Australia - A Concise History of Australia

The year in which Captain James Cook took possession of Australia, or the Great South Land as it was generally known to navigators who had speculated on the possible existence, is not looked upon with any great favour by the Aborigines who had lived on the continent in harmonious coexistence for around 30,000 years. Cook's action in claiming for England the eastern coast from 39 degrees to 10.1/2 degrees latitude south was not considered to be an auspicious event by anyone other than those present at the time.

Cook had been despatched from Plymouth, England, on 26 August 1768 with directions to proceed to Tahiti. The barquentine Endeavour carried two important passengers, Joseph Banks of the royal Society and Dr David Solander. Banks was to observe the transit of Venus across the sun while the Endeavour was at Tahiti, and Solander's task was to collect botanical samples for study back in England. there were also some sealed orders which Cook was not to open until Banks had completed his task at Tahiti. those instructions were for him to proce4d westwards from Tahiti in search of the Great south Land.

First land of any substance discovered on this venture was New Zealand. After six months of exploration Endeavour sailed further west until 20 April 1770 when Lieutenant Zachary Hicks sighted land. On 29 April they sailed into a bay where the ship anchored and a party was sent ashore. for eight days Cook, Banks, Solander and the rest of the expedition explored the immediate vicinity of the large bay. The huge variety of plant specimen s and other such items collected by Solander prompted Cook to name the expanse of water Botany Bay.

On 5 May Endeavour sailed out of Botany Bay and turned north. Later that same day they sailed past two large headlands which appeared to guard a good anchorage. Cook named the area Port Jackson but did not enter it, thus missing the finest waterway on the continent. continuing north up the coastline, charting and naming numerous landmarks on 11 June Endeavour struck a reef north of what is now Cairns, forcing Cook to beach the vessel and begin repairs. six weeks later the voyage resumed until they reached the northernmost point of the east coast at a point Cook named Cape York.

It was here on 21 August 1770, on Possession Island, that Cook claimed the entire eastern coast in the name of the King.

In European terms very little occurred in Australia's history during these years. Although the eastern coast of the continent was a British possession, it could just as well have been a Dutch or a French settlement for all anyone in London knew or cared. The Aborigines continued to live the way they always had, blissfully unaware of what was to happen to them and their lands.

Following the rebellion of the American colonies the British Government was left with nowhere to consign its convicts. When the gaols became hopelessly overcrowded the convicts were loaded on to crumbling prison hulks moored in ports around Britain. In 1779 Sir Joseph Banks spoke in favour of the land Cook had named New South Wales as a possible destination for what was seen as human refuse. There was support for a penal colony at New South Wales., but because it was so far from Britain it took the government some considerable time to make up his mind.

Prime Minister William Pitt in 1786 announced that a penal colony was to be established at Botany Bay. A fleet of vessels was assembled at Portsmouth under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, who had been charged with establishing a suitable place to which the products of the draconian court system could be sent. On 13 May 1787 the fleet sailed out past the Isle of Wight and turned south for the long, difficult journey.

After a long, disagreeable voyage the eleven ships - HMS Sirius and HMS Supply, the convict ships Friendship, Prince of Wales, Lady Penrhyn, Scarborough, Charlotte and Alexander, and the storeships Borrowdale, Golden Gove and Fishburn - entered Botany Bay.

Phillip gave the Botany Bay area a cursory inspection and did not like what he saw He decided to look for a more agreeable area for the settlement and sailed north to the mouth of the waterway Cook had named Port Jackson. Once through the towering headlands Phillip was impressed - Port Jackson was an excellent deep-water port which would accommodate a vast number of ships with ease. He sailed inland, searching for a suitable area with a good supply of running water. Finding a small cove into which a clean, clear stream emptied, Phillip named the cove for his associate Lord Sydney, Baron of Chiselhurst, the Secretary of State for the Home Office.

The rest of the fleet sailed from Botany Bay on a voyage of exploration and colonisation. These British colonists were faced with hacking out an existence in an environment they neither knew nor understood. Men who had spent much of their lives as sailors and convicts - born and raised in the slums of cities such as London, Manchester and Liverpool - were forced to learn the ways of this vastly different land. Problems between the 'Aborigines and the whites began almost immediately; the whites were mostly unprepared to understand or cope with the indigenous people, while the Aborigines wanted to defend their tribal lands from encroachment by the new, unknown invaders. In May the first of many clashes between whites and Aborigines took place; the whites came off second best, two being fatally wounded in the conflict.

For Phillip relations between Aborigines and whites were rather low on the list of priorities - staying alive was his primary concern. It had soon become obvious there was a distinct lack of agricultural talent amongst the settlers, a fact testified to by the failure of numerous crops. A settlement was established at rose Hill, west from Sydney Cove, where the soil was more fertile and chances for a successful agricultural enterprise were greater, but despite this Phillip was close to panic by the end of the year. He was forced to despatch HMS Sirius to Cape Town for fresh supplies of food and crop seeds. Another of Phillip's problems was the Marine Corps he commanded. The Marines, far from home and unhappy about the worked they were forced to do, were becoming increasingly fractious and difficult to control. They were involved in all manner of corrupt activities and were insolent and uncooperative toward their commander. The year finished badly. With the future of the settlement in grave doubt, Arthur Phillip was a worried and unhappy man.

1789 was probably one of the bleakest years in the history of white settlement in Australia. The non-arrival of further supplies from England exacerbated the situation, forcing governor Phillip to place everyone in the colony on rations until such time as crops from the newly established farm at Rose Hill (later Parramatta) could be harvested. Unbeknown to Phillip or his colony a storeship, guardian, had sailed for New South Wales but had struck an iceberg in the southern Indian Ocean. In order to save the ship and the crew all the stores destined for Port Jackson were thrown overboard and the ship was forced to return to Cape Town.

While the problem of feeding the settlement continued so did the process of exploration. Phillip sailed north from Port Jackson and discovered the mouth of the Hawkesbury River. Much of the shoreline of Port Jackson had been charted, mainly by Lieutenant John Hunter. Rather than exterminate the Aborigine population like many of his fellow settlers wanted to do, Phillip preferred to attempt some understanding and communication. Two young black men named Colebee and Bennelong were captured and handed over to Phillip; Colebee escaped and returned to his tribe, but Bennelong and Phillip became friends and later travelled to England together. Bennelong gave his name to the site on which the Sydney Opera House now stands. The government farm at Rose Hill yielded its first crops in December, but these went nowhere near meeting the drastic needs of the settlement and the tight rationing was maintained. James ruse, a convict who was found to have some farming knowledge, was granted a small plot of .4 ha at Rose Hill. He was the first convict to be granted land, a trend that would continue in the coming years.

In Britain the prison authorities despatched another fleet of convict ships carrying more than 1000 felons, for New South Wales. Had Phillip known he would have been appalled. One consolation was that a storeship, Justinian, was included in the Second Fleet. When the fleet eventually reached Sydney cove in June it was revealed that 267 of the convicts - more than one-quarter of the complement that had departed England - had died en route, mainly as a result of ill-treatment at the hands of their gaolers. this shocking situation would lead to more efficient and humane treatment of convicts on voyages to penal settlements in future years.

Also on the Second fleet was a group of soldiers known as the New South Wales Corps. this new Corps had been raised in Britain specifically for service in the penal colony and was intended to replace the less-than-effective Marines. One problem which had not occupied anyone in Britain at the time of the sailing of the First Fleet was what would happen to convicts whose terms of imprisonment expired in New South Wales. Phillip solved this quandary to some degree by granting land to those who wanted it and who could turn it to good use. He extended the land grants system to include sailors and marines as a way of quietening their mutinous outpourngs.

The settlement of areas outside the Sydney Cove region gained momentum as farms were established to the north and the west of Parramatta (formerly Rose Hill). Some of this land was owned by Marines, but the majority had been granted to former convicts. Results of cultivation were mixed, however, some headway was gradually being made in the push for self-sufficiency. tough rationing measures remained in force.

Oblivious as they had always been to the situation in New South Wales, the home government prepared and despatched yet another fleet of convict-carrying ships for Sydney Cove. while the mortality rate on the voyage was not as dramatic as for the Second Fleet, it was nevertheless high by the time the ships dropped anchor in Port Jackson in August.

1792 was a pivotal year for the colony of New South Wales. The New South Wales Corps, under Major Corps, under Major Francis Grose, took over almost all command of the settlement and Arthur Phillip's requests for permission to return to Britain were finally granted, leaving the way open for Grose and his highly capable Lieutenant, John Macarthur, to assume control. Soon after Phillip's departure an American clipper ship carrying foodstuffs and a large quantity of rum arrived in Sydney. The captain of the clipper refused to sell any of the provisions unless all the rum was also bought. Macarthur, acting through Grose, engineered the purchase of the entire cargo. Almost overnight rum became the primary form of currency for New South Wales, members of the Corps were paid in rum, while tradesmen and farmers were forced to accept it in payment for their labour or crops. Before long the New South Wales Corps had become known as the 'Rum Corps'.

For the first time new arrivals in New South Wales comprised more than the usual parade of convicts and military men. A small group of free settlers, consisting of various tradesmen and farmers, arrived in 1792 and established a new settlement called Liberty Plains at what is today the Sydney suburb of Bankstown. Phillip's departure for Britain was notable in that he took with him two Aborigines, Bennelong and the young boy Yemmerrawannie. Georgian London was entranced by the arrival of these two black 'savages' from the New South Wales penal colony. Bennelong and Yemmerrawannie even had the dubious pleasure of meeting King George III.

With Francis Grose in the chair as Lieutenant Governor, and John Macarthur in the background manipulating him, the New South Wales Corps rose to new levels of power and influence. The trade in rum as a currency proliferated and the Corps became more deeply involved in all manner of graft and corruption. Exploration of the region surrounding Port Jackson continued, with the major event of 1793 being the expedition led by William Paterson west from Parramatta into the foothills of the Blue Mountains

In the absence of a fully-fledged Governor the 'Rum Corps' consolidated its hold on the economy of the colony. Men such as Grose and Macarthur were becoming wealthy from their efforts, while free settlers were forced more and more under the oppressive control of the officers of the Corps. The spreading of settlement north from Parramatta reached the Hawkesbury River with the establishment of the town of Windsor on the banks of the waterway, because of catastrophic flooding.

The governorship of New South Wales was restored when Captain John Hunter, one of Phillip's officers on the First Fleet and the man who had charted much of Port Jackson, was appointed to the position. Unfortunately London, by delaying too long in replacing Phillip, had played into Macarthur's hands - through neglect the New South Wales Corps had been allowed to become the alternative government of the colony. Despite his strenuous efforts to curtail the trade in rum and for powers of the Corps, Hunter was unable to make headway against the entrenched corruption.

Agricultural development had advanced to the point where New South Wales was self-sufficient in grain supplies. to process the grain brought in from the western areas around Parramatta a windmill was constructed on a hill overlooking Sydney cove. today the windmill site is known as Observatory Hill. A long tradition of Australian industrial militancy began in 1795 when labourers employed to harvest wheat took strike action in pursuit of better wages. As were most such actions in those years it was unsuccessful.

George Bass, who had arrived at Sydney Cove in company with the master navigator Matthew Flinders, began a programme of exploration which would have a dramatic effect on the future of the New South Wales colony. In June he struck out for the mountainous country west of Sydney, hoping to find a way across the barrier which had halted Captain William Paterson three years earlier. But like Paterson, Bass found the huge escarpments of the blue Mountains impenetrable and was forced to return to Sydney. Life for governor Hunter continued to be dominated by his battles with the New South Wales Corps - battles which he almost always lost.

Undaunted by his failure in 1796 to find a way across the Blue Mountains, George Bass took to the water and sailed south from Port Jackson heading for Van Diemen's Land. Hugging the coastline, Bass passed Wilson's Promontory and discovered the entrance to the Westernport Bay. he surmised that Van Diemen's Land and New South Wales might in fact not be connected as had been previously supposed, but that there could well be a passage between the two land masses. Returning to Sydney he resoled to explore the region further.

Exploration north from Port Jackson took Lieutenant John Shortland to the mouth of the Hunter River. Venturing along the river he noticed pieces of coal lying on the banks, a discovery which led to settlement of the region that same year. Although it was short-lived, it laid the basis for the coal-mining industry for which the Hunter Valley was to become famous. As well as moves to found the coal-mining industry, the groundwork was laid for that other great Australian enterprise, wool-growing. John Macarthur (who had engineered the New south ales Corps' control over the colony's economy), ever ready to embrace another money-making venture, joined with the Reverend Samuel Marsden and Alexander Riley to buy a small flock of prime merino sheep which had been brought across from Cape town. Macarthur, Marsden and Riley began a breeding programme with the sheep, intending that the product could be sold to the woollen mills of Britain.

Excited by the discoveries he had made the previous year, George Bass joined with Matthew Flinders to mount a voyage of discovery to Van Diemen's Land. Bass arranged for the construction of a sloop to his own specifications, named it Norfolk, and set out in the vessel with Flinders from Port Jackson on 7 October to retrace his journey of 1797.

His theory about a passage between New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land proved correct. They named the vast expanse of grey and inhospitable water Bass Strait and headed the Norfolk across the strait to the western coast of Van Diemen's Land which the two voyagers now supposed was an island. Sailing south, they rounded the southern tip of the island, discovered and explored the Derwent River, then continued around the eastern coast of the island and north back to Sydney Cove.

Matthew Flinders, fresh from his triumph with Bass, sailed north from Port Jackson to explore the northern coastline of New South Wales. while little real benefit accrued to the colony in the short term, his discoveries on that voyage laid the groundwork for future settlements to the north. In the wake of the reapers' strike of 1795, a number of worker groups had attempted to use industrial action to win a better standard of remuneration. The colonial administrators, frightened of what this might lead to, applied the combination Acts which had been passed in Britain to prevent the grouping of workers into unions. It was the beginning of a long and bitter history of industrial confrontation between workers and employers in Australia.

Captain John Hunter's unhappy term as governor ended in September when he was replaced by Philip Gidley King, who had established the Norfolk Island penal colony in 1788. King immediately moved to curtail the rum trade. Part of his strategy was a total ban on the landing of any supplies of liquor from ships. He also introduced a more stable currency and began the practice of selling goods at fixed prices from a government store.

The reaction of the New South Wales Corps and John Macarthur was to attempt a boycott of the new Governor. This resulted in a feud between Macarthur and William Paterson, culminating in a duel in which Paterson was wounded. King sent Macarthur to London for court-martial, but the military insisted he be tried in new South Wales. A compromise was reached when Macarthur agreed to resign his commission and return to Sydney as a civilian. Macarthur turned his attentions to wool-growing but this did not stop his plotting against King.

Governor King provided the colony with a better and larger work-force by introducing the 'Ticket of Leave' system, under which convicts still serving sentences could find their own work and be paid wages. This replaced the previous method of placing convicts with free settlers virtually as slave labour. The discovery of coal on the banks of the Hunter River by Lieutenant John Shortland in 1797 led to the establishment of a penal settlement there in 1801. Convicts sent to the Hunter River were there specifically to work the coal-mines and provide the Sydney cove area with combustible fuel.

French explorer Nicholas Baudin arrived in New South Wales waters and set off a round of colonial jitters. governor King advised the home government in London of the French mariner's presence and suggested he could be investigating the possibility of claiming Van Diemen's Land for France. Matthew Flinders was recalled to England in order to take command of Investigator, in which he was to begin a complete exploration of the Australian continent. He began his voyage of discovery in December of 1801 when he arrived at Cape Leeuwin in what is now Western Australia, matching and surpassing Baudin 's efforts.

John Macarthur, civilian, departed from Sydney cove carrying samples of the wool he had grown by cross-breeding the merino sheep from Cape Town. The quality of the wool was sufficient to force British woolen mill owners into suspending their belief that the penal colony of New South Wales was nothing more than a gaol for England's cast-offs.

A momentous year for exploration, a number of different individuals made attempts to open up the country. The first effort was that of George Caley, who headed west in a bid to succeed where Bass and Paterson had failed. Unfortunately for Caley, the rugged escarpment defeated him just as they had his predecessors. The voyage of discovery begun by Matthew Flinders in 1801 took him from Cape Leeuwin on the western coast of the continent, across the expanse of the Gr5eat Australian Bight, traversing the ent4rances of Spencers Gulf and St Vincents Gulf in what was to become the colony of South Australia in later years. Here Flinders met the French explorer Nicholas Baudin, whose exploits were creating so much concern in Sydney and London, and he named the ar4ea Encounter Bay. Following the coastline past Westernport "Bay, discovered by George Bass, Flinders returned to Sydney cove. After a brief sojourn in Sydney Town he departed once more on a voyage to the north along a similar route to that taken by Captain James Cook in 1770.

Lieutenant John Murray was despatched from Sydney cove south to explore the region around Westernport Bay with the possibility of a settlement in mind. Murray sailed his craft Lady Nelson into Port Phillip Bay, which he explored extensively and reported on favourably to governor King. while Murray was enthusing over the possibilities of Port Phillip bay governor King was agreeing to the closure of the Hunter Valley settlement, establish3d in 1801 to mine coal.

The Matthew Flinders voyage of discovery jo0urneyed north around the tip of Cape York and headed west across the Gulf of Carpentaria to Arnhem Land, where he encountered proas which had sailed south from Makassar. Continuing around the coast until he reached Cape Leeuwin once more, Flinders proved beyond doubt that the land mass which contained New South Wales was a continent.

Governor King followed up Lieutenant John Murray's glowing report on the Port Phillip Bay area by sending New South Wales Surveyor-General Charles Grimes to explore the Yarra River, which emptied into the Bay. Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins was instructed to establish a settlement at Sorrento on Port Phillip Bay but after three months he reached the conclusion that the site was unsuitable for a penal colony. He decided to move across Bass Strait to Risdon Cove early in 1804.

Baudin, the Frenchman who had been exploring the Australian coast concurrently with flinders' efforts, was the direct cause of the establishment in 1803 of a penal settlement at Risdon cove on the mouth of the Derwent River. the new settlement was under the control of Lieutenant John Bowen, who soon found the location unsatisfactory. The Van Diemen's Land penal settlements that followed the Risdon Cove effort gained reputations as the most horrific of all the colonial gaols in the Antipodes. With the growth of the free-settler population of New south Wales, King saw the nece3ssity for a newspaper which could disseminate information about occurrences within the colony. But The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser was little more than a gossip sheet, and discussion of politics was banned.

The making of Van Diemen's Land into a penal colony continued in 1804 when Lieutenant-Colonel David Collins moved his settlement from Sorrento in Port Phillip Bay to join that already in operation at Risdon cove on the Derwent River. Within two months Collins had relocated the settlement up-river to Sullivan's Co9ve on the site of what is now Hobart. In the north of the island another penal settlement was begun on the banks of the Tamar River at George Town, a location which was considered a failure after four weeks. A new situation was found on the opposite bank of the Tamar at York Town.

Relations between whites and blacks deteriorated rapidly around the Derwent River settlement, to the point where settlers were pushing for the right to mount punitive expeditions against the Aborigines. After several clashes the commander of the settlement authorised a party to hunt out and kill fifty of their adversaries as an example to others.

In what has been described as the Vinegar Hill Rebellion, a group of Irish convicts angry with the treatment they were receiving at the hands of the New South Wales Corps rioted at Castle Hill, then marched south towards Parramatta. Overtaken by a troop of soldiers and engaged in battle, nine of the convicts were killed by the soldiers' bullets and a further six were hanged after being tried for their part in the uprising. Expansion of settlement continued when the Hunter Valley area was again occupied after the departure of the coal-mining convicts in 1803. On the exploration front, George Caley repeated his 1802 attempt to cross the Blue Mountains barrier. Again he failed and was forced to return to Sydney Cove.

Flushed with his success in selling his wool to the British woolen mills, John Macarthur set out to establish a major pastoral property at Cowpastures, south-west of Sydney in the area now called Camden. Macarthur was strengthening his position as a prominent civilian in the colony and regularly iplott4ed with anti-King factions to reduce the Governor's influence.

August 1806 marked the beginning of the supreme clash of wills between the colonial governor and the New South Wales Corps when Captain William Bligh was placed in charge of the colony. Bligh came to Sydney with a reputation as a disciplinarian, not to mention a superb navigator who had been able to direct the tiny boat in which he had been cast adrift from the Bounty from the eastern Pacific Ocean to Timor in the East Indies. Like his predecessors Hunter and King, the new governor set himself the task of bringing the New South Wales Corps to heel. The need to bring the currency situation under control was desperate. Readily supported by the free settlers, his abrasive manner earned him little kudos with the Rum Corps. Almost from the start Bligh fell out with John Macarthur, setting off a battle which only one man could win, at least in the short term. In Van Diemen's Land the settlement at York Town on the Tamar River was moved inland to a site named Launceston. The inland regions of Van Diemen's Land had been found to be extremely fertile and very similar to the English countryside, spurring settlers on to agricultural pursuits modelled on those of their homeland.

In 1807 the clash of wills between governor Bligh and John Macarthur came to a head. Bligh took the bit between his teeth and banned outright the use of rum as a form of currency. This, and Bligh's heavy-handed manner, so enraged the New South Wales Corps, whose members had become rich men from the rum trade, that they all but declared war on the Governor. The year of confrontation culminated in Bligh ordering John Macarthur's arrest on a charge of sedition. Bligh had continued to oppose the granting of the Cowpastures land on which Macarthur had established his sheep-breeding station; Macarthur had retaliated by fomenting dissent amongst New South Wales Corps members. Macarthur's arrest in late 1807 set the stage for the divisive and rebellious events which would take place in early 1808.

The new year opened with the colony torn by dissent. Among the members of the New South Wales Corps there was talk of open rebellion against what they saw as the high-handed action of Governor Bligh in his attempts to end the rum trade and his arrest of Corps patron John Macarthur. On 26 January, twenty years after the founding of the colony, the talk of rebellion became action when the leaders of the New South Wales Corps decided to take official control of the colony which they had run on a de facto basis for years. Under its commander Major George Johnston, the Corps marched on Government House and arrested a protesting Bligh on the trumped-up charge of having subverted the laws of Britain. Johnston took control of the colony as Lieutenant Governor for six months until the arrival of another Lieutenant-Governor, Major Joseph Foveaux. Bligh was kept under arrest by the Corps for the rest of 1808. The action of the Corps was way beyond what any right-thinking person would countenance: it was a blatant attempt to regain the control that had been gradually slipping from its grasp under the measures instituted by the Governor.

In February William Bligh agreed to the demands of Johnston and the New South Wales Corps that he return to London. He was placed on board HMS Porpoise for the voyage, but once outside Sydney heads Bligh commandeered the ship and ordered its captain to sail to the Sullivan's Cove settlement in Van Diemen's Land where he attempted to coerce the commander of the settlement, David Collins, to accompany him back to Sydney and retake control of the colony. Collins declined, and Bligh ordered HMS Porpoise to anchor in the entrance to the Derwent River where it remained for the rest of the year.

In London the full extent of the rebellion in New South Wales was realised by the colonial authorities, who then began moves to remove the New South Wales Corps and its officers. Brigadier-General Miles Nightingall was appointed Governor-elect and was given the 73rd Regiment under the command of colonel Lachlan Macquarie to back his authority. After years of corruption and bad leadership the New South Wales Corps would prove no match for Macquarie's disciplined force. Before the new team departed England Nightingall resigned because of ill health, prompting the government to place Macquarie in total control.

Two ships, HMS Dromedary and HMS Hindostan, sailed for Sydney Cove, arriving on 28 December. Word sent to HMS Porpoise in the Derwent River that Macquarie wanted Bligh reinstated as Governor for one day before he took over unfortunately was not received until January 1810, by which time Macquarie had moved ashore to take control.

On 1 January 1810 the new Governor of New South Wales, Colonel Lachlan Macquarie, backed by the full authority of the British Government and supported by the 73rd Regiment, was sworn in by Judge Advocate Ellis Bent. thus began a period of relative stability for the tiny colony under the firm but benevolent Macquarie rule. The new governor found the colony in a state of collapse. Public confidence was non-existent, the financial system had been destroyed and the moral fibre of New South Wales had disintegrated. Macquarie's first move was to end the bitter disputes raging between the various factions in the colony. William Bligh returned to Sydney in mid-January and remained to gather evidence for the forthcoming court martial of Major George Johnston who had deposed him. Johnston's charges against Bligh were found to be groundless.

John Macarthur, foreseeing the actions Macquarie would take against those involved in the rebellion, had fled to Britain in late 1809. Macquarie had instructions to arrest the wool-grower if he found Macarthur had committed crimes against the government. In Britain Macarthur used his considerable influence to avoid detention, but he was unable to return to New South Wales for the next eight years. During this period of exile his wife Elizabeth controlled the Macarthur properties and maintained the breeding programme for the merino flocks. Although Macarthur is often given credit as the father of the Australian wool industry, it was the work of Elizabeth Macarthur during the 1810-1817 period which laid much of the groundwork.

In the relative calm which descended on the New South Wales colony after Macquarie's arrival the free settlers turned their attentions to more rewarding pursuits. The culmination of the merino breeding programme initiated by Riley, Marsden and Macarthur was the shipment of Australia's first commercial load of wool to Britain. That merino clip earned a price of 5/- per pound.

In the wake of the appointment of Lachlan Macquarie the colony settled down as the new leader sought to heal the wounds of the previous twenty years and start a new era of stability. Unfortunately his early efforts were not helped when British banking interests unexpectedly terminated lines of credit because of a crisis in the homeland - a scenario which was to be repeated often in the years to come.

A severe drought hit the infant colony, placing an enormous strain on its tiny agricultural industry. Pressure was brought to bear on Macquarie to mount an expedition to once more try to find a way across the Blue Mountains to what was believed would be fertile lands beyond. Macquarie commissioned three men - Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Charles Wentworth - to attempt what so many others had failed to do. The trio and their team set out in May with a plan to avoid travelling up the Crose or Warrangamba Valleys, both of which ended in escarpments and had halted all previous exploration attempts. Instead the men adopted a policy of keeping to the ridges, eventually they made their way over the daunting barrier to gaze on the wide plains beyond. this achievement was doubtless one of the most notable events in Australian history, and certainly the most momentous since Flinders'[ circumnavigation of the continent.

Following the return to Sydney of Blaxland, Lawson and Wentworth, Macquarie ordered George Evans to retrace their steps and go further west into the vast plains to investigate the possibility of establishing a settlement.

Like Arthur Phillip, Macquarie felt a responsibility towards the Aborigines who still lived around Sydney in significant numbers. Rather than adapt to the ways of the Aborigines Macquarie, like so many others before and since, tried to 'civilise' the uninhabited northern side of Port Jackson in the area now known as Mosman for the Aborigines to establish a farm along European lines. As could be expected the project, well-meant as it was, failed. The Aborigines were not an agriculturally minded race and had no real interest in formal farming methods.

The great navigator Matthew Flinders died in London on 19 July, the day after his book A Voyage To Terra Australis was published. Apart from the vital record this work left for future generations, it was also notable in that flinders suggested the name 'Australia' for the land mass he had circumnavigated between 1801 and 1803.

Following the recommendation of George Evans that a settlement be established on the western plains, a road was pushed through the Blue Mountains to what is today Bathurst. The pioneers who built homes and properties at Bathurst were a hardy breed forced to put up with conditions almost on a par with those which had confronted the first arrivals to the colony in 1788.

New settlement was also in vogue in Van Diemen's Land, where the first free settlers arrived to farm the rich agricultural land. The advent of this trend on the island colony went some way to blunting its notoriety as a harsh and cruel penal installation.

Macquarie's plans for the expansion of the New South Wales colony were further enhanced by moves to encourage the migration of wealthy settlers. the principal attraction to such people was the offer of free labour in the form of convicts to work the properties the well-heeled migrants would take up. for the six years of his incumbency governor Macquarie had been working to establish a better standard of construction in the Sydney Cove area. Until that time most structures were of a fairly rudimentary nature and were inclined to suffer from the slightest tests of nature. The real problem in creating quality buildings was the lack of suitable architectural talent to design them and supervise their construction. Francis Greenway, convicted of forgery in Bristol where he had run an architectural practice, had arrived in New South Wales in 1814 and was granted a Ticket of Leave the following year. Macquarie appointed him Civil Architect in 1816. Greenway was the driving force behind the construction of many of the enduring buildings we have today to remind the people of Australia of the Macquarie era.

Lachlan Macquarie's attempts to stabilise the currency of New South Wales reached a vital point in 1817 when he paved the way for the establishment of the Bank of New South Wales by a group of colonial merchants. In recent years the name of the Bank of New south Wales was changed to Westpac in one of the worst examples of corporate vandalism in Australia's history.

The New South Wales Surveyor-General, John Oxley, was despatched west of the Mountains to explore the country around what was called the Lachlan River. At one point his way was blocked by swampland which forced him to turn back, robbing him of the honour of discovering the Murrumbidgee River.

Macquarie was essentially a man who believed in allowing the people under his command some semblance of dignity and an opportunity to rehabilitate. In this view he was regularly challenged by free settlers who believed that convicted were the scum of the earth and deserved to be treated that way. Being a strong-minded individual, Macquarie was able to ignore these accusations until the settlers began to make their feelings known in London. The Secretary of State for the Colonies, Earl Bathurst, reacted by censuring the Governor - a criticism Macquarie did not accept meekly - and the war of words between London and Sydney was to continue for several more years.

Exploration was once more the talk of the colony when John Oxley, the Surveyor-General, departed on a long series of expeditions which took him again to the western plains to explore the Macquarie River. he discovered the Warrumbungle Mountains and the Liverpool Plains before heading east to the Great Divide. He passed this obstruction to the north of the Hunter Valley and reached the coast at a point now known as Port Macquarie.

With Francis Greenway as his Civil Architect, Macquarie embarked on an ambitious programme of construction. Some of the most notable works completed in the following years include the Macquarie Lighthouse on South head, the Hyde Park Barracks and St James Church. During this time Sydney was transformed from a virtual shanty town to, if not a respectable city, then at least a town of some substance.

During the period 1817-19 relations between Macquarie and Earl Bathurst deteriorated rapidly. The complaints from free settlers in New South Wales regarding Macquarie's treatment of convicts became a veritable flood. Bathurst sent J T Bigge to Sydney to report on what was really taking place. Almost immediately the strong-minded and visionary Macquarie was at odds with the petty, bureaucratic Bigge who criticised him for indulging in a huge public works scheme that was at odds with the primary purpose of New South Wales - a penal colony. Unable to have any impact on Macquarie, Bigge sought to undermine him by associating with the Governor's enemies, most of whom had been behind the campaign of complaints to the Secretary of State.

The year 1820 marked a major expansion westward of the grazing areas of the New South Wales colony. previously pastoral activities west of the Blue Mountains had been severely restr4icted, but all this changed with the opening up of the western plains and the south-western areas around what is now Goulburn. The New South Wales dairying industry was founded with farms established in the Illawarra district to the south of Sydney.

After eleven years of progress, the like of which New South Wales had not seen before, the reign of Governor Lachlan Macquarie came to an end in 1821. Macquarie's relatively humane treatment of the convicts under his control, his concentration on rehabilitation rather than punishment, and his desire to create something more than just a penal settlement out of the colony had earned him as many enemies as friends. 'Regrettably the enemies were people in high places.

Their complaints and the reports of J T Bigge, who had arrived in Sydney in 1819, all combined to put immense pressure on the governor. He had never really recovered from a critical illness in 1819 and Earl Bathurst granted his request for retirement in 1821. His departure from Sydney on HMS Surry was a moment of immense sadness for the population. Macquarie had taken the colony from a squalid collection of makeshift dwellings to a small town of some substance; he had stabilised the colony, and had all but destroyed the rum trade and broken the power of the New South Wales Corps. Without doubt no governor before or since has done so much to advance the cause of Australia.

One of Macquarie's final acts was the authorisation for the establishment of a penal settlement at Port Macquarie at the mouth of the Hastings River, the area discovered by John Oxley in 1818. Port Macquarie was specifically designed to house those convicts who had been found guilty of crimes committed in New South Wales rather than in Britain. Another settlement for convicts - this time for those of an intractable natur4e - was established at Macquarie Harbour on the western coastline of Van Diemen's Land. The convicts worked on timber-cutting and ship construction activities. Macquarie's replacement was Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane, a fanatical astronomer who, whilst a reasonably effective administrator, tended to take a less practical view than the down-to-earth Macquarie.

Phillip King, son of the former Governor, was assigned to continue the exploration work previously undertaken by Matthew Flinders. He headed north from Sydney and achieved a great deal in surveying the inner areas of the Barrier Reef waters as well as charting much of the northern and western coasts of the continent.

Sir Thomas Brisbane, the new Governor, attempted to strengthen the currency reforms introduced by Macquarie by making Spanish dollars the standard medium of exchange in New South Wales. Apart from rum, which had been used until the arrival of Macquarie, various currencies from all over Europe had been accepted for payment of debts. The development of the colony, already proceeding at a solid pace, was further aided by the establishment in London of the Australian Company, which sold land in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land to Scots who wished to migrate. Industrial relations once more became a sore point in 1822 when a group of shepherds employed to tend the growing flocks of sheep providing wool to the British mills struck in support of higher wages. The reaction of the courts was swift and brutal; the organiser of the strike, one James Straiter, received 500 lashes and was imprisoned in solitary confinement for one month.

In 1823 the colony of New South Wales began the long and tortuous road to self-government with the authorisation by London of the establishment of a legislative Council of upright and solid citizens. All Council members were appointed by the governor, who held a power of veto over their decisions. There was no vote by the populace for the Council members. continent. John Oxley, the New South Wales Surveyor-General, having sailed north from Port Jackson searching out sites for another penal settlement, landed on an island in Morton Bay (named by James Cook in 1770). Here he met up with three escaped convicts who told him they suspected the existence of a major river which emptied into the bay. Oxley found the watercourse and proceeded upstream. He returned to Sydney cove full of enthusiasm for the new site.

Governor Brisbane accepted John Oxley's suggestion that the land around Morton Bay be turned into a penal settlement for difficult and intractable convicts; in September Oxley and a number of soldiers went ashore at a point the Surveyor-General named Redcliffe. this first settlement proved badly sited and after three months the decision was made to move up the river Oxley had discovered, to a site which is now the centre of the city of Brisbane. Initially the settlement was known simply as Morton Bay, but the New South Wales Chief Justice recommended it be called Edinglassie - a proposal rejected in favour of Brisbane, which would curry far greater favour with the Governor.

The newspaper established during governor King's term had served the colony reasonably well but, because it could not report on political matters, it lacked appeal to the free settlers who were coming to expect a less censored press in their adopted home. In 1824 William Charles Wentworth (one of the trio who had found the path across the Blue Mountains) joined with Robert Wardell to launch The Australian. The new privately owned journal went some way towards providing a more enlightened view of events in New south Wales. In an attempt to stimulate land development in New South Wales the British government allowed th establishment of the Australian Agricultural Company, which would hold exclusive rights to all land located between Port Stephens, north of the Hunter River settlement, and the Manning River. The company then began promoting the land to prospective immigrants in Britain. Hamilton Hume, an explorer of some note, was commissioned by Governor Brisbane to head an overland expedition to Port Phillip Bay. although settlement had extended a considerable distance to the south-west of Sydney, no one had so far attempted to make a journey through to Bass Strait. Hume teamed up with William Hovell - a mistake, as the pair proved ill-matched in temperament. They discovered the Australian Alps and a major river which they named the Hume, then pushed on southwards until they reached what they believed to be Westernport Bay. In fact it was Corio Bay.

Relations between Aborigines and settlers around Bathurst on the western plains deteriorated in 1824 to the point where a battle between the parties resulted in the deaths of seven whites. Brisbane declared martial law in the region until the situation calmed.

Governor Brisbane's problems in running the colony of New South Wales reached a peak in 1825 when Secretary of State for the colonies Lord Bathu7rst recalled him and his scheming colonial Secretary, Frederick Goulburn. Brisbane's replacement was Major-General Ralph Darling, who had previously been in command of the British garrison at Mauritius. Darling, being a military man, was given to an autocratic exercise of his powers. Almost immediately he found himself offside with that old adversary of numerous other Governors, John Macarthur. he was also criticised by reformers such as William Charles Wentworth who was particularly fighting for greater freedom for his newspaper The Australian.

Once again the old bogy of French colonial ambitions came to the fore, resulting in the despatch of Major Edmund Lockyer to the western part of the continent to establish a military base at King George Sound. Lockyer named the settlement Frederick Town for the Duke of York and Albany. the status of a separate colony was bestowed on Van Diemen's Land in 1825 by a royal Proclamation which also decreed that a Legislative Council be formed. George Arthur was elevated from the rank of Lieutenant-Governor to full governorship of the new colony.

Bushranging came to the fore when a group of convicts who had escaped from the Macqwuarie Harbour penal settlement in Van Diemen's Land in 1824 went on a rampage around Launceston. Although most were recaptured, the leader Matthew Brady remained at large until 1826 when he was caught by John Batman and later sentenced to death for his exploits. Like the settlement at King George Sound on the western side of the continent, the establishment of a presence at Westernport on the south-eastern coast was prompted by the perceived ambitions of the French. The Westernport location was abandoned two years later.

Governor Darling, alarmed at the rapid and relatively uncontrolled spread of settlement well into the western areas of the colony, published a 'Limits of Settlement' notice by which he hoped to bring the expansion under control. Under the terms of the notice any person who settled outside the limits was given no guarantee of protection by the police and was, in effect, a nonentity.

Captain Patrick Logan was assigned to command the Morton Bay penal settlement on the banks of the Brisbane river, beginning one of the most notorious periods in the history of transportation of convicts. to say the least Logan was a disciplinarian; actually his reign was a period of outright cruelty which made Morton Bay a place to be feared by all convicts.

Governor Darling's disagreements with William Charles Wentworth in the matter of freedom of the press of the colony came to a head. Darling went to the length of placing a tax of 4d per copy on newspapers - a huge amount, as the most a newspaper sold for at that time was 1d. the outrage of the population was made clear to the governor and he rescinded the order. Botanist-explorer Allan Cunningham set out from Sydney to explore the country between that town and Morton Bay. he discovered the lush grasslands to the west of the Brisbane River which he named Darling Downs in honour of the governor. Cunningham then found a route from the Downs east to Morton Bay, through what is now known as Cunningham's Gap.

Captain James Stirling, another explorer, was at work in the west. After finding the shallow and almost impassable mouth of a river which he named the Swan, he set out for the north where he established Fort Wellington at Raffles Bay in what is now the Northern Territory. Fort Wellington replaced a less-than-successful settlement on Melville Island just off the coast. At Morton Bay Captain Patrick Logan expanded his domain when he established two new locations for convicts. The first was situated further west along a tributary of the Brisbane River at a place initially named Limestone but later called Ipswich; the second was on Stradbroke Island, one of two large islands which guard the mouth of the Brisbane River from the open sea.

The movement for greater autonomy of government for New South Wales, which was under the direct control of the Secretary of State for the Colonies, scored another victory when the Legislative Council won the right to override legislation and directives brought down by the Governor. It was a major step forward, but the Council still lacked the legitimacy of being elected by the populace.

Charles Sturt, Military Secretary to Governor Darling, set out on an expedition to the west of New South Wales where he explored the Bogan, Castlereagh and Macquarie Rivers. He also earned a place in t6he history books for his discovery and naming of the Darling River.

The Sturt expedition then followed the course of the Murray River to the point where it empties into Lake Alexandrina. The ship which Sturt expected to meet his party at this point did not arrive, necessitating a long and difficult journey back up the Murray.

1830 is remembered as one of the most distasteful years in Australian history. In Van Diemen's Land the Lieutenant-Governor, Colonel George Arthur, angry at the continuing conflict between Aborigines and the white settlers, ordered a 'Black Line' to be formed in an attempt to round up all the island's blacks and corral them on the Tasman Peninsula. the theory was that once gathered in one place the Aborigines could be 'protected' and the whites allowed to get on with the settlement of the land. although the 'Black Line' was judged a failure, it was responsible for widespread dislocation of the black community of Van Diemen's Land and the beginning of the end for the island's tribes.

Also in Van Diemen's Land yet another penal settlement was established, the one with the name of Port Arthur, named for the Lieutenant governor. it was to gain a reputation as an evil and unpleasant prison. While Port Arthur was being established the settlement at Port Macquarie, north of Sydney, was being terminated, at least as a place to send convicts. following the departure of the felons free settlers moved into the area around the Hastings River.

The departure of Governor Darling and the appointment of Major-General Richard Bourke in his place marked the dawning of an era of major change for the colony of New South Wales. Bourke was a rarity in colonial governors - a liberal-minded individual who supported the principle of self-government for the colony and was instrumental in bringing it about. he also ensured full civil rights were granted to all free citizens of new South Wales, ending the divisiveness of Darling's term of office.

Major Thomas Mitchell, Surveyor-General of new south Wales, began a programme of systematic exploration of the colony of New south Wales. He considered that exploration was his exclusive right, and had been gravely offended by the exploits of Charles Sturt. He was determined no further glory would accrue to his rival. In April a weekly newspaper, the Sydney Herald, began publication. it was the commencement of a long and illustrious career for a journal which is still in existence today as The Sydney Morning Herald.

The efforts of Governor Bourke and the government in Britain began to bear fruit as migration began on a hitherto unprecedented scale. The London Emigration Committee co-ordinated the departure of thousands of Britons for new homes in the colonies

With the passage of the Sydney Police Act the course of law and order took a positive turn. In essence, the Act established a police force in new South Wales and introduced police courts to deal with a wide variety of offences mostly related to breaches of the peace.

The principles of systematic land settlement advocated by Edward Gibbon Wakefield during his term as a prisoner in Newgate Goal in London were given a degree of legitimacy with the passage of The South Australian Colonisation Act. Under that Act land was sold in the region known as South Australia, around St vincent6s Gulf, for 12/- p;er acre. As expounded in the Wakefield scheme, the revenue gained from these sales was used to assist the immigration of people unable to afford the fare to the colonies.

Land around the coast of southern new south Wales had been somewhat neglected over the years, but during the 1830s there was a concerted movement to settle various regions. One of the first was the area known as Portland Bay. Edward Henty moved there from Launceston in Van Diemen's Land, established a sheep station and explored further inland.

Settlement of what would become known as Victoria, begun tentatively in 1834, gained momentum in 1835. Encouraged by the success of Edward Henty in the Portland Bay region, John Batman, who owned a property near Launceston in Van Diemen's Land, formed the Port Phillip Association with several other residents of the island. Their intention was to explore and acquire land for farming in the Port Phillip Bay region.

In May Batman sailed up the Yarra River, looking at the possibilities of the region for settlement. He sought out members of the Dutigalla tribe of Aborigines who lived in the region and concluded a treaty with them: the Dutigallas received an assortment of goods and a promise of a yearly rental payment in return for 250,000 hectares of land. The government moved quickly to disallow the treaty. Although Batman had been first on the scene he was in fact beaten to the first settlement by John Fawkner, who established a general store and an inn during 1835.

By the time the Governor formally declared the area around Port Phillip Bay should be opened up for settlement a large number of people, mostly from Van Diemen's Land, had already set up properties there. New South Wales Surveyor-General Major Thomas Mitchell continued his extensive explorations in western New South Wales by following the course of the Lachlan River south. He then travelled west to the junction of the Murray and Darling rivers, crossed the Murray and headed south, discovering a region of fertile grasslands he named Australia Felix.

South Australia began officially with the arrival in the new colony of a number of ships carrying migrants. A province of Britain, it was placed under the governorship of Captain John Hidmarsh. The most significant difference between South Australia and the rest of the colonies that made up Australia was that it was founded on a base of free settlement with no convicts ever having been transported there. In the matter of transportation of convicts agitation to halt the practice became so strong in Britain that the government was forced to direct the colonial Office to begin plans for its cessation. somewhat vague in its wording, the directive left the colonial Office free to pursue a slow reduction in convict departures.

In 1837 the first Chinese labourers arrived in Australia, setting the scene for some of the most shameful acts in Australian history as Anglo-Saxon prejudice and fear of the hard-working orientals drove the whites to unprecedented acts of racial savagery. Development of the Port Phillip Bay region continued apace with the offer for sale of crown land. Governor Bourke had visited the settlement and decreed that a town called Melbourne be laid out. Another settlement, named Williamstown, was established at the mouth of the Yarra River. A highlight of th4e year for the area was the arrival of a flock of over 9000 sheep which had been driven overland from New South Wales.

Caroline Chisholm arrived and began a programme of assisting women immigrants to find work and easing the plight of women in Sydney without work. She arranged the passage of women to country regions where the need for their labour was critical. Also on the immigration front, the first Germans to arrive in Australia settled in South Australia with the help of George Angas, head of of one of the most illustrious pioneering families of the colony. The Germans established towns in the Barossa Valley and laid the groundwork for the wine industry for which the region is famous today.

Exploration of the colonies continued. Angus McMillan set out from Melbourne in the Port Philli district and headed east. He discovered a richly fertile region which he named Caledonia Australis for his homeland of Scotland. Another momentous discovery was that of Paul Strzelecki who, without companions, climbed the highest peak in the Australian Alps which had been discovered by Hamilton Hume and William Hovell. Strzelecki named the mountain after a fellow Pole - the leader of the democratic movement in Poland, Tadeusz Kosciusko.

In South Australia the urge to investigate the country to the south of the settled area on the edge of St Vincents Gulf was strong. Edward Eyre, searching for new grazing lands, forged north as far as what is now known as Lake Torrens. On a second expedition he journeyed north from the southern tip of the Eyre Peninsula to the head of Spencer's gulf. Canada's problems were brought to Australia in 1839 when a group of 150 political prisoners who had been fighting for the French-Canadian cause were shipped to Sydney for internment. They were kept in a separate gaol in the area now known as Canada Bay.

A momentous year for New South Wales the British government finally moved to end transportation of convicts to Sydney Cove. The news for Van Diemen's Land and the Port Phillip district was not so good, as transportation was to continue there for the foreseeable future. Greeted with mixed feelings in Sydney, many people hailed the decision as a major step forward in the development of a free society for the colony while the rest looked upon it as the termination of a marvellous source of free or inexpensive labour. But though the transportation had ended, it would take many years for the numbers of convicts already in New south Wales to work out their sentences.

The Polish explorer who had scaled the heights of the Australian Alps, Paul Strzelecki, followed in the footsteps of Angus McMillan and explored the region McMillan had named Caledonia Australis. Strzelecki more politically minded, gave the area the name of Gippsland after the New south Wales governor, a title which caught on.

Edward Eyre, the South Australian explorer, once more headed north to investigate the region east of Lake Torrens. Defeated by the inhospitable land he opted for an east-west journey across the Nullabor Plain to King George Sound. After his overseer, John Baxter, was murdered by two Aborigines in his party, Eyre continued westward until he chanced on a whaling boat at Esperance. With additional supplies courtesy of the whalers Eyre completed his journey, arriving at King George Sound in 1841.

Settlement of the region to the west of Morton Bay was begun by the Leslie Brothers who established a property on the Darling Downs, discovered by Allan Cunningham on his expedition from Sydney.

In an attempt to gain security from strength the United Tradesmen of Sydney banded together to form a supreme labour council. The union movement continued to be officially ostracised in Britain and in New south Wales. An Australian dynasty had its beginnings in 1841 when John Fairfax and Charles Kemp formed a partnership to purchase the Sydney Herald: the following year the newspaper was renamed The Sydney Morning Herald, a name which remains to this day. Members of the Fairfax family retain substantial shareholdings in the company founded by John Fairfax, and a Fairfax is chairman of the board of directors.

In London the Imperial Parliament bowed to pressure from the colony of New south Wales for some form of self-government, and in 1842 the Constitution Act was passed giving the colony an elected government. The new Legislative council comprised thirty-six members - twenty-four were elected under a limited franchise while the balance were appointees of the governor. The catch was that the franchise was extended only to landowners and, because there was no remuneration for members, only the wealthy could afford to stand for election. This development did nothing to end the autocratic powers of the governors, who were in continual conflict with the Legislative Council.

The shaky legal framework of the Colonisation Act, under which the province of South Australia had been established in 1834, was ended when a new Act gave total control to the colonial Office. South Australia became a fully-fledged colony on the same basis as New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land.

Morton Bay, which had become Moreton Bay following a misspelling in an official document, became available for free settlement instead of existing purely for penal purposes. further north along the coastline the area around Wide Bay was also thrown open to free settlers.

At the settlement of Hindmarsh in South Australia, wheat farmer John Ridley developed a stripper-harvester that revolutionised the harvesting of the grain crop in Australia and the rest of the world. Ridley's efforts were a result of a shortage of manpower in the South Australian colony. His stripper-harvester could work through a harvest easily with only a very few labourers needed.

Exploration dominated 1844 with two intrepid expeditions setting out to investigate some of the harshest areas of the continent. Charles Sturt departed Adelaide and followed the Murray then the Darling Rivers until he reached Laidley's Ponds where Menindee stands today. From there he headed north-west through the Barrier Ranges until the expedition came to a halt in early 1845 near the present day site of Milparinka.

Ludwig Leichhardt had come to Australia from his native Prussia two years before he made his incredible expedition through north-eastern Australia. The journey began at Jimbour station on the Darling Downs west of Moreton Bay and moved north through what is now Queensland. At the southern end of Cape York they turned west and headed around the gulf of Carpentaria, then north-west to the settlement at Port Essington in the far north of the continent.

The Sturt expedition remained at the waterhole near Milparinka for six months, unable to move because of the incredible drought conditions. When rain finally fell Sturt sent the majority of his party back to Adelaide while a small band headed north-west. They crossed Strzelecki Creek, Cooper Creek and the Diamantina River before coming on what was to be known as Sturts Stony Desert. Forced back by a shortage of supplies they returned to the depot.

Resupplied, the Sturt expedition set out in a north-westerly direction again, but after attempting a crossing of the Stony Desert he turned back once more. finally, as the year neared its end, the expedition made its way back south, meeting up with several of the original explorers whom Sturt had sent back to Adelaide. Desperately ill with scurvy, Sturt returned slowly to Adelaide and arrived there in early 1846.

While Sturt had been so unfairly cheated, the Leichhardt expedition did reach the destination during 1845. Its arrival at Port Essington was a complete surprise to the military authorities there. Travelling back to Sydney by ship, the city was equally surprised at the explorers' return and they were greeted as conquering heroes.

A highlight of 1946 was the establishment of several newspapers. In Melbourne The Melbourne Argus made its first appearance, while in Brisbane - as the Moreton Bay settlement had become known - The Moreton Bay Courier was issued. The issue of transportation remained a thorny one in Port Phillip and in Van Diemen's Land as the free settlers in Van Diemen's Land became increasingly vocal in their calls for an end to the shipment of convicts to their colony, or at least for a gradual reduction in the numbers.

Ludwig Leichahardt, flushed with success from his expedition across northern and eastern Australia, decided to attempt a crossing from east to west through the centre of the continent. The expedition, like the first, departed from the Darling Downs, but was forced to turn back after having covered 800 kilometres.

Greater autonomy of government for the colonies of Australia received a considerable boost in 1847 when the Secretary of State for the Colonies, Earl Grey, declared he was in favour of some form of centralised government to bind together New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land, South Australia and New Zealand. This decision marks the point at which the push for Federation in Australia really began, although it was at least another thirty years before the movement gained sufficient momentum to be taken seriously in London.

The name of Ludwig Leichhardt came to the fore once again when he formed an expedition to attempt the crossing Australia he had been forced to abort in 1846. Departing from the Darling Downs in April, the party was never heard of again. to this day no trace has been found of the Leichhardt expedition.

One month after the Leichhardt, departure another major expedition left Rockingham Bay in the north-eastern section of the continent to attempt an overland trek to Cape York. led by Edward Kennedy, the party reached Weymouth Bay in the far north where most of the explorers remained because of shortage of supplies. At Shelburne Bay, further north, it was decided that only Kennedy and the Aborigine Jacky Jacky would make the final leg of the journey to Cape York. both were attacked by blacks not for short of their destination - Kennedy was killed, while Jacky Jacky was wounded by able to make the distance to where the boat was waiting.

One of the nation's most venerable institutions was born in 1848 when a group of Sydney citizens met in a room over a shop in George Street, near the site of Wynyard Station. They agreed to form an insurance group that became known as the Australian Mutual Provident Society. Residents of the Port Phillip district were granted the end of transportation in 1848, clearing the way for the growth of the settlement as a free society. The stream of convicts was replaced with a flow of refugees, particularly former citizens of Germany and Hungary who were fleeing political turmoil in their country.

Governor-General of the Australian possessions, Sir Charles Fitz Roy, realised at the end of the 1840s that the gradual drop in the numbers of convicts in New South Wales meant the reasons for suppressing information about gold discoveries had disappeared. governor Gipps had refused to allow any mention of finds of gold in the colony to be published for fear of the effect it would have on the population. After a particularly poor season for wool, Fitz Roy asked the government in London to supply a geologist who could investigate the mineral worth of New South Wales. The first discovery of gold made public came in this year, at Glenmona, a sheep station north-west of Melbourne.

The development of the Australian States as they exist today took a significant step in 1850 with the passage through the Imperial Parliament in London of the Victoria Separation Act. Melbourne had grown into a substantial town and the rural areas of the new colony were proving particularly good for wheat - and wool-grown. Governor Charles La Trobe was appointed to the colony, while a Legislative Council along the same lines as that in New South Wales was established. This now meant that the Australian continent was divided up into the major colony of New South Wales, plus Victoria and South Australia. The island of Van Dieman's Land was the other colony. Across the other side of the continent the situation was not as rosy. For the first time convicts were being sent to the settlements on the Swan River.

In 1851 the entire face of a Australia began a rapid change while the economy of the colonies was to be forever altered. Edward Hargraves returned from California to try his hand at searching for gold in New South Wales. He met with success at Summer Hill Creek, at a site that later became known as the Ophir Mine. Three months later John Lister, William Tom and James Tom returned to the site and began a more intensive mining. Once the news of their finds was made public, there was a mass exodus from Sydney and Melbourne as would be prospectors made for Summer Hill Creek.

New South Wales authorities were elated at the discoveries of gold, but the Victorians became worried about the rapid decline of manpower in their colony. To solve the problem a special committee was formed, and a converted campaign to find gold in that colony was arranged with the offer of a reward of 200 pounds. The search for Victorian gold met with spectacular success the same year when a rich find was made in the Buninyong Ranges near Ballarat. Victoria soon overtook New South Wales as the source of much of the gold being mined on the continent.

While the colonies caught gold fever the old debate for and against transportation of convicts raged on. although the shipping of convicts to the antipodes had ceased in Sydney and Port Phillip, it continued in Van Diemen's Land and in the west. The Australasian Anti-Transportation League came into being to give a combined strength to the voices raised in protest at the continuing practice.

When the Gold-fields Management Act was passed in 1852 it set the scene for one of the most bitter confrontations in the history of the colonies. It decreed that all goldminers should pay a licence fee for the right to search for gold - a requirement bitterly resented by the miners, who persistently refused to take out licenses. This led to bitter feuds between the miners and the police who were sent on to the gold-fields to endorse the government's policy. Another government decision in 1852 bestowed on Australia the grossly disjointed railway system it enjoys today. Although the British Government had opted for a standard-gauge railway system of 4'8.1/2", the engineer employed by the company building the first railway from Sydney to Parramatta, an Irishman, decided that the colonies should have the 'Irish' gauge of 5'3". Victoria and South Australia concurred and went ahead with planning their own railway systems. When the Sydney engineer resigned his post he was replaced by an Englishman, who decided to change to the standard gauge. By the time this decision was made both Victoria and South Australia were too far advanced to alter their track gauge.

Expansion of the gold mining industry in New South Wales and Victoria was rapid - so rapid, in fact, that by 1853 exports of gold were accruing more revenue than exports of wool. Opposition to the licence system continued and there were a number of minor clashes with police. The anti-transportationists scored a major victory when it was announced that shipping convicts to Van Diemen's Land would cease: the last ship carrying convicts arrived Hobart in May. Squatters, those settlers who had established large sheep runs in the isolated areas of the colonies, came under intense scrutiny in 1853. Vast tracts of land controlled by these people were blocking settlement of the regions by persons of lesser means. The Melbourne newspaper The Argus started a campaign for the breaking-up of the large landholdings by legislation or by the application of punitive land taxes.

Problems encountered in getting wool from the stations in the far west of New South Wales to the coast were partly solved by the introduction of the flat-bottomed river boats which plied the Murray-Darling River System, collecting the wool bales at wharves along the way and carrying them south-west in South Australia. The loss of the port trade for Sydney that this brought about was a major incentive for the development of the New South Wales railway system in later years.

One of Australia's more famous transport organisations began life in 1854 when Freeman Cobb, John Peck, John Lamber and James Swanton formed the American Telegraph Coach Line. The company's first service was from Melbourne to Sandridge (now Port Melbourne), but this was soon put out of business by the railway. Using coaches imported from the United States, the partners then began services along the rough bush tracks connecting Melbourne with the gold-fields. Although it had been expected that Sydney would be the first city to enjoy the pleasures of railway travel, that honour in fact, fell to Melbourne where a line constructed between Melbourne and Sandridge by The Melbourne and Hobsons Bay Railway company opened for business on 12 September. Because of the late arrival of the rolling stock from Britain the first train was hauled by an Australian-built locomotive.

Another first enjoyed by the colony of Victoria in this year was the establishment of Australia's first telegraph line, which ran from Melbourne to Williamstown at the mouth of the Yarra River. Over-enthusiastic enforcement by police of the miners' licence system, at the direction of Governor Hotham, brought tensions between miners and police to an all-time high. The event which brought matters to a head was the arrest and subsequent acquittal in the face of almost overwhelming evidence of James Bentley, owner of the Eureka Hotel at Ballarat, for the murder of James Scobie, a miner. Incensed, the miners began moves to have the decision of the court overturned; in the meantime the Eureka Hotel was burned down by angry diggers. They went to Governor Hotham with a list of demands including universal suffrage, which would have given them a voice in the Legislative Council, and the end of the licensing system. Hotham was less than co-operative and did nothing to calm the situation when he despatched troops to the Ballarat gold-fields in case of riots. After burning their licenses the enraged miners constructed a stockade in defiance of the police, at which point the government judged the actions of the Eureka miners to be treasonous and sent in the troops. In the resultant minor skirmish six soldiers and more than twenty miners were killed. Twelve of those brought to trial on charges of high tr4eason were acquitted, while for a thirteenth miner the action was allowed to lapse.

A major change in the system of government for New South Wales occurred when the Imperial Parliament gave its approval to the establishment of two House of Parliament in the colony. the upper house, or Legislative Council, consisted of members appointed for life and was envisaged to operate as a house of review for legislation passed by the Legislative Assembly, a wholly elected body. It was through this lower house that the principal business of the colony was expected to be conducted.

The Sydney Railway company's continued financial difficulties became so drastic that the New South Wales Government was forced to step in and take control, becoming the first government in the world to operate a railway. construction of the first track from Redfern to Parramatta was sustained by the government. Once again the great Australian hysteria about invasion from the north surfaced when the numbers of Chinese were attracted by the possibility of discovering gold. Greatly resented by the Anglo-Saxon population, various punitive campaigns were undertaken by groups of miners. Although the Victorian Government sought to restrict the numbers of Chinese arriving in the colony, the immigrants simply landed in one of the other colonies and travelled overland to the gold-fields. Augustus Gregory began an expedition from Sydney in the path of the ill-fated trek of Ludwig Leichhardt. Gregory's travels took him through central Queensland, to the Victoria River in what is now the Northern Territory.

The population of Van Diemen's Land presented a petition to Queen Victoria asking that the name of their colony be changed to Tasmania in honour of the navigator Abel Tasman. The British Government acquiesced, granting the name change the same year. Following the establishment of the Parliament of New South Wales in 1855, general elections brought in a conservative government under the Premiership of Stuart Donaldson which lasted five months. After that a government of 'liberals' was in power for four weeks, then the conservatives returned in September with a new leader, Henry Parkes. In Victoria the cause of electoral freedom was enhanced in 1856 when it became the first of the Australian colonies to introduce the secret ballot at elections.

The development of South Australia, the only colony to have escaped the stigma of being a penal settlement, was enhanced when the Imperial Parliament granted it responsible government. Its new Parliament was similar to those of New South Wales and Victoria with an upper Legislative Council and a lower Legislative Assembly.

Following in the wake of electoral reforms which had taken place in South Australia and Victoria, the New South Wales Parliament passed a Bill granting manhood suffrage along with a secret ballot. For the first time men other than those who held property in the colony could stand as candidates; the other major facet of the reforms was the introduction of the concept of electorates based on population, setting the scene for the gradual introduction of the one-person-one-vote system. Again in South Australia, Robert Torrens introduced a revolutionary new form of land ownership made official by the Real Property Act. Torrens - son of Colonel Robert Torrens, a pioneer settler in South Australia - brought in the Torrens title, which greatly reduced the problems associated with the proof of ownership of land and made infinitely easier the transfer of ownership.

A find of gold in the north of New South Wales at a place called Cannoona led to a short-lived gold rush. Benefit did accrue from the Canoona rush - the establishment of a town named Rockahmpton the banks of the Fitzroy River. Ballarat reinforced its position as the premier gold-mining centre in the colonies following the discovery of the 'Welcome Nugget', which weighed in at almost 70 kilograms.

The largest colony so far declared on the Australian continent came into being when an Act of the Imperial Parliament authorised the establishment of Queensland. Smaller than those of the other four colonies, the Queensland Parliament had an eleven-member upper house and a twenty-six member-lower house. Sir George Bowen was appointed as the first Governor of the colony of Queensland.

Exploration of Australia's interior once more entered the news in 1860 with the mounting of two important expeditions. First was that of John Mcdouall Stuart, who planned a crossing from th4e south to the north. he set out from Adelaide in March, but by June - three3-qwuarters of the way to the northern coastline - he was forced back by the barren country and the attacks of hostile Aborigines. During the journey he climbed and named Central Mount Sturt in honour of the earlier explorer. The original name was later altered to Central Mount Stuart. Probably Australia's most famous, the other major expedition was the ill-considered and ill-fated Burke and Wills epic. Led by Robert Burke with William Wills as his lieutenant, it was a major event in Melbourne and many of the city's prominent citizens contributed funds. The caravan, which included twenty-five specially imported camels, departed Melbourne on 20 August with a huge public send-off. They forged north and reached the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria in early 1881, having left a depot of men and supplies at Cooper Creek.

Attitudes of Australia's colonial governments had changed little since the attempts made by Captain Arthur Phillip to 'civilise' the Aborigine population, and 'benevolent protection' of the tribes prevailed. This was little more than a way of removing Aborigines from their traditional lands and placing them in reserves where they became wholly dependent on the white man's benevolence. Aborigines who rejected this 'Christian charity' were subdued and forced into the reserved which were first established in 1860 by the Victorian Government's Aborigine Protection Board.

The saga of the Burke and wills expedition dragged on into 1861 when the party, having reached the Gulf of Carpentaria, headd south once more. Enormous privations were faced by Burke and Wills on the return journey, and by terribly bad luck, they reached the Cooper Creek depot just seven hours after it had been abandoned: provisions and a letter had been buried in the ground. Burke decided that, rather than attempt to overtake the depot party, they would head south for Mount Hopeless. they left a letter in the pit where the provisions had been, but omitted to leave any sign of their presence. In their trek to Mount Hopeless both Burke and Wills perished; their colleague King survived by living with an Aboriginal tribe until his rescue.

When the original depot team later returned to the Cooper Creek site they thought the site had not been reached by Burke and wills, and returned to Melbourne where a rescue expedition was mounted. The rescuers discovered King, who led them to the bodies of the two leaders of the original expedition. both men were given public funerals in Melbourne and were hailed as heroes who had been defeated by the severity of the interior. John McDouall Stuart, though he had been defeated by the same harsh conditions as those which ended the lives of Burke and wills, decided on another attempt to cross the continent from south to north. His new expedition set out in 1861 and this time was successful in reaching the northern coastline. Unlike burke and wills, it was also successful in returning to the point of departure.

The hostility shown towards the Chinese broke into virtual open warfare in 1861 on the Burrangong gold-fields close to the site of the town of Young. Miners angry at the presence of Chinese on the field launched several attacks which resulted in some injuries. A lack of effective police or military control encouraged the rioters, and on 30 June over 3,000 miners, agitated by wild rumours of hordes of Chinese marching on Burrangong, attacked the Chinese cam at Lambing Flat. Eventually sufficient troops arrived to quell the riots and several miners were arrested, but the subsequent assault on the police compound resulted in a miner losing his life. those arrested for the attacks on the Chinese went free when the all-white juries declined to bring in a guilty verdict.

Although some attempts to grow sugar cane in the Port Macquarie district had failed, it was not until 1862, when John Buhot grew it in the Botanical Gardens in Brisbane, that it was considered a likely prospect for Queensland. Buhot joined with Captain Louis Hope, who established a cane plantation at Ormiston just east of Brisbane. Hope's enterprise was the beginning of the massive Queensland sugar cane industry.

Once Louis Hope had proved sugar cane could be grown economically in Queensland a number of planters established estates up and down the colony's coastline. conventional wisdom had it that white men could not work in the incredible heat and humidity of cane-growing country, so a number of planters devised a scheme similar to that on which the West Indian cane trade had been built. With the support of Governor George Bowen, the planters organised the 'recruitment' of labourers from the various islands of the South Pacific. Officially indentured labourers, in reality the 'kanakas' were slaves. Recruitment of the workers followed different patterns; some ship captains were honest in the way they offered work to the islanders, whereas many others simply kidnapped the strongest men and brought them to Queensland. fortunately the kanaka trade was restricted to Queensland, but it remains a blot on the history of Australia - an era when slave-trading became the norm.

Captain Louis Hope's sugar plantation at Ormiston near Brisbane yielded its first crop in 1864. He constructed a sugar-milling plant which went into operation the same year, and his pioneering efforts gained him official recognition as the founder of the sugar industry in Australia.

Bushranging in the remote areas of the colonies had become big business by the 1860s, with numerous 'personalities' who had made names for themselves through their exploits. Despite the folk-hero image cultivated by many of the bushrangers, they were tracked constantly by the police. In 1865 the notorious Ben Hall, who had been responsible for numerous hold-us and robberies, was shot by police on the Lachlan Plains in western New South Wales. On the agricultural scene the growth of the sugar cane industry in northern Queensland promoted the settlement of the Cleveland Bay - Ross Creek area, which had been used as a port since 1863. The new site was named Townsville after the merchant and kanaka-trader Robert Towns, who had lobbied the Queensland Government for its development.

Another major Australian achievement was the invention of the wool press, which compressed wool into bales. This allowed far greater quantities of wool to be transported to the selling centres and enabled much more economical shipping of the raw wool to Britain and other markets.

Queensland's sugar industry grew rapidly and was set to become the colony's largest, developing on the back of black slave labour brought in from the South Queensland Government supported the establishment of vast sugar plantations which were the basis of many large sugar companies. Expansion continued during 1866 with the opening of mills in the region around the Mary and Burnett Rivers.

Concerned with the need for more secondary industries in the colony, the Victorian Government introduced a tariff on certain imported goods in the hope the higher prices would encourage local entrepreneurs to establish businesses. That Victorian tariff was the beginning of protectionism in Australia, which today remains as contentious an issue as it was in 1867. The discovery of copper deposits at Cloncurry in the far west of Queensland was overshadowed by the more important finding of gold at the tiny settlement of Gympy (later called Gympie) by James Nash. gold was the one mineral which could guarantee a rapid influx of cash, as had been proven in Victoria where Melbourne had developed into a prosperous city, and the parlous state of Queensland's finances had led the government to offer rewards for its discovery.

Antagonism between the Irish and the English was impressed upon the local population in the Australian colonies when a group of convicted Irish political prisoners arrived. For the first time in the history of the colonies a member of the Royal Family, which was held in awe and respect by the mostly British population of Australia, arrived on the warship HMS Galatea for an official visit. The Duke of Edinburgh was given a rapturous welcome when he visited many areas of the colonies during a stay which lasted seven months from October 1867.

Most dramatic of the events of 1868 was undoubtedly the attempted assanination on 12 March of the visiting Duke of Edinburgh at Clontarf on the northern shore of Po9rt Jackson. The royal visitor was shot and wounded by James O'Farrell, who was claimed to be a member of the Irish Sin Fein organisation. Apprehended and charged, needless to say O'Farrell was found guilty and hanged a short time later. Transportation, the sole reason for the foundation of the colony of New South Wales in 1788, ended in 1868. Considerable agitation amongst residents of the colonies and lobbying by various human rights groups in Britain had brought the trade to a close. Western Australia was the last penal settlement, receiving its final shipload of convicts in January. this left Australia looking towards a future as a free country with convicts in January. This left Australia looking towards a future as a free country with an economy largely based on agriculture traded with the 'Mother Country'. Gold fever continued to spread in Queensland; a rich find was made at a place called Ravenwood, west of Townsville, which lasted a considerable time and contributed a huge amount of revenue to the Queensland Treasury.

Railway construction was a talking point for citizens of New south Wales in 1869 when work was completed on the Lithgow zigzag line. Built to take the western railway over the Blue Mountains, the track was designed for the trains to climb one section of track then reverse up another - thus avoiding a line which, because of the grades involved, would have stretched for many kilometres beyond the ultimate destination at which the engineers were aiming.

This was the year of the Overland Telegraph Line, an achievement which captured the imagination of every Australian in 1870. A submarine telegraph cable had been laid from Europe to the Dutch East Indies, and the Australian colonies were eager that it be extended to link the major cities with Britain. A company known as the British-Australian Telegraph company was formed by private investors to negotiate with the South Australian and Queensland Governments, as each administration was eager to have the telegraph service run through its colony because of the revenue potential. In the end it was South Australia which offered the company the best deal, but in return it had to construct an overland telegraph line from Palmerston (Darwin) south of Port Augusta through country which only recently had been crossed by John McDouall Stuart and which was largely unmapped. The deal with the British-Australian Telegraph Company was that the South Australian line would be completed by the beginning of 1872.

Work continued on the Overland Telegraph Line between Port Augusta and Palmerston (Darwin) throughout 1871 under the direction of South Australian Postmaster-General Charles Todd. It reached Tennant Creek in December, but rugged terrain and problems with rains and flooding hampered progress further north and it did not arrive in Palmerston in time as per the agreement with the British-Australian Telegraph Company. A second party was set to work at Palmerston in late 1871 to construct a line south to connect with that struggling north. The link from Java completed in November, however it was not until June the following year that the first telegrams went through. As a sidelight to the development of Overland Telegraph, a town with the name of Stuart was established on the route4. This settlement honouring the great explorer retained its name until 1933 when it was changed to Alice Springs. while the labourers were battling to push the Overland Telegraph through on time a discovery of gold was made a a place called Pine Creek south-east of Palmerston which occasioned a gold rush from the southern colonies.

The saga of the Overland Telegraph continued with the British-Australian Telegraph company becoming increasingly restive over delays in the completion of the line. Originally the agreement had set 1 January 1872 as the date on which the two cables would be linked, but it was to be another eight months before the final join was made. From June to August a special team of Horsemen was established to operate a shuttle service carrying telegrams between the two unjoined sections of the line. As it turned out it was not needed: the following day the submarine cable between Java and Palmerston failed. The connection though to London was made a Frew's Ponds on 22 August, but the actual service did not begin until October when it revolutionised communications for Australians - no longer were they completely reliant on mail ships for their link with the outside world.

Another, larger, find of gold was made at Charters Towers, just to the west of Ravenwood in Queensland. Charters Towers quickly grew into a roaring, brawling boom town with vast sums of money being made and lost overnight. Centralised government for the Australian colonies took another step forward in membership of which was restricted to whites born in Australia. The Association was highly nationalistic and advocated an end to rivalries between colonies by the formation of a central administration.

For those who yearned to discover what lay in the few unexplored regions of the continent the last great challenge was the country west of the Overland Telegraph Line. Colonel Peter Warburton and a part of explorers felt Stuart (Alice Springs) in April to attempt a crossing to Perth, but they were forced by the terrible conditions to turn north and make for the coast. A matter of one week after Warburton's departure another expedition, under the command of William Gosse, departed from Stuart for a similar attempt, Gosse, though able to penetrate the harsh country further than Warburton had, also was forced back. His greatest discovery on the journey was a huge monolithic rock which he named for the South Australian Premier, Henry Ayers.

Victoria and the other colonies had always been reliant on new South Wales for supplies of coal from the Hunter Valley. David Ryan's find of huge deposits of brown coal around the Morwell River district in eastern Victoria set the stage for a gradual charge in that reliance. Although the better-quality New South Wales coal was needed for burning in steam engines and similar equipment, the brown coal ultimately proved suitable for electricity generation.

While there was no remuneration for Members of IParliament in the Australian colonies it was extremely difficult for any persons other than those with substantial incomes to run for election. The New South Wales Trades and Labour Council, keen to gain a greater voice in the legislative process, decided to field a candidate in the 1874 elections and undertook to pay a wage to the winner for the term he spent in the Legislative Assembly. Chosen was Angas Cameron, who easily