II, the suburban dream involved a nuclear family—two parents and several children—living in a home on a quarter-acre (about 1,000 square metres) block, often with a car in the garage and a white picket fence. This ‘paradise’ offered room to breathe, with perhaps a small vegetable garden and a few fruit trees. People wanted to live ‘the good life’.

Most suburban blocks were smaller than a quarter of an acre, but they were still large enough to cause ‘urban sprawl’ as the suburbs spread out from city centres. That brought all sorts of problems. As new land was opened up, councils and government authorities struggled to provide services—roads, parks, libraries, schools, power, gas, water, drainage, sewerage and public transport.

Public transport was a major problem. The very first arrivals found no public transport, so they bought cars. This meant that there was no demand for public transport. Later, as more people moved into the suburbs, they had to buy cars as well. Later still, when people asked for public transport, they were told that everybody had cars, so there was no need for buses and trains. The dream of living in a home on its own block remained popular, but often each new suburb would be filled with families of much the same age. Schools had to be built to accommodate the children of these, often young, families. Then the demand for schools shrank as the children grew up but stayed in the area with their parents. When the parents retired and moved out of the area, new families moved in and the number of schoolage children went up again. Older suburbs usually had a better mix of age groups because, over time, the cycles evened out. However, in the newest areas—the furthest-out suburbs—the age balance was still often missing. The standard of medical treatment improved during the twentieth century. Hygiene was better and children were inoculated against a number of killer diseases, so young children were much less likely to die. Parents began to have fewer children, and that left them with

The milkman called each morning to deliver milk in glass bottles, a butcher’s boy collected orders and delivered the meat, the grocer did the same, and even fruit was sold from carts. more money to spend on making a better life for both themselves and their children. More children stayed at school for longer, more went to university, and more learned skills. Most of the hard physical work had once been done by unskilled labourers, but now there were machines to dig ditches and holes or move heavy loads around. Australia needed trained workers who could make, look after, use and repair those machines. Skilled people earned more money, and so people grew richer and moved out into the suburbs. The corner shop With families getting smaller and building blocks getting larger, the population density—the number of people to each hectare—fell. The old retail model in a suburb involved a number of corner shops, plus the occasional cluster of shops with a greengrocer, a butcher, a grocer, a chemist and a few other specialty shops like hardware, clothing and shoes. In the 1940s, small children were often sent to the corner shop to buy groceries, and they could usually get there without crossing a road. If they had to cross a road, These photos, taken between 1964 and 1970, show an era that was passing—(far left to right) the picket fence on a quarter-acre block, the milkman delivering milk to suburban homes and the corner shops that used to be common.

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Television comes to Australia

Selling the dream of eventually owning your own home—an advertisement for a new suburb in Newcastle.

there were not many cars and so children would usually hear them well before the cars got too close. The milkman called each morning to deliver milk in glass bottles, a butcher’s boy collected orders and delivered the meat, the grocer did the same, and even fruit was sold from carts. A baker’s cart came each weekday with bread, and the iceman delivered large blocks of ice for the ice chests that would soon be replaced by gas and electric refrigerators. These systems did not work very well in thinly populated new suburbs, which had few homes per hectare and few people per home. There were not enough people within walking distance of a corner shop and the delivery people had to travel too far. The corner shops survived for longer in the old, heavily populated inner suburbs, but the small groups of shops either became shopping centres or were bulldozed and replaced with home units, from which people drove to large shopping centres. About the 1970s, town planners and architects started arguing for more compact living to reduce the urban sprawl. Once again, the suburbs and people’s lifestyles changed.

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Early attempts As early as 1885, inventor Henry Sutton had tested the ‘telephane’, a system for sending images of the Melbourne Cup race to Ballarat. Australia’s first experimental television transmission happened in Melbourne in 1929. It was called ‘radiovision’. There were serious television trials in 1934 using radio station VK4CM, broadcasting to 18 receivers in Brisbane. However, none of these trials led to further developments. After World War II, many trained radio and radar technicians had the skills to work in television. With the Olympics being held in Melbourne in 1956, the time seemed right to introduce television. Decisions had to be made about technical standards, but many of these standards had disadvantages. If Australia adopted American standards, more programming would come from America. If British standards were used, then British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) material would be favoured. There were no commercial television stations in Britain in the 1950s. Not surprisingly, British standards were adopted for transmission, but the Liberal government wanted to allow commercial television. By 1956, American programs could be delivered in a format that all the Australian channels could use. The government was worried that television might fail, and so it allocated commercial licences to established newspaper publishers. Broadcasting to the nation Early television sets had a small screen in a large box that contained the circuits and a giant cathode-ray tube. They were called ‘black-and-white’ TVs, but they were really dark grey and either greenish or bluish. The early electronics used thermionic valves—thumb-sized tubes that did the same work as a transistor but gave out more heat.

Early television sets had a small screen in a large box that contained the circuits and a giant cathode-ray tube.

Taking Australia to the world Many people around the world became aware of fictional versions of Australian life through television programs like the children’s drama Skippy the Bush

Kangaroo, and popular ‘soapies’ like Home and Away and Neighbours.

Men on TV appeared to be wearing white shirts, but actually they wore blue, because white looked grubby in the transmission. Fabrics were plain, with no stripes or fine checks because they caused ‘strobing’ when the scan lines of the camera interacted with the pattern in the fabric, and that was hard on the eye. Where possible, scenes were taken in a single shot, and a lot of programs were broadcast live. Footage could be inserted into a program but, in the earliest days, there was no videotape, so the footage came from movie film fed through a machine that turned the film into a television signal.

When wireless began, stations hired stage performers, and a few of them succeeded in the new medium. With the arrival of television, radio performers and programs were often poached, although only radio quiz shows seemed to survive the shift to television. The take-up of television was slow. At the end of the 1950s, less than 5 per cent of homes in Melbourne and 1 per cent in Sydney had a TV set. The 1956 Olympics were available on TV in Melbourne but, until a coaxial cable was laid in 1963, there was no transmission from state to state. By 1967, television stations could get satellite links to overseas and, in 1975, colour television reached Australia.

From the 1980s on, multiculturalism was promoted on television with the establishment of the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), which brought Australians a wide range of television programs from around the world. Two victims of television were suburban cinemas and drive-in theatres, because many people now stayed at home to watch ‘the box’ rather than going out to see a movie. Television continues to evolve, with analogue broadcasts now replaced by digital transmission.

A rehearsal for a television program in the late 1960s.

Through television, well-known people became more recognisable, including politicians such as Prime Minister John Gorton, seen here watching television in 1968.

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Controversial Issues Many factors drove the social changes of the 1960s—fear of atomic bombs, desire for better education, awareness of the importance of the natural environment and, most importantly, the sudden understanding that, if enough people stood together and demanded the same thing, governments could be forced to change their minds. People could hear about issues on the radio or read about them in a newspaper, but the impact of actually seeing events on television was huge. Australia changed.

ABOVE: A huge crowd crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge during a Walk for Reconciliation, 2000. RIGHT: Singer Paul Kelly, writer of protest songs.

LEFT: An Aboriginal girl in Cape York, Far North Queensland.

The Vietnam War Seeking independence In the 1850s, Napoléon III of France was the ruler of a small empire. His uncle, Napoléon Bonaparte, had sold a large slice of North America, called ‘The Louisiana Purchase’, to the USA in 1803. After Bonaparte was defeated in 1815, the other European powers acted to try to stop France from ever again becoming a major power. In 1854, many Australian colonists were upset that the French had seized New Caledonia and sent convicts there. But, in 1859, most Australians were not particularly interested when the French began taking over Cochin China, part of what was later called Indochina, which now includes Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. When the Japanese proclaimed the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere and then invaded most of SouthEast Asia during World War II, they said it was time for Asians to stand together against the exploitation of the

colonialists. In reality, the main aim of the Japanese was probably to have colonies of their own. In 1945, as the Japanese began to lose the war, the Asian nations sought independence from them. In China, the nationalists and the communists had been allies against Japan but, after Japan was defeated, they began to fight each other. America supported the nationalists, while Russia, keen to promote international communism, supported the communists. Communist theory says that revolution can come about only when the people rise up against their oppressors, and not through a war. In real life, such grand theories do not always work and so, through war, the communists took over China and international communism seemed to have won. India and Pakistan became independent from Britain in 1947, but the Dutch wanted to keep Indonesia as their colony. The PKI—the Indonesian Communist Party— formed a peaceful coalition with other parties that were trying to win control, and then waited for the right time

In this 1944 Japanese board game, players travel to other countries of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.

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A conscript off to Vietnam says goodbye in Perth (above) and, in Sydney, the anti-war protests got larger and larger (above right).

to act. Gaining independence from the Netherlands took four years, and it happened because of strong support from India, Australia and the USA. In late December 1949, the Dutch recognised Indonesian independence and withdrew their troops. The USA and Australia immediately recognised the new nation. Vietnam The situation with Vietnam was different. The Vichy French Government effectively gave Indochina to the Japanese in 1940. Throughout World War II, the USA supported the Viet Minh—a coalition of Vietnamese nationalists and communists. In September 1945, British and French troops invaded Vietnam. This was the beginning of the First Indochina War, in which France was supported by the USA. The French were beaten at Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and Vietnam was divided into a communist north backed by China, and a non-communist south backed by the USA. The first US military advisers appeared in South Vietnam in 1950, their numbers increasing after 1954. In 1965, the first US troops went to South Vietnam, and the USA then asked its allies to help. Britain and Canada, who were members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), refused; however, the United States’ allies in the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) agreed, with Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Thailand and the Philippines all sending troops. These countries agreed to do this because they feared that recent history would be repeated. Japanese troops had invaded much of Asia in the 1940s, and now politicians painted a fearful image of international communism moving south in the same way. Each nation

Moratorium marches Unlike many of the earlie r wars in which Austra lia was invo lved, there w strong opposi as tion at home to A u st ra li a’s involvement in the Vietnam War. There were huge an tiwar ‘Morat orium’ march around the co es untry. This w as partly because it w as the first w ar that peop le saw firsthan d on their te levision scre ens. The oppositi on to the war w as of te n hard for Australi an troops figh ting in Vietn am to accept—eith er then or n ow.

was seen as a potential domino which, in falling to communism, would knock the next nation down. It was a simple theory and, in hindsight, it was wrong, but it was accepted by many at that time. Conscripting Australian troops Australia lacked the troops needed to provide a battalion in 1965 and a full task force in 1966, so the government introduced conscription. All 20-year-old men had to register, and then there was a ballot based on date of birth. If their birth dates were selected and the young men passed a medical test, they had to leave their jobs

If their birth dates were selected and the young men passed a medical test, they had to leave their jobs and join the army.

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and join the army. They were given military training and some were sent to serve in Vietnam. There were various ways to avoid conscription, including claiming to be a pacifist, but objections on political grounds were not accepted, despite a growing groundswell of political opposition to Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Those who tried to ‘dodge the draft’ risked being sent to jail.

In the end, the communists won in Vietnam, but the tide of international communism had run out of momentum and no more ‘dominoes’ fell. By then, more than 3,000 Australian troops were wounded fighting in the Vietnam War, and 500 men died, including 200 conscripts.

Dismissing a government The election of a Labor government at the end of 1972 came as a shock to the Liberal–Country Party coalition, which had been in government for 23 years. Labor Party leader Gough Whitlam had led his party into power with one of the greatest Australian political slogans—‘It’s time!’—and promises of change. Twenty-three years is a long time in opposition and the members of the new Labor government had no previous experience as ministers. That inevitably caused problems. Once in opposition, the Liberal–Country Party coalition pursued a blistering campaign of negativity—as every opposition does. Governments can be defeated if the opposition can force enough government members out or get them to change sides. Oppositions try to force an election when the government is unpopular. Governments stay in power by keeping their allies close and by holding an election when the government is popular. Only the governor-general officially has the power to call an election. However, according to Australian parliamentary conventions and the Constitution, the

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Prime Minister Gough Whitlam after the dismissal of the government (top). The election slogan ‘It’s time’ (above).

governor-general can call an election only when advised to do so by the government. Australia has two houses of parliament—the House of Representatives and the Senate. The Senate can defeat or change any bill, but it cannot introduce ‘money bills’—the bills that provide the government with money to spend on running the country. This leaves the Senate with a negative role, because it can still veto a money bill—called ‘refusing supply’. If supply is refused, the government has no money to keep going and it must call an election.

The rules for electing senators are complicated, and usually neither side wins a majority. The final decision, the balance of power, often lies with a handful of independents and members of minority parties.

A double dissolution If the Senate continues to refuse to pass legislation, the Australian Constitution says that the prime minister can advise the governor-general to call a ‘double dissolution’. This means that all positions in both houses of parliament are declared vacant and all members and senators must face re-election. If the Senate still refuses to pass legislation after a double dissolution, a joint sitting of both parliamentary houses is held, with a simple majority deciding the outcome. In 1974, the opposition’s refusal of supply was dealt with in this way. In politics, many rules are set out in the Constitution, but other rules exist as unwritten rules called conventions. These are usually based on courtesy and decency. To gain a small advantage in the next election, due in 1977, the Labor government appointed lawyer and Labor Senator Lionel Murphy to a vacant place as a judge on the High Court. This annoyed the opposition, but it was within the rules. Then the Premier of New South Wales, Liberal politician Tom Lewis, decided to ignore a longstanding convention. This convention was that a state government appoints a replacement senator who has been nominated by that senator’s party. Instead, Lewis appointed the Mayor of Albury, Cleaver Bunton, who was not aligned to any party, to replace Senator Murphy. This outraged both the Labor Party and the executive of Lewis’

Liberal Party. Bunton understood the convention and, while he was a Liberal appointee, he supported the Labor government on all the 1975 money bills. The next break with convention came when a Queensland Labor senator died and, instead of appointing the person the Labor Party had nominated, Queensland Premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen appointed Albert Field. Although Field was a member of the Labor Party, he was an opponent of the Whitlam government. The Dismissal Field had not yet taken his seat when the crisis that led to ‘the Dismissal’ emerged, so the Senate was still one member short. When a senator from one party is absent, it is the convention that the other party arranges for one of its senators to also be absent from the Senate. This makes sure that when the senators have to vote on legislation, the results are fair. Because the federal opposition knew it could probably win an election as the government was unpopular, it ignored the convention and did not withdraw one of its senators. As a result, the opposition now had a majority in the Senate and refused supply, which meant that the government could not do anything and would have to call an election. While negotiations were going on to persuade the opposition to grant supply, Governor-General Sir John Kerr joined in secret discussions with the opposition and conservative lawyers. On 11 November 1975, he dismissed the Labor government, appointed Liberal opposition leader Malcolm Fraser as prime minister, and accepted Fraser’s advice to call an election. Labor was swept out of office in the election, and Australian political life reached a new low from which it has probably yet to recover.

Advancing Australia During the short time it was in government, Gough Whitlam’s Labor government made some significant changes. Among many other initiatives, it abolished the death penalty, introduced legal aid for those who could not otherwise afford a lawyer, made tertiary education free, and introduced a new national anthem, Advance Australia

Fair. Australia’s new national anthem, Advance Australia Fair.

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Conserving the Tasmanian wilderness In the 1960s, people started thinking differently about the Australian environment and how to protect it for the future. The world population was growing fast, air and water quality was getting worse in many cities, fisheries were failing and desert areas were getting larger. Television programs were showing graphically what was happening in other countries with droughts, famines, floods and other natural disasters. Australians started questioning the old idea that the environment was only important if it could be used for growing food or making money. Sandmining was stopped in New South Wales and Queensland, and

people even began asking whether building dams was always a good idea. Campaigns for the environment started being organised by ‘greenies’—people who believed that the natural environment was valuable even if governments and companies could not make any money from them. A forest is not just a collection of trees—it is a web of living things that need and support each other. With ecosystems, all species are important, but without wiping them out, it is very hard to identify the most important ones—the keystone species. Environmental education By the 1970s, environmental educators were encouraging their students to learn about the environment, care about it and take action to protect it. They said that if any two of these things happened then the third would follow.

This photograph of the Franklin river, called Morning Mist by Peter Dombrovskis, helped the campaign against the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, in Tasmania, to be successful.

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Television programs showed what would be lost to the world if action was not taken to protect their environment. These programs gave people knowledge and made them care: action soon followed. Scientists began to build up case studies. For example, on poor-quality land in the Myall Lakes National Park, Macrozamia plants—cycads— often grow near the Sydney red gum (Angophora costata) rather than with the more common Eucalyptus trees. Angophora trees have holes and hollows where branches have broken off. Termites live in the trees and hollow out the insides. Brushtail possums live in the hollows. They eat the orange outside coverings of the Macrozamia seeds and drop the rest of the seeds near the trees, where they germinate. Macrozamia roots ‘fix’ nitrogen, improving the sandy soil. The trees grow better, providing more heartwood for the termites, and more hollows for the possums. So a forest is definitely much more than just a bunch of trees! When people knew that, they campaigned to stop sandmining there. Opposing the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam In the 1980s, an educated environmental movement confronted the Tasmanian Government’s plan to dam the Gordon River in Tasmania. It was proposed that two dams, including the Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, would generate 180 megawatts of hydro-electricity. While this scheme was described as being ‘clean and green’, it would in fact be neither. At the very least, new roads would divide animal habitats, which can lead to extinction of species. Roads also cause erosion and the silting-up of rivers, and they introduce weed seeds. The new, educated opposition knew about the damage caused by an earlier scheme on Lake Pedder in Tasmania. They had opposed that and lost, but they were determined not to let it happen again. The supporters of the proposed Gordon-below-Franklin Dam knew that if they could get work started, it would be harder to stop and, if they got the work completed, it could never be undone. The stakes were high.

Television programs showed what would be lost to the world if action was not taken to protect their environment.

Protesters against the damming of the Gordon River and its effect on the Franklin River, at the opening of a federal Liberal Party election campaign, 1983.

The planned dam would give work to unemployed people, and its continuing operation would provide more jobs. Because of this, about 70 per cent of Tasmanians at first supported building the dam. However, when the film The Last Wild River was shown on Tasmania’s two commercial television stations, and the magical photographs of Peter Dombrovskis and Olegas Truchanas were published, the mood soon changed. Heavy machinery was being moved in even as a committee of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris declared the area a World Heritage site in November 1982. Protesters blockaded the area and, on 14 December 1982, the arrests began. More than 1,200 protesters were arrested and more than 500 were jailed.

With a federal election due on 5 March 1983, action escalated on 1 March. The next day, Dombrovskis’ photograph Morning Mist appeared in mainland newspapers, with the caption: ‘Could you vote for a party that would destroy this?’ The federal Labor Party had promised to preserve the area, and it was swept into power in Canberra. The new Federal Government ordered work on the dam to stop, but the Tasmanian Liberal government kept it going, saying that the Commonwealth had no power to stop it. Finally, on 1 July 1983, the Australian High Court found, by a margin of 4 to 3, that the Commonwealth had the power to prevent work in a World Heritage area. The environmental scene had changed forever.

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scant explorations, the early explorers decided that the Aboriginal population was very small and lived only on the coastal fringe. In other words, they were convinced there was plenty of terra nullius land for them to use for farming. Later, when the European settlers realised that Aboriginal people lived throughout Australia, it was too late for them to turn around and go home. An alternative translation of terra nullius could perhaps be ‘finders keepers’—the settlers had found the land and now they were going to keep it. Even in the early days of white settlement, a few white people sympathised with the Aboriginal people. In October 1840, explorer Edward John Eyre wrote in his journal about the spearing of a white youth by an Aboriginal man: We should remember … that our being in their country at all is, so far as their ideas of right and wrong are concerned, altogether an act of intrusion and aggression … they cannot comprehend our motives for coming amongst them, or … in remaining, and may very naturally imagine that it can only be for the purpose of dispossessing them … our presence and settlement, in any particular locality, do … dispossess the aboriginal inhabitants. Cartoonists like Judy Horacek helped Australians to see the unfair treatment of Aboriginal people.

Aboriginal land rights Claiming terra nullius The original justification for British settlers taking up land in Australia was that they thought nobody owned the land. There were no fences, no farms, no boundary markers and no rulers saying, ‘This is my land, go away!’ So the British said it was terra nullius— a Latin phrase meaning ‘land belonging to nobody’. Did terra nullius apply in Australia? After sailing along the coast with James Cook and landing at only two places—Botany Bay and Cooktown—botanist Joseph Banks concluded that the continent was ‘thinly inhabited’, and so he recommended that a settlement party be sent to Botany Bay. The first white settlers to arrive in Australia in 1788 encountered a few Aboriginal people living along the coast. When they travelled inland, they did not recognise any plants or animals as bush tucker. Based on their

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Very few white Australians in the first 150 years of settlement saw the issues that clearly. An Aboriginal man who spoke in 1853 about going to England to ‘turn em Queen out’ was greeted with smiles but not with nods of agreement. Queen Victoria had the title deeds to her property, but the Aboriginal people had no title deeds to their land—the white people had them instead. In 1938, a few white Australians, mainly churchmen and academics, supported a Day of Mourning to mark the day in 1788 when the arrival of white settlers changed the lives of Aboriginal people forever. However, most Australians did not think there was a problem. Then, in the 1960s, some white people found their consciences and their voices. Their opponents called them ‘rent-acrowd’, because the same faces often turned up at protest

An alternative translation of terra nullius could perhaps be ‘finders keepers’—the settlers had found the land and now they were going to keep it.

demonstrations, or ‘demos’, for different causes. That was probably because those same people were protesting about different aspects of a single problem—social injustice. Freedom rides The generation that grew up after World War II lived daily with the fear of nuclear war. The world was interconnected, and ideas and images flowed from one side of it to the other. These young people had seen former colonies win their freedom after World War II, and they saw new hope, new successes—and sometimes new injustices. They could also see how other countries were fighting old injustices. In the USA, white and black students starting travelling on buses together into the south of the country where there was segregation of African-Americans from white Americans and other racist behaviour. These bus trips were called ‘freedom rides’ because the students were campaigning for the rights of AfricanAmericans. In 1965, a group of students from the University of Sydney decided to organise Australia’s first freedom ride. They travelled in a bus through towns in north-western New South Wales where segregation was practised against Aboriginal people, including barring them from entering cafes, cinemas, theatres, hotels and swimming pools.

From little things Australian musicians Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody wrote and performed the protest song From Little Things Big Things Grow in the early 1990s. It tells the story of Vincent Lingiari and the Gurindji people’s fight for land rights, reconciliation and a ‘fair go’ for Aboriginal people.

The first step was to make it possible for the Commonwealth to make laws to help Aboriginal people. So, in 1967, the government held a referendum, in which 90 per cent of voters supported the necessary changes to the Constitution.

Prime Minister Gough Whitlam pouring soil into Vincent Lingiari’s hands at Wattie Creek, Northern Territory, 1975.

At first, the freedom rides and demonstrations changed little, but people were often shocked to find out about the inequalities that Aboriginal people lived under. Change had to come.

A poster for the 1967 referendum.

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Land rights One of the events that influenced the granting of land rights to Aboriginal people happened at Wave Hill Station in the Northern Territory in 1966. A British pastoral company called Vesteys delayed paying a fair wage to the Aboriginal stockmen and servants who worked on the station. Stockman Vincent Lingiari led 200 of Vesteys’ Aboriginal workers in a walk-off to Wattie Creek. Vesteys finally returned 90 square kilometres of Gurindji land to its traditional owners in 1972. In 1975, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam symbolically poured soil into Vincent Lingiari’s hands—as well as giving him the title deeds to land at Wattie Creek (Daguragu). The position of many Aboriginal people improved after that.

The Aboriginal Land Rights Act (Northern Territory) 1976 set the scene. Then came the Mabo case. This attacked the terra nullius provision. Under terra nullius, the land rights of hunter-gatherers and nomads like the Australian Aboriginal people were regarded as being weaker than the land rights of those who occupied the land and used it for farms and gardens. However, the Meriam people of Murray Island had gardens, recognised property and had clear boundary markers. So Murray Islander Eddie Koiki Mabo had a winning case: there was no way anybody could claim rights over his people’s land by using the arguments of terra nullius. The key feature of the case was the decision that the Crown (originally Britain, but now the Commonwealth of Australia and/or the state) held

sovereignty and could make rules and laws. All the same, pre-existing ownership could not be wiped out. In October 2012, the Wik case, which had started in 1993, ended when Federal Court judge Andrew Greenwood granted native title to a 5,000-squarekilometre area of land and waterways in the AurukunWeipa area, on the western side of Cape York in Queensland. The decision recognised the rights of the Wik and Wik Way people to camp, hunt and conduct ceremonies across that area. At the same time, they could not stop pastoralists from running their cattle there.

Fighting overseas Anti-war protests When Australian troops were sent to the Sudan in 1885, most people agreed with the decision. In 1899, when Australian troops volunteered and were sent to fight in the Boer War, not everybody approved. Australians of German or Dutch origin sometimes spoke out for the Boers, and so did some clergymen, pacifists and a few political radicals. Ordinary Australians sang patriotic songs very loudly, and called the peace-lovers cowards and traitors. Between 1914 and 1918, pacifists and socialists were treated in the same way as the opponents to the Boer War had been, but there was a lot more opposition to World War I, which helps explain why Australians voted twice against conscription during that time. World War II was more complicated. Germany and Russia had signed a peace pact, so Australian communists were told to oppose the war. When Germany invaded Russia in June 1941, the communists suddenly changed sides and supported the war. Most Australians knew about the atrocities committed by the German and Japanese armies, so very few of them opposed the war—and wartime propaganda helped. The Korean War was fought at a time when many ordinary

Those who favour war use the loss of freedom as a threat to get the public’s support.

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The start of the Iraq war (the Second Gulf War) in March 2003 outraged many people.

Australians feared a communist invasion. There was not much opposition to the war in Korea, but the Vietnam War was a very different matter. In that case, it was easy for opponents to say that Australian troops were being used to fight someone else’s civil war. There was also evidence of Australia’s allies committing atrocities, and conscripts were dying in a war which seemed to have little to do with Australia’s needs or welfare. It was easy to object to the Vietnam War and hard to support it, so supporters fell back on calling the antiwar people ‘traitors’. The main victims were the troops who went, willingly or unwillingly, to Vietnam. They knew they were fighting an unpopular war that many people called ‘dirty’. The simple fact was that, as in most wars Australia has been involved in, Australia had little choice but to support its allies—in this case America. The argument was that if we did not support our allies, then how could we expect them to support us if we were invaded?

invasion was about oil, power and money, and the USA acted promptly, bringing a large force into Saudi Arabia to help if, as everybody expected, Iraq invaded that country as well. Unlike the Vietnam War, the coalition troops came from 30 different nations, and their involvement was authorised by the United Nations. While protests against the Vietnam War were fuelled by the fact that it was the first ‘television war’, coverage of the Gulf War was carefully stage-managed. Cameras from US television station CNN recorded and shared images of allied ‘successes’ on the one hand and Iraqi ‘atrocities’ on the other. Most people in Australia thought their troops were fighting a just war. Fighting in the First Gulf War was well managed, the Iraqis made some tactical errors which could be exploited for public relations purposes, and the war was over too quickly for anybody to organise protests.

The Gulf Wars The First Gulf War began in August 1990 when Iraqi troops invaded the small but oil-rich state of Kuwait, on Iraq’s southern border, at the top of the Persian Gulf. The

The argument was that if we did not support our allies, then how could we expect them to support us if we were invaded?

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Crowds watching Prime Minister Kevin Rudd giving the Apology to the Stolen Generations, Melbourne, 2008 (above) and the word ‘sorry’ written in the sky during National Reconciliation Week, Sydney, 2000 (right).

The Second Gulf War was different. Australia’s involvement in this war began in 2003. The USA asserted that Iraq was still concealing ‘weapons of mass destruction’, such as nuclear or biological weapons, despite the fact that United Nations Security Council inspectors had not found any. The USA also accused Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein of helping terrorist groups such as al Qaeda, which was linked to the devastating terrorist attacks in New York on 11 September 2001. When the USA, led by President George W. Bush, could not get backing from the United Nations to overthrow Saddam Hussein, it pushed ahead anyway with a ‘coalition of the willing’, which included Britain and Australia. Many Australians were not so willing to support Prime Minister John Howard involving Australia in what its opponents called an ‘illegal’ war. Saddam Hussein was deposed and executed, and over 100,000 other Iraqis died, including many civilians. The Second Gulf War officially ended in 2009.

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Saying sorry The Stolen Generations were Aboriginal children taken away from their parents and families. The people taking the children away believed that Aboriginal culture was inferior to European culture. Many of the children they took away grew up feeling that they had no people, no family, no country and no place. These are all a central part of a continuing culture in Aboriginal society.

Most of the people who took the children of the Stolen Generations from their parents believed they were doing the right thing. When the truth came out, the few participants who were still alive were upset to learn what they had really done.

Looking back now, it seems very cruel to take children away from their parents, so why did white people do it? As well as wrongly believing that Aboriginal people were inferior, many thought that the Aboriginal race would die out. They also believed, again wrongly, that all Aboriginal people had black skin, like many of those in the Northern Territory. So they assumed that any pale-skinned Aboriginal children had ‘white blood’ and therefore needed to be ‘rescued’. There is no such thing as an inferior race. Every human race has evolved certain genes that help them to survive in the area in which they live. For example, Europeans have pale skins, which help them to make more vitamin D in the sunless far north of Europe. This vitamin helps our bodies to grow strong bones. However, in Australia, that same pale skin means that white people are more likely to suffer from deadly skin cancers. There are certainly cultural differences, and cultures are easier to change. There are no inferior cultures and no superior cultures, but some cultural habits also help people to survive in a particular place. Many white Australians learned the truth about the Stolen Generations from Geoffrey Atherden’s 1986 film Babakiueria, which looked at a world in which the social positions of black and white Australians were changed around. It was gentle satire with a ferocious bite.

In his ‘Redfern Speech’, Prime Minister Paul Keating spoke of devastation and demoralisation, of dispossession, of the diseases and alcohol that white men had brought, and of the murders white settlers had committed.

But Keating stopped short of what was expected in Aboriginal culture: a formal apology for the way in which children were stolen from their families. In 1996, John Howard replaced Keating as prime minister. Howard feared that a formal apology—saying sorry—would start a flood of lawsuits for monetary compensation. In May 1997, a report called Bringing Them Home was tabled in Federal Parliament, but the Liberal government offered no apology. On 28 May 2000, in the run-up to the Sydney Olympics, 250,000 Sydneysiders walked over the Sydney Harbour Bridge during the Walk for Reconciliation. They hoped to shame the government into action. This was ‘middle Australia’ speaking— ordinary suburban Australians who had learned enough of the harsh truth about the Stolen Generations to know what needed to happen.

A belated apology On 10 December 1992, a political leader admitted for the first time the truth about what had happened to Aboriginal people in ‘the land of the fair go’. In his ‘Redfern Speech’, Prime Minister Paul Keating spoke of devastation and demoralisation, of dispossession, of the diseases and alcohol that white men had brought, and of the murders white settlers had committed. He celebrated a people who had lived in Australia for about 50,000 years, and who had survived two centuries of abuse.

Australians of all ages supported the Apology to the Stolen Generations in 2008.

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Saving the children Some Aboriginal adults worked out ways to stop the government from taking their children away. For example, children would be encouraged to sit quietly in a hole in the ground, covered by a piece of corrugated iron, when the ‘welfare people’ came to take them away.

It should have been enough, but it was not until 13 February 2008 that the next prime minister, Kevin Rudd, tabled a motion in parliament that apologised to Australia’s Indigenous peoples. Rudd publicly apologised to the Stolen Generations, their families and communities, for the laws and policies which he said had ‘inflicted profound grief, suffering and loss on these our fellow Australians’. In many ways, a wrong had finally been righted.

Vying for the leadership Changes in political leadership in Australia have often involved claims of treachery. Billy Hughes was a master of the art, and there are still unanswered questions about why Andrew Fisher resigned as prime minister in 1915. There are plenty of similar cases. Robert Menzies switched to federal politics in 1934 on the promise that Joseph Lyons would resign the leadership to him, but ‘Honest Joe’ Lyons was still leader of the UAP in 1937. Menzies took over when Lyons died in 1939, but Sir Earle Page of the Country Party refused his party’s support to Menzies—a man who had resigned his commission as a militia officer during World War I. After 1949, Menzies kept his position as prime minister by sidelining those likely to seek the Liberal leadership. William McMahon was blocked by John McEwen, the then Country Party leader, from the Liberal leadership when Harold Holt drowned in 1967. John Gorton won, but then he was beaten by McMahon after McEwen retired. Gorton was elected deputy leader,

This 1950s cartoon is commenting on the battles between political parties; people within the same party also have fights.

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but was sacked by McMahon for disloyalty just five months later. After Malcolm Fraser became Liberal leader in 1975, Gorton became an independent politician. He attacked Fraser and denounced the dismissal of the Whitlam government and, in 1983, he congratulated Labor’s Bob Hawke for ‘rolling that bastard Fraser’. Still, politics can sometimes be a funny game and, in the last few years, Malcolm Fraser and Gough Whitlam have become allies in their positions as Australia’s elder statesmen. Hawke replaced the dumped Labor leader Bill Hayden and then, as when Paul Keating replaced Hawke, there were ill feelings on both sides. Meanwhile, in the Liberal Party, there was continual squabbling between John Howard and Andrew Peacock. Howard eventually won, and he went on to become a long-serving prime minister, but he and Peter Costello also fought over the leadership during Howard’s later years in office. Life at the top end of politics can sometimes offer very little in the way of trust, honour or loyalty in any party. Australia’s first female prime minister Between 1996 and early 2005, the Labor Party was led by a number of different people—Kim Beazley, Simon Crean and Mark Latham. Then Beazley took over again when the front-runners, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd, withdrew after Latham resigned as leader. After further squabbling about leadership, Beazley threw all positions open in December 2006. Kevin

Julia Gillard voting in the 2010 federal election which she won (left). Kevin Rudd, leader of the opposition, answering questions at the National Press Club in April 2007, a few months before becoming prime minister (right).

Rudd was elected leader, with Julia Gillard as deputy leader. A year later, the Labor Party won office. However, nothing else had changed and, before long, leaks and destabilisation were the order of the day. In hindsight, Kevin Rudd failed to ‘sell’ his policies and to contain the claims of the opposition. Politics is often driven by polls and short-term impressions, and he was seen as a certain loser in the coming August 2010 elections. So, in June 2010, the Labor Party replaced Rudd with Julia Gillard, who became prime minister.

After the August election, Gillard formed a minority government. Three years later, in June 2013, Rudd won back the Labor leadership and again became prime minister, in the lead-up to the 2013 election. Even though she lost the political battle, Gillard will always be celebrated as Australia’s first female prime minister.

Changes in political leadership in Australia have often involved claims of treachery.

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Dealing with Disasters Australia has always been a tough place to survive in. There are few earthquakes or serious tsunamis, but the continent suffers extreme weather. What Australians in the south call ‘summer’ is the ‘wet season’ in northern Australia. ‘The wet’ brings huge cyclones that sometimes move across the continent, causing floods. An ocean system called La Niña causes floods while another one called El Niño causes terrible droughts. With or without drought, there are bushfires that can devastate our environment. LEFT: A flood in New

South Wales in the 1870s. BELOW: A newspaper

report about shipwrecks in 1833. LEFT: Firefighters in

the Brindabella Ranges, near Canberra, 2003. BELOW: Victims of

drought, Fords Bridge, New South Wales, 2002.

Droughts and flooding rains In the early 1900s, a homesick Australian girl holidaying in England wrote a poem that she called Core of My Heart. In the 1890s, she had seen a drought break on Torryburn Station in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. She had marvelled as the brown countryside quickly turned green after the rain. Dorothea Mackellar’s poem, later called My Country, summed up her feelings about this land of contrasts: I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of ragged mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains. Australia’s life forms have been shaped by an endless cycle of parched summers, droughts, bushfires, cyclones and floods. An ancient drought, followed by a flood, created one of the oldest records of Australian life—the Devonian fish-kill site at Canowindra in New South Wales. Droughts continue to cause huge stock losses for farmers, who sometimes are even forced to sell their farms.

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It was just good luck that no-one died in the Hawkesbury floods of 1809. The people who had built their farms beside the Hawkesbury River did not recognise the signs of past floods, such as broken branches and other rubbish deposited in the tops of trees. All they saw was good farming land. During the gold rushes in the 1850s, gold diggers who ‘washed for gold’ in creek beds and camped close to their claims also needed to be able to read the signs. A Danish man called Claus Gronn, who wrote about his experiences, saw a wall of water 2.5 metres high rushing down a creek towards a group of Chinese diggers. He shouted a warning, and all but one of them got clear. Luckily, the last man was able to cling to a tree until the waters went down. The Wiradjuri people of the Gundagai area in New South Wales would have saved many lives if the white settlers had accepted their warnings about building too close to the Murrumbidgee River. In June 1852, about 80 white people drowned when a flood arose overnight. Many more would also have drowned if two Wiradjuri men in bark canoes had not rescued about 40 of them. Drought dried up this river bed near Coonamble in New South Wales in 2002.

The city of Brisbane, which sits on a narrow river valley at the end of a large water catchment, has had many problems with floods over the years. Eight of the ten worst floods since white settlement happened in Brisbane before 1900. The 1974 flood was the fourth highest, while the 2011 flood was only the 11th highest— although it also caused a lot of damage. Pelicans’ playground Sometimes floods can have positive effects. The salt lakes of inland Australia are usually flat and dry plains of white salt. Once in a while, though, the monsoon season in the Top End creates a large low pressure zone, surrounded by damp air and clouds. When this moves over the land, torrential rain falls on the inland. If the storm pushes far enough south, the rain falls into a maze of channels that carry the water into Lake Eyre in northern South Australia. The land is flat and so the water moves slowly, at about a man’s walking pace. A lot soaks into the ground, but some reaches Lake Eyre. Then the salt dissolves, the mud softens, and the eggs of tiny prawn-like crustaceans and fish hatch. Algae that have been lying dormant below the salt come back to life. The crustaceans eat the algae, the fish eat the crustaceans, and then the pelicans arrive to eat the fish. Somehow pelicans sense that there is water in the usually dry centre of Australia. That instinct has evolved over many thousands of years. The pelicans know when Lake Eyre is full of fish to eat, but free of the predators that eat their young chicks. Once they arrive, the pelicans build their nests and feast on fish, while raising as many baby pelicans as they can. As the water dries up again and the fish disappear, the adult pelicans fly off, often abandoning the chicks that cannot yet fly. But, next time a low pressure zone comes in over the coast and delivers water to the lake, the chicks that previously were able to leave come back to breed.

Very few Aboriginal people were harmed by those cyclones, mainly because they knew when a dangerous storm was coming and where the best places were to seek shelter.

This home was wrecked after Cyclone Tracy devastated Darwin in 1974.

Cyclones If the low pressure in the centre of a weather system is low enough, it becomes a cyclone. The low pressure generates very fast winds that go clockwise around the eye of the storm. These winds can rip the roofs off buildings, hurl ships and boats onto the shore, and push over trees, while the torrential rains cause floods. Australia’s most devastating cyclone was called Cyclone Tracy. It hit the Northern Territory capital of Darwin on Christmas Eve in 1974, destroying much of Darwin and killing 71 people. The city looked like a war zone. No-one celebrated Christmas there that year.

Broome, in northern Western Australia, has also been hit by two tropical cyclones, both of which destroyed Broome’s pearling fleet. The first, in 1884, killed 140 people, while the one in 1935 took 141 lives. Very few Aboriginal people were harmed by those cyclones, mainly because they knew when a dangerous storm was coming and where the best places were to seek shelter. Frogs calling for mates and the changed behaviour of birds were signs that told Aboriginal people when rain was coming.

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Over the centuries, bushfires have destroyed settlements: settlers fight a bushfire in the 1880s (left) and residents of the Omeo Valley, in Victoria, look at the damage after a fire on Australia Day, 2003 (right).

Fighting fire Bushfires were mentioned in Australian newspapers as early as 1826. However, the Aboriginal custodians of the land had been using controlled bushfires as a part of what is now called ‘firestick farming’ for a long time before white settlement. They used fires to keep undergrowth under control and to produce new growth to attract the animals they hunted, such as kangaroos. Firestick farming had the added advantage of making major wildfires less likely, in the same way that hazardreduction burning does today. Once the local Aboriginal people died, or were killed or chased away by white settlers, hardly any controlled burning occurred for many years. This meant that, until the 1950s, there were many disastrous fires, which people had to fight as best they could. The first recorded firestorm occurred in Victoria on Black Thursday in February 1851. It left 12 people, a million sheep and thousands of cattle dead. It was followed by Red Tuesday in February 1898, again in Victoria, in which 12 people died. And then Black Sunday, 14 February 1926, in the Gippsland area of Victoria killed 31 people, as well as destroying land and buildings.

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It did not stop there. As the population rose, so did the number of deaths in bushfires and the amount of destruction the fires caused. Victoria’s Black Friday in 1939 saw 71 people dead, while Black Tuesday in Tasmania in 1967 killed 62 people, with a further 900 injured and more than 7,000 made homeless. South Australia’s Ash Wednesday in 1980 destroyed 51 homes and left 40 people injured, while Victoria’s Ash Wednesday in 1983 killed 75 people. Even after the introduction of controlled burning and hazard reduction, bushfires can still sometimes become uncontainable forces of nature. When a firestorm assaulted the ‘bush capital’ of Canberra in 2003, it destroyed more than 500 homes, but amazingly only four people died. Victoria was not so lucky on Black Saturday in February 2009. In all, 173 people died when 400 fires burned out of control in the state in a single day.

After this devastating firestorm in Victoria, the fire danger warning system was adjusted, with the new category of ‘catastrophic’ added to the previous five-point scale. Despite these catastrophic events over the years, Australians are lucky that there have not been even more bushfire disasters.

Transport and other disasters

The Hero of Gundagai In 1852, Wiradjuri men Yarri and Jacky

The highest death tolls in disasters in Australia have usually come from shipwrecks. Many people died in the days of sail, when Dutch ships raced eastward pushed along by the westerly winds called the ‘Roaring Forties’, then turned north to sail to what is now Jakarta in Indonesia. Some of them were wrecked off Western Australia’s coast, which juts out into the Indian Ocean. Victoria’s ‘Shipwreck Coast’ is near the Great Ocean Road. Sailing ships heading east towards Melbourne and Sydney often hit the shore where it pushes out to the south. At least 638 vessels have been wrecked there. One of the worst wrecks was that of the Cataraqui off King Island in Bass Strait in 1845. Of the probably 408 people aboard the ship, only nine survived. The sailing ship Dunbar was wrecked on the rocks at the Gap, just near Sydney’s South Head, during a severe storm in 1857. There was only one survivor, who was thrown onto the rocks near where the ship hit. He managed to survive despite not being found for two days. The other 121 crew and passengers all perished. Sadly, the end of the age of sail did not make the sea safer. The steamship Admella was wrecked off the coast of South Australia in 1859. While 89 people died, 24 survived, many of them clinging to the wreckage for up to a week waiting to be rescued. While there have been a number of train disasters in Australia, the worst was in 1977, when a commuter train derailed at Granville, in Sydney’s western suburbs,

Jacky helped save about 40 people from drowning in a devastating flood in Gundagai in New South Wales. Risking their lives in the floodwaters in fragile bark canoes, they ferried people to safety from rooftops and the branches of giant river red gums. They both received bravery awards, and a memorial was erected to Yarri, the ‘Hero of Gundagai’.

and ran into the supports of a road bridge. The bridge collapsed on two of the train’s carriages, killing 83 people and injuring many more. Another disaster occurred when a mentally ill man opened fire at the historic Port Arthur tourist site in Tasmania in 1996, killing 35 people and wounding another 23. His actions led to the tightening of gun laws in Australia. No doubt Australia will suffer from more natural and man-made disasters in the future. However, being prepared, helping others in trouble, and following the orders of emergency services personnel will help to ensure that there is as little damage and loss of life as possible. By the 1860s, steam tugs could sometimes save a damaged ship.

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The Sporting Life Ask any Australian what we think about sport and the answer will be ‘sports-mad, mate!’. Australia has a good climate for sport, and no news program would be complete without sports news. We play sport and we spend a lot of time watching sport and admiring good players. We even say Australia punches above its weight (a boxing term!) to describe the way Australians have dominated world sports in the past, but will we do so in the future?

LEFT: Surfboards were

very long in the 1940s. BELOW: A commemorative

carpet for the Melbourne Olympics, 1956.

LEFT: Cricket today.

The Melbourne Olympics In 1859, a grain merchant named Evangelos Zappas persuaded the Bavarian-born King Otto I of Greece to support an Olympic festival in Athens. The Greeks removed Otto from the throne in 1862, and so the second Olympiad in that series was never held. The games held in Athens in 1896 are now regarded as the first of the modern Olympics. The Olympic Games were held in the Northern Hemisphere for many years, but they finally visited the Southern Hemisphere in 1956, when they were held in Melbourne. One reason for the delay was that most competitors came from the Northern Hemisphere and, while aircraft were getting faster in 1956, it still took two or more days to travel from Europe to Australia. The Hungarians revolt In 1956, the team from the USA flew to Melbourne by slow, propeller-driven planes, stopping at Hawaii and Fiji, but many other teams travelled by steamship. The Hungarian team, for example, travelled on a Russian

The Olympic Games were held in the Northern Hemisphere for many years, but they finally visited the Southern Hemisphere in 1956, when they were held in Melbourne.

steamer, unaware that, back in their capital city of Budapest, Soviet troops were killing unarmed Hungarians who wanted the troops to get out of Hungary. The Soviet Union, with a cooperative Hungarian Government, had largely controlled Hungary since 1945, but the Hungarian people were used to revolting against outsiders—Hungary had been an unwilling part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the 1800s. In 1956, the Hungarian Revolution or Uprising came at the end of October and, while it seemed to be successful at first, the Soviet army crushed it in early November. About 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops died in the fighting, and almost 200,000 Hungarians fled their country. In Melbourne, the Hungarian Olympic athletes received the devastating news about what was happening in their country. This led to some interesting incidents when Russia played against Hungary in water polo. Hungary was leading 2–0, when a Russian player hit a Hungarian player in the eye. General fighting broke out among the competitors. At the end of the game, which the Russians lost 4–0, Valentin Prokopov gashed the eye of a Hungarian player named Ervin Zador with his elbow. That night, there were demonstrations in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda, when Russian and Hungarian fencers met for a game. By the end of the Games, 34 members of the Hungarian Olympic team had decided not to go home. Some stayed on in Australia, while many ended up in the USA. Boycotting the Games Other political problems affected the Melbourne Olympic Games. British forces had occupied Egypt for many years before they withdrew in 1952. When the Egyptian dictator Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalised the Suez Canal in October 1956, British, French and Israeli troops invaded Egypt to try to topple him. The USA forced the invaders to leave. Egypt had already withdrawn its Olympic team in August 1956 as a protest over British influence in the Newspaper coverage of the Hungary versus Russia water polo match in Melbourne in 1956.

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At the 1956 closing ceremony in Melbourne, the athletes marched together, not as national teams.

Olympic movement. Following Egypt’s lead, Lebanon and Iraq joined the boycott. Later, the Netherlands and Spain withdrew as a protest against the Soviet attack on Budapest. Then the People’s Republic of China withdrew because athletes from Taiwan would be taking part, and the neutral Swiss boycotted on account of all the political interference! The Swiss later cancelled their boycott, but by then it was too late for them to send a team before the Games started on 22 November 1956. The friendly Games In spite of the squabbling, the Melbourne Olympic Games were referred to afterwards as ‘the friendly

The horse events One part of the Melbourne Olympic Games was actually held months before the Games proper, and in Sweden. Strict Australian quarantine laws meant that all the horserelated events, like show jumping and dressage, could not be held in Melbourne, and so they were held in Stockholm instead.

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A souvenir of an England versus Australia cricket match around 1900.

The English bowler, B.J.T. Bosanquet.

Games’, mostly because of an idealistic suggestion by 17-year-old Melburnian John Ian Wing. In 1956, he wrote to the Olympic organisers suggesting that the athletes should enter the closing ceremony not as nations but as a mixed group, all parading together. The number of Australian athletes in the 1956 Olympic Games almost outnumbered the competitors in all our teams from the dozen Olympiads before it. It would be over 40 years before there was such a large Australian team again—at the Sydney Olympics in 2000. After the USSR and the USA, Australia came third in the medal tally at the Melbourne Olympics, with Hungary fourth. Runners Betty Cuthbert and Shirley Strickland won three and two gold medals, respectively, swimmer Murray Rose won another three gold medals, and swimmer Dawn Fraser took two gold and one silver. Three other swimmers— Lorraine Crapp, Jon Henricks and David Theile— also won gold.

Most Australians loved sport, and Australia’s success at the Melbourne Olympics made them even more sports mad.

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Cricket Cricket was being played in the new colony of New South Wales as early as 1804, and there was a cricket ground by at least 1809. In 1810, Governor Lachlan Macquarie took charge of New South Wales and announced his plan to name the streets of Sydney. In the same notice, he gave an official name to what was then called the ‘exercising ground’, the ‘common’, the ‘race course’ or the ‘cricket ground’. It was now to be called Hyde Park. Around 1825, merchants in Sydney offered cricket bats and balls for sale in the newspapers. Cricket was obviously a popular game by then and, on 2 May 1830, it was reported that ‘a well contested cricket match was played off on the Surry Hills, before a considerable crowd of spectators’. Early representative matches between colonies were difficult to plan. It took time for letters to go back and forth, and then for the teams to travel from one colony to another. The Melbourne Cricket Club and the Launceston Cricket Club played a match in

Launceston in February 1851, and the locals won. Soon after, many young men in the colonies rushed off in search of gold, but a return match was played in Melbourne a year later, and Melbourne evened the score.

The first Victoria versus New South Wales cricket match was held in March 1856. Intercolonial matches became more common as steamships ran on fixed timetables between the colonies. By the end of the 1870s, there were regular matches between South Australian, Tasmanian, Victorian and New South Wales teams. Sheffield Shield cricket Touring English cricket teams in the 1860s and 1870s established another pattern. Then, in the 1891–92 season, an English team played three tests in Australia. The team was promoted by the Earl of Sheffield, who donated £150 for a trophy for an intercolonial competition, with only New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia involved

at first. This became the Sheffield Shield, which has been played ever since, with one rather unfortunate break in tradition. The break in tradition came in the 1990s. A milk vending company offered money to pay for a cup with the company’s name on it. Cricket traditionalists were appalled, and the non-commercial ABC radio referred to the competition as ‘interstate cricket’ until the name ‘Sheffield Shield’ was reinstated. The modern game The idea of a game taking four, five, or occasionally unlimited days, was difficult for some people to accept. This would not have mattered, but some of those people had lots of money and owned television stations, and they wanted to show cricket on their stations. The Australian Cricket Board stuck with ABC Television, but media tycoon Kerry Packer ‘bought’ players and then set up an almost gladiatorial series of contests to show on his own network. Packer did not like

Shaun Marsh hits a six in the Prime Minister’s XI versus England match, Manuka Oval, Canberra, November 2006.

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More and more, decisions were made based on increasing profits rather than benefiting the game of cricket. spin bowling and, faced with a continual pace attack, batsmen started wearing helmets. Cricket players have a limited life at the top, so Packer’s money attracted many of them. He wanted to present the noise, colour and speed that are found in football matches. He was paying good money, so the players threw away tradition. They wore bright colours rather than whites, and they played in one-day and day–night matches. Audiences enjoyed the games. Limited-overs matches actually have quite a long history. They date back to 65-overs-a-side matches played in England in 1962, but 50-overs format matches became popular. Because the teams now wore coloured shirts with players’ names on them, there were marketing opportunities of the sort found in baseball and football. More and more, decisions were made based on increasing profits rather than benefiting the game of cricket. Loud music and often trivial game statistics were brought in. One result was that Packer’s money allowed

him to buy the rights to the name ‘Test Cricket’, giving his television channel many more opportunities to sell related products and memorabilia. Many cricket traditionalists took to watching matches on Packer’s television station with the sound turned off, while they listened to the ABC radio commentary. In recent years, there has been a move to Twenty20, or Big Bash, cricket, and there will probably continue to be changes as the marketers produce new mascots and more exciting team names. Cricket, once a game played for the enjoyment of the players, is now often a game played for the money paid by live and television audiences. For the elite players at least, the modern game is a far better deal, financially.

The Aboriginal Australian cricketers who toured England in 1868.

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The first Au stralian tour ing cricket team The first orga nised group of Australian cricketers to travel overse as was an Aboriginal te am which to ured Englan d between May and October 1868. They w or had a draw on in 33 of the 47 matches played in En th ey gland.

An illustration of ‘Lawn Tennis’ in The Australian Town and Country Journal, 3 November 1877.

Tennis Preparing a cricket field in the colonies was easy. A few sheep, goats, or even cattle, were put onto the field to chew down the grass, and the result was a surface that was good enough to play cricket on. Scythes were also used to cut the grass by hand. A scythe has a large flat blade, mounted on a bent handle. The blade is swept across the ground, neatly slicing off the grass. Few people had the skill to use a scythe reliably, so most of the ‘lawns’ before about 1865 were rough and bumpy, or they were ‘mowed’ by sheep and goats. Ground like that was good enough for cricket but not for tennis, because the ball would bounce at odd angles, and there was the added problem of slippery animal droppings! The first patent for a mechanical lawnmower ran out in the early 1850s. After that, anybody could sell their version of the cylinder lawnmower, or ‘push’ mower.

In November 1877, an article in The Australian Town and Country Journal calls lawn tennis the ‘newest fashionable game’, adding that it is best played by six players.

Once good mowers were available in the shops, people wanted a lawn, mainly because of the prestige. Having a lawn was a sign that you were rich, but boasting about being rich was considered vulgar. The ultimate show of wealth was a lawn tennis court. The rules of lawn tennis were invented in 1859, just after effective mowers became common in England. The game reached Australia in about 1875 and quickly became popular. Croquet was already a popular sport and, just as British lawn tennis found a home at the All England Croquet Club at Wimbledon, early Australian tennis matches were also probably played on croquet lawns. In November 1877, an article in The Australian Town and Country Journal calls lawn tennis the ‘newest fashionable game’, adding that it is best played by six players. The illustration above shows a game played with racquets and a ball, across a net higher than some of the players’ heads. The Davis Cup Tennis caught on very rapidly in Australia. The Davis Cup competition began in 1899 and, until 1919, Australians competed with New Zealanders as ‘Australasia’. They won the Davis Cup in 1907, 1908,

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Tennis then and now: the Australian Davis Cup Team in 1950 (above) and Sam Stosur in action in Melbourne in 2011 (right).

1909, 1911, 1914 and 1919. Then there was a lull, before Australia beat the USA in 1939. World War II then got in the way. Australia’s golden era of tennis was from 1950 to 1967. Australia won 15 of the 18 Davis Cups held during that time. Australia also won in 1973, 1977, 1983, 1986, 1999 and 2003, but since then there have been years when the Australian team has even failed to qualify to enter the main draw. Australians have made their mark on world tennis. They have won Wimbledon many times: from Norman Brookes in 1907 to Lew Hoad in the 1950s; from Rod Laver, Roy Emerson and Margaret Court in the 1960s to John Newcombe and Evonne Goolagong in the 1970s; and from Pat Cash in the 1980s to Lleyton Hewitt in 2002.

In fact, in 1969, Australians won the men’s singles, the men’s and women’s doubles, and shared wins in the mixed doubles. In 1971, the ladies’ final was between two Australians, Margaret Court and Evonne Goolagong. Over the years, Australia has had an impressive record in Grand Slam tennis tournaments around the world.

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Swimming In the nineteenth century, there were no swimming costumes. This explains why swimming in public between sunrise and sunset was banned until the early 1900s. In the early days of the colony of New South Wales, swimming naked was normal but not always acceptable. Governor Lachlan Macquarie made the following proclamation in 1810: A very indecent and improper Custom having lately prevailed, of Soldiers, Sailors, and Inhabitants of the Town bathing themselves at all Hours of the Day at the Government Wharf, and also in the Dock-yard, His Excellency the Governor directs and commands, that no Person shall Bathe at either of those Places in future, at any Hour of the Day; and the Sentinels posted at the Government Wharf and in the Dockyard are to receive strict Orders to apprehend and confine any Person transgressing this Order. ‘Bathing’ included washing, because few bathrooms or baths were available, so many people scrubbed

themselves off in the sea, usually choosing a quiet beach. They stayed close to the shore, as many colonial Australians were scared of sharks. By the 1830s, Sydney was getting larger and it was hard to find a private beach for naked bathing. In January 1833, a Mrs Biggs announced the establishment of her comfortable ‘bathing machine’—a wooden cart on wheels, which was rolled into the sea so the bathers could get changed and bathe in private. According to Mrs Biggs, it could accommodate families ‘on economical terms’. By February, the government forbade bathing in the public parts of the Domain, which would have assisted Mrs Biggs, whose machine was nearby. Swimming races The first swimming races held in Australia were called ‘swimming matches’, and they were run in bathing places such as the baths at Woolloomooloo in Sydney. These races were always single-sex events—perhaps because of the competitors’ nakedness. A Mr Robinson owned a bathing machine at Woolloomooloo baths in 1838, and by 1839 they were called Robinson’s Baths. The very first swimming matches were held on Saturday, 1 March 1845. They included a junior race

At some point, ‘decent’ neck-to-knee costumes came into use, but a ban on daylight swimming remained in place. around two buoys over a distance of 70 yards (64 metres) held at 6.30 in the morning. There was also an all-ages match over 800 yards (730 metres) held at 7 am, which a Mr Burrowes won in 12 minutes and 25 seconds. Given the early starting times, the times recorded and the era, the swimmers were all probably naked. Competitive swimming soon became popular, and it has remained so. At some point, ‘decent’ neck-to-knee costumes came into use, but a ban on daylight swimming remained in place. By the early 1900s, a number of municipal councils had given up trying to stop people swimming during daylight hours, and the Bathing Bill of 1894 allowed for mixed bathing (males and females together) during daylight hours on some beaches. In Victoria, as early as 1892, the people of Port Fairy allowed ‘bathing in company’, with suggestions that it was no more immodest than family bat-and-ball

The Australasian swimming team won the freestyle relay in the Stockholm Olympic Games in 1912.

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Fanny Durack, a great Australian champion.

Paying your way Fanny Durack and Wilhelmina Wylie were at first refused permission to go to the 1912 Olympics because the New South Wales Ladies Amateur Swimming Association had banned women from appearing in competitions where men were present. They were finally allowed to go, but Fanny and Wilhelmina had to pay their own way there and back again!

games such as tennis or rounders. The writer added that beachwear was usually far more modest than what you would see in a ballroom. Swimming at the Olympics In 1900, one Australian swimmer competed in the Olympic Games in Paris. Frederick Lane won two gold medals—one for the 200-metre freestyle and the other for a 200-metre obstacle race, which involved climbing up and down a pole, scrambling over a row of boats, and diving under another row of boats, as well as

swimming 200 metres! By 2012, Australia had won a total of 143 Olympic gold medals, and 58 of them had been won in the pool. In 1912, at the Stockholm Olympics, Australians—competing as Australasia, which included New Zealand— did well in the swimming, although the 100 metres was won by ‘Kahanamoku, a Hawaii island native’ who represented the USA, beating Australian Cecil Healy. Wilhelmina Wylie and Fanny Durack, both of Sydney, took gold and silver, respectively, in the women’s 100 metres. The men’s Australasian team won the four by 100-metre freestyle relay.

Australia began to take notice of its medal-winning swimmers. Frank Beaurepaire, who later became Lord Mayor of Melbourne, would have been a medallist at the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm if he had not been disqualified for being a ‘professional’ because he was a physical education teacher. This decision was later overturned, and he won three silver and three bronze medals in the Games of 1908, 1920 and 1924. There were no Olympic Games in 1916 because of the Great War (World War I). No medallist has appeared at more than three games. Dawn Fraser won four gold and four silver medals in 1956, 1960 and 1964, while Ian Thorpe won five gold, three silver and one bronze in 2000 and 2004. Murray Rose won four gold, a silver and a bronze, while Australia’s other great swimmers include Shane

Australians Dawn Fraser, Lorraine Crapp and Faith Leech took all three medals in the 100 metres freestyle in the 1956 Olympics.

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Gould, Leisel Jones, Petria Thomas, Grant Hackett, Libby Trickett, Jodie Henry and Stephanie Rice. Other Australian Olympic swimmers who became household names in their eras include ‘Boy’ Charlton, John and Ilsa Konrads, Lorraine Crapp, Jon Henricks, Susie O’Neill and Michael Klim. Australians have certainly made a splash in the swimming pool!

Surfing Surfboats were used long before people thought of surfing as a sport. In 1839, the Illawarra Steam Packet Company called tenders for building a surfboat to use for landing passengers and cargo on beaches to the south of Sydney. In the middle of the nineteenth century, surfboats were often used to get to wrecked ships, and occasionally to land troops on beaches lying between enemy forts. By 1886, a surfboat race was held near Ballina in New South Wales, with four oars and a cox—the person who stands at the back of the boat and steers. Surf carnivals Manly, a seaside suburb of Sydney, held what it called its ‘first annual surf carnival’ in March 1907, with ‘shooting the breakers’ (body surfing), fancy diving and ‘other aquatic sports’. The club’s second carnival in December 1907 offered a fancy-dress competition, wading and swimming races, a tug-of-war and a lifeboat demonstration. Another Manly carnival on 25 January 1908 drew an estimated 40,000 spectators, causing traffic jams at the ferry wharf! By 1919, the surf lifesaving movement was well established and, in November, a postwar ‘Victory Carnival’ at Manly offered events both on the harbour and in the surf. These events included a surfboat race with a prize of 5 guineas (about a week’s pay) for the champion crew. There was also a surfboard exhibition and a display of ‘aquaplaning behind motor speed launches’ on the harbour.

In 1919, there were no board-riding competitions as we know them today, although first and second places were awarded in a ‘surf board display’ four weeks after the Victory Carnival on the North Steyne section of Manly Beach. The 1919 board was little better than a plank of wood, and it was harder to control than a surfboat.

Surfboats heading out through the breakers in a race at Bondi, Sydney.

Surfboards Surfboards were first mentioned in Australian newspapers in 1840 in an article about Pitcairn Islanders, who rode waves with the help of boards. In 1854, The Sydney Morning Herald mentioned Sandwich Islanders (now called Hawaiians) riding their boards, lying, kneeling or even standing. A Hawaiian surfboard was displayed in Sydney in 1888 but, even in 1911, using a surfboard was still banned on Sydney’s beaches. A 1913 Sydney Morning Herald article describes the Hawaiian board as being ‘about seven feet long, and eighteen inches wide’ (about 2 metres by 45 centimetres), with a ‘convex top’. The same article mentions that Duke Kahanamoku, the famous Hawaiian sprint swimmer, wanted to visit Australia. He arrived in December 1914. In January 1915, Sam Walker gave a surfboard demonstration at Yamba, in northern New South Wales. He stood up and even stood on his head on his long, redwood board as he rode in on the waves. Board-riding as we know it had finally reached Australia, but this was during World War I, and so very little happened over the next few years.

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Australian surfing champion, Nat Young (centre) and other surfers, Sydney, 1972.

Stephanie Gilmore competing at Bells Beach, Victoria, 2010.

On Australia Day 1920, a surf carnival at Manly used no surfboards, but it had two other notable features. First, there was a ladies’ surf race, won by a Miss Andrews of Bondi, with Miss Sly and Mrs Park, both of Manly, taking second and third places. But the great excitement of the day came when Douglas Arkell, captain of the Newcastle Surf Club, lined up for the surf race. Arkell had been attacked by a shark a year before, and surgeons had amputated what remained of one of his legs. The other swimmers agreed that he should start at the water’s edge, while they began the race at the back of the beach. His final position was not mentioned, but Arkell finished in the first 12! Women surfers Between the wars, surfboards became lighter. They were now made from plywood moulded to timber frames, which were shaped and bent in the family copper— a large boiler heated by either a wood fire or gas, which was used for washing clothes. The boards were still very heavy, and the few Australian women who rode surfboards usually did so only as tandem riders, even though women had always ridden boards in Hawaii. The very first Australian woman to play the passenger role was 15-year-old Isabel Letham. Her father had helped Duke Kahanamoku make a board for demonstrations at Freshwater Beach in late 1914, and Duke took her on several waves, after which she was ‘hooked for life’. After World War II, the old style of hollow board was replaced by a shorter and lighter one, where a foam or balsa core was covered in fibreglass cloth and resin.

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Fins were added to give the rider more control of their board, so they could dart in and out of waves, and perform tricks that their parents would have thought impossible. More girls began to ride boards as well, although Isabel Letham had now been doing so for years. Australian women were soon riding well enough to win competitions. Phyllis O’Donnell won the first women’s World Championship Surfing Title at Manly Beach in 1964, Layne Beachley was seven times Association of Surfing Professionals (ASP) World Champion, and Wendy Botha was ASP Women’s World Champion four times. The same year that O’Donnell was women’s champion, Australian Midget Farrelly took the first men’s World Surfing Championship, while Nat Young won the world championship in 1966 and 1970. Young was later the ASP World Longboard Tour Champion in 1986 and from 1988 to 1990. Other outstanding Australian surfers include Simon Anderson, Mick Fanning, Stephanie Gilmore, Taj Burrow, Damian Hardman, Barton Lynch and Mark Occhilupo. Nat Young is said to have tried to register surfing as an official religion. This says a lot about the way many Australians view the surf.

Nat Young is said to have tried to register surfing as an official religion.

Athletics One of the earliest newspaper references to organised athletics in Australia described the ‘Border Games’ in August 1850 on a Melbourne racecourse. The events included standing and running jumps, quoit throwing, a sprint, a hurdle race, ‘putting the heavy stone’ and hammer throws. However, after the light hammer flew into the crowd, the stewards stopped that event. The Bendigo Easter Sports in 1856 included running races, with prizes of £2 and £5 (one or two weeks pay), watches and rings. There was also wrestling, ‘the manly art of self-defence’ (boxing), catching greased pigs and climbing greased poles! As well as the usual running races, Melbourne’s ‘Caledonian Gathering’ in 1859 included playing the bagpipes, stone throwing and Highland dancing. And, in 1862, the games at the Copenhagen Grounds in Ballarat featured a novelty race over 100 yards (91 metres) between two ladies in voluminous crinoline dresses! ‘Pedestrians’ In the 1840s and 1850s, the term ‘pedestrian’ referred to athletes like the ‘Flying Pieman’, who performed challenges such as ‘walking 100 miles in 22 hours’.

The Flying Pieman was William Francis King. He once accepted a bet to walk from Sydney to a mile beyond Parramatta and back again—a distance of 32 miles (51 kilometres)—in six hours. He finished in five hours and 59 minutes, and observers said that he was ‘in no way distressed’. Another time, he carried a dog that weighed 70 pounds (32 kilograms) from Campbelltown to Sydney between the hours of 12.30 am and 8.40 am, finishing at 8.20 am, with 20 minutes to spare.

The Flying Pieman Sydney’s ‘Flying Pieman’, William Francis King, died in 1873. His memory lives on in the legends about his athletic ‘pedestrian’ feats. There is an unlikely legend that he sold pies to ferry passengers at Circular Quay, and then walked fast enough to welcome them at the end of their journey to Parramatta, 25 kilometres away, and sold them more pies!

Spot the people getting in free to the first gathering of the Bendigo Caledonian Society, 2 January 1860.

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Australia has had other ‘eccentric’ athletes, including Cliff Young, who started running ultra-marathons in his sixties. He trained in overalls and gumboots, and claimed to have developed his shuffling style of running while chasing sheep, sometimes day and night, on the family farm. He won the first Sydney to Melbourne race over 875 kilometres in 1983, mainly because he went without sleep and overtook the other runners as they slept. He took five days, 15 hours and 4 minutes to complete the run. Young was from Victoria, and many of Australia’s best runners have been Victorians. That state also offers the

Women athletes had to wear clothing that was regarded as decent by polite society, so at first it was hard for them to record fast race times. richest race for men sprinters, the Stawell Gift. Originally run over 130 yards (118.9 metres), it is now run over 120 metres, and it uses a complicated handicap system. Betting is allowed, as it was on the first women’s running championship held in Victoria in 1908, 30 years after the first Stawell Gift. Female athletes Women athletes had to wear clothing that was regarded as decent by polite society, so at first it was hard for them to record fast race times. In April 1908, Ivy Evans of Bendigo was declared the ‘champion lady pedestrian of the Commonwealth’ after she beat Mrs Isa Bell of Albert Park in Victoria in a number of running races. Women did not represent Australia in athletics at any Olympic Games until 1936, when high jumper Doris Carter took part. In 1948, Australian women won one silver and two bronze medals on the track, while in 1952 they won three gold medals and one bronze and, in 1956, four gold medals and three bronze. There have been a number of successful Australian male runners, including marathon runner Robert de Castella, longdistance runners Ron Clarke and Steve Moneghetti, and middle-distance runners Herb Elliott and John Landy. Outstanding Australian female sprinters include Betty Cuthbert, Marjorie Jackson and Shirley Strickland, who each won two or more Olympic gold medals in individual events; as well as Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Olympic gold medallist Cathy Freeman.

A women’s hurdles race, Sydney, March 1931 (above left). Robert de Castella winning the Commonwealth Games Marathon, Brisbane, 1982 (left).

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Aboriginal athletes Over the years, Australia has had many Aboriginal sporting champions. Nova Peris-Kneebone won Olympic gold as a hockey player in 1996, as well as gold in a World Cup and two Champions Trophy hockey competitions. She also won two gold medals in the 1998 Commonwealth Games as a sprinter. Four Aboriginal men have won the Stawell Gift sprinting race, while Percy Hobson won a gold medal for high jumping at the Commonwealth Games in 1962, and Benn Harradine won gold in the 2010 Commonwealth Games in the discus event. In 1971, Evonne Goolagong won her first Grand Slam tennis championship. Five years later, she had another 11 Grand Slams to her credit, and was the world’s top woman tennis player. By the end of her career, she had won 13 Grand Slam titles—seven individual titles and six titles in mixed or women’s doubles events. There have been many famous Aboriginal boxers, including Tony Mundine, his son Anthony Mundine, and Lionel Rose. Rose became world bantamweight champion in 1968, but he refused to fight in South Africa in 1970 because, under South Africa’s apartheid rules which discriminated against black people, he could only be admitted into the country as an ‘honorary white person’. Another Aboriginal sportsman who spoke out against racism was Charles Perkins, who led the 1965 freedom ride. He was a professional soccer player who had turned down an offer from the British team Manchester United. Instead, he returned to Australia and played for the Adelaide Croatia Soccer Club, before becoming captaincoach of the Pan-Hellenic team in Sydney. Later, he was a senior public servant and public figure. Cathy Freeman Cathy Freeman is one of the best known and most admired of Australia’s Aboriginal sporting stars. She was only 16 when she won her first Commonwealth Games gold medal in Auckland in 1990. Freeman was the first Aboriginal person to win gold at a Commonwealth Games, and one of the youngest medallists. She had always been a sprinter as a girl growing up in Mackay in Queensland, but at 14 she moved to

Cathy Freeman is one of the best known and most admired of Australia’s Aboriginal sporting stars.

Cathy Freeman on the blocks at the start of a race in 1997.

Brisbane and then, on a scholarship, to Toowoomba, before playing her part in the four by 100-metre relay in the 1990 Commonwealth Games. She ran well, but not at medal standard, at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, but at the 1994 Commonwealth Games she took gold in the 200- and 400-metre sprints, and silver in the four by 100-metre relay. While her team came first in the four by 400-metre relay, it was later disqualified. At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Freeman took silver behind France’s Marie-José Pérec in the 400 metres. Her times improved as the Sydney Olympics got closer, but she was troubled by injuries, and there was also the pressure of being the home-town favourite. Freeman had one very stressful moment at the start of the Sydney Olympic Games. She had been selected to light the flame in the Olympic cauldron. The torch was passed to her by six women, all former gold medallists. Freeman stepped forward as required, and then the machinery that was designed to lift her up to the cauldron ground to a halt. The official explanation was that there was a computer glitch. For four minutes, Cathy Freeman kept her cool as Australians, and television viewers watching the opening ceremony around the world, held their breath until the cauldron was finally lit.

Pérec pulled out of the 400-metre race, claiming to have been harassed. Then, on 25 September 2000, Australians again held their breath for the 49.11 seconds it took Cathy Freeman to win Olympic gold. Freeman ran a lap of victory carrying both the Australian and the Aboriginal flags—a fitting gesture of reconciliation.

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Football By 1829, members of the military garrison in Sydney were playing football in the barracks square. According to The Sydney Monitor, this was an old Leicestershire custom. It clearly caught on, because in 1832 an angry citizen complained to The Sydney Herald about youths playing football in Hyde Park on a Sunday ‘during the hours set aside for Divine Service’. In 1837, merchants were selling ‘Foot Balls’ in George Street in Sydney. By the 1850s, the churches were praising the idea of having ‘a healthy mind in a healthy body’, and so playing sport on a Sunday became acceptable. ‘Aussie Rules’ Only one successful sport has been invented in Australia. Australians in states where it is less popular often call the game ‘Rules’ or ‘Aussie Rules’, or even ‘aerial ping-pong’. In states where the game is popular, it is often just called ‘footie’. Officially, it is AFL—after its governing body, the Australian Football League.

A cricketer named Tom Wills started the game in 1858 in Melbourne. By year’s end, there were rules and a number of games had been played, although there was a fair amount of adjustment later. At first, there was no time limit, and the first team to score two goals was declared the winner. The earliest references to Aussie Rules football clubs appeared in Australian newspapers in 1858, and by 1859 there was enough interest in the game for a sample of the rules-in-progress to be published in The Argus. These rules included: scoring by passing the ball between the posts without touching either one; scoring a fair goal by forcing a ball between the goalposts in a scrimmage; and prohibiting tripping, holding and hacking, but allowing pushing with the hands or body when a player was moving fast.

Other rules said that the ball might be picked up at any time, but could not be carried further than necessary for a kick and that, in the absence of umpires, the two captains were the sole judges of infringements. By 1866, the rules had been revised several times, clubs had been started in South Australia, Queensland and Tasmania, and an oval ball was being used rather than the round ball favoured in the rather similar Gaelic Football. The first Australian Rules competition was based in Melbourne and was called the Victorian Football Association, after it was formed in 1877.

Old-style ‘Aussie Rules’: an 1880s player and ball (left), and a 1908 souvenir program from a carnival (above).

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Lucas Neill in action for the Socceroos in a match against Malaysia, Canberra, 2011.

In September 1869, a match between 16 members of the North Adelaide Club and 16 from the Woodville Club ran from early in the afternoon until sundown. It seems they did not change ends, because a very strong wind favoured North Adelaide all afternoon, and the only goal of the match went to them. After a reasonably successful visit by an English team in 1888, the game might have gone international, but that failed. The Victorian Football League formed as a breakaway group in 1896, and their competition started in 1897. Two things changed over the years: the rules and the methods of play. A writer in The Argus in 1910 commented that there was little that was original in the game at that time. He continued: The first code of rules was drawn up in 1866, but there have been many changes since then … though it may seem strange to speak thus of ‘ football,’ it is possible for a man to be a good player without kicking the ball at all. Handball has been developed to such an extent that the ball frequently travels between half a dozen players without reaching the foot at all. Very few people questioned the changes, because they made for a more exciting game and that brought the crowds in. Rugby At the very end of 1863, news reached Australia that British public schools Eton, Harrow, Westminster, Winchester and Rugby had agreed to have one general set of rules for ‘football’. They intended to play on Saturday afternoons. By 1866, a fierce match—with mauls, touchdowns and kicked goals—took place in Sydney between two teams called ‘University’ and ‘Military and Civil’. The game, in late August, would be the last of the season, as the ground was to be prepared for the coming cricket season. This must have been a Rugby Union game, as Rugby League did not break away from Rugby Union until 1908. Before long, watching football became a popular spectator sport. By 1884, the term ‘barracker’ was

known, and the first person described as a barracker was a retired team vice-captain. For a few years, ‘barracker’ seems to have been a popular Victorian term, but it slowly found its way to Tasmania and South Australia and, by 1889, ‘barracking’ at the cricket was heard of in the Hunter Valley in New South Wales. The modern game Modern football, whatever the code—Australian Rules, Rugby Union, Rugby League or soccer—is quite unlike what it was in the past, even as late as 1970. The changes have mainly involved money and marketing, and began when Kerry Packer started luring English and Australian test cricketers by offering them more than ten times what they had been paid for a series of five test matches. If football players wanted professional pay, the clubs had to be run professionally. The rights for everything from media coverage to team shirts and memorabilia also had to be managed professionally. Teams based on suburbs became franchises that could be moved around, and leagues became national institutions. The VFL became the AFL in 1990, and the South Melbourne team became the Sydney Swans, while Fitzroy became the Brisbane Lions. Tradition and nostalgia may have been ignored, but the football codes continued to thrive.

Before long, watching football became a popular spectator sport.

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Australia was extremely pleased with the result of their 1983 challenge for the America’s Cup.

In 1887, Scottish challenger Thistle was made to a secret design. When the vessel was dry-docked before the race, her hull was draped with cloth to hide the details. In 1895, the Americans had their new boat Defender built inside a hangar, and launched it at night to keep its design secret. Between 1899 and 1930, Sir Thomas Lipton, a very rich tea merchant, made five unsuccessful challenges, but he made his brand of tea popular in Britain! There were challenges in 1934 and 1937, before a gap of 21 years. By 1958, a new standard for yachts had been established, and the British challenger that year was in the new 12-metre class. And, by then, challengers did not have to sail all the way to America!

The America’s Cup There are two ways to win a yacht race: by being the most skilled sailor and/or by having the best boat. Yachting has always been a sport for the rich because, at the extremes of big-boat yacht racing, rich men ‘buy’ their designers, their skippers and their crews. The America’s Cup was named after the schooner America, the first vessel to win the race, in 1851. A syndicate from the New York Yacht Club (NYYC) built the schooner and took her to England to race against British yachts. In a race against the entire Royal Yacht Squadron around the Isle of Wight, America won by eight minutes and the syndicate took the Cup back to New York. In 1857, they donated it to the NYYC under a deed of gift, which was amended in 1881 to make it very hard for foreigners to ever win the Cup. Challengers had to sail their yachts to where the race was held, and there were other restrictions on the length of yachts and the sail area. In the 24 challenges before 1983, careful use of the rules had ensured that every foreign challenger lost.

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Australian challengers A yachting ‘class’ is a set of rules, limits and specifications, inside which boats may be designed. That means a naval architect anywhere can look at the rules and make a design that is within them. All of a sudden, Australia was knocking at the door of the NYYC. The 1962 and 1970 challenges were funded by Sir Frank Packer, a rich publisher and the father of media mogul Kerry Packer. Another Sydney-based challenge was sailed in 1967. All three failed. Alan Bond now entered the competition. Bond was an extremely rich and controversial Western Australian entrepreneur, who would later go bankrupt and serve time in jail for fraud. Many Australians now regard him as a rascal, and some did even then. Bond’s team launched unsuccessful America’s Cup challenges in 1974, 1977 and 1980, winning just one race and losing 12. Each challenge was a ‘best-of-seven’ competition. With that history, the Americans were probably not very worried about the 1983 challenge. However, Bond arrived with a golden spanner that he said would be used to unbolt the cup. He was playing mind games—but the Americans were better at it! The Americans discovered that Bond’s yacht, Australia II, featured marine architect and designer

Australia II crossed the line 41 seconds ahead of the American boat, with the boxing kangaroo flag flying and Australian band Men at Work’s song Down Under belting out.

Ben Lexcen’s winged keel, and they began to worry. They complained that the Australians were hiding their design, despite the precedents set by Thistle and Defender. The gentlemen of the NYYC could not get the design thrown out, the media were not allowed to examine the keel, and scuba-divers failed to photograph it. The NYYC had no alternative but to start sailing. A few days later, Australia II was down three races to one.

Australia II crossed the line 41 seconds ahead of the American boat, with the boxing kangaroo flag flying and Australian band Men at Work’s song Down Under belting out. In Perth, Prime Minister Bob Hawke declared, ‘I tell you what, any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum!’ It was a day for sports-mad Australians to rejoice.

Dennis Conner, the American skipper of Australia’s rival Liberty, was not the only one playing games now, but he hardly needed to. He just needed one more win and it would all be over. The Australians had suffered equipment failures early on, but they were now on top of those issues, and they soon levelled the score at three wins each.

Sailing solo around the world

Conner was still feeling good when he took a lead of two minutes in the final race on 26 September 1983. Then things came unstuck. By the next mark, he was less than a minute ahead and, at the final mark, he trailed by 21 seconds, and Australia II was pulling away.

Most people say that the first person to sail around the world was Ferdinand Magellan, but he died in the Philippines and just four out of the 55 crewmen from his ship Trinidad actually made it all the way back to Portugal in 1522. Sailing around the world was a dangerous business in the 1500s. By 1589, Martin Ignacio de Loyola had gone around the world twice, and by 1711 Englishman William Dampier had been around the world three

An aerial view of Australia II off Fremantle during trials for the America’s Cup in 1983.

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Joshua Slocum started the new and more dangerous tradition in the 1890s of sailing around the world alone, and over 200 people have done so since then. times, including two visits to Australia. The cook from Dampier’s ship died near Shark Bay and was buried there: sailing around the world was still pretty dangerous. Between 1766 and 1769, a Frenchwoman named Jeanne Baret sailed most of the way around the world on Louis Antoine de Bougainville’s Étoile. She was disguised as a boy, as women were not welcome on sailing ships at that time. She left the ship in Mauritius and reached Paris, probably in 1775. In the 1800s, more ships sailed to Australia, and sailing around the world became more common and much safer. Joshua Slocum started the new and more dangerous tradition in the 1890s of sailing around the world alone, and over 200 people have done so since then. In 1988, Australian Kay Cottee did it the hard way, by going the whole way without calling into any ports, and thus becoming the first woman to sail non-stop around the world. Then in 1999, Jesse Martin sailed back into Melbourne after a trip around the world. He was just 18.

Jessica Watson on her yacht after completing her solo voyage around the world, 15 May 2010.

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Jessica Watson was 11 when she decided to be the youngest person to sail alone, non-stop and unassisted, around the world. She completed her journey on 15 May 2010, and she turned 17 just three days later. She was later made the 2011 Young Australian of the Year.

At the end of 2011, Watson skippered the yacht Another Challenge in the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race with the youngest-ever crew, none of whom was over 22.

Other sporting highlights From archery to zorbing, there are many sports in which Australia has produced champions. Some make the headlines and become household names, but many others do not. Team sports Australian basketball gets good media coverage, partly because of the way it is presented and sold to the public. Australia’s male basketball team, the Boomers, have struggled to reach medal level at the Olympics, but the women’s team, the Opals, won bronze in London in 2012, after winning silver at three earlier Olympic Games. Australia’s hockey players have achieved even more impressive results. Both the Australian women’s and men’s hockey teams regularly play in the finals at the Olympic and Commonwealth Games, and also in worldclass events such as the Hockey Champions Trophy. The men have won six bronze, three silver and one gold medal at the Olympics, as well as the last five Champions Trophies. The women have won three Olympic gold medals and six Champions Trophies. The Australian men’s water polo team finished seventh at the London Olympics in 2012, while the women’s team came fourth at the Athens Olympics and won bronze medals at both the Beijing and London Olympics. Australia’s netball teams have also dominated the world in the game for many years. Netball has a huge following in Australia, both as a spectator sport and as a highly popular recreational game. Perhaps because it is a sport predominantly played by women, it does not get the recognition or coverage that men’s sports such as the various codes of football receive.

Australia’s Donna-Lee Patrick playing hockey against New Zealand in Melbourne in 2001.

Individual sports Another sometimes underrated sport is squash. Australian squash player Heather McKay won 16 British Open and two World Open championships between 1962 and 1979. Five of her British Open wins were against other Australians. And cycling in Australia goes back at least to the 1890s, when people realised that a bicycle needed less space to store and was easier to keep than a horse. Many people regularly travelled long distances by bicycle, and some bush workers used their bicycles to carry heavy loads, and then had races on them when they got to their destination. Francis Birtles rode bicycles all around Australia but, while Birtles was no racer, Hubert Opperman was. ‘Oppy’ began his working life delivering telegrams by bicycle, and he went on to win many endurance races. He was later knighted, and he served as a federal cabinet minister in the Menzies government. Like Opperman, Cadel Evans has competed in the Tour de France but, unlike Opperman, Evans won the event, in 2011. Anna Meares, Robbie McEwen and Ryan Bayley are also high-achieving Australian cyclists.

Australia has also produced champion motorcyclists, rally drivers and racing drivers, all of whom learned their skills on Australian roads. They include Formula One racing champion Sir Jack Brabham, and world champion motorcycle riders Casey Stoner and Mick Doohan. Despite its mainly warm climate, Australia has also bred winter sports champions such as snowboarder,

‘Oppy’ in his prime in the 1920s.

Torah Bright, who won a gold medal in the 2010 Winter Olympics, and the very lucky and tenacious Steven Bradbury, who won a gold medal in the 1,000-metre shorttrack speed-skating event at the 2002 Winter Olympics. This is just a small selection of some of Australia’s outstanding sporting achievements.

Last man standing Australian speed skater Steven Bradbury won his gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City in the USA in unusual circumstances. When all of the skaters in front of Bradbury fell over, one after another, all he had to do was to stay on his feet and glide past the finishing line. His win, which showed that persistence pays off and that sometimes it is enough just to be the last man standing, led to the introduction of a new Australian phrase— ‘doing a Bradbury’!

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Embracing Multiculturism The people who argued for a ‘White Australia’ in 1898 were 110 years too late. Multicultural Australia began in 1788, with people initially coming here from all over the world as officials, convicts or as servants or crew members on ships, and later as migrants or refugees. In many cases, they were outnumbered by English speakers and just adopted the customs of the majority British, giving up their own cultures, knowledge, language and insights. In the end, Australians started to realise what they were losing.

LEFT: The Bharatam Dance

Company, 1994. BELOW: A pipe band after the Anzac

Day march, Melbourne, 1996.

LEFT: Champion athletes, Melinda Gainsford-Taylor and Cathy Freeman.

Abandoning the White Australia Policy Officially, there was no White Australia Policy. Still, in the first half of the twentieth century, some non-white people were given a dictation test in a European language they were unlikely to know. If they failed the test, as they usually did, they were not allowed to stay in Australia. This approach was also used for ‘political undesirables’ like the communist journalist Egon Kisch. Kisch came to Australia in 1934 to warn about the threat from Hitler’s Germany. He was fluent in several European languages, and so he was tested in Scottish Gaelic. When he failed the dictation test, he was ordered to leave Australia.

Kisch challenged the order in the High Court and won, so he was allowed to stay in Australia and spread his message. His challenge made

some Australians, especially his left-wing supporters, even more aware of how unfair the test was. Because there was no officially named ‘White Australia Policy’, no official action was required to remove it and so, over time, the White Australia Policy was allowed to fade away. Curiously, the change did not happen under a Labor government. The Labor Party was usually the party that supported equality but, because the unions feared ‘opening the floodgates’ to foreign labourers, who they feared would work for lower wages, the party was afraid to act. Instead, former cycling champion Hubert Opperman, as Liberal Minister for Immigration between 1963 and 1965, oversaw the end of the old policy. Historical background In 1895, the colonial premiers had met to discuss restricting the entry of all non-white people in the event of federation of the colonies. In the end, they agreed instead to ban ‘undesirable persons’. Somebody had to decide who was ‘undesirable’. Customs officers would examine the papers and backgrounds of people applying to enter Australia. If the applicants seemed to be ‘the wrong sorts’, the dictation test would be used to ensure that they failed. Entry was never refused on racial grounds because, officially, all entrants were given the same test. In 1901, at the time of Federation, there were two major ideological groups in Australian politics—the Protectionists and the Free-Traders. The Australian Labor Party (ALP) was growing, and Edmund Barton only became Prime Minister in 1901 with the support of the ALP. The ALP had to act in the interests of its greatest supporters, especially the Australian Workers Union (AWU). This union had grown out of a number of shearers unions in the individual colonies. The AWU feared the effect of cheap foreign labour on the working conditions of its members. The original plan was to ban all foreign nationals, but Britain complained that this would offend British subjects in India and people from Japan— then Britain’s ally—so the dictation test was introduced instead. After World War I, with Japan taking over old German colonies in the Pacific, Japan was seen as a threat, and World War II seemed to justify that view.

In 1910, ‘White Australia’ supporters even had their own music to march to.

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Students protested at Mascot (Sydney Airport) about Nancy Prasad’s deportation in 1965.

Nabbing Nan cy

During World War II, many refugees reached Australia, including 4,400 ‘Asiatics’. In December 1947, Arthur Calwell, the Minister for Immigration, spoke of plans to send most of the refugees back to their home countries, even though some had married Australians. He then made insensitive comments that upset many people. That may have contributed to the ultimate failure of the White Australia Policy, although there were other influences. The Colombo Plan The Colombo Plan was designed to help restore Asian economies affected by Japanese occupation and the deprivations of World War II. It began in 1950 and originally involved sending Australian experts in various fields to Asia. By 1952, 150 Asian students were studying as undergraduates or for higher degrees in Australian

The dictation test remained until 1958 and, after 1963, under Hubert Opperman, the Immigration Department began easing the restrictions on people of ‘mixed race’, making entry easier for foreigners with qualifications, who would once have been barred from coming to Australia.

In 1965, a litt le girl called Nancy Prasa was to be de d ported from Australia, m because she ainly was an Indian Fijian. Abori student activ ginal ist Charles P erkins staged ‘kidnap’ of N a ancy at the airport to dr aw attention to the unfairne ss of Austra lia’s immigration policies. To th e de m on strators’ disappointm ent, the gove rnment mad e sure Nancy left th e next day. Sh e w as fi n ally allowed to se ttle in Austra li a in th e 19 when she was 70s a teenager.

universities, and the number grew rapidly. Later, there was a similar plan for people from African countries that were members of the British Commonwealth— the Special Commonwealth Assistance for Africa Plan. These plans worked on two levels. The students were selected carefully and, once in Australia, they were supported and taught about local customs and manners. In fact, they were often given far better support than postwar migrants. In the longer term, many of these talented students returned home and then rose to prominence in their own countries. By then, they had a good understanding of Australia, and often had fond memories of the time they had spent here. They were welcomed to Australia as guests and were never regarded as foreign job-stealers. Some of the old fears about foreigners were now dying away. The dictation test remained until 1958 and, after 1963, under Hubert Opperman, the Immigration Department began easing the restrictions on people of ‘mixed race’, making entry easier for foreigners with qualifications, who would once have been barred from coming to Australia. Australia was improving its status as a world citizen.

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Refugees in Australia Vietnamese ‘boat people’ At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, many people in South Vietnam feared living under a communist government. Some of them had worked for the allies, others had fought in South Vietnam’s army against the communists, and some just did not agree with communism. An estimated 60,000 South Vietnamese were executed at the end of the Vietnam War. Another million were sent to ‘re-education’ camps, where around 160,000 died. About 130,000 Vietnamese who were close allies of the USA were helped to leave the country and resettle, mostly in the USA. The Vietnam War was fought to contain international communism and, before the war was lost, the domino theory predicted that international communism would roll south, but this did not happen. In 1976, the Vietnamese communist party was purged when one faction, the pro-China wing, lost power, while the pro-Russia group took full control. This alarmed China, because there were many people of Chinese origin in Vietnam. These people, known as the Hoa, felt threatened and, in both Vietnam and China, ethnicity tended to count even more than politics.

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Vietnamese ‘boat people’ reaching Darwin in November 1977.

There were other problems in nearby countries. In Cambodia, the Khmer Rouge was trying to persuade the Chinese to remain neutral when war broke out between Cambodia and Vietnam. The Vietnamese pressure on the Hoa people increased during 1977 and 1978, and many fled to China, where they were welcomed, but then sent to work as peasants on state-run farms. Most of the Vietnamese Hoa were wealthy traders and merchants and so, rather than work on a farm, many of them travelled by boat to other countries like Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore and Indonesia. Later, some of them sailed even further. On 25 December 1978, Vietnam invaded Cambodia and forced the Khmer Rouge out. In February 1979, the Chinese army invaded Vietnam, but achieved little. The Vietnamese occupied Cambodia for almost ten years. Most of these incidents were part of a larger fight for supremacy between Chinese and Russian communists. It seemed that the ideal of international communism was a lost cause. There was still a lot of suffering in the name of communism. Many Vietnamese ‘boat people’ who had reached other Asian nations wanted to settle somewhere else, and so they looked to their former allies. In the end, the USA agreed to take 823,000 Vietnamese refugees, Australia and Canada each agreed to take

Unlike today’s ‘boat people’, who usually come from refugee camps in Indonesia, most of the first wave of refugees who came to Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s arrived by plane on the last leg of their journey.

137,000, France offered to take 96,000, and Britain and Germany each agreed to accept 19,000. Many more refugees who left Vietnam by boat either drowned or were killed by pirates. Unlike today’s ‘boat people’, who usually come from refugee camps in Indonesia, most of the first wave of refugees who came to Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s arrived by plane on the last leg of their journey. Many of the patterns and assumptions for later waves of refugees were established then, but there were many other refugees with different needs. Economic refugees The United Nations High Commission on Refugees distinguishes between ‘economic migrants’, who leave their country to find a better life elsewhere, and ‘refugees’, who leave their homes because their lives

are in danger or they are being persecuted because of their religious, cultural or political beliefs. Many refugees started coming to Australia from Lebanon in the Middle East after a civil war broke out there in 1975, but the first Lebanese migrants had actually reached Australia in the late 1800s. The early arrivals were mainly Christian and well-off, but many of the later arrivals were poor Muslims. Australia had no qualms about taking them in, even though their culture, language, religion and ethnicity were different. However, some people did question their ability to fit in.

Today, Australia is being asked to accept refugees from many parts of the world—Tamils from Sri Lanka, minority groups from Burma, Syrians and Farsi-speaking Hazara people from Afghanistan, as well as people from Somalia, Ethiopia and other African countries. Under the law, anybody can ask for asylum as a refugee in Australia, but that is not the same as being granted asylum. In 2009–10, only around 44 per cent of requests for onshore protection visas were approved. Australia has shown compassion for the victims of many conflicts—too many people, according to the critics, but far too few, according to others.

Afghan refugees with a treasured carpet that they brought from Kabul, 2005.

An African food stall, Newcastle, 2010.

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Chain migration When people arrive in a new country, they often seek out links to their home country: food, clothing, news, their own language and religion, plus the support of friends and family. Immigration often begins with a handful of people migrating and then encouraging others to follow them, so they have familiar company in their new country. As a migrant community grows, others from the same area or culture may follow from the home country. This is called chain migration, and it has happened in Australia. Working in Australia Until the gold rushes, groups of people from the same country did not usually congregate in one place in Australia. On the large goldfields, Germans, Scots, the Irish, even American diggers often worked with their own people. Before the gold rushes, convicts went where

As a migrant community grows, others from the same area or culture may follow from the home country. This is called chain migration, and it has happened in Australia. they were sent, and free workers went where there was work. Many Scots became squatters in Victoria and New England, but there were few other ‘ethnic clumpings’. Other concentrations of national groups were less obvious. The Cornish tin miners at Moonta in South Australia went there to mine copper, and many Cornish people, whose descendants live around Daylesford in Victoria even today, settled there because they were ‘hard rock’ miners. Late in the nineteenth century, some of them moved to Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie to mine reef gold. German immigrants were recruited to work in South Australia and in Queensland, where German place and personal names can still be found.

Migrants leaving their ship in 1964. Many of them had family or friends waiting on the dock.

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John Alloo’s Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853. His real name was Chin Thum Lock.

Other trades sometimes brought national groups to a single place. After World War I, parts of the old AustroHungarian and Ottoman Turk Empires were formed into Yugoslavia, but many people from that area, including Croatians and Serbians, began leaving in the mid-1920s. Some of them reached Fremantle and settled there as fishermen, while others moved to the eastern goldfields of Western Australia, where they mainly worked at cutting the timber that fuelled the steam engines. Migrants from the Greek islands understood fishing, and so they often settled in fishing ports. Chinese gold diggers usually came to Australia in close-knit groups from a single village or group of villages. In some cases, the Chinese gold diggers were allowed to work only in certain diggings, but even off the diggings they tended to stay together, living near their temples. The term ‘Chinatown’ was used in California in the 1850s, and it probably came to Australia from there. Ballarat had the first Australian Chinatown, although Bendigo’s was established soon after.

In the late nineteenth century, Cairns, Rockhampton and other Queensland towns had Chinatowns, and so did Sydney. The original Sydney Chinatown was in The Rocks area, until bubonic plague broke out in that area in 1900. Many buildings were demolished, and Chinatown moved to an area near the Haymarket, where it is today. Moving on In ‘pure’ chain migration, one or two men reach a new land, find work, learn enough of the local language

to survive, and then send for more people from their family or their village. The new arrivals settle close to the founders but, within a generation, the well-off often move out. Sydney’s Leichhardt remains a centre of Italian culture but, 20 years after the first Italians settled there, some of them moved to suburbs like Five Dock, or further afield. A church, temple, synagogue or mosque can be a powerful anchor to hold people in an area. For example, before the number of Vietnamese in Cabramatta in Sydney grew, the area was dotted with Serbian Orthodox churches. Melbourne was once called the city with the secondhighest number of Greeks anywhere in the world. This would not be so now, partly because fewer Greeks have migrated to Australia recently, but mainly because later generations moved around and married outside their culture. This often leads to the loss of old traditions. Early white settlers in Australia usually married partners from their own country and, until the 1950s, Australians usually married people of the same religion. Many people now marry partners from different races and with different religious affiliations. The challenge for future Australians is to appreciate and conserve as much of our rich multicultural heritage as we can.

Melbourne was once called the city with the second-highest number of Greeks anywhere in the world.

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A local policeman stopping for a Turkish coffee at the Haldon Street Festival, Lakemba, Sydney, 2010.

the Scots ‘eat haggis and porridge, wear kilts, play the bagpipes and speak Gaelic’. In reality, there is obviously far more to every culture. Introducing ‘exotic’ food Some of the twentieth-century waves of refugees introduced unfamiliar religions to Australia, and they also brought new food traditions with them from places like Thailand, Vietnam and Cambodia. Indian and Lebanese food was also introduced, and it represents a wide range of Mediterranean and Islamic or Arabic traditions.

Multicultural Australia In many ways, Australia has always been multicultural. In colonial times, the Scots and the Irish sometimes seemed like alien cultures to the English, but there were also Africans like outlaw ‘Black Caesar’, as well as Chinese, Indian and people from other races who had come to Australia in small numbers. Before long, Maori sailors from New Zealand could also be seen on Sydney streets. Once the gold rushes started, the number of different nationalities increased greatly, but these people, if they stayed in Australia, were expected to assimilate—to give up their ‘foreign ways’, to learn to speak English, and to conform to British standards. Just about the only culture, apart from the English, that was ‘allowed’ to thrive was that of the Scottish community, although the Irish also managed to hang onto many of their old ways. Today, the pipe bands that lead the Anzac Day march and the celebration of St Patrick’s Day are part of Australian tradition for many people. To many Australians before World War II, a foreign culture was often defined by spicy food, quaint clothes, weird music and a strange language. Some people stereotyped certain cultures by, for example, saying that

To many Australians before World War II, a foreign culture was often defined by spicy food, quaint clothes, weird music and a strange language.

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In a way, food was often a vehicle for the acceptance of new cultures into Australian life. In rural Australia, some Greek migrants opened cafes in which standard ‘Aussie fare’— such as meat pies, steak and eggs, and ‘mixed grills’—were served. They also served souvlaki, dolmades and other Greek delicacies. Before long, more Anglo-Australians, some of whom had widened their horizons through overseas travel, were trying this food, and so it slowly became an accepted part of Australian culinary tradition.

Chinese restaurants also opened up, offering ‘Australian’ meals and ‘Australianised’ Chinese food. Such food introduced more ‘exotic’ foreign dishes such as sweetand-sour pork, along the same lines as Italian ham and pineapple pizza, and mild Indian curries. The food was often far from authentic, but it allowed Australians to taste and to start to appreciate what other cultures had to offer. Multicultural food helped many Australians to appreciate that there is more than one way of looking at the world, and that every culture is worthy of respect.

Reconciliation Reconciliation is both an idea and an ideal. As Reconciliation Australia points out, effective reconciliation involves Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians working together to build better relationships for the benefit of all Australians. A starting point is understanding the history of the relationship between white people and Aboriginal people in Australia, and then constructively moving on from that.

To many Aboriginal people, the white settlement of Australia in January 1788 was actually an invasion.

Acknowledging the past To many Aboriginal people, the white settlement of Australia in January 1788 was actually an invasion. However, many white Australians do not believe it was an invasion because no shots were fired. When a country is invaded, a group of foreigners takes over the land. They claim it as their own, enforce their laws and impose them on the native people. That is what happened when the people from the First Fleet came ashore at Sydney Cove in 1788. While what happened in 1788 cannot be undone, agreeing that it was an invasion will help people to see more clearly where justice lies. Over the years, Aboriginal people have suffered from the effects of the occupation of their land by white people, but they have also benefited from the introduction of medicine, running water and education, for example. That may be but, on balance, Aboriginal people lost far more than they gained. For example, the average lifespan for Aboriginal people is 17 years less than that for non-Aboriginal people, while Aboriginal unemployment rates are four times higher, and Aboriginal people are 11 times more likely to end up in jail. These statistics are not acceptable. Things obviously need to change but, as many governments have discovered over the years, bringing about positive change is not easy.

At the heart of such change is the recognition of and respect for the special places, cultures, rights and contributions of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Part of this involves acknowledging the wrongs committed by white governments in the past. This includes the taking of Aboriginal land, the massacring of Aboriginal people, and the plight of the Stolen Generations.

When the white settlers arrived, there were hundreds of different Aboriginal languages, cultures and traditions. While Aboriginal groups had some common features, there were many differences as well. This meant that, when the first coastal explorations were carried out in the 1800s, Bungaree and other English-speaking Aboriginal people, who travelled with the explorers as interpreters, often could not understand the languages and cultures of the Aboriginal people they encountered. According to Reconciliation Australia, the keys to reconciliation are recognition, mutual respect and good relationships between the First Australians and other Australians at local, state and national levels. As Paul Kelly and Kev Carmody declared in their popular protest song, ‘from little things, big things grow’.

Communication breakdown Talking about ‘Aboriginal culture and tradition’ makes as much sense as talking about ‘European culture and tradition’, because Aboriginal people are from many cultures, just like Europeans. When the first

James Cook and his crew landing in New Zealand, before charting the eastern coast of Australia.

coastal exploration of Australia happened in the 1800s, English-speaking Aboriginal people often went along to interpret the language of the local Aboriginal inhabitants but, away from Sydney, they could not understand their language.

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On the World Stage Australians often go overseas, either to gain wider experience of the world or sometimes to conquer new fields. Some—especially scientists, artists, writers, musicians and stage performers—settle elsewhere, while others return home after a few years. Australians are great tourists and sometimes those who set off for a holiday find a new life on the other side of the world. But, as Peter Allen sang, they still call Australia home.

ABOVE: Portrait of Nellie Melba.

LEFT: Miranda Coney, The Australian

ABOVE: This artwork in the National Gallery of

Ballet, and Albert David, Bangarra Dance Theatre.

Australia, Canberra, is a memorial to all Indigenous people who died between 1788 and 1988.

Entertaining abroad At the end of World War II, Australia’s population was about 7.4 million. At that time, a lot of Australian entertainers made a living playing in theatres around the country. By 1960, the population had grown to around 10.4 million, but the audience for entertainers in theatres had dropped, mainly because of television. A single act that would normally keep an artist in work for months travelling around Australia could now lose its impact overnight with just one performance on television, which obviously reached a much wider audience. This meant that artists had to either keep coming up with new acts or find new audiences. Succeeding overseas In the 1950s, many people followed the sea-lanes and air routes that led to Britain and Europe. They were the natural places for up-and-coming artists to go, though very few of them could afford air travel then. Some Dame Edna Everage in her ‘Cockatoo Dress’ in 1997.

Peter Allen performing at the opening of the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 1983.

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went to make their names in Britain, while others just wanted to experience the opportunities that they could not find at home. In the postwar period, Australians abroad usually stayed in one of two or three areas that were frequented by other Australians. One of these was Earls Court in London, which was then commonly known as ‘Kangaroo Valley’. There, they could find other Australians who thought and spoke as they did, and shared their sense of humour. One of the most successful members of the Australian contingent in London at that time was actor and comedian Barry Humphries. Humphries was successful in both Australia and Britain, and later in the USA. His main character was suburban Australian housewife ‘Edna Everage’, who Humphries developed into international ‘megastar’ Dame Edna Everage. While living and performing in Britain, Barry Humphries emphasised and exploited his ‘Australian-ness’ in his act.

Humphries also created the very over-the-top Australian character ‘Bazza’ McKenzie. An uncouth larrikin, McKenzie first appeared in 1964 in a comic strip in the British satirical current-affairs magazine Private Eye. The first McKenzie film, made in 1972,

Rupert Murdoch at a media conference in 1990 (left) and Germaine Greer at the National Library of Australia in 2005 (right).

was based on a book of the comic strips that was banned in Australia. However, Prime Minister John Gorton supported the making of the film, and Prime Minister Gough Whitlam appeared in the 1974 sequel, in which he made Barry’s aunt, Mrs Edna Everage of Moonee Ponds, a dame. Other outrageous characters created by Barry Humphries included Sandy Stone and ‘cultural attaché’ Sir Les Patterson, but Dame Edna was his greatest success. She showed the world that Australians could definitely laugh at themselves. Other Australian arrivals in Britain in the 1960s who became internationally successful included Germaine Greer and Clive James. Greer, an author, academic and feminist, is best known for her controversial, bestselling book about feminism, The Female Eunuch (1970). Clive James became a popular author, poet, humourist and television presenter. Rupert Murdoch followed in his father’s footsteps as a media tycoon and became one of the best-known Australians in Britain. Murdoch was dubbed ‘the dirty

Other outrageous characters created by Barry Humphries included Sandy Stone and ‘cultural attaché’ Sir Les Patterson, but Dame Edna was his greatest success. She showed the world that Australians could definitely laugh at themselves.

digger’ by the British media, who found his business tactics less than honourable. Murdoch’s media empire spread to the USA, and in 1985 he became a US citizen so he could own television stations in the USA. Comic actor Paul Hogan arrived later on the international scene. He was known in Australia for playing larrikin Aussie characters, and he made his name overseas playing Australian outback ‘hero’ Mick Dundee in the highly successful film Crocodile Dundee in 1986. Another Australian ‘export’ was singer and dancer Peter Allen, who also had a successful career in the USA in the 1980s. He composed and sang a number of songs about Australia, including I Still Call Australia Home, which continues to resonate with Australian expatriates. Many of Australia’s international stars find a home on the world stage but continue to call Australia ‘home’.

Winning the Nobel Prize Fourteen people with Australian connections have won the international Nobel Prize in their field of endeavour. Only one has been in the area of literature. Author Patrick White was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1973 for producing ‘an epic and psychological narrative art which has introduced a new continent into literature’—in other words, for bringing

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Sir Howard Florey helped a medical revolution with his work on the antibiotic, penicillin.

Australia to the world through books like Voss and The Tree of Man. While White came from an Australian ‘squattocracy’ background—his family had settled in the New England region of New South Wales in the 1850s—many other Australian Nobel Laureates have migrant or international backgrounds. Science William Lawrence Bragg shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father, William Henry Bragg. Both father and son were knighted for their efforts, but to avoid confusion the father was called Sir William and the son Sir Lawrence. Lawrence Bragg was the grandson of Sir Charles Todd, South Australian Postmaster-General and Government Astronomer, who oversaw the building of the Overland Telegraph. Bragg senior was professor of

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physics at Adelaide University until the family returned to Britain in 1909. Together, they invented a technique called ‘X-ray diffraction’. Aleksandr Prokhorov shared the 1964 Nobel Prize in Physics for work on lasers and masers. Born at Atherton in Queensland in 1916, his parents were Russian revolutionaries who had fled to Australia to escape persecution by the Tsarist government. In 1923, when the turmoil of the Russian Revolution was over, the family returned to Russia and Prokhorov studied physics there. John Cornforth was educated in the New England area of New South Wales and then in Sydney, before he and his future wife both won scholarships to Oxford University in Britain. He shared the 1975 Nobel Prize in Chemistry with Vladimir Prelog. Cornforth also did some work on penicillin, the wonder drug that had brought Australian scientist Howard Florey to prominence and won him a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945. John Harsanyi, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1994, lived in Australia for only a short time. His Jewish parents owned a pharmacy in Budapest, but Harsanyi’s interests lay in philosophy and mathematics. However, in 1937, with war looming, he studied pharmacy, as he thought this would be a safer profession in a time of war. When Germany occupied Hungary in 1944, Harsanyi was placed in a forced labour unit, and later sent to a concentration camp in Austria. Harsanyi escaped, and a Jesuit priest sheltered him in a monastery until the war was over. He then completed a PhD and settled down to teach in Hungary. He realised that, as a non-communist, he had little future there, and so he and his future wife fled, via Austria, to Australia. They arrived in December 1950 and were married three days later. Harsanyi worked in a factory for three years while studying at night for a Master’s degree in economics. After he graduated, they spent just three more years in Australia before moving to the USA for the rest of their lives. Brian Schmidt was born in Montana in the USA. He grew up there and in Alaska. Schmidt shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with two other scientists, Saul Perlmutter and Adam Riess. They won the award for providing evidence that the expansion of the universe is accelerating. While he was studying at Harvard University in the USA, Schmidt met Jennifer Gordon, an Australian PhD student in economics. They moved to Australia in 1994, and Schmidt began work at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in Canberra in 1995.

In 1963, Sir John Eccles shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his complicated work on neurophysiology—the study of how the nervous system works. Physiology or Medicine The other Australian Nobel Prizes were all won for the category called ‘Physiology or Medicine’, a broad term that leaves the judges room to select the best of the best. Sir Howard Florey shared the 1945 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with two other scientists. They worked on the challenge of developing a poisonous product, made by a common mould, into a drug that could kill deadly bacterial infections—what is now known as the antibiotic penicillin. Within a year of the award, germs had developed that were able to survive penicillin, mainly because people misused the drug. This made the work of future Nobel Prize winner John Cornforth all the more important. Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet shared the 1960 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with a Briton, Sir Peter Medawar. Burnet spent most of his life in Melbourne, where he worked as an immunologist and virologist at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, which is the oldest medical research institute in Australia. Burnet also spent two years—1926 and 1932—working in London. In 1963, Sir John Eccles shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his complicated work on neurophysiology—the study of how the nervous system works. The other winners were Andrew Huxley and Alan Lloyd Hodgkin. Eccles was educated in Warrnambool and Melbourne. He spent 12 years in Britain, before returning to Australia. Peter Doherty shared the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Rolf Zinkernagel. Trained as a veterinarian, Doherty studied the way in which ‘killer T cells’ identify infected cells in the body and destroy them. He grew up in Queensland and got his first degree there, then completed a PhD in Edinburgh in Scotland. He then returned to Australia, where he carried out his prize-winning work at the John Curtin School of Medical Research at the Australian National University. Barry Marshall and Robin Warren shared the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for proving that stomach ulcers were not caused by stress or high acid levels in the stomach, but by a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori. Warren was born and trained in

Adelaide, and he then moved to Perth. Marshall was born in Kalgoorlie and educated in Perth, where he met Warren. Marshall and Warren began to suspect that H. pylori caused ulcers, but their tests on piglets failed to prove it. Then, in 1984, when Marshall was 33 and in good health, he underwent careful medical checks before swallowing a culture of H. pylori. A few days later, an endoscopy showed massive inflammation in his gut, along with an infection of H. pylori. A few days after that, he cured the infection and stopped the inflammation by taking antibiotics. He had proved his theory in a very spectacular and convincing way!

Elizabeth Blackburn shared the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak for work on telomeres, an important part of the chromosomes that carry our genes. Blackburn grew up in Tasmania and gained an honours degree at Melbourne University, but she has spent her working life in Britain and the USA. Scientific research involves cooperation, and so it is not surprising that it is often an international endeavour. It is impressive that so many scientists with connections to Australia have been honoured in this way.

Sir John Eccles, Nobel Laureate, 1963.

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Sharing Australia’s stories Some books about Australia were written before white settlement in 1788. William Dampier and James Cook both wrote bestsellers, describing their journeys to the Great South Land. Later, Governor Arthur Phillip, marine officer Watkin Tench and Lieutenant-Governor David Collins wrote about their experiences in the new colony. George Barrington, an Irish pickpocket, was sometimes claimed as Australia’s first creative writer, but his ‘writings’—including the book published under his name, A Voyage to Botany Bay (1795)—were probably actually compiled by journalists. People believed that he had also created the memorable lines that opened the first theatre performance in Australia in 1796: True patriots all, for be it understood: We left our country for our country’s good. But, now, these lines are thought to be the work of English playwright Henry Carter. Establishing an Australian voice During the colonial period, several poets’ work emerged. Judge Barron Field, for example, created some of the first verse compositions, focusing on the country’s distinctive fauna and flora, to appear in Australia in book form, in 1819. Francis MacNamara, known as ‘Frank the Poet’, wrote ballads about his experiences as a convict in Australia. The first Australian-born poet was explorer, landowner and statesman William Charles Wentworth. He is mainly remembered for exploring the Blue Mountains with Gregory Blaxland and William Lawson in 1813, but his poem, Australasia, won a poetry prize in Britain in 1823. From the 1830s, Charles Harpur published poems on the beauty and solitude of the Hawkesbury country, where he had been born, and on political liberty. Later, from the late 1850s, Henry Kendall wrote lyrical verse describing various kinds of landscapes. Australian literature developed further in the late nineteenth century. In 1874, journalist Marcus Clarke’s powerful and compassionate novel about convict life, For the Term of His Natural Life, was published. Robbery under Arms, a bushranging story set in the goldfields, written by Rolf Boldrewood (whose real name was

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Thomas Alexander Browne), was released as a serial in The Sydney Mail in the early 1880s, and then as a book in 1888. The urban murder mystery, Mystery of a Hansom Cab (1886), by Fergus Hume, provided a vivid description of life in the fast-growing Melbourne of the 1880s. When it was first published, it outsold English author Conan Doyle’s A Study in Scarlet (1887), the first book to feature his famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. Born and bred in the bush, Henry Lawson wrote short stories and poems about bush life which helped to provide the emerging nation with a distinctly Australian voice. He belonged to the ‘Bulletin school’ of writers and artists whose work was also strongly nationalistic. Lawson’s first collection of stories, While the Billy Boils, was published in book form in 1896. Other authors whose work was published in the Bulletin magazine in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries included poet Andrew Barton ‘Banjo’ Paterson and novelist Miles Franklin. Banjo Paterson wrote what have become iconic poems about life in the Australian bush, including Clancy of the Overflow (1889), The Man from Snowy River (1890) and Waltzing

Henry Lawson in 1896, ready to go ‘on the wallaby’ (wandering the bush).

Matilda (1895). Miles Franklin’s best known novel, My Brilliant Career (1901), was based on her childhood in the Brindabella Ranges near Canberra. Australian fiction took another direction in the novels of Ethel Florence Richardson who, like a number of women authors, wrote under a man’s name—Henry Handel Richardson. Despite their Australian settings, her work emphasised self-discovery and memory of personal loss. Her coming-of-age novel, The Getting of Wisdom, published in 1910, was greatly admired, as was the tragic three-part novel, The Fortunes of Richard Mahony, which she wrote while living in England. Christina Stead, considered to be one of Australia’s finest writers, wrote 15 novels in her career spanning 50 years, many years of which she lived outside Australia. Her best known work, The Man Who Loved Children (1940), was largely based on her experiences as a child and young woman growing up in Sydney. Although only one Australian author, Patrick White, has won the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is awarded for a body of work rather than a specific novel, other Australian authors have won an impressive array of national and international awards. One of Australia’s finest writers is David Malouf, who has won 15 Australian and international awards since 1974. He has written novels, short stories, poetry, plays and a memoir. Malouf first made an impact with Johnno (1975). Now a classic, this novel explores the issue of male identity during the 1940s and 1950s in Brisbane. More recently, Ransom (2009)—Malouf’s masterly retelling of part of Homer’s Iliad—focuses on the themes of revenge, change, redemption and fate. Peter Carey has won the Man Booker Prize, the Miles Franklin Award and the Commonwealth Writers Prize. Author of 12 novels, many short stories, two screenplays and books for children, Carey has spent much of his literary life overseas, as did Randolph Stow, who was the author of eight novels for adults, as well as the entertaining children’s book Midnite: The Story of a Wild Colonial Boy (1967). Award-winning Western Australian author Tim Winton has also written across a range of genres from novels such as Cloudstreet (1991) and The Riders (1994), the Lockie Leonard

Author Thomas Keneally signing books at the National Library of Australia, 22 October 2006.

books for children to his collection of short stories The Turning (2004). A strong advocate for and an active member of the Australian environmental movement, his contribution is acknowledged in Wilderness Society and Environment Awards. Thomas Keneally’s novel Schindler’s Ark, centred on the holocaust in Germany during World War II, won the Booker Prize in 1982. Later adapted by director Steven Spielberg into the film, Schindler’s List, it received seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, in 1993. Many of his other award-winning novels, including The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith (1972), are based on Australian historical events. Kate Grenville is another writer who interprets Australia’s colonial past in her fiction, including the much acclaimed The Secret River (2005).

‘Banjo’ Paterson wrote Waltzing Matilda for a tune, written down here by Christina Macpherson, about 1895.

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Dorothy Wall’s human-like koala characters in her book, Blinky Bill, 1933.

The cover of Norman Lindsay’s The Magic Pudding, 1918.

New Zealander Ruth Park arrived in Sydney in 1942, aged 25. Like other Australian writers, she also used historical backgrounds in her fiction. Her adult novel, The Harp in the South (1948), provides a harsh but realistic account of life in the poorer suburbs of Sydney during the Great Depression, while her children’s fantasy novel, Playing Beatie Bow (1980), explores the past in The Rocks area of colonial Sydney. Writing for children Children’s authors, like Park, often shape how younger readers understand Australia and, in the end, how adult Australians understand their land. Ethel Turner arrived in Australia from England in 1879, aged nine. Her classic children’s book, Seven Little Australians, set in the rural outskirts of Sydney in the 1880s, was an immediate success, probably because she was writing about what she knew. Illustrator May Gibbs, creator of the ‘gumnut babies’, was also born in England but, when she moved to Australia as a young child, she fell in love with the animals and flowers of the Australian bush. Her gumnut

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babies first appeared in an illustrated heading for a serialised version of an Ethel Turner story in The Sydney Mail in 1913. In 1918, they became the central characters in the much-loved classic, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, which Gibbs both wrote and illustrated. Also in 1918, established novelist and controversial artist Norman Lindsay published another Australian children’s book which has become a classic—The Magic Pudding. In part, Lindsay wrote the book to win a debate with his friend Bertram Stevens at the Bulletin about whether children preferred reading books about fairies or food. Lindsay’s food-based book has now been in print for over 90 years. He was obviously right! While Lindsay wanted to make children happy, author-illustrator Dorothy Wall wanted to make them

Also in 1918, established novelist and controversial artist Norman Lindsay published another Australian children’s book which has become a classic—The Magic Pudding.

more caring. She had come to Australia from New Zealand in 1914 at the age of 20, and in 1933 she wrote the first of her three Blinky Bill books about a cheeky little koala. Her aim was to make children fall in love with the cuddly creatures so that they would fight against the shooting of koalas for their fur. Colin Thiele, initially a teacher before concentrating on writing fiction for children, also reveals a concern for protecting the environment in his many books, especially in his moving novel, Storm Boy (1963), which tells the story of a pelican called Mr Percival and is set on the South Australian Coorong. Patricia Wrightson, who began writing in the 1950s, often featured Aboriginal mythology in her novels, including the very popular The Nargun and the Stars (1973). Wrightson also championed the importance of the natural environment in her books. She was recognised internationally in 1986 when she won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing. That same year, Australian illustrator Robert Ingpen, who had illustrated Thiele’s Storm Boy, won the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Illustration. Mem Fox is another internationally recognised Australian children’s author. Born in Melbourne, Fox grew up in what is now Zimbabwe in Africa. Like The Magic Pudding, her picture book Possum Magic (1983), illustrated by Julie Vivas, celebrates and showcases food and Australian animals and remains the best known picture book in Australia. Sonya Hartnett has also gained international recognition for her writing. Hartnett, who writes for both children and young adults, won the prestigious and lucrative Astrid Lingren Memorial Award in 2008. Author-illustrator Shaun Tan won the same award in 2011, as well as winning an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 2010 for The Lost Thing, based on his picture book of the same name. Other Australian author-illustrators with significant international profiles include Graeme Base and Bob Graham. Writing in verse Since colonial times, Australia has also produced many successful poets, including Dorothea Mackellar and Dame Mary Gilmore who, like Miles Franklin, Henry Lawson, Banjo Paterson and Norman Lindsay, were part of the ‘Bulletin school’. Other later poets who have told the Australian story through their verse include Adam Lindsay Gordon, Kenneth Slessor, A.D. Hope, Judith Wright, Rosemary Dobson, David Campbell, Les Murray and Mark O’Connor.

Making music Australia has produced a number of world-class singers, as well as notable musical performers and composers. Singing superstars In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, operatic soprano Dame Nellie Melba was considered a superstar. She was born Helen ‘Nellie’ Porter Mitchell in Melbourne in 1861, and she chose the stage name of ‘Melba’ after her hometown. Melba became an international star. Her name is linked to four Australian recipes— the dessert Peach Melba, sweet Melba sauce, the chicken and mushroom dish Melba Garniture, and Melba toast. Her name also lives on in the Australian saying ‘to do a Melba’. This refers to the many ‘final’ farewell performances she gave. Of course, this international stage and recording star obviously deserved to be farewelled in more than just one town or country!

‘Madame Melba’: Dame Nellie Melba as she appeared on a coloured, glittered postcard.

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Melba’s series of farewell concerts began at the impressive Covent Garden theatre in London in June 1926, after she had announced her Australian farewell to grand opera in October 1924. Her very last farewells to the opera stage took place in Sydney on 7 August and in Melbourne on 27 September 1928. Then, in Geelong in November 1928, she gave her very last Australian concert. Melba understood the risk of being displaced by a better singer, and over her long career she ‘saw off’ more than one competitor. A wealthy woman, she found herself

Joan Sutherland singing the title role in Handel’s Alcina, which she performed all over the world.

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Melba died in 1931 of complications from facelift surgery, having inspired a generation of Australian singers. isolated in Australia when the Great War broke out in 1914, so she devoted herself to fundraising to support the war effort. She undertook three fundraising tours of North America, but she always returned to Australia. Australian composer Percy Grainger said of Melba, ‘Her voice always made me mindsee Australia’s landscapes’. Melba died in 1931 of complications from facelift surgery, having inspired a generation of Australian singers. Dame Joan Sutherland was also a world-famous Australian operatic soprano, whose career was at its height from the 1950s to the 1980s. The quality of Sutherland’s voice and her performances earned her the name ‘La Stupenda’. She attracted appreciative audiences wherever she performed, and the Opera Theatre, in the Sydney Opera House, was renamed the Joan Sutherland Theatre in 2012. Like Melba, singer June Bronhill took her name from her hometown. Born June Gough in Broken Hill in 1929, she found that some people had trouble pronouncing her surname, which is not a good thing for a performer. She abbreviated her hometown’s name to give herself the stage name ‘Bronhill’ in 1952. This also allowed her to thank the town which had helped raise money to send her overseas to pursue her love of singing. As Bronhill herself said, she cheekily pushed her way into roles in opera, while overseas. She performed mainly in light operas, operettas and musicals, and made the lead role in The Merry Widow her own. Bronhill had a larrikin sense of humour that often endeared her to her audiences during the 1970s. On one occasion, the tiny singer tripped on the hem of her dress. A stagehand asked, ‘Is the dress too long?’ Bronhill replied, ‘No, my legs are too short!’ While Bronhill was not made a dame, like Joan Sutherland, she was much loved. Australia’s other leading women singers include pop stars Helen Reddy and Olivia Newton-John, but Australia’s most successful pop princess is Kylie Minogue. Minogue started her career as an actor on the television series, Neighbours, during the 1980s. The soap opera was very popular in Britain and in other countries, as well as in Australia. From there, Minogue launched her highly successful international singing career.

‘Classical’ Australians Like our scientists, many Australian classical musicians have international connections. Composer and pianist Percy Grainger grew up in Australia but, from 1885, at the age of 13, he lived in Germany, England and the USA, with short visits back home. Many of his possessions and memorabilia are preserved in the Grainger Museum at the University of Melbourne, in the city where he was born. Composer Elena Kats-Chernin migrated from Uzbekistan to Australia in 1975, when she was 18, while the composer of Australia’s first opera, Isaac Nathan, was born in England and was 51 years old when he arrived in Sydney in 1841. It is said that Nathan was the grandson of King Stanislaus II of Poland, and that he was a secret agent for both George IV and William IV of England. Nathan came to Sydney after the British Prime Minister refused to pay the £2,000 that the government owed him. Australia has produced many other internationally acclaimed composers of classical music, including Ross Edwards, Peggy Glanville-Hicks, Miriam Hyde, Richard Meale and Peter Sculthorpe. Australian conductor Simone Young was the first woman to conduct the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as the first woman to conduct all of Richard Wagner’s epic Ring Cycle, which involves four operas played over four consecutive nights, taking approximately 15 hours. Like science, the world of music is international and includes many outstanding Australian performers.

Kylie Minogue wows the troops in the Tour of Duty Concert at Dili Stadium, East Timor, 1999.

Popular stars Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb, of the pop group, the Bee Gees, were born in Britain but grew up and got their start in the music industry in Australia before becoming famous in Britain. Australian Nigel Westlake has composed music for well-known films such as Babe and Miss Potter, the story of authorillustrator Beatrix Potter. Gurrumul, an Aboriginal singer from North East Arnhem Land, has become an international star through his songs about his culture.

Barry Gibb of the Bee Gees, at Kings Cross, Sydney, about 1970.

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Eugene van Guérard’s picture of tree ferns in the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, 1867.

Picturing Australia Colonial artists In colonial times, Europeans were fascinated by Australia, with its strange creatures and alien landscape. Because it was difficult to transport animals and plants on the long sea voyage from Australia to Britain, and photography was not yet fully developed, many people relied on paintings and sketches to show them what the animals and plants of Australia looked like, as well as what life was like in the new colony. For this reason, artists were very much in demand from the earliest days of settlement, and the work of colonial artists often provides important historical records. Significant and interesting artists from this time include John Glover and Eugene von Guérard, both of whom captured the Australian landscape, and in particular its plants and trees. In fact, von Guérard had such an eye for detail in his paintings that botanists have been able to use them to study plant life in colonial Australia.

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Capturing the Australian landscape The Heidelberg School was the first significant art movement in Australia. It was represented by a range of artists from the late nineteenth century who followed the Impressionist practice of painting landscapes, bushscapes and streetscapes while outdoors, rather than in a studio. It included artists such as Arthur Streeton, Tom Roberts, Charles Conder and Frederick McCubbin, whose work captures both the life and spirit of that time. Later artists also concentrated on the distinctive Australian landscape. Aboriginal painter Albert Namatjira painted watercolours of the unique Central

Fred Williams, who is acknowledged as one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century, emphasised the abstract qualities, luminous colours and vastness of the Australian landscape.

Australian landscape, and his work was very popular during his lifetime. German-born Hans Heysen also made a name for himself painting the Australian landscape, especially his portrayals of the Australian gum tree. Representational art is not the only way to capture a landscape. Fred Williams, who is acknowledged as one of the most important Australian artists of the twentieth century, emphasised the abstract qualities, luminous colours and vastness of the Australian landscape. As well as depicting the landscape, Sidney Nolan popularised one of Australia’s most iconic stories in a series of narrative paintings depicting the activities of bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang. Twentieth-century artist Arthur Boyd also had a unique way of portraying both the Australian landscape and Australian stories. His homage to the colours and shapes of the Australian bush feature in the tapestry, based on his painting of the bush in the Shoalhaven region of New South Wales, that is hanging in the Great Hall of Parliament House in Canberra. Painting people and places Other Australian artists present urban rather than rural or bush landscapes. One of these artists is Jeffrey Smart, whose paintings feature precise, bold, geometric images of apartment blocks, roads and construction sites. The images of artists like Sali Herman, Russell Drysdale and William Dobell also capture Australian streetscapes, people and places. Other significant male artists include Conrad Martens, William Piguenit, Louis Buvelot, John Olsen and Brett Whiteley. Important women artists include Grace Cossington Smith, Margaret Preston and Margaret Olley.

In the early 1970s, art teacher Geoffrey Bardon supplied the people of Papunya with art materials and encouraged them to express themselves in paint. The distinctive designs, earthy colours and strong cultural elements in their work have led to world-wide recognition, especially for artists such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri.

Another Aboriginal artist who achieved similar international recognition was Anmatyerre elder Emily Kame Kngwarreye, from Utopia in the Northern Territory, who only started painting in her seventies. One of the most important Indigenous art works is The Aboriginal Memorial at the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra. The memorial is an installation of 200 hollow log coffins from Central Arnhem Land which commemorates all the Indigenous people who have lost their lives defending their land since white settlement of Australia in 1788. The decorated logs, which are designed to be walked among, feature the work of 43 artists from a number of clans and reflect their traditional imagery. It is a moving tribute to their people. The way that people represent their world through art often says a lot about who they are and where they live.

A self-portrait of Grace Cossington Smith, painted about 1951.

Aboriginal art Aboriginal artists often have a unique way of seeing and depicting the Australian landscape and their place in it. The important Aboriginal art centre of Papunya Tula is based at the Aboriginal settlement of Papunya in the Western Desert area of the Northern Territory, about 240 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs. Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, expert wood carver and acclaimed ‘dot artist’, 1989.

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Australian dance Aboriginal people already had a strong culture of dance when white settlers arrived on their shores. It was an integral part of their corroborees. In her book, Dancing with Strangers, historian Inga Clendinnen explains that dance was the first way in which Aboriginal and white people communicated with each other. They danced together on 29 January 1788, even though, the day before, the Aboriginal people had been more hesitant. According to Lieutenant William Bradley: when the Boats put off, the Men began dancing & laughing & when we were far enough off to bring the place the Women were at in sight, they held their arms extended over their heads, got on their legs & danced. A souvenir program from Anna Pavlova’s appearances in Brisbane, 1929.

One of the most popular performers during the gold rush period in the 1850s was Irish dancer and actress Lola Montez. Montez had already lived a scandalous life when she came to Australia in 1855.

While the Aboriginal people held their corroborees, the settlers also liked to dance. The main existing records of dance from the colonial period are found in paintings and sketches.The settlers often composed their own dance music. For example, when Ludwig Leichhardt reached Sydney in 1842 in the Sir Edward Paget, a composer named Stephen Marsh wrote The Paget Quadrilles to celebrate the ship’s arrival. It was published by Frederick Ellard, who composed and published many other dance tunes. One of the most popular performers during the gold rush period in the 1850s was Irish dancer and actress Lola Montez. Montez had already lived a scandalous life when she came to Australia in 1855. At one stage, she had been married to two men at once, and she had also been the mistress of a king. Needless to say, she was not welcome in polite society, but the diggers at the goldfields loved her. Apparently, when Montez was dancing, she sometimes failed to wear ‘enough petticoats’. Her most famous act was called the ‘Spider Dance’. Robert Helpmann in Frederick Ashton’s ballet, The Wanderer, 1941.

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Dancers of the Australian Ballet as cut-out dolls in Wild Swans, 2003 (left) and Albert David and Miranda Coney in Stephen Page’s Rites, 1997 (right).

Classical ballet By the 1830s, ballet performances often featured in Australian theatres. The theatrical company of entrepreneur J.C. Williamson, often referred to as ‘The Firm’, employed ballet dancers from about 1874 onwards. In 1913, Williamson brought Adeline Genée and a full company drawn from the Imperial Russian Ballet to Australia. Their tour was a great success and, as Genée was leaving, a reporter declared that she had awakened a new artistic sense in Australia. This paved the way for Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova, who visited Australia in 1926 and 1929. Like Dame Nellie Melba, Pavlova had such an impact that the meringue-based dessert, ‘pavlova’, was named after her—although there are still disputes about whether it originated in Australia or New Zealand! Pavlova and other Russian dancers inspired many Australians to take up ballet. In 1933, aged 24, theatrical dancer Robert Helpmann left for England, where he became a star of what is today called the Royal Ballet. He went on to become an internationally acclaimed ballet dancer, actor, choreographer and stage director.

In the 1930s, just before World War II began, Colonel Wassily de Basil’s Ballet Russes companies toured Australia three times. Their tours ended in 1940 and, because of the war in Europe, some of the dancers stayed in Australia. One of them was Czech-born Edouard Borovansky, who started his own ballet company in

Melbourne in 1942 and helped to keep alive an interest in ballet in Australia until the 1960s—including commissioning works by Australian choreographers. In 1962, English ballerina Peggy van Praagh became artistic director of a new national company, the Australian Ballet. In 1965, Robert Helpmann joined the company as co-artistic director. The new company encouraged Australian choreographers and composers, as well as providing an opportunity for Australian dancers such as Marilyn Jones, Kathleen Gorham and Garth Welch to pursue a career in ballet. At the age of 19, Australian ballet dancer Danilo Radojevic won a gold medal in Moscow and then joined the American Ballet Theatre in New York as a soloist. He later taught in New York. He returned to Australia in 1997, becoming the associate artistic director of the Australian Ballet Company in 2001. Contemporary dance As well as classical ballet, Australia also has a number of world-class contemporary dance companies. These include the Sydney Dance Company, which from 1979 featured the adventurous contemporary choreography of Graeme Murphy and his successors, and Stephen Page’s Bangarra Dance Theatre, an Indigenous performing arts company that successfully combines the spirituality of Aboriginal culture with modern forms of storytelling through dance. Through dance companies like Bangarra, one of the oldest Australian art forms continues to be enjoyed by later generations.

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Capturing Australia on film

England in 1948, where he started a stage career, before moving into British films. While he never settled in Hollywood, Finch is best remembered for his role in Network, for which he won an Academy Award for portraying crazed television anchorman Howard Beale, The early film industry who was remembered for encouraging people to lean out Although Australia produced the first feature-length of their windows and shout, ‘I’m as mad as hell and I’m film, The Story of the Kelly Gang, in 1906, Australia’s not going to take this anymore!’. film industry did not flourish. This was basically because Actor Rod Taylor made his film acting debut in Australia’s population was too small and Australia was 1953 in King of the Coral Sea. He then appeared in in the wrong place—it was in the the 1954 film, Long John Silver, Southern Hemisphere, far away before heading off overseas to from both Europe and the USA. take the lead in many Hollywood By 1914, the Australian film movies. However, at home, a industry had disappeared. State number of Australian actors governments had banned popular continued to get stage work and movies about bushrangers because pick up support roles in British and they made the police look clumsy, American films shot in Australia. and overseas companies controlled They included Charles ‘Bud’ the marketing and delivery of films Tingwell, John Meillon, to small, locally owned cinemas. Bill Kerr and Ed Devereaux. The overseas companies also set up In 1966, They’re a Weird Mob chains of theatres under a variety of took a new and rather quirky names. These companies preferred look at Australia’s multicultural showing cheap, mass-produced society. It told the story of an American and English rather than Italian migrant learning Australian Australian films. English, and provided good Part of the problem was the acting roles for Australians Clare quality of Australian films. In 1911, Dunne and Chips Rafferty. By an article in Perth’s Sunday Times then, Australian television was called for a ‘Bureau for Burning also producing local dramas that Awful Bio. Films’—locally made provided both Australian actors ‘live motion’ pictures. The writer and behind-the-scenes people— complained of ‘bush scenes’ shot in make-up artists, costume makers, parks with English trees and ‘prison editors and cameramen—with vital warders’ whose uniforms made experience and exposure. them look like tram conductors! When John Gorton became prime minister in 1968, he Peter Finch in The Story of Robin Acting overseas introduced government support for Hood and His Merrie Men, 1952. When local Australian film the Australian film industry. This production died out in the early twentieth century, led to the ‘Australian New Wave’ of filmmaking when Australian actors had to head to Hollywood in the USA the Whitlam government continued the support in 1972. if they wanted a career in film. One of the first successful One of the key films made at this time was Australian Hollywood actors was Errol Flynn, who had Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was released in starred in the 1933 Australian film, In the Wake of the 1975. It was directed by Peter Weir and produced Bounty. It was the beginning of a series of swashbuckling by Pat Lovell. This was the beginning of a series leading roles, and an equally adventurous and troubled of films that showcased Australia and Australian private life. filmmaking, including Mad Max starring Mel Gibson After serving in the Australian army during World and Crocodile Dundee starring Paul Hogan. War II, British-born actor Peter Finch headed back to

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Other successful films which unashamedly featured Australian subjects, characters and settings followed, including Breaker Morant and Gallipoli in the 1980s, and Strictly Ballroom, Muriel’s Wedding, The Castle and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert in the 1990s. Winning Academy Awards In 1996, his performance as a mentally unstable but brilliant pianist in the movie, Shine, earned Geoffrey Rush an Academy Award for Best Actor, while Heath Ledger’s Hollywood career took off after his appearance in the 1999 movie, Two Hands. Eric Bana had his first film credit in the Australian comedy, The Castle, an endearing tale about a suburban family fighting the powers-that-be. By 2012, Australians had won 34 Academy Awards in 17 categories. These included Ken Hall and Damien Parer for ‘best documentary’ in 1942 for Kokoda Front Line!, and best actor and best supporting actor awards for

By 2012, Australians had won 34 Academy Awards in 17 categories. Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Peter Finch, Geoffrey Rush, Russell Crowe and Heath Ledger. Six Australian cinematographers have won Academy Awards (Oscars), as have six Australian costume designers. Mel Gibson took out an Oscar for best direction, while Kirk Baxter has won two editing Oscars. George Miller, Suzanne Baker, Adam Elliott and children’s author-illustrator Shaun Tan have all won Oscars for animated films. While the Australian film industry did not flourish in its early years, it has certainly taken off since the 1970s, and it continues to make its mark on the world stage.

The poster for Crocodile Dundee, made in 1986, starring TV comedian Paul Hogan.

The poster for Picnic at Hanging Rock, filmed in 1975. This film changed how the world saw Australian cinema.

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You Are a History Maker Many people have made Australia a better place. They have made our history, even if they have never appeared in the history books. In fact, when you look carefully, most people have done something, maybe only small, but something to help change our lives and our history. Everybody’s actions count. Our history makers have invented better tools or machines, developed cures for diseases or ways to control pests that were harming Australia. They have bred better crops or stock, and discovered new mineral resources. Some of them have shown us better ways to care for our

land, while others have found better ways to care for our people. They have painted pictures or sung songs, and written poems or stories that have made us love Australia more. Others have done the same thing through music or dance. Many of our history makers have been hurt or have died while building bridges, roads, tunnels and dams to make our lives better. Others have influenced our history by fighting fires, floods and even enemy troops. What you do in your life becomes part of Australia’s history.

List of Illustrations NOTE : Page numbers are in bold. Many image titles have been shortened due to space restrictions. You can view full titles, medium and dimensions from the links listed on the National Library of Australia’s website at http://publishing.nla.gov. au/pages/resources.do

Ancient Australia 8: Peter Dombrovskis, Cloud Forest … Tasmania, 1990, nla.pic-vn4801914, Courtesy Liz Dombrovskis; 9: Platypus and Fruit Bats, c. 1880, nla.pican23288906; 9 & 10: Anton Hartinger and Carl Horegschj, Telopea speciosissima … Neu Holland, 1850s, nla.pic-an8420691; 10: Zoe Shuttleworth, Proteas at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, 2012, reproduced under Creative Commons licence, creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en; 11: Four Maps Showing Continental Drift, iStock image; 12: John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter, Phascolarctos cinereus, 1863, nla.aus-vn760101-1-s80; John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter, Phascolomys Wombat, 1863, nla.aus-vn760101-1-s168; 13: Mark Mohell, Canowindra Fish Fossil Site, 2004, Courtesy Mark Mohell and the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities; 14: Jason Baker, Diprotodon (Skeleton), 2011, http://www.flickr. com/photos/mezuni/5678638476/, reproduced under Creative Commons licence, creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en; 15: Andrew Kerr, Megalania, DK Images.

The Dreaming 16 & 23: William Barak, Dancing Scene, c. 1880–1890, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H3725; 17: Tommy McRae, Aboriginal Men Hunting … Wahgunyah Region, Victoria, 1880, nla.pic-an6431252-15; 18: Samuel Thomas Gill, Native Village … South Australia, c. 1846, nla.pic-an2377287; 17 & 20: Port Jackson Painter, Aboriginal Hunting Implements and Weapons, c. 1790, nla.pic-an5600392; 19: Joseph Lycett, Aborigines Using Fire to Hunt Kangaroos, c. 1817, nla.pican2962715-s20; 21: Tim Webster, Dancer from Munyarryun Family in ‘Laka Bunkul’ … at the Bangarra Dance Theatre Studios … Sydney, November 1998, nla.pic-vn3096223; 22: Mickey of Ulladulla, Corroboree, in Drawings by Tommy McRae and Mickey of Ulladulla, 1860s–1901, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, PXA 364.

Voyages of Discovery 24: Richard Cushee, A New Terrestrial Globe, 1731, nla.map-glob6; 25: Francisco Pelsaert, title page from Ongeluckige Voyagie van’t Schip Batavia, 1649, nla.ausvn5350559; James Cook, page from Journal of HMS Endeavour, 1768–1771, nla. ms-ms1-s298r; 26: Geoffrey Chapman Ingleton, Luis Vaes de Torres, 1606, 1938, nla.pic-an6152180, Courtesy Michaela King; 27: Pieter Goos and Johannes van Keulen, Oost Indien Wassende-Graade Paskaart … Meede de Zeekusten van Asia, c. 1690, nla.map-t792; 28: Jacob Gerritsz Cuyp, Portrait of Abel Tasman, His Wife and Daughter, 1637, nla.pic-an2282370; 29: Table of Star Signs and Dates … Belonging to Captain James Cook, c. 1750, nla.pic-an7905959; James Cook, page from Journal of HMS Endeavour, 1768–1771, nla.ms-ms1-s66r; 30: Pritchard, Bass and Flinders in the Tom Thumb, 1795, 1910s, nla.pic-vn5216510; 31: Aaron Arrowsmith, A Chart of Basses Strait, 1800, nla.map-rm684; Captain Matthew Flinders, R.N., 1814, nla.pic-an9455829-1.

Founding Colonies 32: Algernon Talmage, The Founding of Australia, 1937, nla.pic-an4910556; 33: George William Evans and J. Tyrer, Chart of Van Diemens Land, 1822, nla. map-f500; John Appleby … Taken at Port Arthur, 1874, nla.pic-vn4270331; 34: John Allcot, The First Fleet in Sydney Cove, January 27, 1788 in The Sydney Mail, 26 January 1938, nla.pic-an7891482; 35: Henry Macbeth-Raeburn and Francis Wheatley, The Pioneer, Captain Arthur Phillip R.N., 1936, nla.pican9846228; 36: Convict Uniform, 1830s, nla.pic-an6393471; Convict Portraits, Port Arthur, 1874, nla.pic-an11590418; 37: Sir William Dixson, Leg Irons, before 1849, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, DR 167; 38: William Oswald Hodgkinson, Bulla, Queensland, 1861, in Album of Miss Eliza Younghusband, nla.pic-vn4189024-s46; 38: Governor Arthur’s Proclamation to the Aborigines 1st Nov. 1828, nla.pic-an2291826; 40: James Reid Scott, Flogging Prisoners, Tasmania, 1850s, nla.pic-an6332106; Attack on a Settler’s Hut, 1860s, nla.pic-an5576563; 41: Portrait of Tasmanian Aboriginal

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Woman Truganini, c. 1890, nla.pic-vn6154561; 42: Government Printing Office, Arrest of Governor Bligh, January 26, 1808, 1900s, nla.pic-an7655522; 43: John Macarthur, 1850s, Courtesy Dixson Galleries, State Library of New South Wales, DG 222; Alexander Huey, Portrait of Rear-Admiral William Bligh, 1814, nla. pic-an11230917; 44: Paul Mick, Lachlan Macquarie, Governor of New South Wales, 1810–1821, 1920s, nla.pic-an9721060; 45: Frank Hurley, Farm Cove & Conservatorium of Music … Sydney, New South Wales, 1910–1962, nla.pican23478438; 46–47: Robert Dale and Robert Havell, Panoramic View of King George’s Sound, 1834, nla.pic-an7404363; 47: William Alfred Clarson, Brisbane, 1888, nla.pic-an7878644; 48: William Knight, Collins Street, Town of Melbourne, 1839, nla.pic-an5695310.

Exploring the Land 50: Nicholas Chevalier, The Great Australian Exploration Race, in Punch (Melbourne), 18 November 1860, nla.cat-vn1625521; Samuel Thomas Gill, George French Angas and James William Giles, The Departure of Captain Sturt, August 1844, 1847, nla.pic-an7350668; 51: Joseph Lycett, Bathurst Cataract … New South Wales, 1824, nla.pic-an7691000; Portrait of Ludwig Leichhardt, c. 1850, nla.pic-an21971599; 52: Augustus Earle, Waterfall in Australia, c. 1830, nla.pic-an2273848; 53: Charles Rodius, Convicts Building Road over the Blue Mountains, 1833, nla.pic-an6332110; 54: George William Evans, James Taylor and John Clark, Arbuthnot’s Range from the West, 1820, nla.pic-an11324187; 55: Captain Charles Sturt, 1895, nla.pic-an9941030; Samuel Thomas Gill, based on a sketch by Charles Sturt, The Sandy Ridges of Central Australia, c. 1846, nla. pic-an2377285; 56: John Arrowsmith, Sketch Map of Captain Sturt’s Tracks … South Eastern Central Australia, 1849, nla.map-t115; Waterbottle Used by Captain Charles Sturt, 1820s, nla.pic-an6393462; 57: Henry Hering, Portrait of Edward John Eyre, London, c. 1865, nla.pic-vn5982505; 58: Samuel Thomas Gill and Frederick Grosse, Overlanders with Cattle, in The Illustrated Sydney News, 16 October, 1865, nla.pic-an7096134; 59: Ebenezer Edward Gostelow, The Pink Cockatoo, 1928, nla.pic-an3810826; 60: J. Macfarlane, Meeting of Major Mitchell and Edward Henty, Portland Bay, 1836, 1890s, nla.pic-an9025855-3; 61: Samuel Augustus Perry, Overland Expedition to Port Essington, 1846, nla.map-f517; 63: Eugene Montagu Scott, Natives Discovering the Body of William John Wills … Coopers Creek, June 1861, 1862–1864, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H6694; Thomas Adams Hill, The Burke and Wills Australian Exploring Expedition, in The Illustrated London News, 1 February 1862, nla.pic-an8960212; 64: J. Macfarlane, John McDouall Stuart Planting the Union Jack on Central Mount Stuart, 1860, 1890s, nla.pic-an9025855-5; 65: Portrait of John McDouall Stuart, c. 1862, nla. pic-an10038025; 66: Joshua Reynolds and Samuel William Reynolds, Sir Joseph Banks, 1820, nla.pic-an9283213; 67: Sketches of the Alleged Bones of a Bunyip, Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 1847, p. 3, nla.news-page1516637; Alexander Walker Scott and Helena Forde, The Kangaroo (Macropus major), in The Mammals of Australia by Gerard Krefft, 1871, nla.aus-f11248-12x.

The Lure of Gold 68: Samuel Thomas Gill, The Rush to the Ballarat Goldfields in 1854, 1872, nla. pic-vn3112351; 69: Samuel Thomas Gill, Cradling, Forrest Creek, 1853, nla.pican7537575; Prospecting for Gold or Rewarded at Last, 1860s, nla.pic-an7096208-4; 70: Map of the Counties of Wellington and Bathurst Shewing the Present Gold Field of New South Wales, 1852, nla.map-rm3108; 71: Thomas Balcombe, Mr. E.H. Hargraves, the Gold Discoverer of Australia, 1851, nla.pic-an10343135; 72: Samuel Thomas Gill, Zealous Gold Diggers, Bendigo, 1852, nla.pic-an7537712; 73: L.R., Charles Joseph Staniland, Emigrants Going to Australia, 1880s, nla.pican8924234; 74: George Baxter, News from Australia, 1840s, nla.pic-an8930070; 75: Beryl Ireland, Eureka Stockade, c. 1890–c. 1900, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H141890; Replica of the Flag Flown … at the Eureka Stockade, 1854, c. 1970, nla.pic-an11278531.

Settling the Land 76: Joseph Lycett, Raby, a Farm … New South Wales, 1826, nla.pic-an7690856-1; 76–77: Australian Labor Party, Australian Labor Party: A Collection of HandBills, Newspaper Cuttings and a Manuscript, 1891–1906, nla.aus-vn5266949; 77: Samuel White Sweet, Sheep Shearers, 1870s, nla.pic-an20886593-27; 79: William Rodolph Thomas, Shepherd’s Hut … South Australia, 1864, nla.

pic-vn4935823; 80: Selector’s Hut, Gippsland, 1880s, nla.pic-an8929053; 81: James Hazel Adamson, Lady Augusta & Eureka, Capt. Cadell’s First Vessels on the Murray, 1854, nla.pic-an6016067; 82: Two Iron Grey Mares, 1868, nla. pic-an24110715, Charles Henry Kerry, Storing the Harvester, New South Wales, c. 1895, nla.pic-vn6100576; 83: Samuel Calvert, Morgan the Bushranger, 1864, nla.pic-an9900666; 84: Wanted Poster, Offering a Reward … Kelly Gang, 1879, nla.pic-an8391421; 85: George Lacy, Capture of Bushrangers … by Gold Police, c. 1852, nla.pic-an3103554; 86: Melton Prior, Collins Street, Melbourne, from The Illustrated London News, May 1889, nla.pic-an8701391; 87: Albert Charles Cooke, Melbourne, from The Illustrated Australian News, April 1882, nla.pic-an8533521; Wes Stacey, Close-up of Victorian-style Suburban House, Melbourne, c. 1970, nla. pic-vn5155355; 88: Australian Labor Party, Australian Labor Party: A Collection of Hand-Bills, Newspaper Cuttings and a Manuscript, 1891–1906, nla.ausvn5266949; 89: Brookong Station Union Shearers, 1890s, nla.pic-an23150657.

The Growth of Cities 90: Gibbs, Shallard and Co., Sydney, 1879, nla.pic-vn3625708; 91: Walter G. Mason, Arrival of the First Railway Train at Parramatta from Sydney, 1857, nla. pic-an8021264; 92: John Skinner Prout and Thomas Heawood, The Old Tank Stream, Sydney, c. 1874, nla.pic-an7370585; 93: Professional Rat Catchers, c. 1900, Courtesy State Records New South Wales; 94: William Henry Corkhill, Couria Creek School Pupils, c. 1890, nla.pic-an2475247; M. De Metz and Gibbs, Shallard & Co., The Writing Lesson, 1878, nla.pic-an8926627; 95: State School Children, in Illustrated Australian News, May 1878, nla.cat-vn2495305; 96: Amelia C. Rusden, Roman Catholic Chapel, Sydney, July, 1834, nla.pic-an4857980; 97: Samuel Calvert, Planting the First Pole on the Overland Telegraph Line, c. 1870, nla.pic-an10328023; 98: South Australia, Government Printer, Map of South Australia with Adjacent Colonies, 1882, nla.map-rm1163; 99: Samuel White Sweet, Overland Telegraph Party, 1872, nla.pic-an5770764; 100: Ploughing Engine … Gippsland, Victoria, 1886, nla.pic-vn3106641; 101: Samuel Thomas Gill, Mill at North Adelaide on the Torrens, 1840s, nla.pic-an2835422; 102: George Lacy, Nothing like Opposition, c. 1855, nla.pic-an3103379; 103: Murray River Paddle Steamers, c. 1880; nla.pic-an6152993; 104: Francis Birtles on His Bicycle, 1899–c. 1928, nla.pic-vn3303106; 105: Thomas Carrington, The Electric Light, 1882, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, mp008965; 106: One of the First Cars in the Electric Tramway … Perth, Western Australia, c. 1899, nla.pic-vn4778596; 107: J. Lizars, Magic Lantern, c. 1895–1905, Collection: Powerhouse Museum Sydney; The Actual Armour as Worn by Ned Kelly … ‘The Story of the Kelly Gang’ Movie, 1906, nla.pic-an24932346.

Federation 108: Tom Roberts, Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth, 1903, nla.pic-an8334379; The Referendum, the West Australian Score Board and some of the Federal Leaders, 1900, nla.pic-an24462857; 109: Julian Ashton and Howard Ashton, An Invitation to Meet Their Royal Highnesses … the Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1901, nla.pic-an8334487; 110: Australasian Federal Referendum, 1899, nla.pic-an7435035; 111: West Australians … Voting Yes, 1900, nla.pic-vn3302372; 112: William James Mildenhall, Federation Celebrations in Centennial Park, Sydney, 1901, nla. pic-an11030057-405; 113: Scene in Swanston Street, Melbourne, 6 May 1901 as their Royal Highnesses … the Edward VII Arch, nla.pic-an9125196-s18-a1; 114: Norman Lindsay, Official Programme … the Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia … Melbourne, 1901, nla.ms-ms1540-14-438; 115: Herbert Walter E. Cotton, Enfranchised!, 1902, nla.pic-an6222116; 116: Portrait of Dame Enid Lyons, nla.pic-an23259539; 117: Three Chinese Farm Workers … New South Wales, c. 1885, nla.pic-an3367238-s107; Recruits, New Hebrides, 1890s, nla.pic-an24494646; 118: Samuel Thomas Gill, The Invalid Digger, 1852, nla.pic-an7537636-1; 119: Lionel Lindsay, Ruins, 1922, nla.pic-an10887870; 120: NSW Department of Lands, Canberra Contour Survey: Proposed Site for the Federal City, 1909, nla.map-gmod102; 121: Portrait of Federal Capital Site Surveyors … Canberra, 1910, nla.pic-vn4599805; 122: Frank Hurley, In the Blizzard, Getting Ice for Domestic Purposes … Adelie Land, 1911–1914, nla. pic-an23478538; 123: Frank Hurley, Portrait of Sir Douglas Mawson, c. 1930, nla.pic-vn4925816; Sir Douglas Mawson, South Polar Region: With the Antarctic Continent Drawn, 1911, nla.map-rm4064.

Becoming Anzacs 124: Frank Hurley, The Morning after the First Battle of Passchendaele … Zonnebeke Railway Station, October 12, 1917, nla.pic-an24574133; 125: May Gibbs, We Are the Gumnut Corps, c. 1916, nla.pic-vn5816909; Quick! Give Us

a Hand Old Sport!, c. 1915, nla.pic-an7697023-1; 126: Departure of N.S.W. Contingent for Soudan in 1885, nla.pic-vn3597135; 127: Garnet Garfield, The Transvaal War: For the Pianoforte, 1890s, nla.mus-an4994966; 128: W. & A.K. Johnston Ltd., Formation of the Modern German Empire, A.D. 1914, 1917, nla. map-vn4769373; Edward Stanford Ltd, The World Showing the British Empire, 1925, nla.map-ra314-s4; 130: David Henry Souter, It Is Nice in the Surf but What About the Men in the Trenches, c. 1915, nla.pic-an7697011-3; Australia Has Promised Britain 50,000 More Men, c. 1916, nla.pic-an7697084; 131: Allan C. Green, Boorara X Pfalz, between c. 1914 and 1954, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H91.325/711; 132: J.H. Leonard, The ‘Farmer & Settler’ map of Gallipoli War Area, 1915, nla.map-vn4197591; 133: The Anzacs Landing at Gallipoli on cover of Birth of a Nation: March for the Pianoforte by Richard Stanley, between 1915 and 1920, nla.mus-an8423013; 134: Horses Being Loaded on the S.S. Southern Cross … en Route to the Boer War, 1900, nla.pic-vn3408857; 135: Australian Soldier, R. Brownell, Riding a Camel … Egypt, c. 1915, nla. pic-vn4654434; 136: Major General John Monash, Glisy, France, 1918, nla. pic-vn3997572; W.B. McInnes, Lieutenant General Sir Harry Chauvel, 1938, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, ART13521; 137: Frank H. Boland, Group Portrait of Military and Navy Officers … Duntroon, 1911, nla.pic-an23764191; 139: Frank Hurley, The 7th Brigade of Australian Field Artillery … the Hindenburg Line, France, 1 October 1918, nla.pic-an10885587-s71; Frank Hurley, Soldiers in a Trench along the Front Line … Flanders, October 1917, nla.pic-an23478306; 140: Frank Hurley, A Soldier Standing near the First Tank Captured from the Germans … France, 26 May 1918, nla.pic-an10885587-s35; 141: A Bristol F2B Fighter (J-6586), c. 1917, nla.pic-vn3723283; Will Longstaff, War Planes of the Australian Flying Corps, 1918–1919, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, ART03029; 142: Frank Hurley, Australians of the Imperial Camel Corps … 1917–1918, nla.pic-an23478294; 143: Frank Hurley, Forty Thousand Horsemen … Palestine during World War I, 1910–1962, nla.pic-an23816545; 144: Australian Light Horse Brigade … Middle East, 18 October, 1917, nla.pic-vn4982264; 145: Portrait of Kemal Pasha (Mustafa Kemal/Atatürk), c. 1919, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, P04621.002; The Turkish Flag, iStock image; 146: The War!, 1915, nla.pic-an7696969; Australians Arise!, 1916–1918, nla.pic-vn4938850; 147: Australian Labor Party … ‘Vote No Mum, They’ ll Take Dad Next’, nla.picvn3697266; 148: John Finnemore, The Signing of the Treaty of Peace at Versailles, June 28th, 1919, nla.pic-an8312098; 149: Portrait of Hughes Being Carried by Soldiers … 1918, nla.pic-an23150756.

Modern Times 150: Australia: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, 1940s, nla.pican20044744; 151: John Flynn, Unidentified Woman with Pedal Powered Transceiver and Morse Typewriter, 1926, nla.pic-an24601399; Harold Betteridge, We’re Going Up: Song Fox-Trot, nla.mus-vn3118614; 152: Russell Roberts, Portrait of Gladys Moncrieff, 1930s, nla.pic-an23378109; Commercial Photographic Co., Cavalcade Radio, c. 1930–1969, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H2011.52/363; 153: Amalgamated Wireless Australasia, The First Direct Wireless Messages from England to Australia, 1918, nla.pic-vn3421834; 154: The Invasion of Australia: A Silent Terror … Our Inheritance, c. 1910, nla.pic-an24261643; 155: Computer—CSIRAC, 1949–1964, Courtesy Museum Victoria, HT 20756; D. Moore, Radio Telescope, 210 Foot, Parkes, New South Wales, October 1961, nla. pic-vn4589692; 156: Walter Burley Griffin, Canberra Federal Capital of Australia Preliminary Plan, c. 1914, nla.map-gmod34; Jorma Pohjanpalo, Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, 1930, nla.pic-vn4513629; 157: Edward William Searle, Old Parliament House Opening Ceremony, Canberra, 1927, nla. pic-vn4655983; 158: Francis Birtles and His Dog … Arnhem Land, c. 1899–1928, nla.pic-vn3301921; 159: John Flynn, From Trekalano, Group Portrait, 1912–1951, nla.pic-an24630914; 160: Edward Burke, Our Heroes of the Air, 1930s, nla. mus-an9057275; 161: H.B. Miller, Portrait of Harry Lyon, Charles Ulm, Charles Kingsford Smith and James Warner in front of the Southern Cross … United States, 23 May 1928, nla.pic-vn3930681.

The Great Depression 162: Sydney, Domain, 25 June 1930, nla.pic-vn3697234; Edward William Searle, Bridge Opening Ceremony, 1932, nla.pic-vn4653837; 163: ‘Wild Selling: New York Panic: Profits Wiped Out’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1929, p. 17, nla.news-article16596498; Five Men Looking for Work in the Great Depression, c. 1930, nla.pic-vn5125787; 164: Jack Lumsdaine, Banish the Budget Blues, c. 1930, nla.mus-an8527093; 165: Johnstone, O’Shannessy & Falk, Portrait of J.H. Scullin, 1920s, nla.pic-an23310317; Portrait of Joseph A. Lyons … Brisbane, 1924–1939, nla.pic-an23150181; 166: Sydney Harbour Bridge Construction, 1929

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

281

or 1930, nla.pic-vn3291066; 167: Certificate for Crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge, 1932, nla.pic-an21421698; 168: Cave Dwellers near Kurnell, New South Wales, 1930s, nla.pic-vn3706012; 169: On the Wallaby Track, 1981, nla. pic-an24284739; Unemployed Men … the Great Depression, c. 1930, nla.picvn5125791; 170: Phar Lap, Ridden by William Elliot (Billy Elliot), with Trainer Tommy Woodcock … on 20 March 1932, nla.pic-vn3549369; Phar Lap, Winner Melbourne Cup, 1930, nla.pic-an23181978; 171: Batchelder & Co, The First Melbourne Cup Trophy, 1865, nla.pic-vn5039757; 172: Samuel Garnet Wells, T he Fighting Kangaroos! Australia’s 1st Test Team, 1932, nla.pic-an20978933; 173: Portrait of Cricketer, D.G. Bradman, 1934, nla.pic-an24669613; 174: Brenda Palma, 1938 Day of Mourning and Protest, Collection: Powerhouse Museum Sydney, Courtesy Brenda Saunders; 175: The Rt. Hon. R.G. Menzies P.M. of Australia Broadcasting … the Outbreak of War, 1939, nla.pic-an23217367; Robert Menzies, Declaration of War, 1939, in Papers of Sir Robert Menzies, 1905–1978, MS 4936, Box 251, Folder 5, nla.cat-vn2941360.

Defending Australia 176: Latest War Map … Showing All Theatres of War, c. 1941, MAP G5696. S7; 177: Unidentified Royal Australian Air Force Pilot Standing near a Bristol Blenheim Bomber, c. 1942, nla.pic-vn3723188; ‘Japan Strikes Hard at Pacific Bases’, The Courier Mail (Brisbane), 9 December 1941, p. 1, nla.cat-vn2864600; 178: RAAF, Directorate of Public Relations, Nine RAAF de Havilland DH.82 Tiger Moth Trainer Biplanes in Flight, c. 1942, nla.pic-vn4904193; 179: Line of Allied Soldiers Mounted on Camels … Libya, 1940s, nla.pic-an23566158; 180: Unofficial Rats of Tobruk Medal: Major General J.J. Murray, c.1941, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, REL42329; James Emery, Siege of Tobruk, April–Dec. 1941, 1966, nla.pic-vn5017899; 181: Frank Hurley, Dawn of El Alamein Battle, c. 1942, nla.pic-an23816560; 182: Portrait of Prime Ministers R.G. Menzies and Winston Churchill, 1941, nla.pic-vn4506895; 183: Australian Imperial Force, 2nd (1939–1946), Your Country Needs You!, nla.pic-vn4702420; Australian News and Information Bureau, Portrait of John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia, 1941–1945, nla.pic-vn3600322; 184: George Browning, 25 Brigade Advancing along Kokoda Trail, 1944, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, ART23615; 2/31st Australian Infantry Battalion along the Banks of the Brown River, 1942, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H99.201/1963; 185: USS Peary Burns … after a Japanese Air Raid, Darwin, 1942, nla.pic-vn5126065; 186: Asahi Shinbunsha, Seinan Taiheiyo Seizu (Map of Southwest Pacific Ocean), 1944, nla. map-rm3942; 187: Japanese Torpedo on Exhibition, c. 1942, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H98.104/896; Damaged Japanese Submarine Being Raised from Sydney Harbour, c. 1942, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H98.104/871; 188: USS Chicago … Woolloomooloo Bay, 1941–1943, Courtesy Australian War Memorial, 008043; 189: Women at the Small Arms Ammunition Factory, 1944, nla.pic-an11035265-s226; cover of The Australian Women’s Weekly, 14 June 1941, nla.news-page4715478; 190: Department of Supply and Shipping, The Uniform Dress, Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service, 1943, nla.pic-an24536142; 191: Commonwealth Rationing Commission and Commonwealth Department of Health, Planning Meat Ration Meals, c. 1944, nla.aus-vn5080356; Bruce Howard, Tea and Butter Ration Tickets … World War II, Melbourne, c. 1973, nla. pic-vn5058422; 192: Commonwealth Rationing Commission, New Clothes from Old, c. 1943, nla.aus-vn5056721; 193: Arthur Gulliver, The Story of a Patrol, 1951, Courtesy State Library of Victoria, H2002.199/3726.

Building for the Future 194: Wolfgang Sievers, Main Tunnel T2 … the Snowy Mountains Scheme, New South Wales, 1957, nla.pic-vn3415857; 195: Australian Office of Education, Australian Outline: Education, c. 1949, nla.pic-vn5717593-6; Robin Vaughan Francis Smith, Italian Migrant Market Gardeners, Adelaide, c. 1960, nla.picvn4237225; 196: Welcome to Bonegilla, Programme, 1949, nla.pic-vn3670758; Spacic Dragoljub and His Wife, Who Arrived as Migrants … 29 June 1948, nla. pic-vn5126026; 197: Australia Lloyd Triestino, 1957–1963, nla.pic-vn3726199; 198: Laurence John Failes, Map of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme Area, 1954–1965, nla.pic-an20118662-1; Laurence John Failes, Bulldozer at One of the Murray Power Stations, between 1954 and 1965, nla.pic-an20118662-8; 199: Interior View of the Holden and Frost Motor Body Works, Adelaide, c. 1925, nla.pic-vn5125895; 200: B.R. Linklater, Wise Motorists Fly TAA, Then Drive Avis Rent-a-Car, c. 1958, nla.pic-an7649535; 201: Which Can You Trust to Defeat the Communists?, The Argus (Melbourne), 18 October 1949, p. 4, nla.newsarticle22786189; Sir Robert Menzies … Signing Papers, 1950s, nla.pic-vn3307904; 202: Wes Stacey, Residence, Hunter’s Hill, Sydney, New South Wales, c. 1970, nla. pic-vn5155435; Raymond De Berquelle, Milkman, Bruce Street, Kingsford, Sydney,

282

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1966, nla.pic-vn3064374; 203: Raymond De Berquelle, ‘Here is your change’ … Glebe, Sydney, 1964, nla.pic-vn3065150; Raymond De Berquelle, Corner Shop … Surry Hills, New South Wales, 1964, nla.pic-vn4386076; 204: Creer & Berkeley and Lang, A.A. Co. Garden Suburb, Hamilton, 1926, nla.map-lfsp1735; 205: Stephen Fleay, Australian Television Presenter … at the CBN 8 and CWN 6 Television Studios, Orange, New South Wales, October 1968, nla.pic-vn4785432; Bruce Postle, Prime Minister John Gorton, 10 January 1968, nla.pic-vn4573488.

Controversial Issues 206: Wolfgang Sievers, Young Child … Cape York, North Queensland, 1957, nla. pic-an13908897-10; 207: Loui Seselja, Huge Crowd on Sydney Harbour Bridge during the Walk for Reconciliation, Corroboree 2000, nla.pic-an24526893; Martin Philbey, Paul Kelly Performing on Stage at the Sound Relief Bushfire Benefit Concert … 14 March 2009, nla.pic-vn5013337; 208: Ichisaburo Sawai, Dai Tōa Kyōeiken Meguri Sugoroku, c. 1944, nla.pic-vn4693326; 209: Reg Morrison, A Young Draftee being Deployed to Vietnam Farewells Family, 1966, nla.pic-vn4994440; Ern McQuillan, Union of Australian Women in the May Day Parade, 1965, nla.pic-vn4395009; 210: Gough Whitlam Speaking on the Steps … Parliament House, Canberra, 11 November 1975, nla.pic-an24355085, Courtesy Australian Information Service; Australian Labor Party, It’s Time: Rural, c. 1972, nla. cat-vn772336, Courtesy Australian Labor Party; 211: Peter Dodds McCormick, Advance Australia Fair, 1900–1909, nla.mus-an6012238; 212: Peter Dombrovskis, Morning Mist … Franklin River, Tasmania, 1979, nla.pic-an24365561, Courtesy Liz Dombrovskis; 213: Andrew Lachlan Chapman, Franklin Dam Protesters at the Liberal Party Federal Election Campaign Opening, 1983, nla.pic-vn4229965; 214: Judy Horacek, Just How Much More Evidence of Traditional Ownership Will You Require?, c. 1995, nla.pic-vn3294982; 215: ‘Yes’ for Aborigines, Poster for Referendum 27 May 1967, nla.aus-vn3116836; Mervyn Bishop, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam Pours Soil into the Hands of Gurindji Traditional Owner Vincent Lingiari, 1975, Courtesy Australian Government; 216: Harry Weston, Liberty or Slavery, c. 1917, nla.pic-an14106529; 217: Wendy McDougall, Labor MP and Deputy Premier Andrew Refshauge … on the Day the Bombs Started in Iraq, 20 March 2003, nla.pic-an24882429; 218: June Orford, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd … during the Apology to the Stolen Generations, Melbourne, 13 February 2008, nla.pic-vn4502862; Loui Seselja, Advertising the Event with the Word Sorry Written in the Sky … Sydney, 2000, nla.pic-an24526919; 219: Mervyn Bishop, Children Holding Portraits of Members of the Stolen Generation, 2008, nla.pic-vn4494716; 220: Samuel Garnet Wells, Boxing Match, LCP and ALP, 1950s, nla.pic-an6570619; 221: Benjamin Rushton, Prime Minister Julia Gillard with Ballot Paper … the Australian Federal Election, Melbourne, August 2010, nla. pic-vn4972537; Damian McDonald, Kevin Rudd Taking Questions … Parliament House, Canberra, 17 April 2007, nla.int-nl39724-dmc3.

Dealing with Disasters 222: A Flood in New South Wales, 1870s, nla.pic-an8926646; 222–223: Frightful Wrecks!, 1833, nla.aus-vn5980837; David Tunbridge, Volunteer Crew of MLO 10 of the ACT Bushfire Service … Brindabella Ranges, on the Night of 11/12 January 2003, nla.pic-an24954618; Darren Clark, Dead Cattle, Fords Bridge, New South Wales, 2002, nla.pic-vn3409115; 224: Darren Clark, Dry River Bed with Fish Skeleton, Coonamble, New South Wales, 2002, nla.pic-vn3409092; 225: Bruce Howard, Tracy—She Broke His Heart: The Morning After Cyclone Tracy, 1974, nla.pic-vn3076160; 226: Samuel Calvert, Bush Fire in Australia, c. 1880s, nla. pic-an8927792; Simon O’Dwyer, As the Sun Rises over the Horizon Residents in the Omeo Valley … Return to Their Homes to See First Hand the Devastation Caused by the Inferno … on Australia Day 2003, nla.pic-vn3121837; 227: Haughton Forrest, Tug for Clipper, Tasmania, c. 1860, nla.pic-an2288583.

The Sporting Life 228: Greg Power, Prime Minister’s XI Batsman, Shaun Marsh, Hits a Six … Manuka Oval, Canberra, 10 November 2006, nla.int-nl39667a-gp42; 229: Ray Leighton, Surf Sirens, Manly Beach, New South Wales, 1938–46, nla.pican14035743-4; British Australian Carpet Manufacturing Co., XVI Olympiad Melbourne 1956, nla.aus-vn3297619; 230: Bruce Howard, Newspaper’s Coverage of the Water Polo Match between Hungary and Russia, Melbourne, Victoria, 1956, nla.pic-vn4278496-s287; 231: Bruce Howard, Olympic Athletes March Together … the Melbourne Olympics, 1956, nla.pic-vn4278496-s322; 232: Leslie Ward, An Artful Bowler, B.J.T. Bosanquet, 1904, nla.pic-vn3586313; All England v. Australia, c. 1900, nla.aus-vn4558701; 233: Greg Power, Prime Minister’s XI Batsman, Shaun Marsh, Hits a Six … Manuka Oval, Canberra, 10 November 2006, nla.int-nl39667a-gp42; 234: Aboriginal Australian Cricketers in England,

1868, nla.pic-an13938309; 235: ‘Lawn Tennis’ in Australian Town and Country Journal, 3 November 1877, p. 25, nla.cat-vn41861; 236: Australian Davis Cup Team … New York, USA, 1950, nla.pic-vn5126108; Greg Power, Australian Tennis Player Sam Stosur Playing at the Australian Open, 2011, nla.int-nl40386-gp84; 237: Australasian Swimming Team, Winners of the Freestyle Relay, Olympic Games, Stockholm, 1912, nla.pic-an21171586; 238: Exchange Studios, Portrait of Fanny Durack, 1912, nla.pic-an10716253; Bruce Howard, Australian Swimmers … the Olympic Pool, Melbourne, 1956, nla.pic-vn4278496-s218; 239: Frank Hurley, Surf Boats Bondi, 1910–1962, nla.pic-an23478403; 240: John Witzig, Nat Young … at the Australian Surfing Championships, Sydney, 1972, nla.pic-vn4473899; Surfglassy, Stephanie Gilmore Winning Her Round Three Heat of the Rip Curl Pro at Bells Beach, 2010, Reproduced under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/deed.en; 241: George Lacy, The First Gathering of the Bendigo Caledonian Society, Jan. 2nd, 1860, nla. pic-an3103469; 242: Women’s Hurdles Race … Sydney Sports Ground, 1931, nla. pic-vn4584021; Michael Jensen, Robert de Castella Winning the Gold Medal at the Commonwealth Games Marathon, Brisbane, 1982, nla.pic-vn3297433; 243: Nathan David Kelly, Portrait of Cathy Freeman, 1997, nla.pic-vn3551388; 244: Australian Rules Footballer, 1880s, nla.pic-vn4467031; H.D. Newby, A Profusely Illustrated Souvenir … of the Australasian Football Jubilee Carnival, 1908, nla. aus-vn5214037; 245: Greg Power, Socceroos Captain Lucas Neill Kicks the Ball, Socceroos Australia v Malaysia Soccer Match, Canberra Stadium, 7 October 2011, nla.int-nl40553-gp63; 246: Rocco Fazzari, The Cup, 1980s, nla.pic-an24026950; 247: Richard Woldendorp, Aerial View of ‘Australia II’ Sailing off Fremantle, 1983, Courtesy State Library of Western Australia, 215707PD; 248: Karl Sharp, Jessica Watson … after Completing Her Voyage around the World, 15 May 2010, nla. pic-vn4840890; 249: Bruce Postle, Australia’s Donna-Lee Patrick during a Hockey Match against New Zealand … Melbourne, 2001, nla.pic-vn4581669; An Opperman Promotion for Malvern Star, 1920s, nla.pic-vn3427462.

Embracing Multiculturalism 250: Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation, Together We Can’t Lose, c. 1996, nla.pic-vn5751356, Courtesy Reconciliation Australia; 251: Sharyn Lee Meade, ANZAC Day Parade, Melbourne, 1996—After the March, nla.pic-an12549227-44; Jim Hooper, Chandrabhanu in Bharatam Dance Company Production, Bodhissatva, 1994, nla.pic-vn3510661; 252: W.E. Naunton, White Australia: March of the Great White Policy, 1910, nla.mus-vn3118296; 253: Curly Fraser, University Students Protest over the Deportation of Indian Nancy Prasad under the White Australia Policy, Mascot, 1965, Courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, Australian Photographic Agency, 20363; 254: Michael Jensen, Vietnamese Boat People, Darwin, November 1977, nla.pic-vn3209915; 255: Louise Whelan, Food Stalls at the African Refugee Training Markets in Hamilton, Newcastle, NSW, 2010, nla.pic-vn5756654; June Orford, Fatah and Makai Mohmand with a Carpet … from Their Homeland, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2005, nla.pic-vn3536543; 256: Migrants Arriving at an Australian Port, 1964, nla.pic-vn3146421, Courtesy Australian News and Information Bureau; 257: F.W. Niven & Co., John Alloo’s Chinese Restaurant, Main Road, Ballarat, 1853, nla.pic-an10236766; 258: Louise Whelan, Local Police Having a Turkish Coffee … Lakemba, New South Wales, 2010, nla.pic-vn5756781; 259: Edwyn Temple, Landing of Captain Cook in New Zealand, 1769, 1880, nla.pic-an6054544.

On the World Stage 260: Jim McFarlane, Miranda Coney and Albert David in a study for Stephen Page’s ‘Rites’, 1997, nla.pic-an23764028; 261: Ramingining artists, The Aboriginal Memorial, 1987–88, Courtesy National Gallery of Australia, photograph: John Gollings; Madame Melba, 1890–1920, nla.pic-an22931644; 262: Lewis Morley, Portrait of Dame Edna, 1997, nla.pic-vn4088130; Don McMurdo, Peter Allen Performing at the Opening of the Sydney Entertainment Centre, 1 May, 1983, nla. pic-an24770603; 263: Bruce Postle, Rupert Murdoch Announces Newspaper Mergers … Melbourne, 8 October 1990, nla.pic-vn4579000; Damian McDonald, Portrait of Germaine Greer during Her Visit to the National Library of Australia, 2005, nla.int-nl39522-dmc3; 264: Portrait of Howard Florey, c. 1960, nla.pican23609885, Courtesy Australian News and Information Bureau; 265: Sir John Carew Eccles at the Time He Won the Nobel Prize in 1963, nla.pic-an21150491-5; 266: Frank Mahony, Henry Lawson in 1896, nla.pic-an12114346; 267: Loui Seselja, Thomas Keneally Signing Books at the National Library of Australia, 22 October 2006, nla.int-nl39646-ls28; Christina Rutherford Macpherson and A.B. Paterson, Waltzing Matilda Manuscript, c. 1895, nla.ms-ms10086; 268: Norman Lindsay, The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum, 1918, nla.aus-vn1274760; Dorothy Wall, illustration in Blinky Bill,

the Quaint Little Australian, 1933, nla.aus-an3281107; 269: Madame Melba, 1890–1920, nla.pic-an22931644; 270: Don McMurdo, Joan Sutherland in Alcina, 1967–1998, nla.pic-an24716993; 271: Matthew Sleeth, Australian Singer Kylie Minogue Performs … East Timor, 21 December 1999, nla.pic-an24812907; Rennie Ellis, Barry Gibb, Kings Cross, c. 1970–71, nla.pic-vn4081860; 272: Eugène Von Guérard, Ferntree Gully in the Dandenong Ranges, Victoria, 1867, nla.picvn4930985; 273: Marilena Damiano, Portrait of Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri, 1989, nla.pic-vn3356974; Grace Cossington Smith, Self-portrait, c. 1951, nla.pican21209662; 274: J.C. Williamson, Souvenir: Anna Pavlova … Brisbane, 1929, nla.pic-vn3409847; Anthony Gordon, Robert Helpmann in Frederick Ashton’s Ballet, The Wanderer, 1941, nla.pic-vn3289848; 275: Regis Lansac, Dancers of the Australian Ballet as Cut-out Dolls in Wild Swans, 2003, nla.pic-vn3264767; Jim McFarlane, Miranda Coney and Albert David in a study for Stephen Page’s ‘Rites’, 1997, nla.pic-an23764028; 276: Peter Finch as the Sheriff of Nottingham, 1952, nla.ms-ms9733-5-153; 277: Picnic at Hanging Rock, 1975, Courtesy Jenny Lovell and the National Film and Sound Archive; Crocodile Dundee, 1986, Courtesy John Cornell and the National Film and Sound Archive.

You Are a History Maker 278: row 1 from left: Damian McDonald, Captain Michael Taylor Filling out the Log Book in the Cockpit, 2005, nla.int-nl39475e-dmc49; Nick Moir, CFA Fire Fighters Observing the Beechworth Fire … Victoria, 9 February 2009, nla. pic-vn4594988; Christian Pearson, Step into the Future, 2011, nla.pic-vn6151389; Darren Clark, Jeannie Gadamdua Sharing Traditional Bush Knowledge … Northern Territory, 12 August 2010, nla.pic-vn5196717; row 2 from left: June Orford, A Feast Laid out for Monks to Select Their Daily Meal … the Thai Buddhist Temple in Box Hill, Victoria, 1 August 2004, nla.pic-vn3312121; Greg Power, A Vendor for Street Newspaper The Big Issue, Known as Bill the Historian … Melbourne, January 2011, nla.int-nl40385-gp15; Darren Clark, View of the Esplanade Taken from Old Admiralty House, Darwin, 20 October 2010, nla.picvn5177355; row 3 from left: Greg Power, Pink Stacks, Brisbane Square Library, Queensland, 2008, nla.int-nl39890a-gp30; Darren Clark, Ballet Dancer, Melissa Jayne Dougall … North Perth, Western Australia, 2007, nla.pic-vn4230808; Jaime Murcia, Five Teenagers Wearing Street Fashion … Ballarat, Victoria, 2009, nla. pic-vn4706279; row 4 from left: June Orford, A Young Girl Tree Planting to Replace Vegetation Lost … Flowerdale, 2 May 2009, nla.pic-vn4609395; Philip Gostelow, External View of the Australian Pavilion … China, 18 May 2010, nla. pic-vn4935543; June Orford, Forest and Styx River nearby, Styx Valley, Tasmania, 2004, nla.pic-vn3096436; 279: row 1 from left: Simon O’Dwyer, A Night View of Coal Fired Loy Yang Power Station, Traralgon, Victoria, 27 July 2005, nla. pic-vn4533102; Rodney Dekker, View of Lake Hume about 5% Full … Victoria, November 2006, nla.pic-vn4499343; Loui Seselja, Bradley Chatfield Acknowledges the Audience in Sid’s Waltzing Masquerade … Sydney Dance Company, The Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, 5 September 2009, nla.int-nl40107-ls15; row 2 from left: Robert James Wallace, A Pedapod Pedicab Bicycle, Sydney, 2008, nla.pic-vn4367222; Robin Smith, Toora Wind Farm … Victoria, 2006, nla. pic-vn4235776; Louise Whelan, Justine Kimba Visiting Her Friend’s Shop for a Fitting … St Marys, New South Wales, 16 October 2010, nla.pic-vn5756651; row 3 from left: Bill Bachman, Rebeca Wall Opening Farm Gate, Langidoon Station, North-east of Broken Hill, South-west New South Wales, October 2003, nla. pic-vn3883748; Greg Power, Interior View of Brisbane Square Library, Queensland, 2008, nla.int-nl39890a-gp37; Louise Whelan, Three Boys with Musical Instruments Participating in Sikh Community Classes … Glenwood, New South Wales, 13 November 2010, nla.pic-vn5756754; row 4 from left: Philip Gostelow, Children Wearing Sun-protective Shirts … Brighton Beach, Perth, 2 January 2010, nla.pic-vn4811855; Richard Green, Gnarled Skeletons, Sturt Stony Desert, South Australia, 2006, nla.pic-vn4831608; row 5 from left: Greg Power, Graffiti on a Wall and Bins in Hosier Lane, Melbourne, January 2011, nla.int-nl40385-gp5; Darren Clark, Customers at the Asian Food Stall, Mindil Beach Markets, Darwin, 28 October 2010, nla.pic-vn5177405; Darren Clark, Scott Nardu with Two Other Aboriginal Children … Wudikapildiyerr Outstation, Daly River, Northern Territory, 16 June 2010, nla.pic-vn5178302; row 6 from left: Greg Power, Bicycles for Hire … Melbourne, 20 January 2011, nla.int-nl40386-gp115; Louise Whelan, Health Professional Vaccinating Participant in the World’s First Human Trials of the Swine Flu Vaccine, Royal Adelaide Hospital, Adelaide, 22 July 2009, nla.pic-vn4666802; Karl Sharp, Hybrid Electric Car at Charge Point, Glebe, New South Wales, 2010, nla.pic-vn4934040

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

283

Index Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations.

A Abbott, Tony, 221 ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission), 153, 197, 233, 234 Aboriginal people arrival in Australia, 18 art, 16, 17, 21–23, 22, 23, 261, 273 athletes, 243 constitutional referendum (1967), 174, 215 cricket team (1868), 234, 234 culture, 20, 21, 259 dance, 21, 21, 22, 23, 260, 274, 275, 275 Day of Mourning (1938), 173–174, 174, 214 European diseases, 20–21 and explorers, 26, 54, 58, 59, 60, 62, 64 firestick farming, 18, 19, 226 hunting, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 20 land rights, 214, 216 nature observation, 18–19, 67, 224, 225 pathways and tracks, 53, 58 reconciliation, 219, 258–259 resistance by, 37–39, 38, 40, 41 ritual spearing, 19, 37–38 Stolen Generations, 218–220 voting rights, 116, 174 white settlement, 19–21, 78, 259 Aborigines Progressive Association, 173 Academy Awards (Oscars), 277 ACSI (Advisory Council of Science and Industry), 154 Adelaide (SA), 48–49 Admella (ship), 227 Advance Australia Fair, 211 aerial warfare, 140–141, 175 Afghans, 103 agricultural inventions, 82–83 agriculture, 78–83, 154–155 Agua Caliente Handicap, Mexico, 171 aircraft, 140–141, 141, 160–161, 178 Albany (King George Sound) (WA), 46, 46–47, 59 Albert, Prince, 99 Allen, Peter, 262, 263

284

INDEX

Allenby, Edmund, 142, 144 Amalgamated Shearers Union, 89 America (schooner), 246 American ‘Great White Fleet’, 114 America’s Cup, 246, 246–247, 247 Anderson, Simon, 240 Angas, George French, 22 Antarctica, 122, 122–123, 123 antiwar protests, 209, 209, 216–218, 217 Anzac Day, 146, 149 Anzac legend, 125 Anzacs, 132, 181 Arbuthnot’s Range (Warrumbungles) (NSW), 54, 54 arc lighting, 104, 105 Argonauts Club, 153 Arkell, Douglas, 240 art, 16, 17, 21–23, 22, 23, 261, 272, 272–273 Arthur, George, 41 Atatürk (Mustafa Kemal), 145, 145 Atherden, Geoffrey, 219 athletics, 241–243 Auralia (proposed colony), 111 Australasian Federation Conference (1890), 86, 110 Australasian Federation Conventions (1890s), 110, 111, 115, 119 Australia Day, 173 Australia II (yacht), 246–247, 247 Australian Ballet Company, 275, 275 Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC), 153, 197, 233, 234 Australian Cricket Board, 233 Australian Flying Corps, 140–141, 141, 160 Australian Imperial Force (AIF), 136, 147, 179, 182–183 Australian Labor Party, 89, 97, 147, 165, 202, 252 Australian Light Horse, 127, 129–130, 134, 137, 142–144, 143–144 Australian Museum, Sydney, 10, 67 Australian Rules football, 244, 244–245 Australian Women Pilots Association, 161 Australian Women’s Army Service (AWAS), 189 Australian Women’s Land Army (AWLA), 189–190

Australian Workers Union (AWU), 252 Austro-Hungarian Empire, 128 aviation, 140–141, 160–161

B Babakiueria (film), 219 Baker, Suzanne, 277 Ballarat (Vic.), 107, 241, 257, 257 Ballarat Reform League, 75 ballet, 275 Ballet Russes, 275 Bana, Eric, 277 Bandt, Lewis, 159 Bangarra Dance Theatre, 21, 21, 260, 275, 275 Banks, Joseph, 29, 39, 52, 66, 66, 214 banksias, 11, 59 Barak, William, 23 Bardon, Geoffrey, 273 Baret, Jeanne, 248 barracking, 245 Barrington, George, 266 Barton, Edmund, 112, 113, 252 Barwick, Garfield, 202 Base, Graeme, 269 basketball, 248 Bass, George, 30, 30 Batavia (ship), 27 Bathurst (NSW), 44, 53 Batman, John, 49 Battle of Beersheba (WWI), 142–143 Battle of Hamel (WWI), 137–138, 140 Battle of Messines (WWI), 139 Battle of Passchendaele (WWI), 124, 140 Battle of the Coral Sea (WWII), 183–184 Battle of the Somme (WWII), 138 Batty, Robert Johnston, 37 Baudin, Nicolas, 31, 39, 46 Bauer, Ferdinand, 146 Baxter, John, 58 Baxter, Kirk, 277 Bayley, Ryan, 249 Beachley, Layne, 240 HMS Beagle (ship), 30, 31 Beale, Howard, 276 Beaurepaire, Frank, 238 Beazley, Kim, 221 Beckford, Elizabeth, 34, 35, 36

Bee Gees, 271, 271 Bell, Mrs Isa, 242 Bendigo (Vic.), 241, 241, 257 Bennett, George, 67 Bennett, James, 160 Bentley, James, 74 Bethell, Colonel, 140 bicycles, 104, 104, 249 Bigge, John, 45 Biggs, Mrs, 237 biodiversity, 13 Bird, Nancy (later Walton), 161 birds, 11, 29, 59, 59, 66 Birtles, Clive, 158 Birtles, Francis, 104, 104, 158, 158, 249 Bjelke-Petersen, Joh, 211 Black Caesar, 38, 83–84 Blackburn, Elizabeth, 265 Blake, William, 54 Blanchett, Cate, 277 Bland, William, 37 Blaxland, Gregory, 53 Blériot, Louis, 140 Bligh, William, 42, 42–43, 43 Blue Mountains (NSW), 52, 53, 53, 70 boat people, 254, 255 Boer War, 127, 134, 216 Boldrewood, Rolf, 266 Bond, Alan, 246 Bonegilla (Vic.), 197 Bonney, Charles, 58 Bonney, Lores, 161 Borovansky, Edouard, 275 botanists, 66 Botany Bay (NSW), 29, 34, 52 Botha, Wendy, 240 Bourke, Richard, 49, 94 Bowen, John, 39 Boxer Rebellion, China, 126 boxing, 243 Boyd, Arthur, 273 Brabham, Jack, 249 Bradbury, Steven, 249 Bradfield, John, 166–167 Bradley, William, 274 Bradman, Donald, 172–173, 173 Bragg, William Henry, 264 Bragg, William Lawrence, 264 Bridges, William Throsby, 136, 137 Bright, Torah, 249 Brisbane (Qld), 46, 47, 54, 225 British Empire, 126–128, 128 Broken Hill (NSW), 270 Bronhill, June, 270 Brookes, Norman, 236

Broome (WA), 225 Brown, Robert, 66 Browne, Thomas Alexander, 266 Bruce, Stanley, 158 bubonic plague, 93 Bull, J.W., 83 The Bulletin, 86, 116, 152, 266, 269 Bungaree (Aboriginal man), 259 Bunton, Cleaver, 211 bunyips, 67, 67 Burke, Robert O’Hara, 50, 62–64, 63 Burke and Wills Expedition, 38, 62–64 Burma, 183 Burnet, Frank Macfarlane, 265 Burrow, Taj, 240 Bush, George W., 218 bushfires, 13, 223, 226, 226 bushrangers, 83–84, 85 Buvelot, Louis, 273

C Caldwell, William Hay, 67 Californian gold rush, 70–71 Calwell, Arthur, 197, 253 Cambodia, 254 Cambrian period, 12 camels, 103–104, 135, 135, 142, 142, 179 Campbell, David, 269 Campbell, Robert, 43 Canberra (ACT), 120–122, 156, 156–158, 226 Canowindra (NSW), 13, 224 capital city, federal, 120, 120–122, 123, 150, 156-158 carbon dating, 13, 18 Carey, Peter, 267 Carmichael, Jennings, 119 Carmody, Kev, 215, 259 Carnegie, David, 19 cars, 158–160, 199–200 Carter, Doris, 242 Carter, Henry, 266 Casey, Richard, 145, 191, 202 Cash, Pat, 236 cast-iron decoration, 87 Cataraqui (ship), 227 Catholics, 96–97 Centennial Park, Sydney, 112, 112 Central Powers (WWI), 128–129 chain migration, 256–257 Charlton, ‘Boy’, 239 Chauvel, Harry (Henry), 136, 136–137, 138, 142 USS Chicago (ship), 187–188, 188

Chifley, Ben, 201 children’s books, 268–269 China, 129, 193, 254 Chinese furniture, 118 Chinese gold diggers, 49, 224, 257 Chinese workers, 73, 117, 117, 118 Churchill, Winston, 114, 182, 182–183 Chusan (ship), 102 cinemas, 276 city life (early settlement), 92–93 Clark, Andrew Inglis, 111 Clarke, Marcus, 266 Clarke, Ron, 242 ‘Clarke the Barber’, 59, 60 Clendinnen, Inga, 37, 274 coaches, 102, 103, 158 coastal mapping, 30–31 Cobb & Co, 103 Collins, David, 39–40, 44, 49, 266 Colombo Plan, 253 combine harvesters, 83 Commonwealth Games, 243, 248 Commonwealth Institute of Science and Industry, 154 Commonwealth War Book, 191 communications, 97–99 communism, 192–193, 201–202, 208–210, 216–217, 254 Communist Party of Australia, 201–202 computers, 155, 155 Conan Doyle, Arthur, 266 Conder, Charles, 272 Conner, Dennis, 247 conscription, 97, 147, 147, 209–210 Constitution of Australia, 111–112, 119 constitutional referendum (1967), 174, 215 continental drift, 10, 11 convicts, 33, 34–37, 36, 40, 45, 46, 73 emancipists, 37 secondary offenders, 40, 46 ticket-of-leave, 37 Cooee March, 130 Cook, James, 29, 122, 259, 266 Cook, Joseph, 131, 148, 149, 157, 197 Cooper Creek (SA), 63, 64 corner shops, 203–204, 204 Cornforth, John, 264, 265 Cornish people, 256 corroborees, 21, 22, 23, 274 Costello, Peter, 221 Cottee, Kay, 248 Cotter River, 122 Court, Margaret, 236 Crapp, Lorraine, 232, 239 Crean, Simon, 221

INDEX

285

cricket, 153, 172, 172–173, 228, 232, 232–234, 233, 234 Crofts, Thomas, 35 croquet, 235 Crowe, Russell, 277 CSIR (Council for Scientific and Industrial Research), 154–155, 191 CSIRAC (computer), 155, 155 CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation), 155 Curnow, Thomas, 84 Curr, Edward, 23, 78, 81 Curtin, John, 182–183, 183, 201 Cuthbert, Betty, 232, 242 Cuvier, Baron, 15 cycads (Macrozamia plants), 213 cycling, 104, 249 Cyclone Tracy, 225, 225 cyclones, 225

D Daley, James, 70 Dalgety (NSW), 120–121 Dampier, William, 14, 15, 20, 28–29, 247–248, 266 dams, 198–199, 213 dance, 21, 21, 22, 23, 260, 274–275, 275 Darcy, Les, 171 Darling, Ralph, 92 Darling River, 56, 60 Darwin, Charles, 30, 31, 66 Darwin (NT), 30, 185, 185–186, 225, 225 Davis, David, 170, 171 Davis Cup, 235–236 Daylesford (Vic.), 256 de Castella, Robert, 242, 242 De Groot, Francis, 167 Deakin, Alfred, 111, 112, 113, 114 Democratic Labor Party, 97, 202 Denman, Lady, 121, 122 d’Entrecasteaux, Bruny, 39 Department of Labour and National Service, 189–190 Depression (1890s), 87 Depression (1930s), 162, 163, 163–169, 168, 169 Derwent River (Tas.), 30, 39 Desert Mounted Corps (WWI), 140, 142 Devereaux, Ed, 276 D’Ewes, John, 75 Dickson, James, 113 Dickson, John, 100 dictation test for migrants, 118, 252, 253

286

INDEX

diggers (WWI), 133, 144, 149 dinosaurs, 14 Diprotodon (giant wombat), 14, 66 dirigibles, 140 disasters, 223–227 disease, 20–21, 35, 57, 64, 65, 93 displaced persons (WWII), 196–197 Dixon, James, 96–97 Dobell, William, 273 Dobson, Rosemary, 269 dogs, 123, 174, 192, 241 Doherty, Peter, 265 Dombrovskis, Peter, 213 donkeys, 135 Donohoe, Jack, 84 Doohan, Mick, 249 droughts, 13, 223, 224, 224 Drysdale, Russell, 273 Duffy, Charles Gavan, 110 dugongs, 14, 15 Dunbar (ship), 227 Dunne, Clare, 276 Durack, Fanny, 238, 238 Dutch exploration, 26–28, 27 Duyfken (ship), 26

E Earle, Augustus, 66 Eccles, John, 265, 265 ecology, 198, 212–213 Ediacara Hills (SA), 12 education, 81, 94–95 Edward, Prince of Wales, 99, 104 Edward VII, King, 113 Edwards, Ross, 271 Eendracht (ship), 28 Egan, John, 75 Egypt, 126, 230–231 El Alamein, Egypt, 181, 181 electric trams, 93, 106, 106 electrification, 104–106 Elizabeth II, Queen, 113 Elkin, Peter, 174 Ellard, Frederick, 274 Elliott, Adam, 277 Elliott, Herb, 242 Ellis, M.H., 158 Emerson, Roy, 236 Empire Air Training Scheme, 178 HM Bark Endeavour (ship), 29, 66 environmental issues, 13, 198, 199, 212–213 Eora people, 22, 38 Eureka flag, 75, 75 Eureka Stockade, 74–75, 75

Evans, Cadel, 249 Evans, George, 53 Evans, Ivy, 242 Experiment (river boat), 102 explorers, 14–15, 25–31, 51–65 Eyre, Edward John, 57, 57–59, 60, 64, 214

F Facey, Albert, 129, 132, 133, 135, 148 Fanning, Mick, 240 farming, 78–83 Farrelly, Midget, 240 Farrer, William, 154 federal capital see national capital city Federal Capital Territory, 122 Federal Parliament, 113–114, 122, 157, 157–158, 273 Federation, 109–114 Ferguson, Ronald Munro, 131 Field, Albert, 211 Field, Barron, 266 film industry, 107, 262–263, 276–277 Finch, Peter, 276, 276, 277 firestick farming, 18, 19, 226 First Fleet, 34, 34–35, 96, 100 First World War. see World War I fish fossils, 13, 13, 224 Fisher, Andrew, 122, 148–149, 220 Fisk, Ernest, 152 Fleming, John, 38 Fleurieu Peninsula (SA), 31 Flinders, Matthew, 30, 30, 31, 66 Flinders Ranges (SA), 12 floods, 52, 222, 224–225, 227 Florey, Howard, 264, 264, 265 flour mills, 100 Flying Pieman (William Francis King), 241 Flynn, Errol, 276 food rationing, 191–192 football, 244, 244–245, 245 Ford Motor Company, 159, 200 foreign workers, 116–118, 117, 252 Forrest, John, 111, 115–116, 190 fossils, 9, 11–15, 13, 14, 66–67, 224 Fox, Mem, 269 France, 128, 181, 208, 209 Franklin, John, 122 Franklin, Miles, 266–267 Franklin River (Tas.), 212 Fraser, Dawn, 232, 238 Fraser, Malcolm, 211, 221 freedom rides, 215, 243 Freeman, Cathy, 242, 243, 243, 250

French exploration, 31, 39, 46 Freycinet, Louis de, 46 Fromelles, France, 139 Frost, Henry, 200 Fuchida, Mitsuo, 186 Furphy, Joseph, 86 Fysh, Hudson, 160

G Gainsford-Taylor, Melinda, 242, 250 Gallipoli campaign, 130, 132, 132–135, 133, 149, 182 Game, Philip, 165, 167 Garden Palace, Sydney, 104, 105 Gardiner, Frank, 84 Gawler, George, 58 Gellert, Leon, 197 Genée, Adeline, 275 General Motors Holden (GMH), 200 Georges River (NSW), 30 German colonies, 127, 128, 128, 131 German place names, 146, 256 Germany, 128, 180, 181 Gerstäcker, Friedrich, 102, 104 giant animals, 14–15 Gibb, Barry, 271, 271 Gibb, Robin & Maurice, 271 Gibbs, May, 125, 268 Gibson, Mel, 276, 277 Gibson, William, 107 Gilbert, John, 62 Gillard, Julia, 221, 221 Gilmore, Mary, 269 Gilmore, Stephanie, 240, 240 glaciers, 12 Glanville-Hicks, Peggy, 271 Glover, John, 272 Godley, Alexander, 133, 136 gold diggers, 49, 69, 74–75, 75, 84, 224, 257 gold escorts, 84 gold prospectors (Great Depression), 169 gold rushes, 68, 69, 69–75, 72, 84, 224 Gondwana, 11 Goolagong, Evonne, 236, 243 Gordon, Adam Lindsay, 269 Gordon-below-Franklin Dam, 213 Gordon, Charles, 126 Gordon, Jennifer, 264 Gordon River (Tas.), 213 Gorham, Kathleen, 275 Gorton, John, 205, 220–221, 263, 276 Gough, June, 270 Goulburn (NSW), 117 Gould, John & Elizabeth, 66

Gould, Nat, 97, 99 Gould, Shane, 238–239 Government House stables, Sydney, 44, 45, 45 Graham, Bob, 269 Grainger, Percy, 270, 271 Granville train derailment, 227 Gray, Charles, 64 Great Depression, 162, 163, 163–169, 168, 169 Great War. see World War I Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 186, 208 Greek people, 257, 258 Greenway, Francis, 44, 45, 166 Greenwood, Andrew, 216 Greer, Germaine, 263, 263 Greider, Carol, 265 Grenville, Kate, 267 Griffin, Marion Mahony, 122, 156, 156 Griffin, Walter Burley, 122, 136, 156, 156–157 Griffith, Samuel, 110, 111 Gronn, Claus, 224 Grose, Francis, 42 Gulf Wars, 217–218 Gundagai (NSW), 227 Gurrumul, 271

H Hackett, Grant, 239 Hall, Ken, 277 Hammerman, Bernhard, 197 Hardman, Damian, 240 Hargraves, Edward, 71, 71 Harpur, Charles, 266 Harradine, Benn, 243 Harris, John, 53, 54, 55 Harsanyi, John, 264 Hartnett, Sonya, 269 Hartog, Dirk, 28, 29 harvesters (wheat), 82, 83 Hashemy (ship), 73 Hawdon, Joseph, 58 Hawke, Bob, 221, 247 Hawkesbury River (NSW), 30, 44, 52, 81, 224 Hayden, Bill, 221 Hayes, John, 39 Hayward, Elizabeth, 34, 35, 36 Healy, Cecil, 238 Heidelberg School, 272 Helpmann, Robert, 274, 275 Henricks, Jon, 232, 239 Henry, Jodie, 239

Henty, Thomas, 49 Henty family, 60, 60 Herman, Sali, 273 Hewitt, Lleyton, 236 Heysen, Hans, 273 High Court of Australia, 111, 202, 211, 213 Hindmarsh, John, 48 Hinkler, Bert, 160, 161 Hitler, Adolf, 193 Hoad, Lew, 236 Hobart (Tas.), 30, 40, 44, 48 Hobson, Percy, 243 hockey, 248, 249 Hodgkin, Alan Lloyd, 265 Hogan, Paul, 263, 276, 277 Holbrook (NSW), 146 Holden, Edward, 200 Holden, James Alexander, 200 Holmes, E.L., 158 Holt, Harold, 189, 220 Hoover, Herbert, 174 Hope, A.D., 269 Hopetoun, Lord, 112 horses Melbourne Olympics, 231 racing, 170, 170–171 in transport, 102, 103 in war, 134, 134–135, 138, 143, 144, 175 Hotham, Charles, 74–75 Houtman, Frederik de, 28 Hovell, William, 98 Howard, John, 218, 219, 221 Howell, George, 100 Howitt, Alfred, 23 Hughes, Billy, 97, 122, 139, 147–149, 149, 152, 160, 220 Hume, Fergus, 266 Hume, Hamilton, 55–56, 66 Humphries, Barry, 262, 262–263 Hungary, 230, 231, 232 Hunter, John, 42, 43 Hunter River (NSW), 81 Hussein, Saddam, 218 Huxley, Andrew, 265 Hyde, Miriam, 271 Hyde Park, Sydney, 93, 232, 244 hydro-electricity, 105, 106, 199, 213

I ice ages, 12, 14 Illawarra Steam Packet Company, 239 immigration, 73–74, 116–118, 196–197, 252–258. see also migrants

INDEX

287

Imperial Camel Corps, 135, 142, 142 Indian workers, 116–117 Indochina, 208 Indonesia, 37, 209 Ingpen, Robert, 269 inland sea, 53, 57 HMS Investigator (ship), 30 Iraq, 217–218 Irish people, 96–97, 147, 258 irrigation, 101, 199 Italy, 129, 179

J Jackson, Marjorie, 242 Jacky Jacky (Wiradjuri man), 227 James, Clive, 263 James, Harry, 158 Jandamarra (Bunuba man), 39 Janszoon, Willem, 26 Japan, 129, 175, 182–188, 208, 252 Jardine, Douglas, 172 Joey (Cootachah) (Aboriginal man), 58 Johnson, Millard, 107 Johnston, Major, 43 Jones, Leisel, 239 Jones, Marilyn, 275 jumbucks, 78

K Kahanamoku, Duke, 238, 239, 240 Kanakas, 116, 117–118 kangaroos, 19, 66, 67, 67 Kats-Chernin, Elena, 271 Keating, Paul, 219, 221 Kekwick, William, 65 Kellow, Charles, 158 Kelly, Ned, 84, 84, 107, 273 Kelly, Paul, 207, 215, 259 Kelly family, 107 Kendall, Henry, 266 Keneally, Thomas, 267, 267 Kerr, Bill, 276 Kerr, John, 211 Kidman, Nicole, 277 Kienzle, Bert, 184 Kindur River, 59, 60 King, John, 64 King, Philip Gidley, 39, 42, 43, 97 King, Phillip Parker, 20, 31 King, William Francis, 241 King George Sound (Albany) (WA), 46, 46–47, 59 Kingsford Smith, Charles, 160, 161, 161 Kingston, Charles, 113

288

INDEX

Kisch, Egon, 252 Kitchen, Henry, 45 Klim, Michael, 239 Kngwarreye, Emily Kame, 273 koalas, 12, 12, 66, 268, 269 Kokoda Track, 175, 184, 184–185 Komodo dragons, 15 Konrads, John & Ilsa, 239 Korean War, 193, 193, 216–217 Krefft, Gerard, 67 Kuhlken, Captain, 131 HMAS Kuttabul (ferry), 188

L La Trobe, Charles, 74 Labor Party. see Australian Labor Party Lachlan River (NSW), 53, 60 Lady Nelson (ship), 54 Lady Penrhyn (ship), 34, 35 Lake Eyre (SA), 13, 225 lamps, 81 land clearing, 80 land rights, 214, 216 Landells, George, 64 Landy, John, 242 Lane, Frederick, 238 Lang, Jack, 161, 165, 167, 197 Lang, John Dunmore, 15 Larcombe, Jim, 169 The Last Wild River (film), 213 Latham, Mark, 221 Launceston (Tas.), 40, 105 Laver, Rod, 236 lawnmowers, 235 Lawrence, Thomas Edward, 142 Lawson, Henry, 266, 266 Lawson, William, 53 Leacock, James Freeland, 159 Lebanese people, 255 Ledger, Heath, 277 Leichhardt, Ludwig, 51, 60, 61, 61–62, 274 Letham, Isabel, 240 Lewis, Tom, 211 Lexcen, Ben, 247 Liberal Party of Australia, 165, 201 Light, William, 48–49 lighting, 81, 104–106 Lightning (ship), 102 Lindsay, Norman, 268 Lingiari, Vincent, 215, 215, 216 Lipton, Thomas, 246 literature, 266–269 Logan, Patrick, 46 Lovell, Pat, 276

luminescence (dating method), 18 lungfish, 67 Lynch, Barton, 240 Lyne, William, 96, 112, 119 Lyons, Enid, 116, 116 Lyons, Joseph, 153, 165, 165, 220

M Mabo, Eddie Koiki, 216 Mabo case, 216 MacArthur, Douglas, 184, 193 Macarthur, Elizabeth, 45, 78, 79 Macarthur, James, 88 Macarthur, John, 43, 43, 44, 45, 78, 79 Macgillivray, John, 62 Mackay, Mr (contractor), 116 Mackellar, Dorothea, 224, 269 Macleay, William Sharp, 15, 37, 67 MacNamara, Francis, 46, 266 Macquarie, Elizabeth, 45 Macquarie, Lachlan, 43–45, 44, 53, 232, 236 Macquarie River, 56 Macquarie Street precinct, Sydney, 44, 45 Macquarie towns, 44 Macrozamia plants (cycads), 213 Magellan, Ferdinand, 247 Major Mitchell’s cockatoos, 59, 59 Malouf, David, 267 Manly, Sydney, 239, 240 Mannix, Daniel, 147 Maori Wars, 126 Marconi, Guglielmo, 152 Maria Island (Tas.), 41 Marsden, Samuel, 78 Marsh, Stephen, 274 Marshall, Barry, 265 marsupials, 11, 67 Martens, Conrad, 22, 273 Martin, Jesse, 248 Martin (servant boy), 30, 30 Martindale, Captain, 103 Matthew, Daniel, 100–101 Mawson, Douglas, 122–123, 123 McCubbin, Frederick, 272 McDonnell, Richard, 65 McEntire, John, 37–38 McEwen, John, 220 McEwen, Robbie, 249 McGinness, Paul, 160 McGregor family, 130 McKay, Heather, 249 McKay, H.V., 83 McMahon, William, 220 McRae, Tommy, 23

Meale, Richard, 271 Meares, Anna, 249 Medawar, Peter, 265 medical treatments, 80–81, 93, 171, 203, 265 Meehan, James, 44 megafauna, 14–15 Megalania prisca (giant monitor lizard), 15, 15 Meillon, John, 276 Melba, Nellie, 157–158, 261, 269, 269– 270 Melbourne (Vic.), 241, 257 Federation, 113, 113–114 first settlement, 48, 48, 49 Olympic Games (1956), 205, 229–231, 230–232 1880s, 86, 86, 87 Melbourne Cup, 170–171, 171 Menzies, Robert, 165, 174–175, 175, 178, 182, 182, 201, 201–202, 220 Mermaid (ship), 54 Mertz, Xavier, 123 M’Gregor, Hugh, 70, 71 Mickey of Ulladulla, 23 midget submarines (WWII), 187, 187–188 migrants, 73, 73–74, 195, 196, 196–197, 252–258, 255, 256. see also immigration milk supply (early settlement), 92–93 milkmen, 93, 202, 204 Miller, George, 277 Minogue, Kylie, 270, 271 Mitchell, Elyne, 138 Mitchell, Helen ‘Nellie’ Porter. see Melba, Nellie Mitchell, Thomas, 14, 37, 53, 59–60, 66, 84 Molonglo River, 122 Monash, John, 136, 137–138, 140 Moneghetti, Steve, 242 monotremes, 10, 67 Montez, Lola, 274 Moonta (SA), 256 Moran, Patrick, 96 Moreton Bay (Qld), 30, 46 Morgan, ‘Mad Dog’ Daniel, 83, 84 Morse, Samuel, 97 motor sports, 249 motor vehicles, 158–160, 159, 199–200 multiculturalism, 251–259 Mundine, Anthony, 243 Mundine, Tony, 243 Mungo Man, 18 Murdoch, John Smith, 157 Murdoch, Rupert, 263, 263

Murphy, Graeme, 275 Murphy, Lionel, 211 Murray, Les, 269 Murray River, 57, 60, 81, 103, 104, 198– 199 Murrumbidgee River (NSW), 57, 60, 198–199, 224 music, 269–271 Myall Creek massacre, 38 Myall Lakes National Park, 213 myxomatosis, 168

N Namatjira, Albert, 22, 23, 272–273 Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 230 Nathan, Isaac, 271 national anthem, 211 national capital city, 120, 120–122, 123, 150, 156–158 National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, 273 Nauru, 131 netball, 248 Network (film), 276 New Caledonia, 208 New Guard movement, 165, 167 New Guinea, 28, 131 New South Wales Corps (Rum Corps), 41–44 New South Wales Lancers, 127 New York Yacht Club (NYYC), 246–247 New Zealand, 12, 110, 118–119, 126, 131, 133–134 Newcastle (NSW), 44, 46 Newcombe, John, 236 Newton-John, Olivia, 270 Niemeyer, Otto, 164–165 Nimitz, Chester, 184 Ninnis, Belgrave, 123 Nobel Prize, 263–265 Nolan, Sidney, 273 Norfolk (boat), 30 Norfolk Island, 40

O Occhilupo, Mark, 240 O’Connor, Mark, 269 O’Donnell, Phyllis, 240 old age pensions, 118–119 Old Parliament House, Canberra, 157, 157–158 Olden, Harry, 142, 144 Oldfield, Bert, 172 Oliver, Alexander, 120

Olley, Margaret, 273 Olsen, John, 273 Olympic Games, 230, 238, 242, 243, 248, 249 Melbourne (1956), 205, 229–231, 230– 232 Stockholm (1912), 237, 238 Sydney (2000), 232, 243 O’Malley, King, 119, 122 O’Neill, Susie, 239 opossums, 11 Opperman, Hubert, 249, 249, 252, 253 Otto 1, King, 230 Ottoman Empire, 128–129 Overland Telegraph, 97, 98, 99 overlanders, 57–58, 58, 60 Owen, Richard, 15, 67 Oxley, John, 53–54, 55, 59, 66

P Pacific Islanders, 116, 117–118 Packer, Frank, 246 Packer, Kerry, 233–234, 245 paddle-steamers, 81, 81, 104 Page, Earle, 220 Page, Stephen, 275 palaeontologists, 11–12 Pangaea, 11, 11 Papua New Guinea, 14, 131, 183–185 Papunya (NT), 273 Parer, Damien, 277 Park, Ruth, 268 Parkes, Henry, 73, 110 Parkes radio telescope (NSW), 155, 155 parliament, federal, 113–114, 122, 157, 157–158, 273 Parliament House, Canberra, 157, 273 Parramatta (NSW), 44, 52 patent medicines, 81, 93 Paterson, Banjo, 135, 141, 182, 266–267 Paterson, William, 40 Patten, Jack, 173 Pavlova, Anna, 274, 275 Pawsey, Joe, 155 Peacock, Andrew, 221 pedal wireless, 151, 153 Peirce, Augustus Baker, 104 pelicans, 225 Pell, Morris, 103 Pemulwuy (Eora warrior), 38, 39, 83 penicillin, 264, 265 pensions, 118–119 Pérec, Marie-José, 243 Peris-Kneebone, Nova, 243 Perkins, Charles, 243, 253

INDEX

289

Perlmutter, Saul, 264 Perry, Joseph, 112, 116 Perth (WA), 37, 46 petrol rationing, 190–191, 201 Pfalz, later Boorara (ship), 131, 131 Phar Lap (racehorse), 170, 170–171 Phillip, Arthur, 35, 35, 37–38, 41–42, 266 Phillips, John, 70, 101 Picnic at Hanging Rock (film), 276, 277 pigs, 92 Piguenit, William, 273 Pinner, Gwen, 158 plate tectonics, 10 platypuses, 9, 10, 67 ploughs, 82, 82 P&O (shipping company), 102 Poland, 196 political leaders, 148–149, 220–221 pollen deposits, 18 Poo, Sam, 84 HMS Porpoise (ship), 43 Port Arthur (Tas.), 41, 227 Port Essington (NT), 60, 62 Port Fairy (Vic.), 237–238 Port Macquarie (NSW), 54 Port Phillip (Vic.), 39–40, 49, 60 Potter, Beatrix, 271 Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, 105, 106 Pozières, France, 139 Prasad, Nancy, 253 Prelog, Vladimir, 264 Preston, Margaret, 273 prickly pear, 154, 154, 155 prime ministers, 148–149, 220–221 Prince of Wales (ship), 182 Prokhorov, Aleksandr, 264 Prokopov, Valentin, 230 Proteaceae family, 10, 11 Protestants, 96–97 public transport, 203

Q Qantas (Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services Ltd), 160 quarter-acre blocks, 202–203

R rabbits, 155, 168 radio, 131, 151, 152, 152–153 radio astronomy, 155 Radojevic, Danilo, 275 Rafferty, Chips, 276 railways, 93, 103, 166 Raine, John, 100

290

INDEX

Ranken, George, 15 ratites, 11 rats, 93 Rats of Tobruk, 180–181 Read, Rudston, 173 Reconciliation Australia, 258, 259 recruitment posters (WWI & II), 125, 130, 146, 183 Red Baron, 141 Red Cross, 146, 148 Reddy, Helen, 270 Rede, Robert, 74–75 ‘reffos’, 197 refugees, 196–197, 253–255, 254, 255 Reid, George, 110–111, 119 religion, 96–97 Repulse (ship), 182 Reynolds, Maurice, 103, 160 Rice, Stephanie, 239 Richardson, Henry Handel (Ethel Florence), 267 Ridley, John, 83 Ridley strippers (wheat), 83 Riess, Adam, 264 Risdon (Tas.), 39, 40 river steamers, 81, 81, 104 Robe, Frederick, 88 Roberts, Tom, 272 Robinson, Captain, 131 Robinson, George Augustus, 41 Robinson’s Baths, Sydney, 237 rock art, 21, 22 Roman Catholics, 96–97 Rommel, Erwin, 180, 181 ‘roof rabbits’ (cats), 168 Rose, Lionel, 243 Rose, Murray, 232, 238 Ross, James Clark, 122 Rowell, Sydney, 184 Royal Air Force (RAF), 178 Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF), 140, 157–158, 177, 178, 178 Royal Exhibition Building, Melbourne, 86, 114 Royal Military College, Duntroon, Canberra, 136 Rudd, Kevin, 218, 220, 221, 221 Rudd, Steele, 152 Rudder, Enoch, 71 rugby, 245 Rum Corps (New South Wales Corps), 41–44 Rum Rebellion, 41–43 rum trade, 42, 43 Rush, Geoffrey, 277 Ruskin, John, 87

Russell, Robert, 49 Russia, 128, 193, 196

S sailing ships, 102 saltwater crocodile, 14 sandmining, 212, 213 Sarah Island (Tas.), 40–41 sawmills, 101 SBS (Special Broadcasting Service), 205 Schmidt, Brian, 264 schools, 81, 94, 94–95, 95 scientific research, 66–67, 154–155, 264–265 Scobie, James, 74 Scottish people, 256, 258 Scrivener, Charles, 120, 122, 156 Scullin, James, 164, 165, 165 Sculthorpe, Peter, 271 scurvy, 35, 57, 64, 65 scythes, 83, 235 sea levels, 14, 18 Second World War. see World War II selectors, 79 settlers, 77–83 home remedies, 80–81 shelter, 79, 79–80, 80 Shackleton, Ernest, 122–123 Shark Bay (WA), 12, 15, 28, 46, 248 shearers, 77, 78, 89, 89, 117 sheep, 38, 49, 78–79 Sheffield, Earl of, 233 Sheffield Shield cricket, 233 shepherds, 38, 78 Shiers, Walter, 160 shipwrecks, 227 Simpson, John, 135 skating, 249 Slessor, Kenneth, 269 Slocum, Joshua, 248 Smart, Jeffrey, 273 Smith, Grace Cossington, 273, 273 Smith, Keith, 160, 161 Smith, Richard Bowyer, 82–83 Smith, Ross, 160, 161 snowboarding, 249 Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electric Scheme, 106, 194, 198, 198–199 Snowy River, 199 social welfare, 118–119 soils, 12–13, 52, 79, 166, 213 Solander, Daniel, 66 Sophia Jane (ship), 102 Southern Cross (aircraft), 161, 161 Soviet Union, 193, 230, 231

Spanish exploration, 26 Spence, Catherine, 115 Spielberg, Steven, 267 sports, 229–249 squash, 249 squatters, 23, 73, 74, 79, 89 Stawell Gift (sprinting race), 242, 243 Stead, Christina, 267 steam engines, 100, 100–101 steam mills, 100–101, 101 steamships, 102 Stevens, Bertram, 268 stock-market crash (1929), 164 Stolen Generations, 218–220 stomach ulcers, 265 Stoner, Casey, 249 The Story of the Kelly Gang (film), 107, 107, 276 Stow, Randolph, 267 Streeton, Arthur, 272 Strickland, Edward, 126 Strickland, Shirley, 232, 242 strikes, 201 stromatolites, 12 Stuart, John McDouall, 50, 62, 64, 64–65, 65, 99 stump-jump ploughs, 82 Sturt, Charles, 50, 55, 55–57, 59 suburbs, 202, 202–204, 203 Sudan, 126, 216 Suez Canal, 126, 142, 181, 230 sugarcane, 117 supercontinents, 11 surfboards, 229, 239, 240 surfboats, 239, 239 surfing, 239–240, 240 Sutherland, Joan, 270, 270 Sutton, Henry, 204 Swan River colony (WA), 37, 46–47 swans, 29 swimming, 236–239, 237, 238 Sydney (NSW), 90, 112, 126 first settlement, 34–35, 48 World War II, 186–188 Sydney Conservatorium of Music, 45, 45 Sydney Cove (NSW), 32, 34, 35, 52 Sydney Dance Company, 275 Sydney Harbour Bridge, 162, 166, 166–167, 207, 219 Syria, 181 Szostak, Jack, 265

T Tait family, 107 tallow (sheep fat), 79

Tamworth (NSW), 105 Tan, Shaun, 269, 277 Tank Stream, Sydney, 51, 92, 92, 93 tanks (WWI & II), 140, 140, 181 Tarwood, John, 37 Tasman, Abel, 28, 28 Tasmania. see Van Dieman’s Land Taylor, P.G., 161 Taylor, Rod, 276 telegraph, 62, 65, 97–99 television, 204–205, 205, 212, 213, 217 Telford, Harry, 170 Tench, Watkin, 266 tennis, 235, 235–236, 236 terra nullius, 214 Thargomindah (Qld), 105–106 The Rocks, Sydney, 167, 257 Theile, David, 232 Theodore, Edward, 165 Therry, Roger, 94 They’re a Weird Mob (film), 276 Thiele, Colin, 269 Thomas, Captain, 75 Thomas, Petria, 239 Thomson, Herbert, 158 Thomson steam car, 158 Thorpe, Ian, 238 tillite, 123 Tingwell, Charles ‘Bud’, 276 Tjapaltjarri, Clifford Possum, 273, 273 Tobruk, Libya, 180–181 Todd, Charles, 99, 264 Tom Thumb (boat), 30 Torres, Luis Váez de, 26 trains, 91, 93, 103, 166, 227 trams, 93, 106, 106 transit of Venus, 29 transport, 81, 93, 102–104, 203 transportation of convicts, 33, 34–37, 36, 40, 45, 46, 73 treadmills, 100 Trickett, Edward, 110 Trickett, Libby, 239 Triple Entente (WWI), 128 Trollope, Anthony, 47, 78 Truchanas, Olegas, 213 Truganini (Palawa woman), 41, 41 Turkey, 132–134, 142–145 Turner, Ethel, 268

U Udet, Ernst, 141 Ulm, Charles, 161, 161 Ultimo Power Station, Sydney, 105, 106 Unaipon, David, 174

unemployment, 164, 168–169 UNESCO, 213 unions, 88–89, 201, 252 United Australia Party (UAP), 165, 201, 220 United Nations, 213, 217, 218, 255 universities, 202, 211 USA (United States of America), 111, 129, 182, 183, 209 USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist Republics), 193, 196, 230, 231 utility vehicle (ute), 159, 159

V Van Diemen’s Land (Tasmania), 28, 30, 31, 33, 37, 39–41, 44 van Praagh, Peggy, 275 Vesteys (pastoral company), 216 Victoria, Queen, 113, 114, 214 Victoria Cross medal, 127, 140, 146 Victorian Football League, 244 Vietnam War, 208–210, 217, 254 Vietnamese people, 254, 254–255 Vivas, Julie, 269 Vlamingh, Willem de, 28–29, 46 volcanoes, 10, 12 Voluntary Aid Detachment (VAD), 188 von Guérard, Eugene, 272, 272 von Mueller, Ferdinand, 146 von Richthofen, Manfred, 141 voting rights, 115, 115–116, 174

W Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 49 Walers (horses), 134, 134–135, 138 Walker, Sam, 239 Wall, Dorothy, 268–269 wallaby track (Great Depression), 163, 169, 169 waratahs, 9, 10, 11 Warren, Robin, 265 Warrumbungle Range (NSW), 54, 54 wartime censorship, 192 wartime rationing, 190–192 waste disposal (early settlement), 92 water polo, 248 water supply, 92, 93, 120 waterwheels, 106 Watson, Jessica, 248, 248 Wave Hill Station (NT), 216 Weddell, James, 122 Weir, Peter, 276 Welch, Garth, 275

INDEX

291

Wellington Caves (NSW), 14, 15, 59, 66–67 Wells, H.G., 129 Wentworth, William, 53, 266 Westlake, Nigel, 271 wheat, 83, 154 White, Patrick, 263–264 White Australia Policy, 118, 252, 252–253 Whiteley, Brett, 273 Whitlam, Gough, 199, 210, 210–211, 215, 216, 221, 263 Wickham, John, 30 Wik case, 216 Wilkes, Charles, 122 Williams, Fred, 272, 273 Williams, Ivor, 140 Williamson, J.C., 275 Wills, Tom, 244 Wills, William, 62, 64 Wills, William John, 62–64, 63 Wilson, Woodrow, 149 Wimbow, John, 84 Wing, John Ian, 232 Winton, Tim, 267 Wiradjuri people, 224 wireless, pedal, 151, 153 Wiseman, Solomon, 37, 94 Wollemi pines, 9 wombats, 12, 12, 66 women aviators, 161 sports women, 238, 240, 242

292

INDEX

voting rights, 115, 115–116 in war, 175, 188–190, 189, 190 Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAAC), 188 Women’s Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF), 188 Women’s Royal Australian Army Corps (WRAAC), 189 Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service (WRANS), 189, 190 Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS), 188 wool industry, 78–79, 154, 193 Woolloomooloo, Sydney, 93, 237 workers, 88–89, 116–118, 201, 252 World War I (Great War), 125, 127–149, 216 aerial warfare, 140–141 animals at war, 134, 134–135, 135, 142, 142 conscription, 97, 147, 147 desert campaign, 135, 137, 142–144 diggers, 133, 144, 149 generals, 136–138 home front, 146–148, 152 maps, 128, 132 recruitment, 130, 130, 146 returned soldiers, 148 wartime leaders, 148–149 Western Front, 124, 138–140, 139 World War II, 175–192, 216 aerial warfare, 175, 178 attack on Australia, 183–188

maps, 176, 180, 186 North Africa, 179–181 rationing, 190–192 women, 175, 188–190 Wright, Judith, 269 Wrightson, Patricia, 269 Wyatt, George, 101 Wybalenna, Flinders Island, 41 Wylie, Wilhelmina, 238 Wylie (Aboriginal man), 58–59

Y yachting, 246–248 Yagan (Noongar man), 39 Yarri (Wiradjuri man), 227 Yarry (Neramberein) (Aboriginal man), 58 York, Duchess of (1901), 113, 114 York, Duke and Duchess of (1927), 157, 158 York, Duke of (1901), 113, 113, 114, 166 Young, Cliff, 242 Young, Nat, 240, 240 Young, Simone, 271

Z Zador, Ervin, 230 Zappas, Evangelos, 230 Zinkernagel, Rolf, 265 zircons, 12 Zoological Society, London, 66

Australia’s history began when a landmass called Gondwana broke up. The new island continent had dinosaurs, birds, and some mammals that would become the kangaroos, platypuses, wombats and possums of today. The continent also had strange plants, insects, spiders, lizards and snakes, but there were no humans, not until about 50,000 years ago, when the first Aboriginal people arrived. Australia’s history changed when these new arrivals began shaping the land. They settled in and grew used to the land. The land became used to them, as well. In the 1600s, strangers came visiting and drawing maps. They returned to their home countries and told others about the places that they had explored. In 1788, some of the strangers came back to live in Australia, and our history changed again. The history of this country has always been shaped by the land. The rocks, the soil, the plants, the animals and the climate affected how people lived. The early European settlers struggled to understand the land, but they learned how to survive in the end. Then people started finding gold and more visitors rushed to Australia from many parts of the world. A lot of them stayed and became Australians. Before long, Australia’s colonies joined together to make a nation. The new nation looked outward, sending troops off to fight in wars. At home, other Australians worked to make Australia worth coming home to. In peacetime, Australians contributed ideas, knowledge and skills to the world. Australia became a nation to be proud of, and the story of how that happened is our history. That is the story that The Big Book of Australian History tells.

PETER MACINNIS is an award-winning Sydney-based history and science writer. He won the 2012 Whitley Award in the young naturalist category from the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales for Australian Backyard Naturalist, which was also listed as a Children’s Book Council of Australia’s Eve Pownall notable book in 2013. He received the Eve Pownall Award in 2010 for Australian Backyard Explorer. His 2006 book, Kokoda Track: 101 Days, was short-listed for the New South Wales Premier’s History Awards in 2007 and was an Eve Pownall Honour Book in the 2008 Children’s Book Council of Australia Awards. Children’s Book The Big History Book

COMING SOON The

ISBN 978-0-642-27832-6

BIG BOOK of INDIGENOUS AUSTRALIAN HISTORY

edited by Professor John Maynard

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