A NATION IS BORN

Until fairly recently, Australian immigration policies encouraged British applications for permanent residency and citizenship. As a consequence almost everyone in the UK seems to have at least one relative living in Australia. In the early days of colonial rule, the British government used Australia as an outlet to hold their convicts. On the 26th of January 1788 the first fleet of 11 ships arrived at Sydney Harbour and this marked the beginning of a new nation. A second coastal penal settlement was established in Tasmania in 1825. From the first colony, exploration and settlement spread and at the same time the British government was giving away free land in order to encourage people to move away from the overcrowded shores of Britain to the apparently empty land of Australia.

Free settlers started to greatly outnumber the convict population and settlements spread to South Australia in 1837. Victoria sprang up in 1851, Queensland in 1859 and although the Swan River Colony had been established in 1827 it only became a self-governing colony in 1890. The Commonwealth of Australia was formed in 1901 through the proclamation of the Constitution for the Federation of six States. The original fathers knew that they were at the forefront of this new nation and were concerned about avoiding the pitfalls of the lands that they had come from. They had progressive ideas about the rights of man, democratic procedures and the value of a secret ballot. Since then the constitutional links with Britain have been slowly loosened.

The colony’s development was far from smooth. The Aborigines were not pleased to see the new arrivals, who promptly declared the land to be uninhabited and simply took it over. It is estimated that the population of Aborigines across Australia before 1770 was more than 300,000. They spoke 500 different languages that were as complex and rich as any European language, yet were dismissed as babble by the first settlers. The situation became worse for the Aborigines as they were thrown off their land, whole communities became infected by the foreign diseases that arrived along with the Europeans and some fell victim to imported social problems.

GOLD

The exploration of Australia came relatively late and progressed slowly. The inhospitable nature of much of the continent, the barrier of the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney and the difficult nature of the Australian bush added to this slow development. It was the discovery of gold at Bathurst by Edward Hargraves in May 1851 that put Australia firmly on the map. This announcement sent shock waves around the world and the rush of prospectors to Bathurst from other colonies was so great that the population of Victoria declined rapidly. This was the first of many subsequent gold finds that attracted a flood of migrants to the Australian shores. Those miners who came initially for the gold remained as settlers and contributed their skills to the new land. This led to the rapid economic growth which made it possible for Australia to become relatively independent.

POST-WAR PEACE AND PROSPERITY

By 1880, Australia had a population of two million. By the end of World War I, that number had swelled to six million. After the end of World War II, the nation entered a boom time when there was a sustained period of rapid industrialisation and encouragement of immigration from Europe. The population then rose from seven million to eleven million with the influx of immigrants between 1945 and 1965. This wave saw the change of the culinary, psychological and cultural face of Australia. During this period when the population was increasing so dramatically the Australian government tried to influence the nationalities of the immigrants, by passing the Immigration Restriction Bill, known more commonly as the ‘White Australian Policy’. This Bill had been introduced to prevent the immigration of Asian and Pacific Islander people, but was later revoked.

The number of Australians employed in the manufacturing industry had grown steadily since the beginning of the century, and many women who had taken over for the men while they were away at war were able to continue working during peacetime. Primary industries such as wheat and wool also continued to grow in output, although the percentage of Australians employed in the rural sector started to decline.

The economy developed strongly in the 1950s. This period saw the opening of mining resources and major nation-building projects like the huge hydro-electricity generator project in the Snowy Mountains. A prosperous society meant that everyone was benefiting, suburban property ownership increased and the government consolidated its political stability.

The establishment of a capital city for the country became a priority. The battle was bitterly fought out between Sydney and Melbourne, and the compromise meant that the government developed a new territory between the two cities on the Monaro Tablelands. Canberra was developed in 1913 as the head of the nation.

AN EVER-CHANGING SOCIETY

During the 1960s Australia’s society and culture was again amidst the elements of change. The main reasons were the declining influence of Britain as a world power, the increasing domination of the United States especially during the Vietnam War and the increasing ethnic diversity within Australia’s social make up. The ‘Baby Boomers’ had a huge effect on the nation’s direction as their generation emerged as an active force behind a great deal of economic, political and social change.

In 1967 Australian citizens voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum to give the federal government the power to pass legislation on behalf of Australia’s indigenous people. This showed an enormous amount of support towards improving the living conditions for both the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities by Australia as a whole. In 1993 a watershed was reached when the High Court rejected the view that Australia was unoccupied when the first fleet of settlers arrived. The Court also recognised the right of Aborigines to claim sections of unoccupied land throughout the country. Although the Aborigines still remain Australia’s most disadvantaged group the future is looking much brighter and increasingly harmonious.

The long post-war domination of the national political scene by the National Party finished in 1972 when the Labour Party won the general election. The following three years saw reforms and major legislative changes in education, health, social security, foreign affairs and industrial relations. However, in 1975 a constitutional crisis resulted in the Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam, being dismissed by the Governor General and subsequent defeat of the Labour party in the following election. The National Party dominated the political scene until 1983 when Labour once again came to office. The present coalition government, led by Prime Minister John Howard, took over from the Labour Party after winning the 1996 general election and was re-elected in 1998 and again in 2004.