4. A new nation formed

First Fleet and Rum Rebellion

In May 1787 the eleven small ships of the First Fleet, carrying British convicts, sailed from Portsmouth. It was commanded by Captain Arthur Phillip who later became the first governor of New South Wales. Eight months later the 1,000 passengers, three quarters of them convicts, arrived in Botany Bay, in January 1788. The voyage was relatively free of accidents and only 23 people died during the trip. The conditions on the Second and Third Fleets were awfully different from those on the First Fleet. The Second Fleet earned a reputation as the horror fleet. Of the 1,000 convicts 267 died before reaching Sydney. On the Third Fleet 200 of the 1,800 convicts on board the ships died. Overcrowding, starvation rations, savage punishment inflicted by ships’ masters accounted for this death toll.

Philip decided that Botany Bay was unsuitable as the site for the new settlement. He selected Sydney Cove with its freshwater stream as the new site and raised the flag for King George III, establishing the first British colony in Australia. The early years were very hard ones. A chief problem was the supply of food. Philip tried to cultivate friendly relations with the Aborigines, but without avail. The first violent clashes took place in 1788, and they continued during the next four years.

The marines who had accompanied Philip were replaced in 1792 by the New South Wales Corps, when Philip left the colony.

The officers of the corps monopolized trade in the colony by buying up the cargo of any ship that came to Sydney. Then they sold the goods to the colonists and to the government for a large profit. During the corps’ administration, spirits, particularly rum, became the colony’s currency. It was used to buy goods and to pay wages. The corps soon received the name the Rum Corps.

In August 1807, William Bligh was appointed a new governor of New South Wales. Governor Bligh was a severe person with a hot temper. He had already survived a mutiny on his famous ship the Bounty. As governor of New South Wales he launched an attack on the rum trade and soon made enemies of the corps officers, big landowners and merchants. In January 1808 the commander of the New South Corps, George Johnston, arrested Bligh. This revolt came to be known as the Rum Rebellion. In 1809 Bligh was officially replaced by Lachlan Macquarie who brought his own regiment of troops to replace the New South Wales Corps and suppressed its trading monopoly.

During the administration of Macquarie the appearance of Sydney improved. New buildings, roads and bridges were constructed. The first hospital and charity schools for poor people were opened. Macquarie encouraged convicts by rewarding their good behavior. He granted land to emancipists (ex-convicts) and gave them government assistance to help them start farming. He used skilled convicts and emancipists in government service. He also energetically promoted the assimilation of emancipists back into society. This policy continued until the arrival of Governor Sir Richard Bourke in the 1830s, who also was sympathetic to the emancipist cause.

Free Immigration

Although the first free immigrants arrived in Australia in 1793, their numbers were small. Most were men with capital, attracted by free land and cheap convict labor. During the 1830s the immigration of free settlement to the Australian colonies was encouraged. In 1831 the British Government introduced assisted migration to the colonies, funded by money raised from the sale of land. As the number of free settlers grew, the society of the colonies changed. Skilled workers, their families and single women were particularly desired as immigrants. By 1850 the total number of assisted immigrants had reached 170,000.

Until the 1830s colonial society was dominated by convicts who were generally unable or unwilling to follow the rules of traditional family life. The free immigrants of the 1830s and 1840s brought a more traditional form of family life, with its emphasis on marriage, to the colonies.

During the 1930s an increasing number of assisted free immigrants from Britain arrived in the colonies. They were opposed to transportation of convicts and the convict system. They found supporters in Britain, and in 1840 transportation to New South Wales was suspended.

Squatters

Exploration of the continent had increased during the 1820s. By the 1830s and 1840s much of the southeast of the continent had been explored, and Ludwig Leichhardt had explored the northeastern part of Australia.

The explorers were quickly followed by squatters (farmers) who illegally set up stations (big farms) on crowned land, and by overlanders, who drove cattle and sheep over land from New South Wales to present-day Victoria, South Australia and Queensland. A boom in the wool industry began in the 1820s and reached a peak in the 1830s. Australian wool was in great demand in Britain, and wool had become the main export of the colonies. During the 1840s control of the land became a major political issue. The squatters demanded security of tenure (possession). The governor was not willing to grant it, but the squatters won their fight in 1847 when the British government intervened.

The early colonial land policy in Australia involved granting land in return for a small fee. Land could only sold within the colonies’ settled areas. But pastoral boom was reaching its peak. Pastoralists (squatters) who did not want to buy land or could not find good land within the limits, squatted on land beyond the limits illegally. They were soon called squatters.

By the middle of 1830s squatters were hundreds of kilometers beyond the limits of occupation. By 1840 squatters had occupied most of Victoria and eastern New South Wales and had reached the Darling Downs in present-day Queensland. They had also pushed beyond the established areas of settlement in the colonies of South Australia and Western Australia.

Squatters from Tasmania began to settle the Port Philip district. The government could no longer ignore the squatters’ occupation of southeastern Australia, and in 1836 introduced annual licences allowing the squatters to occupy the land beyond the limits. The licence cost 10 pounds(twenty Australian dollars) a year.

During the late 1830s the pastoral boom began to falter. A long period of draughts began, and wool prices began to decline. By 1841 the economists of New South Wales and Tasmania were in the grip of depression. The squatters sought a political solution for their economic problems.

In 1823 a Legislative Council was created as the first measure of limited government. The council could propose legislation on local matters, but financial and land policies remained in the hands of the governor, that is, London.

When the new council met in 1843, it was dominated by the squatters. They included many of the families of the old emancipists and free settlers. The squatters called for a self-government in which a colonial government would have control of land policy. Their position received support from the free immigrants. By the end of the 1840s it was obvious that Australia was no longer a jail. In 1850 the Australian Colonies Government Act was adopted by the British Parliament. Legislative councils, similar to that of New South Wales were established in South Australia, Tasmania and the newly proclaimed Victoria.

Between 1788 and 1850 Australia changed from a penal colony to a group of colonies on the verge of self-government.

The end of “Convictization”

During the 1830s the opposition to the transportation of convicts was widespread both in the colonies and in Britain. In 1838 a select committee was appointed by the House of Commons to

examine transportation and the convict system. A small number of convicts were sent to the Port Phillip District between 1844 and 1849. Transportation to New South Wales was abolished in 1850. It was also officially abolished in Tasmania in 1852, and the last convict ship reached the island in 1853. That was the end of the convictization of the Australian continent. By the beginning of the 1850s five colonies had been established in Australia; they were the present states of New South Wales, Tasmania, Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria. Queensland and Northern Territory were established later.

Tasmania was among the first areas opened to free settlement. A few settlements were made along the hot coast of north Australia. With the loss of American colonies Britain began to establish its eastern empire in India. The east was seen as the place for a new empire. In addition, the British government was concerned about the activities of other European powers, particularly France and Holland, in the Asian and Pacific regions. They might become interested in Australia

Britain also wanted to open up new areas of trade in the southeast Asian region and began to search for new sources of supply, like flax and timber for its navy. Botany Bay was a new colony in the east, and it was to act as a strategic post to watch the activities of other European nations in the area. It was also to become a new trading centre. .

Gold-rush

The situation in Australia changed radically in the early 1850s with the discovery of gold in New South Wales and then, in large amounts, in Victoria. The discoveries turned the economy and lifestyle of the colonies into a state of turmoil. Men abandoned the land and their jobs in the towns and joined the gold rush. Crews abandoned ships at the first port of call and headed for the diggings. Fortune-seekers came from all corners of the globe to join in the fever.

The goldenfields were roisterous, uncontrollable shanty towns peopled by hard workers and dreamers, villains and vagabonds. A few found fortunes, most remained poor. Those who wanted riches without working for them lived in the bush and subsisted on robbery with violence, earning the name bush-rangers.

Gold transformed Australia’s economy, contributed to a marked increase of population and laid the foundation for economic growth. It also helped bring democracy to the colonies, which, except Western Australia, had been granted self-government in their internal affairs. Western Australia gained self-government in 1890.

In the 1890s the colonies agreed to unite a federal union to form the Commonwealth of Australia. In 1899 and 1900 the Australian people agreed to federation at several referendums. The next nation was proclaimed on January 1, 1901 at Central Park in Sydney.