A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department 1835

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A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department 1835 – 1885

Micah Batt

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of

Master of Philosophy

UNSW

School of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Surname or Family name: Batt First name: Micah Other name/s: Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: MPhil School: School of Humanities and Social Science Faculty: Title: A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

The research contained in this thesis seeks to address a range of issues and questions related to an exploration of why Victoria’s colonial government established a defence department in 1883 when no other Australasian colony did so. The study draws primarily on Australian and British archival records, contemporary historical accounts and a large body of relevant secondary material to consider how political leaders, colonial administrators and the armed services in Britain and Victoria confronted the problems associated with planning, designing, implementing, funding and maintaining an effective indigenous defence capability in Victoria during a period of rapid social, economic and political change.

The research identifies a series of chronologically related themes over the fifty-year period following European settlement in Victoria that shaped the evolution of Victoria’s colonial defence management through to the creation of a dedicated defence department in 1883. The chronological themes examine how local security issues related to Victoria’s gold rush combined with the pressures from wider strategic competition between Britain and various European powers and the introduction of responsible government, came to generate a set of complex contingent defence management circumstance in Victoria. It considers how such complexities came to shape the management of colonial defence in the Colony and how the vision and efforts of two men; James Service and Frederick Sargood, came to influence the ultimate decision to create Australia’s first, and only, colonial defence department.

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Table of Contents Page

Table of Contents i Declaration ii Abstract iii

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. 9 (1835 – 1855)

Chapter 2. 31 (1855 – 1870)

Chapter 3. 51 (1870 – 1880)

Chapter 4. 71 (1880 -1885)

Conclusion 95

Bibliography 105

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ABSTRACT

iii

‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation.

I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

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iv Introduction

When the eminent naval historian Nicholas Rodgers chronicled the history of the Admiralty in his book entitled, The Admiralty, he started by stating that ‘of all the responsibilities of government, few are as important as that of national defence.’1 This statement is an often-repeated refrain in the annals of military history. Yet despite this, Australian history has largely been quiet on the subject of how Australia’s own national defence institution evolved from its colonial past. This is not a circumstance particularly unique to academic enquiry into Australia’s military past, but reflective of a wider tendency surrounding Australian historical analysis into the evolution of national identity from its colonial past. With few notable exceptions, detailed analytical research into the history and formation of late colonial and early national public policy, mechanisms of governance and creation of public institutions has been notably absent in Australia. This is somewhat surprising when one considers just how much influence this period in Australia’s history wielded over the eventual nature and character of Australian national identity after Federation. Australian military history is no different, with little detailed attention being given to consideration of the key themes and influences that shaped the formation of Australia’s first, and only, colonial defence department prior to Federation. As one of the original seven federal departments of the first Federal Executive in 1901, the Commonwealth Department of Defence played a central role in cementing the legitimacy and authority of national governance in Australia.2 It was in the Colony of Victoria where the emergence of defence issues laid claim to the development of Australia’s only colonial defence department. This thesis explores the genesis of that department.

The research contained in this thesis seeks to address a range of issues and questions not previously examined by scholars in the field. Principal among these is the question of why Victoria’s government established a civil defence department in 1883 when no other Australasian colony did so. It also seeks to examine how many of the early challenges and complexities that confronted colonial administrators in Australia and Britain, came to shape that decision, and how the passage of its evolution ultimately

1 Nicholas Rodgers, The Admiralty, Terrance Dalton Ltd, Suffolk, 1979, p. x. .. . . 2 Craig Stockings, The Making & Breaking of the Post-Federation Australian Army, 1901-09, Land Warfare Studies Study Paper No. 311, Canberra, July 2007, p. 9. A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

influenced the nature and character of Australia’s first dedicated defence department. To do this, the research undertakes a selective chronological analysis of the topic, examining the fifty-year period between the establishment of a military garrison in Port Phillip Bay in 1835 and the establishment of Victoria’s defence department and the first two years of its operation, ending in 1885. The period in question underscores themes of how political leaders, colonial administrators and the armed services alike confronted the problem associated with planning, designing, implementing, funding and maintaining an effective indigenous defence capability during a period of rapid social, economic and political change in Victoria. The dissertation builds on these themes to consider how the government and military bureaucracy worked to balance the pressures of civil and national defence needs over time, and how structural policy reform emerged to address these problems. By undertaking this research, the thesis ultimately aims to provide further historical insight into how Victoria’s, and subsequently Australia’s, national defence identity took root.

Whilst in broad terms the topic of Victoria’s defence department has been touched on some by military researchers and historians, the question surrounding why a complete government department was created in Victoria has largely escaped detailed consideration. To date, academic and popular treatment of Victoria’s colonial defence story has generally been framed as a corollary to consideration of broader historical questions. Certainly the creation of a defence department in Victoria has gained passing attention in a range of historical works on Victoria’s colonial past, Australia’s military history, as well as some Commonwealth and British accounts of imperial history. General Victorian histories, with a focus on the development of public policy, administration and governance have tended to concentrate on explaining the genesis of broader social, economic and industrial policy in the Colony. Reform of the civil service has had some attention, as has the role Victorian governments played in Australia’s early Federation movement.3 These accounts have largely considered the topic of Victorian military and naval history through its ‘operation’ use during seminal events. Repression of Indigenous resistance, the quelling of sectarian riots

3 There is a large volume of literature relating to these aspects of Victorian history. Some notable examples include: Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1977; Alan Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District: Victoria Before Separation, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2003; Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia: 1860-1900, Vol. 3. Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1988; and Paul Strangio and Brian Costar (ed.), The Victorian Premiers: 1856 – 2006, Federation Press, Sydney, 2006.

2 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

in Melbourne, the suppression of the rebellion at Eureka, or the capture of the Kelly gang are all aspects of Victoria’s socio-military past that have received generous attention.

The background to the founding of Victoria’s defence department has also escaped the detailed attention of many military histories of colonial era Australia and, surprisingly, histories dedicated to Victoria’s military past. As rich and as authoritative a body of academic work that these accounts comprise, their focus has principally considered the imperial and colonial military and naval forces themselves. The works of Jeffery Grey, Robert Nicholls and Craig Wilcox, amongst many more, provide a detailed and considered body of research into colonial military life in the Australian colonies, accounting for the development of many key defence capabilities, such as the volunteer and militia movements, the establishment of colonial naval capabilities and the various colonial fortification schemes, designed and built by William Jervois and Peter Scratchley.4 In many instances these accounts also provide a detailed analysis of the interwoven relationship between the social and cultural development of the Australian colonies and the imperial and colonial branches of the armed forces. Other, lesser known research, namely Ted Millar’s unpublished 1957 thesis, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’, and Robert Marmion’s 2009 thesis, ‘Gibraltar of the South – Defending Victoria: An Analysis of Colonial Defence in Victoria, Australia, 1851- 1901’, have outlined in broad detail the effect that the formation of the Victorian defence department had on the management of military and naval forces in the Colony, but left other key areas of the decision to raise a defence department unexplored.5

Colonial defence issues in Victoria and the other Australian colonies were also the subject of wider analysis during a period in the 1960s, when the topic of imperial defence history became popular amongst a group of scholars at Duke, Cambridge and Oxford universities. This eminent group of researchers included the likes of John Cell, Donald Gordon, Richard Preston, Donald Schurman and Brian Tunstall. Their general focus became the evolution and changing direction of British imperial defence policy in the wake

4 See Jeffery Grey, A Military History of Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2000; Robert Nicholls, The Colonial Volunteers: The Defence Forces of the Australian Colonies – 1836-1901, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988; and Craig Wilcox’s, For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia 1854-1945, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1998; and Red Coat Dreaming, Cambridge University Press Sydney, 2009 5 Ted Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’, M.A. Thesis, University of Melbourne, (Royal Military College), Canberra, 1957; and Robert Marmion ‘Gibraltar of the South, Defending Victoria: An Analysis of Colonial Defence in Victoria’, Australia 1851- 1901’, PhD Thesis, Melbourne University, 2009.

3 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

of responsible government.6 This body of research generally focussed on the era of transition away from imperial administration in the English-speaking colonies and the challenges associated with colonial self-government and imperial rejuvenation during the second half of the nineteenth century. Popular themes included; the effects of responsible government, the centralisation of imperial military power at home in Britain, and the emergence of a decentralised system of managing colonial and imperial defence interests in the late nineteenth century. Such accounts attest to the importance of the role that Victoria’s military evolution played in shaping and influencing the wider story of imperial defence development through the second half of the nineteenth century. The research undertaken by these historians also attests to the importance that this period played in cementing the military and naval relationships between Britain and the Commonwealth well into the twentieth century.

Both the published and unpublished literature referencing the Victorian defence department points to the relevance and importance that the Department played in the wider evolution of Australian and imperial defence considerations. But to date, none of this work has directly explored the issues relating to the decision to form a civil defence department in Victoria, the background to that decision, or the impact of that decision had for defence planning in an Australian context. The account that follows has been organised into four chronological chapters, each seeking to explain four broad periods in the evolution of Victoria’s defence department. The first section considers the circumstances surrounding Victoria’s defence bureaucracy as it grew from a settler outpost of New South Wales to a separate colonial entity. It sets a context for military to government relations in Victoria and considers how decisions in London concerning the assumption of responsible government shaped subsequent deliberation about management of colonial defence issues. The research contained here demonstrates how resource constraints and population pressures manifested themselves into a tension between internal security necessities and the growing concern about the external defence needs of the Colony during the intervening months of crisis between the uprising at Eureka and hostilities between Britain, France and Russia in the Crimea in the mid-1850s.

6 See John Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Policy Making Progress, New Haven & London University Press, 1970; Donald Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, Johns Hopkins Press, Maryland, 1951; and Richard Preston, Canada and Imperial Defence: A Study of the Origins of the British Commonwealth’s Defence Organization, 1867-191, Duke University Press, Durham, 1967; Donald Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, Frank Case, London – Portland, Ontario, 2000; Brian Tunstall, ‘Imperial Defence, 1815-1870’, in J.H. Rose, A.P. Newton and E.A. Benians et al. (eds.), Cambridge History of the British Empire, Vol. 2, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1940.

4 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

Through the second and third chapters, the thesis examines how the speed and method of the introduction of responsible government in Victoria set in train a series of complicated relationships and competing expectations between colonial governments in Australia and the imperial government in London for the on-going management of defence capabilities. A focus on constitutional systems and executive authority during the formative years of the introduction of responsible government came at the expense of due consideration for the technical means by which governance would be effected. Key among these were defence and security mechanisms, which by the late 1850s, were framed through a politically contested discourse in London and the colonies surrounding the direction of Britain’s strategic policy abroad and the future of imperial military support to self- governing colonies. In London, continuing controversy over the British military’s performance in the Crimean war and mounting strategic pressure from France over the Orsini affair only added impetus the withdrawal argument. When, in 1870, Britain did finally withdraw its garrison in Victoria, successive Victorian governments struggled to establish the necessary policy and governance framework to generate a credible local defence capability. The thesis will examine how onus and affluence alone were not sufficient factors in the Colony to establish effective management of its defence capability. Lacking an overarching bureaucratic system to manage both government expectations on one hand and the day-to-day business of the armed services on the other, Victoria’s entire defence capability suffered as a result. Defence management matters soon became the subject of politicised debate in the Parliament, which itself was beset by deep political intransience throughout the 1870s and early 1880s.

The final part of the thesis looks at how Victoria’s unique circumstances and the involvement of two personalities, James Service and Frederick Sargood, led to the creation of Australia’s first civil defence department. The thesis contends that this area of significant public policy reform was a product of Sargood’s appreciation of the technical means to reform the armed services and their relationship to local colonial authorities and Service’s desire to develop a means to establish a common undertaking to politically federate the disparate colonies of Australasia. Leveraging off the necessity to address the defence situation, Service saw a nexus between modernising Victoria’s means of defence management and establishing a pathway to engendering greater Australian influence over British foreign policy in the South Pacific. A political calculation in Service’s eyes that was

5 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

designed to prove a key catalyst to finding greater common interests between disparate Australian colonies and to realise his ultimate goal of bringing the Australian colonies together as a Federated state. Through this process, Victoria developed and validated the first modern military-government relationship in the Australian colonies, which later became the basis for Australia’s national defence model.

Time and space preclude this thesis from undertaking a comparative analysis of the topic against that of other Australian colonial military administration arrangements. It is also limited in its consideration of certain other aspects of Victoria’s military past during the fifty-year period under examination. Issues such as the founding of Victoria’s colonial navy, detailed critiques of its volunteer and militia movements and the involvement of imperial and colonial forces in operational actions, such as the suppression of Indigenous groups, the Eureka uprising or other conflicts and military campaigns are examined only in- so-far as they affected the trajectory and evolution of colonial defence management. In most instances these issues have been the subject of considerable historical analysis elsewhere. The work of Craig Wilcox, Robert Marmion, Wilson Evans and Colin Jones is amongst the most authoritive of that pertaining to the raising and history of Victoria’s colonial volunteer, militia and naval forces.7 In addition the work of John Connor, Ted Millar, and John Molony has added to the broader body of analysis exploring the operational aspects of colonial military forces in Australia and Victoria8. Finally, given that the focus of this thesis is the story behind the genesis of Victoria’s defence department, space has precluded a detailed examination of the sixteen years of Victorian defence department operation. This however, is left to future studies to consider.

By examining this important aspect of Australia’s colonial military past, the research that follows has built on, and brought together, a wide range of secondary literature. Without the detailed and rich accounts of Victorian and Australian general, military and imperial history, this thesis would not be possible. It has also drawn heavily from the vast, if at times sketchy, quantities of primary research material available in

7 See Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia 1854-1945, and Robert Marmion, ‘The Victorian Volunteer Force on the Central Victorian Goldfields: 1858-1883’, MA Thesis, La Trobe University, 2003; both examine the Victorian volunteer movement in some detail. For details concerning the raising of Victoria’s colonial navy, see Wilson Evans’, Deeds not Words: The Victorian Navy, Hawthorne Press, Melbourne, 1971; and Colin Jones’, Australian Colonial Navies, Australian War Memorial, Canberra, 1986. 8 See John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788 •1838, UNSW Press, Sydney, rev. ed. 2005; Ted Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’; and John Molony, Eureka, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001.

6 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

archival, Parliamentary and newspaper resources available for research into the subject. It is hoped that by addressing questions surrounding how and why Victoria established Australia’s first and only colonial defence department, this thesis marks the starting point of a deeper understanding of the contribution that this decision made to Victoria and Australia’s military institution.

7 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Introduction

8 Chapter One – 1835-1855

The role of Britain’s Military garrison in the district of Port Phillip, prior to separation from New South Wales, was pervasive across most forms of public administration. Whilst its most obvious role during the first twenty years of European settlement was the protection of the districts population from internal and external security threats, it is hard to imagine how public civil administration could have succeeded in the district at all without its presence. From inception in 1835 as a satellite settlement of New South Wales, to its ascension to independent colonial entity in 1855, reliance on military authorities for either the conduct of public administration or the means to support effective civil administration was ever present. Reliance on British military garrisons, such as the one established in Port Phillip Bay, was the result of Britain’s sophisticated system of administrating its global network of colonies. But such a system had its challenges for local administrators to negotiate and in Port Phillip districts case, these challenges were increasingly complex owing to its geographic isolation, ever increasing population growth and limited resource base from which to draw support. Militarily the situation would become so pronounced that, by late 1853, authorities in Melbourne struggled to manage the competing requirements of deteriorating internal security and the growing external defence needs of the rapidly expanding colony. Such was the pressure that by late 1854, the new colony of Victoria had assumed the mantle as the centre of imperial military administration in the Australian colonies with the relocation from Sydney to Melbourne of the headquarters for all British Army garrison forces in Australia. This decision would ultimately be a telling factor in the evolution of military administration in the Colony.

Contemporary accounts attest to the fact that the decision in 1835, by New South Whales colonial authorities to dispatch a military garrison to the settlement at Port Phillip Bay related ostensibly to concerns over unregulated European expansion into the region. It was the inability to tax, rather than through any sense of security or strategic concern, that motivated imperial authorities in Sydney to send a military garrison to the Port Phillip Colony.9 In addition to the usual instructions provided to military detachments undertaking

9 The founding of the Port Phillip settlement is the subject of a large volume of literature. Useful woks include: Henry Tuner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: From its Discovery to Absorption into the Commonwealth of A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

such assignments Captain William Lonsdale, commander of the first garrison of troops to be sent to Port Phillip, was instructed by the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Richard Burke, to compile an accurate census of inhabitants, livestock and occupied land, including a comprehensive list of all premises erected. Wherever possible, his written instructions directed that the ‘moral and social condition’ of the Indigenous inhabitants were to be improved, and he was directed to exercise complete general superintendence in all matters requiring the authority of the Crown.10 This decision by imperial administrators to address the calls from the squatters in Port Phillip Bay, and authorise Crown authority over the new settlement, had not been an easy one. In the eyes of many in Whitehall, including the likes of Lord Glenelg, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, the calculus behind the commitment of imperial resources to such ventures had become a matter worthy of considered deliberation.

Liberal economic theory of the period held that the key to Britain’s imperial success was its laissez-faire approach to reducing the cost of Empire. It was a view widely accepted by a succession of imperial administrators at the Colonial Office. Since Napoleon’s defeat in 1815, the size of Britain’s military had nearly halved from 255,000 to 140,000.11 This same period had seen Britain’s relative share of world manufacturing output almost double to nine and a half percent.12 Secure in the knowledge that access to the worlds’ oceans and an unrivalled naval supremacy enabled such liberal economic theory, Whitehall officials were never enamoured with the prospect of establishing new colonial outposts, such as that proposed at Port Phillip Bay. By the mid-1830s, governors, administrators and politicians alike knew that imperial defence was being run on a shoestring, and so the decision to support a new and untested imperial outpost at Port Phillip came with significant reservations from London. Burke’s request for Colonial Office direction in the matter in late 1835, had not been met with enthusiasm in Whitehall. However, the

Australia: 1797-1901, (2 Vols.), Heritage Publication, Melbourne 1973; Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District: Victoria Before Separation; James Boyce, 1835: The Founding of Melbourne and Conquest of Australia, Black Ink, China, 2011; and Geoffrey Blainey, A History of Victoria, Cambridge University Press, New York, 2006. 10 To achieve this, and in addition to the detachment of 30 soldiers, Lonsdale’s party comprised three constables, two collectors of customs, a civil surveyor, a clerk, a tide waiter and Mr William Buckley, the escaped convict who had lived amongst the Indigenous inhabitants of Port Phillip Bay and spoke the local Aboriginal dialect. See William Hunter to William Lonsdale, Military Instructions to Lonsdale, 12 September 1836 and Dees Thompson [NSW Colonial Secretary] to William Lonsdale, Civil Instructions to Lonsdale, 14 September 1836, Michael Cannon, Historical Records of Victoria: Vol. 1 – Beginnings of Permanent Government, Victorian Government Printing Service, Melbourne, 1981, pp. 46-54. 11 Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000, Fontana Press, London, 1989, p. 193. 12 Ibid, p. 198.

10 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

extended lines of communication between the Australian colonies and London, some six months at best, and a growing tide of immigration to Port Phillip Bay eventually put paid to the Colonial Office’s ability to stop the initiative. By the time Burke had received Lord Glenelg’s somewhat discursive agreement to support the establishment of a new settlement, Burke by not opposing the growing immigration, had effectively endorsed the establishment of the settlement.13 Consequently, Captain Lonsdale and his contingent of soldiers became the first representatives of imperial administration and authority in the new district of Port Phillip.

Conditions for Lonsdale’s new garrison at Port Phillip during the early pioneering days of settlement were spartan. Before suitable barracks could be built, the soldiers lived in tent lines and improvised shelters constructed from foliage and mud. Described by one contemporary observer as little more than humpies, these improvised barracks were located at what is today’s Flagstaff Gardens, near Spencer Street in Melbourne.14 Lonsdale’s contingent of 40 soldiers from the 4th Kings Own Regiment, a British infantry line regiment typical of the units that served in the Australian colonies, had arrived in Sydney in 1832. Administration of Britain’s military forces in the antipodes was, in the early 1800s, undertaken directly from London. The decisions that determined the destination and duration of garrison assignments in the colonies were made at Horse Guards, headquarters of the British Army in London, nominally under the control of the War Office. Because of the distances involved and the paucity of detailed direction from London owing to the limited speed of official communication, military assignments to the colonies typically lasted two years. Regimental tours were often accompanied by a further two years in another eastern outpost of Britain’s Empire, usually involving Hong Kong, Singapore or more frequently, India.15 Local command in the Australasian colonies was exercised via the British Army’s Headquarters in Sydney; in 1836 the Headquarters was responsible for approximately 1,900 imperial troops from the 4th (Kings Own), the 50th (Queen’s Own West Kent) and the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiments.

13 A considerable body of research examining the cause and effect of British imperial policy in the nineteenth century exists in many forms. Much of the detailed contained in this examination is drawn from the works of Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of Great Powers, Chapter 4; Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, Abacus, London, 1996, Part 3; and Niall Ferguson, Empire: How Britain Made the Modern World, Penguin Books, London, 2002. 14 Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District, p. 68. 15 Grey, A Military History of Australia, pp. 13-14.

11 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

From the start, the pressure on Lonsdale and the colonial authorities to provide sufficient and appropriate infrastructure for the rapidly expanding community was immense. When the military garrison arrived at Port Phillip in late 1836, the district’s population numbered some 224 permanent residents. Within five years that number had grown to over 10,000; comparable growth in New South Wales had taken more than twenty-two years to achieve.16 The troops at Port Phillip were soon joined by an improvised labour force of approximately fifty convicts, courtesy of the New South Wales penal system, and a further one hundred ‘ticket of leave’ men who were employed to construct the first formal streets of the new city of Melbourne. Typical duties supervised by Lonsdale and his soldiers included the building of official government premises, carrying fresh water, unloading the ever increasing amount of government stores arriving by boat at the mouth of the Yarra River, the fencing-off of government land and caring for its livestock.17 Government supplied rations in Port Phillip during this period were basic. One in eight of the supervised workforce were perpetually sick, with many labourers and soldiers alike suffering the symptoms of scurvy.18

Military garrisoning duties in the new district involved those activities typical to many colonial outposts. The supervision of the convict labour force, mounting guard over key government facilities, deterring Indigenous attacks and undertaking constabulary duties were all common activities for the troops. But soon, the size and complexity of the administrative task confronting Lonsdale and his small administrative team of clerks become overwhelming. Aggressive rates of immigration to the district, when combined with a lack of appropriate public facilities and an as yet inadequate framework for administering the population, quickly evolved into a concern over the management of public order. Records from the settlement’s first Magistrates Court, established by Lonsdale soon after his arrival in 1836, document the conviction of more than one person per day for incidents relating to drunkenness. In 1838 alone, 440 people were convicted for such offenses. Lacking appropriate gaol facilities, the court resorted to floggings and fines as the most common form of punishment.19 In response, in June 1838 authorities in NSW extended the Sydney Police Act of 1833 to Melbourne and dispatched a detachment of specially formed mounted police to the settlement. Yet in many ways Lonsdale’s own

16 Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District, p. 75. 17 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’, p. 7; Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol.1, p. 244; Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District, pp. 76-77. 18 Shaw, A History of The Port Phillip District, p.77. 19 Ibid, p. 78.

12 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

administrative staff compounded his problems. A succession of drunken and incompetent clerks and qualified officials of works meant, for example, that the program for the construction of public infrastructure was slow and inadequate. In fact, the standard of building was so poor that by 1841, all work previously undertaken, with the exception of the jetty at Sandridge (Port Melbourne), had to be pulled down and rebuilt.20 The appointment of a civilian senior superintendent, Sir Charles La Trobe, in 1839, saw little immediate change to this situation.

When Glenelg had finally decided to formally recognise the settlement at Port Phillip, he had agreed with Burke’s assessment that a formal appointment of a local administrator should occur. However the Secretary of State’s attempt to minimise administrative overheads in London by insisting that it be strictly and completely under the responsibility of the New South Wales Governor, had in effect created a position with little autonomous power.21 The administrative relationship that developed as a result between the civil and military authorities in Melbourne quickly became a significantly convoluted system of bureaucracy, reflecting the complex web of departmental structures in London. In what must have appeared to be a logical arrangement to administrators in Whitehall, it was explained to La Trobe that he was to hold the same position to the Governor of New South Wales as the Governor stood to the Secretary of State in London. The details of the various lines of authority were carefully explained by Deas Thompson, the Colonial Secretary for New South Wales, in his written instructions to La Trobe. Thompson explained that where the ‘preservation of peace was concerned’, La Trobe could call directly on the assistance of the local military authorities in Melbourne. This could be done, it was noted, without seeking further authority from Sydney but at the same time he must carefully avoid involving himself in matters that were considered strictly military in nature. This included any issues related to military expenditure and decisions associated with the garrisoning of imperial troops in the district. La Trobe could request additional military support from outside the district but must make these requests to the Colonial Office through the Governor in New South Wales.22 La Trobe soon found himself in the unenviable position of considerable responsibility but with limited autonomy or authority to direct the few resources at his disposal without running the risk of embroiling his office in bureaucratic quagmire.

20 Ibid, p. 76. 21 Ibid, p. 170. 22 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 1, p. 77.

13 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

When observing the wider British pattern of colonial administration during this era, it is easy to overlook the relative sophistication and evolving complexity with which public administration in Britain had developed by the early nineteenth century. In London the focus of imperial decision-making rested with the Colonial Office. Since 1801, it had shared its ministerial representative in Cabinet, the appropriately entitled Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, with the War Office. Despite this arrangement giving every appearance of structural coordination deep at the heart of imperial policymaking, the reality of the relationship between the two departments was quite different. Occupying two cramped and rundown seventeenth-century houses at number 14 and 15 Downing Street, the Colonial Office ran its fiefdom of imperial bureaucracy through a regimented, if not always disciplined, decision-making and information management process. The cornerstone of this process was the system of receiving, processing and dispatching correspondence. Despatches were received from the numerous colonial Governors and representatives dotted around the globe before being prioritised and then filtered through various levels of clerical and advisory deliberation, eventually arriving at the desk of the Permanent Undersecretary for a decision and response. Frequently decisions would be deferred to the Secretary of State or Cabinet for advice before proceeding to a particular course of action.23 With the regular and often sudden changes in government at Westminster, the role of Permanent Undersecretary was key to the retention of corporate knowledge on any given colonial policy matter. Between 1836 and 1871 the three men who filled this appointment; Sir James Stephens, Herman Merivale and Sir Fredrick Rodgers respectively, played a significant, if at times understated role in determining the shape and character of government that would eventuate in Victoria as the colonies political process matured.

The administrative mechanisms by which the British government controlled its naval and military forces at this time were, in many ways, even more complex. Whilst the War Office and Admiralty nominally retained administrative oversight of the two armed services, the day-to-day business of managing naval and military forces rested almost completely with Horse Guards in the case of the British Army and the Admiralty Board in the case of the navy. It was these two bodies that determined which regiments and ships

23 A detailed description of how this correspondence was managed and the mechanics of the decision making process can be found in Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Policy Making Progress, Chap 1.

14 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

would rotate to the Australian colonies and for how long they would remain. Decisions concerning the number of troops or ships on any given imperial station would most often be a matter for negotiation between the War Office or Admiralty, and the Colonial Office and Treasury. A further complicating issue was the role of the Ordinance Department. Ostensibly part of the War Office, it retained responsibility for the design, construction and management of all military barracks, facilities and fortifications in Britain and abroad. The complicating dimension to this structural arrangement was a behavioural dynamic governing the relationships between the three principal entities involved in the decision making process; the colonial administrators in Government House, officials in the relevant departments in London, and the appointed government representative in Westminster. The structural and procedural rigidity of the era resulted in far less consultation at a departmental level than one would come to expect in the latter part of the nineteenth century. In summary, the administrative map for imperial decision making in London was, by the 1830s and 1840s, already a more complex and nuanced affair than is often assumed. The implications of these arrangements for colonial administrators in the colonies, whether at Government House in Sydney, or in the superintendents office in Port Phillip, were profound in both the way the business of Empire was conducted in the colonies, but also the way colonial government structure evolved in the years to come.

Until the early 1850s the responsibility for government decision making in New South Wales and in the Port Phillip district rested principally with the Governor. At the same time the Headquarters of the Royal Navy’s vessels stationed in Australasia and the imperial garrison in the Australasian colonies were both located in Sydney. However, as the size of Melbourne and other satellite settlements in Port Phillip grew, the centralisation of decision-making in Sydney became problematic. Contemporary records found in the Port Phillip Colony’s Bluebook, a compilation of official statistics forwarded to the Colonial Office annually, illustrate the developments within the colonial bureaucracy in Sydney and Melbourne over this period. By the end of 1837, the number of civil servants in Melbourne was twenty-four. By the end of the following year it had grown to thirty-three, and by the end of 1839 to forty-eight (including the new superintendent, La Trobe).24 Official correspondence from Port Phillip during the 1840s illustrates that the district had assumed a sizable proportion of the New South Wales administrative effort, which increasingly struggled to keep pace with the demands of the sustained population growth to the district.

24 Record of Official Salaries and allowances and Schedule of the Authorised Establishment in the District of Port Phillip, see: Cannon, Historical Records of Victoria, Vol. 1, pp. 126-37.

15 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

Obtaining a replacement for a trooper’s horse (mounted troopers were needed to remove the distinct advantage of the growing number of mounted miscreants) for example, or trying to determine the priority of the construction for the new barracks being undertaken near Flagstaff Gardens, or indeed whether to send soldiers to Sydney where regimental records were kept for disciplining, were all tasks which required a nuanced understanding of imperial responsibilities and lines of authority. Any given issue potentially required consultation with various departments and officials in Melbourne, Sydney and/or London.25

The question of how Britain’s administrators negotiated this bureaucratic maze in such a technically constrained era has confronted imperial historians for generations. For La Trobe and the military garrison in Port Phillip in the late 1830s and 1840s, successful negotiation of this process was subject to the ability to persevere and learn what you could along the way, euphemistically referred to at the time as the British skill at ‘muddling- through’. The military garrison of the district continued to undertake the duties of state, the most pressing of which continued to be its constabulary function, while conforming to its regimen of rotating troops in and out of the Port Phillip district every two years or so. The soldiers of the King’s Own were eventually replaced by soldiers from the 28th (North Gloucestershire) Regiment and, in turn, by a rifle company from the 80th (Staffordshire) Regiment in 1842, commanded by Captain Lewis. In December 1838 the unannounced arrival of four American men-of-war at Port Jackson alerted military authorities in Sydney to the vulnerability of all Australasian colonial outposts to seaward attack, and a small battery of guns was established at Point Gellibrand, near the tip of the Williamstown peninsula. Smaller military contingents were occasionally detached from Port Phillip further afield in support of specialist tasks such as the survey of Mitchellstown, or to locations where colonial authorities believed trouble was brewing between squatters and Indigenous groups. By the early 1840s, comparable detachments had been dispatched to Geelong and Portland for similar purposes.26 In 1844, the 58th (Rutherlandshire) Regiment replaced the 80th and in 1846 a larger contingent of the 99th (Wiltshire) Regiment arrived amid controversy surrounding the considerable size of the garrison appointed to serve in the district. In addition to garrison duties, such troops were still employed in policing the

25 Ross Curnow, ‘Ruminations Upon Regional Administration in 19th Century New South Wales’, J.J. Eddy and J.R. Nethercote (ed.), in Towards National Administration: Studies in Australian Administrative History, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1994, pp. 10-11. 26 Nicholls, The Colonial Volunteers: The Defence Forces of the Australian Colonies – 1836-1901, p. 3.

16 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

district, preserving order, preventing conflict with Indigenous groups, attending as guard or escort at public functions, and performing other routine duties.27

By the early 1840s, La Trobe was increasingly concerned with the issue of public order in the city of Melbourne. Sectarian tensions between Protestant and Catholic sections of the large Irish community resulted in a series of riots between 1843 and 1846, necessitating the deployment of additional imperial troops from New South Wales.28 The management of these events highlighted further the limitations of the administrative decision-making process for colonial authorities in Port Phillip. Growing tension in the community mid-way through 1846 gave cause for the Lord Mayor of Melbourne, Sir James Frederick Palmer, to address a memorandum to the Governor of New South Wales, Sir George Gipps, highlighting the City Council’s concern over law and order, suggesting more garrison troops were needed. Gipps referred the matter to the Colonial Office in London. Lord Earl Grey, the new Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, responded in November 1846 rejecting the request for additional troops. Grey was unaware that in July of that year, authorities in Melbourne had narrowly avoided a serious clash between heavily armed groups of opposing factions from the large Irish settler community within the city. Matters were only brought under control after a state of martial law was declared and the heavily outnumbered soldiers of the 80th Regiment took control of the city with the agreement of both protesting groups. It is difficult to know if knowledge of the events of July would have altered Lord Grey’s decision to assign additional troops to the Australian colonies, for his response left the responsibility for further management of the issue in the hands of the New South Wales legislature. Authorities in Sydney had already, belatedly, approved the sending of additional troops from the 99th Regiment and so the matter was resolved locally.

The 1846 riots exposed a key point of concern for colonial administrators in Port Phillip; the lack of a responsive means to reinforce the military and security mechanism within the district at short notice. The issue would become a persistent point of tension between authorities in Melbourne and those in Sydney and London. The centralised nature

27 For further detail of the roles, functions and regiments that came to Port Phillip during this period, see the Argus, 28 July 1934, p. 9. This article, along with others appeared in Victorian newspapers frequently in 1934- 35 as the centenary of white settlement in Victoria was commemorated. 28 This role was fulfilled by elements of the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment based in Sydney. Significant detail concerning the riots and their impact for the imperial authorities can be found in Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’, pp. 9-16.

17 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

of the military decision making process in the colonies often resulted in local concerns, particularly those relating to the disposition of resources, being deferred to London for consideration. One effect of this circumstance was an increasing emphasis by La Trobe and his growing group of public administrators on seeking local solutions to the resourcing problem. Throughout the 1840s there were several efforts made in Port Phillip district to raise a self-sustaining civil volunteer militia force, similar to those that were gaining in popularity in Britain and in the North American colonies. One notable scheme included an attempt to enrol freed convicts from Van Diemen’s Land, another to recruit a body of soldiers from the district’s Indigenous inhabitants.29 Ultimately the success of these initiatives in Port Phillip district was to be a ways off. It would take sustained political reform and a sense of national necessity before the Victorian public signed up to the need for a home grown means of military defence.

The decade of the 1840s saw significant change in Port Phillip district. Steady immigration to Melbourne throughout the 1840s brought with it an emergent sense of political self-awareness. Growing numbers of urban labourers and professionals in Melbourne identifying with liberal political movements in Britain, America and across Europe added a cosmopolitan flavour to the growing community. Newly arrived immigrants often brought with them news and ideas of the Chartist and Socialist movements. In addition, the raising of the reserve price of land from five to twelve shillings per acre in 1839 had so enraged pastoralists and landowners in the Port Phillip district, and elsewhere in New South Wales, that the first mutterings of self-determination began to be heard in the Australian colonies. In response to public calls for greater autonomy, the government of Sir Robert Peel, passed the Government Act in 1842, providing for a new and revised Legislative Council in New South Wales. Comprising twelve nominees and twenty-four members elected from male property owners, six of the elected men came from Port Phillip district, giving the district its first taste of political self- determination.30

The issue of self-determination and governance in the colonies was by now part of a broader dialogue concerning colonial self-determination. Debate over the character of

29 For details concerning the Van Diemen’s Land scheme see: Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria 1836-1900’, p. 15. For details concerning attempts to recruit Indigenous soldiers, see: Grace Hendy-Pooley, ‘Defenders and Defences of Australia’, Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 1, Part 7, Sydney, 1903, p. 112. 30 Winston McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1979, p. 32.

18 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

Britain’s Empire and the political development of its colonies had been looming since the American War of Independence. Armed insurrections in France, Haiti, Ireland and the Canadian colonies over the last half century had many liberals in Britain, and across the English speaking colonies, asking about the political, economic and not to mention, moral sustainability of Empire.31 It had been a rebellion in the Canadian colonies in 1837 that had sparked this most recent outbreak of imperial introspection. While the most pressing and immediate matters in Upper and Lower Canada were quickly addressed through the dispatch of Lord Durham as political emissary and eventual Governor General of the Canadian colonies, these events had resulted in greater political autonomy for Canadians. Lord Durham’s report into the matter would allude to the idea of responsible government.32

As a theory, the concept of responsible government rested on the assumption that any process designed to give greater political autonomy to the colonies could only ever eventuate in those colonies becoming self-governing. Accompanying arguments about the need for a new constitutional relationship with the colonies was the added incentive for many in the free trade camp, that with self-government came the responsibility of free peoples to defend themselves. A Parliamentary select committee, chaired by Lord Durham, had reported that eighty-seven percent of the total cost (out of a total of two million pounds) of maintaining Britain’s military overseas, was born by the imperial government.33 If the economic incentives of self-government were evident to many in Whitehall, the process of achieving it was somewhat more opaque. Issues such as the practical means by which developing nationhood was to be achieved, the mechanisms needed to establish autonomous administration, how long it should take, and what needed to occur along the way were rarely resolved during Parliamentary and other discussions on the issue.34 The policy received lukewarm responses from Prime Minister William Melbourne and Lord Russell, the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. For Russell, who presided over a

31 For details concerning early debate over Britain’s Empire and the American Revolution, see Randolph Adams, Political Ideals of the American Revolution, 3rd ed., New York, Barnes & Noble, pp. 65-83. For details concerning this debate in Britain the mid-nineteenth century see Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid- Nineteenth Century, p. 81. 32 Lord Durham’s report, Report on the affairs of British North America, was first published in February 1839. It recommended that Upper and Lower Canada be united into a single colony, that Britain increase immigration to contain French influence and that the concept of responsible government be adopted whereby the Governor General would be a figurehead and a ‘Legislative Assembly’ would assume a greater role in determining the internal affairs of state. See Ged Martin, The Durham Report: A Critical Essay, Cambridge University Press, New York, 1972, pp. 42-73. 33 Nicholls, The Colonial Volunteers, p. 5. 34 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, pp. 92-3.

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series of Whig governments in Britain (1846-1852 and 1865-1866) that oversaw the issue, the central dilemma associated with such notions was that it might potentially place colonial Governors in impossible positions. A Governor presiding over a colony with responsible government could theoretically receive advice from his local ministers that contradicted direction from London - what then?35

The ramifications of the policy of self-government for colonies such as Victoria went further and deeper than the issues of political separation from Britain; they raised questions about the development of indigenous and autonomous systems of local administration, effective governance as well as defence and security issues. Such changes brought about the need to completely redefine the bureaucratic model for colonial administration. Lines of authority needed to be redrawn, interdepartmental coordination and new judicial, legal and financial systems established. Not only did a system of government need to be agreed upon, but the very architecture that underpinned its mechanism to function needed to be built from scratch. While most contemporary commentators agreed that the power of the executive could continue to be exercised through the Governor, the exact nature of the relationship between the Governor and the elected ministers was subject to a range of interpretations, which often inspired heated debate. A system for managing this potential point of tension needed to be settled upon, as did the means of achieving coordination and control between executive departments without the direct involvement of the Governor’s office. So too, the requirement and means to submit the actions of the executive to the legislature for scrutiny, especially where matters of finance were involved. Not only did this function need to occur, it would need to occur in advance. Without the presentation of regular, accurate and detailed budgetary estimates for the government as a whole, as well as for individual departments, effective financial mechanisms for controlling government spending would cease, along with any pretence of effective independent government.36

Ever since the election of the Whig government, led by John Russell in July 1846, there had existed amongst imperial administrators in London a drive for economic austerity with respect to the cost of the colonies. The drain on the British Treasury of British garrisons abroad in 1846-1847 was one third of the total cost of the army’s budget,

35 Ibid, p. 112. 36 Ibid, pp. 157-9.

20 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

while at the same time the army and navy combined, accounted for roughly seventy-three percent of the national expenditure, excluding debt services.37 In November, Lord Grey at the Colonial Office wrote to Sir Charles FitzRoy, Governor of New South Wales, and Governor La Trobe about a War Office initiative to transfer the ownership and ongoing running costs of various imperial military facilities to the government of New South Wales. This was followed by the decision to transfer the whole of the 58th Regiment, nine hundred troops in total, to New Zealand. The latter decision came as a consequence of mounting pressure in New Zealand to deal with the increasing resistance from the Maori population and a growing perception in London that imperial garrison duties in New South Wales essentially amounted to policing responsibilities.38 Grey further informed FitzRoy in late 1849 that instead of transferring ownership of the newly built Victoria Barracks in Sydney to the New South Wales government, imperial authorities would lease the existing Barracks to the colonial government. If the New South Wales government wished to keep an imperial garrison force in-situ it would need to pay for it.39

By the end of the 1840s the policy of responsible government was now de rigueur in London, and on 5 August 1850, the Australian Colonies Government Act became law. Its effect was to give Victoria (along with Van Diemen’s Land and South Australia) its own Legislative Council and control of its own judicial system, local government and the right to fix its own tariff scales.40 Along with a new system of self-government came a new name, replacing the title of Port Phillip district with Victoria. The appointment of a new Legislative Executive saw the promotion of Captain William Lonsdale to the position of Colonial Secretary, a decision by La Trobe that was not popular, one contemporary news article describing Lonsdale as ‘weak and wanting capacity’.41 These public views were tempered by the opinion of Latrobe, now officially titled Lieutenant Governor, that Lonsdale’s experience in local official affairs was considerable. The reality of the situation was, however, that the limitations imposed by Victoria’s geographic and administrative isolation were, and would continue to remain, a factor with regard to the paucity of administrative talent supporting local governance. Matters of defence and security

37 Preston, Canada and Imperial Defence, p. 23. 38 Dispatch from Grey to FitzRoy, dated 24 November 1846, copy contained in dispatch from Pakington to La Trobe, dated 14 May 1852, Victorian Parliamentary Papers (VPP), 1853. 39 Dispatches from Grey to La Trobe and FitzRoy dated; 4 Mar 1848, 01 Jun 1848 and 21 Nov 1849, copies contained in dispatch from Pakington to La Trobe, dated 14 May 1852, VPP, 1853. 40 McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, p. 47. 41 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 1, p. 341.

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remained the responsibility of the Lieutenant Governor (until a Governor was appointed in 1855), who still relied almost exclusively on the small garrison of imperial troops and colonial constables stationed in Melbourne. When, in 1851, the first discoveries of alluvial gold were made in Central Victoria, the unpreparedness of already stretched authorities to meet the challenges of internal and external security quickly became apparent.

Of the challenges confronting La Trobe’s administration during the first twenty years of settlement in Victoria, defence of the Colony and the law and order problem were possibly the two greatest issues that he was forced to contend with. Due to the limited resources to deal with these problems, matters were further complicated because these two issues were also matters that La Trobe could do the least about without significant assistance of authorities in London. Amidst the unprecedented and sudden explosion in population that followed the first discoveries of gold at Warrandyte and Clunes in mid- 1851, were a plethora of social, economic and political problems that influenced the Colony’s security situation in profound ways.42 Contemporary accounts attest to only forty-four soldiers and two police constables being available in the Colony in January 1852, a time when the number of migrants making their way to Victoria had increased sixfold.43 Desertion rates amongst soldiers and government employees were increasing and replacement volunteers could not be found from within the local community. La Trobe sought assistance in the first instance from the Governors of New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land, who provided thirty soldiers and one hundred and thirty ‘ticket of leave’ volunteers to act as an impromptu and ultimately ineffectual police militia. Not only did early Victorian authorities need to confront the issue of maintaining law and order amidst a rapidly expanding community, they also needed to answer the increasing demands for the provision of the security of banks, ships and other official facilities charged with the storage of gold and cash now flowing from the diggings. The number of vessels visiting Port Phillip Bay expanded exponentially, and dozens of ships remained at anchor, unable to replace crewmembers that had disappeared in search of gold.44 As a consequence, in December 1851, La Trobe wrote directly to Lord Grey at the Colonial Office, requesting a

42 Victoria increased in population from 87,000 in 1850 to 540,000 by 1861, between 1851 and 1853 the population increased from 97,489 to 222,436 and revenue increased during the same period from £392,000 to £3.2 million. See Statistical Abstract, p. 193-215, VPP, 1866, National Library of Australia (NLA), SRf 355.009945 V645. 43 Alexander Sutherland, Victoria and its Metropolis: Past and Present, Vol. 1, McCarron, Bird, Melbourne, 1888, p. 318; Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, vol. 1, p. 344. 44 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 16.

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Regiment of imperial troops to guard the gaols, banks, port facilities and men-of-war loaded with gold, at anchor in the Bay.45

By 1852, law and order was the most significant public policy issue confronting La Trobe and the authorities in Melbourne. Questions over the responsiveness of official action began to bring the legitimacy of government authority into question as public discord over the issue rose in both Melbourne and on the gold fields. The slow speed of communication with London complicated matters further. While the length of time to send and receive official communiqués with London had improved with the advent of steam powered shipping and faster routes, reducing the overall time involved from one hundred and thirty to seventy days, time delays still caused major dilemmas for La Trobe and his government, often desperate to hear news of their repeated requests for additional military resources.

The whole issue came to a head on the night of 1-2 April 1852 when an armed gang, numbering twenty, boarded the three masted barque Nelson, lying at anchor off Williamstown. The assailants overpowered the sleeping crew and made off with 8,000oz. of gold, valued at £30,000.46 The stolen loot was never recovered. Clearly frustrated by the turn of events, La Trobe again wrote to John Pakington, Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, on 8 April 1852. La Trobe’s despatch reiterated the seriousness of the security issues confronting the Colony and emphasised the fact that there were forty-seven fully rigged vessels in the Bay, most of them devoid of crews and many with large deposits of gold aboard. He reminded Pakington of the close mercantile and economic interests that Britain and Victoria shared, and the vulnerability of such interests given the prevailing circumstances in which Melbourne’s port was all but completely devoid of defences.47 Pakington replied on 14 May, advising that the War Office would shortly be dispatching the 59th Regiment from Hong Kong to the Colony. The choice of regiment was later changed to the 40th (Second Somersetshire) Regiment, which according to the War Office was better placed to depart at short notice. Pakington was quick to make the point that the provision of facilities, barracks and additional pay and allowances to defray the additional

45 La Trobe’s dispatch (No. 57), dated 17 December 1851 is cited in Pakington’s reply dated 14 May 1852, VPP 1852. 46 The Nelson Robbery as it was dubbed by the media was the largest robberies of gold to occur in the nineteenth century, see the Argus, 3 April 1852, p. 4; and the Argus, 5 Apr 1852, pp. 2-3. 47 Dispatch from La Trobe to Pakington, dated 8 April 1852, VPP 1853.

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living costs associated with local inflation as a result of the gold rush would need to be met by the Victorian government.48

The Nelson robbery proved to be a catalyst for a series of events that had a resounding influence on subsequent decisions in relation to defence issues in Victoria. Public concern over law and order in the Colony had culminated by early 1852 in a strong and vocal political backlash directed at the British government’s policy of ‘transportation’ to Australia.49 Whilst lobby groups such as the Australian League pushed for the ending of convict transportation, campaigners in Victoria pushed for tighter restrictions on entry to the Colony by former convicts. Thousands of conditionally pardoned convicts from Van Diemen’s Land and Norfolk Island who had flocked to Victoria in the wake of the gold discoveries were blamed for the rising level of crime in Melbourne and on the gold fields. The Nelson affair thus served to vindicate and strengthen public sentiment over the need for government action. In response to news of the robbery, the Australian League called for both the passing of local anti-transportation laws and the banning of the entry to former convicts into Victoria, in direct contravention of Crown laws authorising unfettered travel for freed convicts within all Australian colonies.50 La Trobe, with precious few resources to manage the situation, assented to the passage of the legislation to this effect and, as a gesture of contrition, wrote to the Secretary of War and the Colonies, explaining his actions and further stating his case for additional imperial resources to protect Victoria from external attack and internal subversion.

The Nelson robbery also compounded growing public concern over the vulnerability of Port Phillip Bay to external attack. It was widely felt that the Port of Melbourne, which generally contained 40,000 tons of shipping and gold deposits in the order of £5 million, would be an attractive target for a hostile raiding force intending to do

48 Dispatch from Pakington to La Trobe, dated 14 May 1852, VPP 1853. 49 The issue of former convicts being used as cheap labour in Victoria had been festering since 1845, when Lord Stanley, the Secretary for War and the Colonies, organized a new scheme of penal discipline which saw approximately 1,700 freed ‘Pentonvillain’s’ (dubbed in recognition of Pentonville reformatory prison where most had come from) arrive in Port Phillip district between 1844-50. See the Argus, 20 Nov 1852, p.2; and McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, p. 44. 50 The pressure of these events is clearly evident in La Trobe’s handling of this matter. By supporting the passage of the Victorian Convict Prevention Act, he was in effect overriding both the Crown’s legislation relating to the rights of freed convicts, as well as the authority of Her Majesty’s Government. There are few other examples to be found across the Empire of such audacity by someone as junior as La Trobe in this instance. His actions obviously had the desired effect, and the matter was soon overtaken by events in the Crimea. The Act was never repealed and was to remain on the statute book of Victoria. See Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, pp. 126-30.

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harm to British economic interests. Legislation was soon proposed by Victorian politician John Fawkner, in the Victorian Legislative Council, proposing that the Lieutenant Governor apply to the imperial government for the services of military engineers to assist with the design and construction of a harbour defence scheme.51 The proposal was met with broad political and public support, and a request was sent to the Colonial Office. The harbour defence issue had been a major theme of La Trobe’s original request to imperial administrators back in December 1851, when he had requested that the Royal Navy establish a permanent presence in the Colony.52 The Admiralty’s efforts to respond had been slow and finally in October 1852, Pakington wrote to La Trobe to confirm that the Royal Navy would be dispatching HMS Electra, a small third class sloop to Australian waters, specifically to serve in Port Phillip Bay.53 When the vessel had not arrived by March 1853, La Trobe sent another pointed despatch to the Colonial and War Office highlighting his increasing frustration over what he and other officials in Melbourne perceived as excessive prevarication by London over security issues in Victoria.54 The Electra eventually arrived in April 1853.

The impatience of La Trobe is understandable in the context of his immediate situation and the pressure he and the authorities were under from local constituents. In October 1852, four companies of the 40th Regiment had arrived in Melbourne. A shortage of labour in the city brought about by the gold rush meant that suitable barracks had not been constructed. The soldiers camped in a vacant plot of land near the Benevolent Asylum until the construction of purpose built facilities on the corner of Little Lonsdale and Spencer streets, known as ‘Iron Barracks’, could be completed. But their numbers were still not sufficient to meet the needs of La Trobe and his government. A petition was subsequently presented to the Governor of New South Wales for the release of the two remaining company’s of the 40th Regiment, stationed in Sydney, but the request was rejected out of hand. The troops that were available to authorities in Melbourne were quickly put to use as gold-escorts and as supplementary police, but La Trobe had nothing in reserve with which to manage emergencies. Meanwhile, the unpopularity of government’s policy over the regulation and licensing of gold prospecting was generating a level of public dissent, which increasingly alarmed authorities in Melbourne. However

51 Victorian Hansard, Legislative Council, Victorian Parliamentary Debates (VPD), Session 1852-53, Vol. 1, p. 169. 52 Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, p. 125. 53 Dispatch from Pakington to La Trobe, dated 18 September 1852, VPP 1853. 54 Dispatch from La Trobe to Pakington, dated 18 March 1853, VPP 1853.

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unpopular the gold licensing policy was, La Trobe recognised the need to be able to back it up with appropriate and effective military force. Law and order issues in the city of Melbourne also remained problematic. In March 1853, another brazen robbery, made famous in 1884 by William Strut’s vivid depiction of the event in his painting ‘Bushrangers on St Kilda Road’; took place when a posse of five thieves took control of St. Kilda road for several hours, robbing every passing pedestrian until one victim managed to escape on horseback into the city and raise the alarm. The gang, none-the-less, made their escape, leaving some twenty hapless victims tied to trees.55

In August 1853 the situation grew more serious still when public protesting minors, led by the Anti-Gold Licence Association, numbering between ten and twelve thousand in Bendigo, prompted La Trobe to commit the Colony’s entire military garrison to the area in a show of force. With the troops in Bendigo, authorities in Melbourne were forced to rely on the small contingent of Royal Marines aboard the Electra to mount guard over Melbourne gaol as La Trobe continued to press his case for additional troops. In an unprecedented effort to seek the support of his fellow Governors in Sydney and Hobart, La Trobe dispatched Lieutenant Clarke with a steamer to Hobart to bring back with him as many troops as authorities in Hobart could spare. Clarke returned to Melbourne with nearly three hundred men from the 99th (Lanarkshire) Regiment who remained in the Colony for three months until other arrangements could be made for the garrisoning of additional troops in the Colony.56 La Trobe’s actions at last caught the attention of authorities in Sydney who finally assented to the sending of additional troops to Victoria. By the time armed confrontation occurred at Eureka over a year later in November 1854, the imperial garrison in Victoria numbered over 1,300. Importantly, these figures included the General Headquarters Commanding all imperial troops in the Australian colonies, which had relocated from Sydney to Melbourne in August 1854.57

In an acknowledgment of the seriousness of the situation confronting authorities in Melbourne, Major General Sir Robert Nickle, the general officer commanding Britain’s military forces in the Australasian colonies, wrote to the War Office suggesting that his

55 While there are many accounts of this incident, perhaps the most detailed of this and other Bush Ranging incidents of the era is contained in John Copper, A History of St Kilda from its First Settlement to a City and After, Vol. 2, Printers Pty Ltd, Melbourne, 1931, pp. 126-130. 56 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 22; see also Sutherland, Victoria and its Metropolis, Vol. 1, p. 353. 57 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 22.

26 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

headquarters be relocated to Melbourne.58 The Duke of Newcastle at the Colonial Office quickly saw the pragmatic merit of the proposal, which provided imperial authorities with a means to reinforce the Victorian garrison. The decision to move the headquarters also provided London with a degree of reassurance that its most experienced officers in the Australasian colonies would be immediately to hand if matters on the goldfields were to escalate out of control.59 The decision also capitalised on a recent change to the official mail service route, which now made Melbourne the first port of call for correspondence coming from London.60 While the importance of this step should not be overstated, the decision did set about establishing an important precedent for the cementing of relationships between Victorian colonial authorities in Melbourne and military authorities in Britain. For the next fifteen years the relationship between successive Victorian governments and the British Army’s senior representative in the Australian colonies formed an important basis for both the immediate management of defence matters in Victoria, as well as developing a growing appreciation of defence issues for a generation of Victorian political leaders and government officials. Issues such as the organisation of the Colony’s defence forces, the provision of advice on the establishment, structure and running of a volunteer military organisation, guidance as to the construction of defensive works, and an integrated scheme of defence for the Colony were all important aspects that benefited from the presence of the headquarters.

By August 1854, when Nickle and his headquarters staff arrived in Melbourne, the military strength of the garrison in Victoria numbered nearly eleven hundred, including all six companies of the 40th Regiment and the headquarters and two companies of the 12th (East Suffolk) Regiment. Nickle and his subordinates quickly set about improving the means by which the garrison could undertake its growing duties in support of local authorities. This included the establishment of a company of eighty handpicked mounted infantrymen, known as the ‘Mounted Military Corps’, to protect the transportation of gold, and to conduct road patrols along the major thoroughfares connecting Melbourne to the goldfields. This unit also escorted prisoners and provided other vital assistance to local authorities such the tracking down of bushrangers and assistance in the suppression of the armed rebellion at Eureka a short time after its establishment. In 1857 the unit was

58 Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, p. 127. 59 Dispatch from Newcastle to La Trobe, dated 2 January 1854, VPP 1853-4. 60 Nicholls, The Colonial Volunteers, p. 12.

27 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

subsumed into the Colony’s police force.61 Although still a politically sensitive issue, by the time of Eureka, the police had the criminal problem largely in hand. The surge of military support in early 1854, and the arrival of a detachment of volunteer English police, along with the Mounted Military Corps, had all greatly assisted in this process. Both the decision to transfer the additional troops to Victoria and the direct involvement of Major General Nickle in events at Eureka, ensured that matters at the stockade in December 1854 were handled without significant military difficulty.

The sequence of events culminating in the sudden reinforcement of imperial troops to Victoria was a direct response to the progressive failure of colonial and imperial authorities to respond to the escalating law and order problems across the Colony during the early 1850s. In such circumstances, local colonial and military authorities were forced to prioritise internal security matters over those of external defence, based on the immediacy of the problem that confronted them. By the time that the Victoria Constitution Act had passed through the Houses of Parliament in Britain and received Royal Ascent on 16 July 1855, the issue of the resourcing of security forces had been addressed, and further political dissidence on the goldfields averted through the efforts of Major General Nickle.62 But local authorities had been forced to take a calculated risk, at a time when the implications for Victorians of a conflict between Britain, France and Russia in Central Asia, was uncertain. As unlikely a prospect as a conflict with Russia reaching Victorian shores was; public expectation of imperial protection, both from the Royal Navy on the high seas and ashore from its military, still existed. Public sentiment, though, was fickle. Failure by imperial authorities to provide those means of protection, or to convey a sense that such a means of protection could be provided when needed, went to the very heart of British imperial legitimacy in the colonies. But, in the rush to transfer the responsibility of governance to colonial authorities there had been little attention or time devoted to consideration of such details. Because of the pressure on authorities in Melbourne and London caused by the situations in both Ballarat and Central Asia at the time, work on the introduction of the new constitution had been rushed by both entities. Only cursory attention had been devoted to the design of the enduring mechanisms and systems to

61 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p 21. 62 The new constitution defined the Colony’s geographical boundaries, conferred full control over lands and land revenue to the colonial legislature, and gave it the power to pass constitutional amendment Bills. At the same time it confirmed the Crown’s right to issue instructions to the Governor; for detail of the passing of the Victorian Constitution Act, and its political implications see McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, pp. 53-55.

28 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

undertake the business of government. The effect of this state of affairs for Victorians would remain evident for another twenty-eight years.

29 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter One

30 Chapter Two – 1855-1870

Whilst the first decade and a half of settlement in Port Phillip district saw little official or public attention afforded to issues of external defence, the next two decades were witness to a reversal of this situation. By 1870, when British garrison troops withdrew from Victoria, defence management concerns were almost exclusively focussed on the premise of defending the Colony from external attack. This change in thinking was prompted by the sudden and tumultuous social and economic changes wrought by the discovery of gold in the early 1850s. It was also the result of a range of evolving international circumstances, such as the growing number of Britain’s strategic competitors extending their influence into the Pacific. Another issue was the affects brought about by recent advances in the technological means of communicating via telegraph, another was the rapid development of naval and military technologies closely associated with steam power and mass production of the industrial revolution. For many Victorians with newly acquired and significant economic and business interests to protect, the absence of a strong harbour defence scheme or the presence of a strong local naval force were matters that influenced both local and international investor confidence. As the decades progressed, such issues became increasingly entwined in political debate in Victoria. The challenge confronting Victorian authorities during this period was how to rapidly establish an understanding of the Colony’s defence requirements and then introduce the appropriate means to achieve its stated objectives. This needed to be done against a backdrop of changing circumstances before Britain withdrew the security assurance provided by the presence of its military garrison.

In September 1853, the annexation of New Caledonia by France provided ample evidence to those that had been lobbying for greater defence capabilities in the Colony that something tangible needed to be done. Indeed, circulating rumours of possible annexation had formed part of Governor La Trobe’s reasoning in 1851 when he had originally written to London requesting additional military resources to defend Port Phillip Bay. The request had prompted London to dispatch Captain Ross and a detachment of Royal Engineers based in India to visit the Colony and advise local authorities on the best means of protecting Port Phillip Bay from external attack. The request had been sat on for some A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter Two

time in London though before receiving the support of General Sir John Burgoyne, the Inspector General for Fortifications at the War Office, after he received credible intelligence that the rumours about French intentions in the Pacific were accurate.63 The issue of external defence rapidly developed further momentum in Melbourne when news of a possible war with Russia in Central Asia began to circulate in 1853.

As the southern hemisphere summer approached in late 1853, newspaper articles from Europe began to arrive in Melbourne speculating that war between Russia and Britain in the Crimea was imminent.64 Local newspaper commentary began to link the lack of imperial government responsiveness to repeated Victorian government requests for military assistance, with the necessity to consider a wholly Victorian means of defence. On 31 December 1853, the Argus reported under the caption ‘Probability of War’, that in-light of the absence of sufficient imperial military and naval resources to repel potential adversaries, that the citizens of the Colony ‘ought to learn to depend upon ourselves, and that any other [means of] defence is delusive and ineffectual’.65 The political undertones contained in such commentary were calculated to generate a sense of frustration for colonial authorities already sensitive to such sentiments in light of the growing civil unrest on the goldfields. Under pressure, the Victorian executive appointed a select committee of the Legislative Council in January 1854 to take evidence on matters pertaining to the defence of the Colony.66 By the 3rd March the committee had completed its report. It recommended that a further request be made to London for the provision of additional naval vessels, military personnel and equipment and that a harbour defence capability be established in accordance with the advice received from Captain Ross and his detachment of Royal Engineers. It also concluded that the establishment of a local volunteer defence corps ought to proceed immediately.67

It was during this period of heightened attention on security matters that La Trobe was replaced as Lieutenant Governor. Having submitted his resignation in late 1852, it had taken officials at the Colonial Office over a year to select his replacement. In the meantime,

63 Dispatch from Newcastle to La Trobe, dated 25 May 1853, VPP 1854; see also John Bock, The Australian Station: A History of the Royal Navy in the South West Pacific 1821-1913, UNSW Press, Sydney, 1991, p. 102; and Miller, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 37. 64 See the Argus, 31 December 1853, pp. 1-2; and the Argus, 02 January 1854, p. 5. 65 The Argus, 31 December 1853, pp. 1-2. 66 Report from the Select Committee on the Defence of the Colony, dated 3 March 1854, VPP 1853-4. 67 Ibid.

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the publicised law and order problems and attendant economic, social and political challenges, had given the Colony a reputation as being one the most difficult colonial posts to fill. Sir Charles Hotham, a former Royal Navy officer with strong diplomatic and naval credentials was the eventual choice in Whitehall. A popular choice with the Colonial Secretary, the Duke of Newcastle, Hotham’s appointment was widely met with public support from the media in London and Melbourne alike. Hotham, however, appeared to have been less enthusiastic about the posting, applying to the Royal Navy for command of a vessel after the announcement of his appointment had been made public. His efforts to re-enter the navy failed, and Hotham eventually assumed the post in June 1854, having travelled out to the Colony aboard the steam auxiliary ship Queen of the South, commanded by Captain William Henry Norman.68

As a former Royal Navy officer, Hotham was quick to appreciate the need for the Colony to establish a coherent mechanism of defence that was both responsive to Victoria’s strategic circumstances as well as meeting the expectations of London. Efforts had been underway as early as November 1852 to secure the approval for a line of funding for the purchase of a steam powered vessel to support routine administrative tasks around Port Phillip Bay. A sum of £11,000 had been identified in the forward budget estimates and in early 1854 a retired Royal Navy Commander, William Lockyer, was approached to act as the Colony’s agent for the purpose of purchasing a suitable vessel.69 Captain Ross in his earlier report on the defences of Port Phillip had already advised that the most effective means of protecting the Bay was the use of two steam powered ironclad guard ships. The Victorian Select Committee report endorsed this recommendation, stating that such a vessel be permanently assigned to protect the Bay and that a series of gun fortifications be established at the heads of Port Phillip Bay. Hotham had the presence of mind to use this advice as a means of convincing the Legislative Assembly to amend its original 1852 decision to purchase a steam powered administrative vessel. Instead, Hotham persuaded the parliament to convert these funds into the purchase of a steam-powered man-of-war.70 The Treasury was directed to release an additional £19,000 for the funding of the purchase, increasing the total funds available for the purchase of the ship to £30,000. William Lockyer in London was subsequently directed to change the order to a vessel of war, and

68 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’ p. 49. 69 Ibid. 70 Despite the Royal Navy’s presence at Port Jackson, the Colony of New South Wales commissioned the local construction of a gunboat to assist in the defence of Sydney harbour. The vessel was named The Spitfire and launched in April 1855. It was the first naval vessel of any British crown colony.

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work started immediately at the shipyard of Young, Son and Magnay at Limestone on the Thames to build the first warship built in England to the order of a British Colony.71

The other key recommendation of the 1854 Victorian Select Committee’s report, the establishment of a locally based Volunteer Corps, was welcomed widely throughout the community. It was widely known that throughout Melbourne and Geelong, informal public meetings were regularly occurring in response to the media reporting a possible war with Russia. The purpose of such meetings was to teach concerned residents the basic art of military drill and marksmanship. The meetings were technically outlawed, but as anticipation grew throughout 1854 that the Select Committee would recommend such a Volunteer system, these meetings grew in popularity. Both the Colonial and War Office’s in London were quick to endorse the proposal, having provided information to Hotham in September 1854 that a well-armed Russian naval squadron had been sighted near Manila in April. Suspicion that the force had headed south into Australasian waters further exacerbated concerns in Melbourne and London that the Victorian Colony was still ill- prepared to defend itself against a determined attack. The Legislative Assembly in Melbourne eventually passed the ‘Volunteer Statute’, after a final round of prevarication, in November of 1854. The formation and subsequent role of the Victorian Volunteer Corps came to represent an important component of the fabric of military life in Victoria over the next century.72 Its existence and function became a cornerstone of the defence plan for the Colony through the 1870s and early 1880s, once the imperial garrison was withdrawn. Initially limited to a strength of 2,000 volunteers, over the next year the movement added a mounted infantry company (requiring a subscription fee of two guineas per annum,) and a volunteer artillery regiment.73

Despite a growing impetus on external defence issues due to the French annexation of New Caledonia and war in the Crimea, it would once again be domestic security matters that would come to define Governor Hotham’s period in office as Lieutenant Governor. Since the departure of La Trobe in May 1854, relations between government authorities in Melbourne and the miners on the Victorian goldfields had continued to deteriorate. Throughout October and November 1854, public protests and civil unrest associated with the gold licensing issues continued to spread around Ballarat. On 16 November, Hotham

71 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’ p. 49. 72 For further detail see Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes: Citizen Soldiering in Australia 1854-1945, and Marmion, ‘The Victorian Volunteer Force on the Central Victorian Goldfields: 1858-1883’. 73 Miller, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, pp. 72-84

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appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the circumstances surrounding the protestor’s claims, but the situation continued to escalate and ten days later a deputation demanding the release of prospectors previously arrested, forced Hotham into a corner. Despite a series of public overtures about the importance of democratic principles, Hotham privately refused to entertain any ideas of abandoning the mining licensing fee.74 By the end of the month he had formed the view that the crisis was tantamount to a rebellion with corresponding objectives to the Chartist assemblies and protests in Britain of the late 1840s. Hotham took a similar hard line to the authorities in England, reinforcing the imperial forces already in Ballarat, and dispatching Major General Nickle, the Commanding General of all imperial troops in the Australian colonies. Hotham’s exact direction and intent for managing the civil disturbance was not well understood by the officers already in Ballarat, and the infamous exchange between the authorities and protesting miners ensued in early December 1854, before Nickle’s arrival.75

Whatever interpretation the public and imperial administrators took over the management of the events immediately surrounding the bloodshed at the Eureka stockade on 3 December 1854, the seriousness of the events did go some way to vindicating the efforts of La Trobe and other Victorian officials some months earlier in attaining additional military resources in the Colony to manage such a circumstance. The events at Eureka, to some extent, also reaffirmed the decision by Nickle and the War Office to relocate the Headquarters of the Australian imperial garrison to Melbourne in August 1854.76 For his part, Nickle’s intervention and efforts after his arrival in Ballarat, in the immediate aftermath of the armed confrontation, were by many contemporary accounts the single most important factor in determining that no further bloodshed occurred.77 More broadly, the military action at Eureka was also interpreted by many in the colonies and in London as a tangible example of the need for responsible, and representative, government in the Australian colonies sooner, rather than later. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this view was popular amongst many liberals and some senior bureaucrats in London. Herman Merivale, the Permanent-undersecretary at the Colonial Office, went so far as to comment that the

74 Bruce Knox, 'Hotham, Sir Charles (1806–1855)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hotham-sir-charles-3803/text6027, accessed 15 April 2011. 75 Thomas Keneally, Australian Origins to Eureka, vol. 1, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2009, p. 534. 76 For details concerning the detailed events at Eureka and their interpretation see, Justin Corfield and Dorothy Wickham, The Eureka Encyclopedia, Ballarat Heritage Services, 2004, and Molony, Eureka. 77 For further details see Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851-1861, p. 169; Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’ pp. 33-35.

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disturbances on the goldfields provided an opportunity for the Colony’s executive government to prove itself.78 Fallout from the immediate mishandling of events in Ballarat however, was to exact its toll on Hotham.

Elevated from Lieutenant Governor to full Governor status in February 1855, Hotham faced growing scrutiny from London for his handling of the Eureka affair.79 His Colonial Secretary, John Foster, resigned in December 1854 without public explanation and by January 1855, Hotham, after a series of disputes with Parliamentary officials over a series of retrenchments of governmental staff and a refusal to call regular meetings of the Executive Council, suffered a collapse of community support.80 The Governor’s failure in March 1855 to endorse the findings of the Eureka Royal Commission, recommending reform of the mining licence, placed him further at odds with influential figures within the Victorian Executive Council. In July, Hotham was rebuked by the new Secretary of State at the Colonial Office, Sir William Molesworth, over his failure to effectively manage a local review of the proposed constitution for the Colony and his handling of local taxation proposals. This again had placed him at odds with a number of influential Victorian officials such as Hugh Childers, the then Auditor-General in Victoria. By November 1855, under further pressure over his management of the proposed formation of a ministerial government, Hotham submitted his resignation to London. His untimely death one month later due to illness aggravated by his busy schedule came so suddenly, that the administration of the Colony fell to the newly appointed senior military officer commanding British troops in Australia, Major General Edward Macarthur.81

With the conclusion of hostilities in Crimea and the signing of the Paris Peace Treaty on the 30th March 1856, concern over external attack from Russia faded quickly in Victoria. Interest and public support for the volunteer movement soon fell away, and discussion concerning the commitment and funding of the imperial garrison assumed the

78 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 46. 79 The elevation of the position of Lieutenant Governor to full Governor status was undertaken in preparations for the assumption of responsible government due to occur in 1857. 80 Bruce Knox, 'Hotham, Sir Charles (1806–1855)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hotham-sir-charles-3803/text6027, accessed 15 April 2011. 81 Sir Robert Nickle died on 26 May 1855, some suggested as a result of deteriorating health from over- exertion in Ballarat during the disturbances. Public records suggest it was the result of a flu that he contracted whilst opening Melbourne’s gas works. He had applied for leave to England in early 1855 but died in his Upper Jolimont home before his request had been approved see the Argus, 28 May 1855 and Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: 1797-1901, vol. 2, pp. 61-66.

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pattern of discourse akin to the early 1850s. In London the recent reform of the civil service and the military in the wake of the Northcote Trevelyan report, and the events of the Crimean War, led in 1854 to the splitting of the responsibilities of the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies into two distinct Cabinet portfolios. Whilst this arrangement came with the advantage of a single minister responsible for all military matters, it also brought the added complication for colonial governors and governments, who now had no official means of communicating with the minister who was responsible for directing the resources so closely associated with the defence of their colonies. This colonial concern was also shared in London where John Robert Godley, the Assistant Undersecretary for War, highlighted that a War Office without official knowledge or responsibility for local colonial defence conditions, left defence planning in the colonies entirely to the Colonial Office.82 Godley who had previously been active in New Zealand politics, was already well aware of sensitivities in the colonies over the question of defence funding. One of the effects of the new departmental arrangement was a slowly growing awareness in London of this problematic situation.

For Major General Macarthur in Victoria, who had strong connections to the Australian colonies extending back to his early childhood in the 1790s, the inconsistency of policy toward the funding of defence costs in the colonies was a vexed issue.83 His extensive experience in New South Wales as the deputy Adjutant-General, and now as acting Governor in Victoria, made him acutely aware of the problems attached to inconsistent defence arrangements between colonies and the British government. The situation at best, led to confusion, at worst acrimony and recrimination. Macarthur, using his initiative and his new position of influence, wrote to Herman Merivale, the permanent under-secretary at the Colonial Office, in an effort to have the matter addressed.84 Authorities in New South Wales soon followed suit, Governor Sir William Denison suggesting to the Colonial Office that the costs attached to the proposed fortification of Sydney Harbour be defrayed by dividing the burden equally between the imperial and local colonial governments.85 Henry Labouchere, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies

82 Preston, Canada and Imperial Defence, p. 27. 83 Macarthur had undertaken two postings to the Australian colonies with the British Army as well as postings to Canada and Ireland. Prior to commissioning into the 60th Regiment, he had lived in New South Wales for two separate periods (1790-1799 and 1806-1808), his father Captain John Macarthur having served with the New South Wales Corps from 1790, had lived in the Colony until his death in 1834. 84 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century’ p. 202. 85 Ibid.

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forwarded the suggestion to the British service departments, observing that the proposed model for sharing the burden of defence costs might serve as a basis for other self- governing colonies.86 The proposal was eventually rejected by officials in the two service departments, based on the rationale that such arrangements may compromise the ability of Britain’s central government to act independently in the event of a crisis affecting one or more of the colonies abroad.87

The year 1856 marked two other important milestones in the maturing of the Colony’s defence arrangements; the arrival in May of Her Majesty’s Colonial Steam Sloop (HMCSS) Victoria, the Colony’s first naval vessel, and the opening in November of the first full parliament of Victoria. The arrival of the Victoria marked an important first step in the process of acquiring an effective harbour defence capability. Despite little else being done to progress the building of fortifications recommended by Captain Ross in his 1854 report, the acquisition of the Victoria did, if nothing else, provide some tangible evidence to a sceptical Victorian public that the Victorian government were prepared to take the matter of developing a local defence capability seriously.

The opening of the first parliament, marked by a full guard of honour provided by troops of the 40th Regiment, saw the responsibility for overseeing defence matters moved from the office of the Chief Secretary, to the Treasurer’s Department. The decision to place defence issues under the responsibility of the Treasury, was in a large part due to the prevailing view that military matters were by and large an issue for the Colonial Governor to manage in concert with imperial authorities in London. Where defence matters did intersect with colonial government authority, it was generally a question of expenditure associated with payment to the imperial government in costs associated with capital works. The arrangement was also a reflection of the relatively immature state of colonial politics during this period in Victorian history. Colonial governments of the era, Victoria’s included, were small and generally inexperienced across the range of portfolio areas that such governments would quickly need to assemble over the coming decades. Defence issues were no exception, and until such a time when defence matters were the exclusive purview of colonial government, it would be difficult to justify the existence of a minister of state to manage such issues.

86 Ibid. 87 Preston, Canada and Imperial Defence, p. 29.

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Meanwhile in Britain, fallout over the war with Russia was driving concern over the growing economic, political and military influence of a number of European states. Recognised experts on contemporary strategic issues, the likes of General John Fox Burgoyne, the Inspector-General of Fortifications, and Captain Sir John Colomb, a respected naval strategist, argued that whilst Russian interests in Central Asia, the sub- continent and Northern Pacific were often cited as likely theatres for the next war, it was the French threat to the security of the Empire that needed to be checked.88 The size of conscript continental armies, combined with the effects of industrialised growth and associated technological leaps in military and naval hardware, provided ample justification for those imperial strategic thinkers favouring a concentration of force. The advent of the steam-powered man-of-war, it was argued, had increased the degree of difficulty for the Royal Navy in any attempt to blockade European ports. The Royal Navy’s effectiveness in home waters would thus be reduced and it would be harder to prevent a temporary loss of command of the sea. Such a loss of maritime superiority, it followed, rendered Britain even more vulnerable to the European military powers, which were increasing in both size and capability rapidly. The dispersal of military and naval capability, it was argued, had already contributed substantially to the nation’s inefficiency during the Crimea campaign, when France had been on the side of Britain.89 Public fears fed into this milieu. Invasion scares were a regular occurrence in Britain throughout this period and there existed a rich literature in newspapers and chronicles.90

In January 1858, diplomatic tension between Britain and France suddenly deteriorated in the wake of the Orsini affair. French suspicion that the perpetrators of an attempted assassination of Napoleon III were using loopholes in Britain’s legal system for protection created a very real concern in Britain that Bonaparte’s nephew may attempt to use the incident as an opportunity to exploit inadequacies in Britain’s home defence to mount an invasion of the British Isles.91 By March, the government’s management of the

88 John Burgoyne, Popular Fallacies with Regard our Security against Invasion, War Office, London, November 1858. 89 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 184; see also Burgoyne, Popular Fallacies with Regard to our Security against Invasion; and John Colomb, Colonial Defence and Colonial Opinion, 1877. 90 Lawrence James, The Rise and Fall of the British Empire, p. 213. This was also the case in the Australian colonies. A notable example with relevance to Victorian’s entitled The Battle of the Yarra, under the pseudonym old colonist was published in Melbourne in 1883. 91 The Orsini affair was covered extensively in the Victorian press. See the Argus, 11 June 1858, p. 6; and 10 July 1858, p. 6.

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incident had cost Lord Palmerston’s Whig Party power, and privately within Whitehall there was mounting pressure to deliver a defence plan that could effectively protect the country from direct French attack. In May, Sir Henry Barkly, Victoria’s newest Governor, received correspondence from the Colonial Secretary, directing him to prepare for a war with France. The dispatch included further advice from General Burgoyne about how best to proceed in improving the Colony’s defence capabilities in the time available. Enlivened by growing media speculation over the possibility of a European war reaching Victorian shores, public meetings to protest the state of the Colony’s defences once again became a regular occurrence in Melbourne. On 12 July 1858, the Mayor of Melbourne, Mr Henry Walsh, called one such meeting attended by over 2,000 members of the public demanding the government improve the defences of the city and the Colony.92 Barkley responded by appointing a Royal Commission to enquire into the ‘Defences of the Colony’.93 Chaired by Major General Macarthur, the Commission made a series of recommendations regarding the number and disposition of artillery fortifications around Port Phillip Bay, the structure of the Colony’s volunteer rifle corps, the need for an additional artillery battery to augment the imperial garrison, and the need for an eventual replacement for HMCSS Victoria.94

In many respects the Royal Commission’s report raised more issues than it was able to resolve. It identified that the Colony was most vulnerable at Hobson’s Bay, where the existing naval and static shore defense capability was insufficient to stop a determined naval or seaborne attack from a well-equipped European power. It also confirmed that the imperial garrison, sitting at a strength of four infantry companies, was not sufficient to protect the Colony in the event that suck an attack materialized.95 Indeed, the commission concluded that existing garrison would be insufficient even to man the static shore defenses that would be required to effectively protect Victoria against a determined attack. The report went on to consider a range of militia and mobilization models of other defence schemes including those of California, New York, the Channel Islands, and Switzerland. The Commission recommended that a volunteer militia of no less than 3,000 men, comprising artillery, engineers, cavalry, infantry and naval personnel be established.96 If

92 The Argus, 13 July 1859, p. 5. 93 Defence of the Colony: Report of the Commissioners, Commission, p. 3, VPP 1858-59. 94 Ibid, Report, pp. 5-9. 95 Ibid, p. 8. 96 The term Militia, as distinct from volunteer, force is important because whilst both imply part-time military service, militia forces in the Victorian guise were to be subject to the military discipline system and could be compelled to serve during a time of national emergency, the concept of compulsion of service was not a

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insufficient volunteers presented themselves, then the Commissioners recommended that a ballot system of conscription should be initiated.97 The report highlighted a yawning gap between government and public expectation over defence matters and the reality of the state of the Colony’s defences. What was not evident in the report was just how difficult attaining such a defence scheme would be when confronted with the challenges of inconsistent imperial policy coming from London, the rapid technical developments driving a new and burgeoning defence industry and the limited political and public policy experience present in the new colony at this time.

The Royal Commission in Victoria followed closely in the wake of an interdepartmental committee in Whitehall, which had been established to consider the ‘the difficulty and embarrassment occasioned…by the absence of any fixed and recognised’ policy concerning colonial defence.98 The Colonial Office had assented to the formation of such a committee, after persistent lobbying from the likes of John Godley in the War Office and George Hamilton of the Treasury. Although resisted throughout the process by the Assistant Undersecretary at the Colonial Office, Sir Frederick Elliot, Godley and Hamilton delivered the highly critical report in December. It found that out of a total expenditure of £1.4 million spent on imperial defence in 1858, the colonies had contributed a mere £150,000. The worst offender was New Zealand, which had made no contribution at all to the £110,000 spent on its defence that year by the imperial government. There were flagrant inconsistencies with Victoria being cited as a case in point. As one of the few colonies paying a considerable amount for the commitment of an imperial garrison, it had in effect been punished through the removal of troops to Tasmania in 1858, which like New Zealand, paid nothing at all to the imperial government for its defence.99 Godley and Hamilton favoured the system proposed by General McArthur and Governor Denison, where a universal scale of dividing defence costs was shared evenly between the imperial and respective colonial governments. Elliot dissented vigorously, stating the Colonial Office position that a uniform system of cost sharing neglected the unique circumstances of individual colonies.100

feature of the Victorian Volunteer Force. The militia system that was eventually introduced into the Colony in 1883 also included a system of remuneration, or pay, for the time imposed on the individual for service. 97 Defence of the Colony: Report of the Commissioners, Report, p. 9, VPP 1858-59. 98 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 202. 99 Ibid, pp. 203-204. 100 See Cell British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 203; Charles Carrington, John Robert Godley of Canterbury, New Zealand and his Friends, Cambridge University Press, London, 2008, pp. 201-204.

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The cost of colonial defence to British tax payers came under even sharper focus in the wake of the Orsini affair, with the War Office embarking on an expensive capital works program to build and improve existing fortifications around the British Isles. Technical advances in naval architecture and artillery had convinced many in the War Office, led by General Burgoyne, of the need to establish a genuinely effective static defence system. The issue was of such significant concern to those in Whitehall that another Royal Commission was set up in August 1859 to examine the state and efficiency of British land-based fortifications against naval attack. The Secretary to the Commission was Major William Jervois, an experienced officer of the Royal Engineers who had developed considerable experience working under General Burgoyne in the Fortifications Department of the War Office. The final report by the Commissioners concluded that ‘neither our fleet, our standing army, nor our volunteer forces, nor even the three combined can be relied on as sufficient in themselves for the security of the Kingdom against foreign invasion’ and the capital works program to establish fortifications at key locations around the country was commenced.101 Burgoyne recommended that similar building programs be undertaken in colonies and military outposts across the Empire. Victorian officials requested further support, and Captain Peter Henry Scratchley, a Royal Engineer of considerable experience, was ordered by General Burgoyne in 1860 to travel to Victoria to design a scheme for the defence of the Colony. His concept for a series of fortifications at the Port Phillip heads and around the Bay manned by a permanent cadre of artilleryman and supported by a small naval detachment and larger volunteer militia, became the blueprint for Victoria’s defence through to Federation. Scratchley’s advice was originally considered and endorsed by the third Victorian progress report of the 1858 Royal Commission into defence (this third report was submitted in late September 1860), but it would not be until the 1870s that any meaningful progress was made in adopting his scheme.102

The failure of the Interdepartmental Committee in London to reach a consensus on the question of colonial defence expenditure in 1859, led to the formation of a Parliamentary committee chaired by the outspoken conservative advocate for colonial defence reform, the member for Traunton, Arthur Mills. The ‘Mills Committee’ as it came

101 For further details concerning the Royal Commission report, recommendations and reception see Timothy Crick, Ramparts of Empire: The Fortifications of Sir William Jervois Royal Engineer 1821-1897, The Express Press, 2012, Chapter 4, and Tunstall, 'Imperial Defence, 1815-1870', pp. 826-827. 102 Defences of the Colony: Report of CAPT Scratchley, RE, dated 22 Sep 1860, VPP 1859-60.

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to be popularly known, was convened in March 1861 and has been described as one of the most important bodies to examine colonial defence before the twentieth century.103 Certainly, the decisions that have been associated with its findings represented a starting point for the move away from a centralised means of undertaking colonial defence through the direct use of imperial means, to a decentralised system of colonial self-defence. The Committee examined the evidence of twenty or so witnesses; mostly prominent political figures, several past and present Colonial Secretaries, and various spokesmen from the services. Official opinion from the colonies was, on the whole, largely unrepresented. Victorian views however, were one of the few colonial voices heard by the Mills Committee. Hugh Childers, the former Auditor-General in the first Victorian Legislative Council and newly elected member of Britain’s Parliament, gave evidence highlighting the military efforts being made by the Victorian government. He also expressed concern that the efforts made by colonies such as Victoria were too often lost on those in London due to the War Office’s system of accounting the Victorian financial contributions along with those of New South Wales.104

The testimony presented to the Mills Committee made evident the range of divergent views and confirmed the existing confusion regarding the extant defence arrangements in the colonies. There were over 44,000 British troops stationed overseas, at a cost to the imperial government of approximately £1,715,000 per annum. The collected contribution of the colonies amounted to £370,000, the largest single amount coming from Victoria.105 Despite the inconsistent nature of the ‘sharing’ arrangement, and the express preference for universal scale of dividing defence costs expressed by colonies such as Victoria and New South Wales, the Committee rejected the idea, preferring a system by which the British government shouldered the burden of essential colonial defence costs for imperial outposts. This policy would ultimately spell the end of Britain’s military garrison in Victoria as well as in other similar self-governing colonies across Britain’s Empire. The central reasoning for this recommendation was that, while Victoria might be happy and able to pay for an alternative ‘scaled’ scheme, many other colonies and outposts were either not prepared to pay, or did not see the need to pay where it was plainly evident that Britain would underwrite their security due to imperial priorities in foreign and/or economic

103 I am citing here the opinion of Brian Farrell, ‘Coalitions of the Usually Willing, Dominions and Imperial Defence 1856-1919’ in Greg Kennedy (ed.), Imperial Defence – The Old World Order: 1856-1956, Routledge, London, 2008, p. 254; and Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 12. 104 Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp. 14-15. 105 Ibid.

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policy. To manage this thorny issue, the Mills committee restated the previous policy that divided imperial dependencies into two categories; colonies and military outposts. The latter would continue to be maintained at the discretion and expense of the British governments, the former, however, would be in the main, the responsibility of individual colonial governments. Britain’s Army forthwith would be consolidated into two effectively positioned striking forces. Some of it would obviously have to remain in India, where the mutiny of 1857 had demonstrated the need for a sizable contingent of European troops, but the remainder ought to be stationed at home.106

In March 1862 the Mills Committee report was duly ratified by a resolution passed in the House of Commons without division, but there remained some obstacles still to negotiate. Despite its easy passage through the House of Commons, the policy remained contentious. Primarily, internal unrest in the United States during the period immediately preceding the Civil War posed a major perceived threat to Britain’s North American colonies, and while the threat to Britain’s cotton industry remained real, Britain would find it hard to remain neutral in any subsequent internal US conflict. Thus, by May of 1862 there were over 18,000 British regular troops in North America. But perhaps more significantly for the Australasian colonies, recent unrest in New Zealand, as a result of the First Taranaki War (widely know at the time as the Maori Wars) in 1860 had required the use of over 3,500 imperial troops, mainly from Australia.

Meanwhile in Victoria, the 1858 Royal Commission into ‘Defence of the Colony’ had continued to convene, in a vain attempt to update its original report in line with the various British interdepartmental and Parliamentary committee meetings occurring in London.107 The Victorian Commission released three further updated reports into the management of defences, most of the recommendations finding themselves quickly overtaken by events as the local political situation and direction from London changed.108 The Commissioners also fell victim to the ever changing advances in in military and naval

106 For further detail see Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp. 12-23; Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, pp. 206-208 and Farrell, ‘Coalitions of the Usually Willing’, pp. 253-255. 107 The first update report, presented to parliament in 1859 recommended the purchase of 24 of the new Armstrong Gun for fortification of the Heads. Although efforts were made to purchase these new artillery pieces, demand in Britain made them unavailable for purchase at the time by Victorian Colonial authorities. 108 A detailed account of this episode is contained in Bob Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, pp. 44-50; and Brad Duncan, ‘The Maritime Archaeology and Maritime Cultural Landscape of Queenscliff: A Nineteenth Century Australian Coastal Community’, PhD thesis, James Cook University, 2006, App. C-2:3.

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technology which were proliferating during this period. No sooner had recommendations to purchase the latest naval artillery been agreed upon, before they were superseded by newer technologies or no longer available due to demand in Britain. By now the complexities associated with the implementation of responsible government and the challenges of retaining responsibility for security and defence decisions centrally in London were becoming evident. Each self-governing colony retained its own set of unique local conditions and expectations. Finding a consensus over agreement of risk, cost sharing or authority whilst maintaining some semblance of consistency across all colonies, was proving to be difficult.

The Colonial Office had been unimpressed with the New Zealand government’s management of the First Taranaki War. Having involved a large number of imperial troops from the Australian colonies, including Victoria, there emerged a growing perception in Whitehall that officials in Wellington were presuming too great a role in directing the employment of imperial troops that served at the discretion of Her Majesty’s Government. It was also perceived in London that local attitudes toward the management of Indigenous affairs had essentially signed the imperial government up as the ‘hired muscle’ in the interests of protecting local government from its own mismanagement of internal policies. As a consequence, once the uprising had been sufficiently suppressed, London sought to withdraw its own troops, in part to impress upon the New Zealand government that its overly draconian policies and ‘wars of repression’ would be better managed if the lives of its own citizens were at risk in the conduct of the fighting.109

The mismanagement of the conflict in New Zealand highlights the paradoxes between the policy and philosophy of responsible government and the reality of implementing it. A resolution was passed in the British House of Commons, which called upon colonies exercising the rights of self-government to assist in their own external defence. Yet when Victoria sought to assist the imperial effort in New Zealand by providing HMCSS Victoria for the transport of imperial troops to and from the theatre of conflict, it soon realised it did not have the pre-existing legal authority to task its vessel operationally and legally protect its crew. In addition, when the Victorian government passed the Armed Vessels Regulation Act, as a matter of urgency, the imperial government concluded that it was legally impossible for a colonial legislature to pass such a law,

109 Arthur Keith, Imperial Unity and the Dominions, Oxford University Press, London, 1916, pp. 301-2.

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particularly where it sought to establish extra-territorial validity. The Duke of Newcastle was hostile towards any perceived attempt to establish a colonial navy, citing fears about eventual separatism.110 Despite the prevarication in London, the necessity for an operational navy remained and the Victoria sailed twice for New Zealand with imperial troops embarked at the behest of local authorities.111 The urgency of the matter was not lost on an already wary Victorian public, where a series of unannounced and embarrassingly unforseen arrivals by visiting Russian and American war vessels throughout the early 1860s had received wide media coverage. The legal ambiguity was finally put to rest in 1865 when Britain’s Parliament passed the Colonial Naval Defence Act, which authorised colonial legislatures to establish the legal architecture to maintain ships of war within colonial territorial waters, and elsewhere, under Royal Navy regulations.112

The requirement to continue to commit troops to New Zealand and North America throughout the 1860s had in effect delayed the adoption of the Mills Committee’s most important resolution, which had heralded the withdrawal of imperial troops from the self-governing colonies. Nonetheless, on 26 June 1863 the Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of Newcastle, circulated a letter to the Governors of the Australian colonies laying down the policy that the imperial government would henceforth retain only limited responsibility to contribute to their defence, save in exceptional circumstances such as those arising during a time of war. Newcastle expressed the view that in Australia’s case, the imperial obligation was met by the existence and influence of the Royal Navy. Despite this general principle, however, he advised that the imperial government was inclined to continue to provide troops for garrison duties under certain circumstances. Collectively, the self-governing colonies, Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia could expect up to fifteen companies of infantry soldiers, plus the headquarters of another regiment, in return for a ‘fair’ contribution toward their costs. The additional regimental headquarters was intended to provide the training and administrative nucleus upon which a colonial military force might be modelled. The total number of troops in Australia under this

110 Cell, British Colonial Administration in the Mid-Nineteenth Century, p. 208. 111 Tom Frame, No Pleasure Cruise, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2004, p. 54. 112 Keith, Imperial Unity and the Dominions, pp. 311-12; an interesting consideration of the background to the Colonial Defence Act is also contained in Bruce Knox, ‘Colonial Influence on Imperial Policy 1858-1866: Victoria and the Colonial Defence Act 1865’ in Historical Studies, Vol. 2, No. 41, 1963, pp. 61-79.

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arrangement would number around 1,350, and the costs to the colonies for their on-going commitment was set at £54,000 a year.113

By the late 1860s it was evident to many that existing arrangements, whereby British garrisons were stationed in the self-governing colonies, would soon end. Both Conservative and Liberal governments in Britain were taking active steps to dismantle the traditional colonial reliance on imperial troops. In 1867, the new Secretary of State for the Colonies, the Duke of Buckingham, informed Canadian authorities of the Disraeli government’s decision to reduce the imperial garrison in Ontario and Quebec to 5,000.114 The arrival of Gladstone’s Liberal government into office in December 1868 set in motion a set of events that would lead to the final withdrawal of British troops from Victoria and self-governing colonies across Britain’s Empire. The ideological and economic zeal of Gladstone and his associates for implementing this change had not abated since the recommendations of the Mills Committee had been released. Gladstone believed that the responsibility for defence must accompany the policy of responsible government. In a debate concerning the Canadian Railway Loan Bill in the House of Commons in 1867, he repeated his belief that what he called a position of ‘vicarious defence’ not only placed an unfair burden on the British taxpayer, but also depressed the tone of political life in the Colony in which it existed. An end to such arrangements was needed in order to bring a self-governing colonies to full political inheritance. By the time of his arrival in government in late 1868, the economic circumstances, Gladstone argued, demanded such a policy be implemented.115

Paradoxically, it was during this period of growing expectation from London over the local management of colonial defence affairs that real progress on defence issues all but stopped in Victoria. After initial efforts to start construction of the harbour defence scheme recommended by Captain Scratchley in his 1863 report, a succession of disagreements between the two houses of Victoria’s parliament had, by 1867, lead to the first of what would be two Parliamentary crises in the Colony that threatened the very premise of responsible government. The resulting political deadlock and blockage of supply effectively ended spending on defence by the McCulloch government between 1867

113 Dispatch from Newcastle to Barkly, dated 26 June 1863, copy contained in The Report of the Royal Commission on Volunteer Force, Appendix E, pp. 218-219, VPP 1875-6, Vol.3. 114 Charles Stacey, Canada and the British Army, 1846-1871 – A Study in the Practice of Responsible Government, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1963, p. 201. 115 Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 26.

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and 1869.116 When the Victorian Parliamentary Select Committee met in 1867 to examine the management and expenditure associated with the Victorian Volunteer Force, it presided over a defence budget of £81,849. Within two years defence spending within Victoria had fallen to £46,872. Spending on capital works programs reduced from £5,054 to £945 and expenditure on local volunteer forces from £42,323 to £21,145 a cut of fifty percent.117 The timing of these spending cuts to the volunteer forces could not have been more unfortunate. With the election of Gladstone’s government into power in Britain in late 1868 went the last hopes of direct support from the British Army.

The job of ending Britain’s military commitment to the self-governing colonies fell to Edward Cardwell, the Secretary of State for War. Cardwell presided over an ambitious reform initiative at the War Office that oversaw the return of imperial troops from abroad and a significant restructure of Britain’s Army, particularly amongst its senior leadership. In early 1869 Cardwell proposed the reduction of imperial forces across Britain’s dependent and self-governing colonies from 50,000 to 26,000. In Victoria the proposal was met with ambivalence. In the intervening years since the Mill’s Committee, a sense of pragmatism and self-interest had overtaken the imperial troop question within Victorian political circles. While many saw the inherent advantages in the provision of a professional military garrison in the Colony, the value of the subsidy system was coming under increasing scrutiny. Some in the parliament were starting to question how imperial authorities were spending the money that Victorian taxpayers provided. When it became evident that the details of these arrangements would not be forthcoming, many in Victoria began to loose faith in the Subsidy scheme altogether.118 Matters were further exacerbated by the imperial government’s refusal to provide assurances that the troops being paid for by Victoria would remain in the Colony during a time of war as well as peace.119 Sir James McCulloch, the Victorian Premier, spoke on behalf of many Victorians when he told the Legislative Assembly that as long as the Colony paid for any part of the troop costs, it felt entitled to

116 For further details about the cause and effect of the two Parliamentary crises in Victoria see, McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, pp. 58-69. 117 The total expenditure for Land Forces (not including imperial troops) in 1867 was £42,323, by 1869 that had reduced to £21,145, the lowest amount spent on the volunteer forces until 1875, see The Report of the Royal Commission on Volunteer Force, Appendix D, p. 196, VPP 1875-6, Vol.3. 118 Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, p. 117; and Grey, A Military History of Australia, p. 23. 119 Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp.26-28; and Stacey, Canada and the British Army, 1846-1871, p. 209.

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get the service of the class of troops which, in the view of the local authorities, were of greatest uses in local defence.120

Matters soon came to a head when Victorian officials requested the use of trained British artillerymen in place of an infantry force. Due to the increasing demands of manning and maintaining modern technical artillery systems favoured in coastal defence system, trained artillerymen were in short supply in Britain. As such the British Army were less inclined to provide such expertise in the colonies, particularly without a cadre of infantry soldiers to maintain discipline. Victorian officials thus advised the War Office that it would decline the further offers of imperial troops, citing its concerns over the imperial government’s reticence to guarantee the troops at a time of war. The Queensland and Tasmanian governments took a similar line. With the New South Wales and South Australian government’s requesting the services of only four infantry regiments between them, the imperial government came to the conclusion in May 1870 that such a limited troop commitment to the Australian colonies was not sustainable. The War Office advised the Colonial Office of their preference to remove the imperial garrison completely, and the Secretary of State for the Colonies agreed. In late May 1870, Governors in each colony were advised of the decision, and by July the issue was reported in the media.121 News of the decision was met with mixed emotion publically. Some in Victoria expressed regret at the decision, but others accepted that the Colony could and should, go it alone henceforth. On the 21 August 1870, the remaining members of the 2nd Battalion, the 18th (Royal Irish) Regiment, recently returned from New Zealand, embarked aboard the troop carrying ship Corona and departed the Colony.122 Less than two months later, Major General Sir Trevor Chute, the last General officer to command the imperial garrison in the Australian colonies, and his General Headquarters, packed up and departed Melbourne on 8 October 1870. Chute was the last official member of the imperial garrison to leave Australian shores.

As a defined period in the evolution of colonial defence management in Victoria, the twenty years between the first significant discoveries of gold and the departure of the imperial garrison represented a period of contrasting development in the state of colonial

120 Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp. 27-28; see also Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly, VPD, 1879, Vol. X. p. 878. 121 The Argus, 19 July 1870, p. 1. 122 The Argus, 22 August 1870, p. 4.

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defence matters. It marked a time of major capability advances through the formation of the Colony’s first Indigenous volunteer force, a new, and for its time world class naval capability, as well as witnessing commencement of an ambitious capital works program to design and build a fortification scheme around its coastline and into Port Phillip Bay. Contrasting against this development was an ill-defined public policy framework, which struggled to appreciate the underpinning realities of the financial and political circumstances that drove the key decisions in imperial defence policy. How this situation evolved is understandable. Prevarication and indecision over financial responsibilities, disparate attitudes toward the idea and ideals of Empire, differing approaches to the management of colonial policy by armed services, individual departments and the government in London, not to mention the unique strategic circumstances specific to each colony, all played their part. But by the time officials in London had agreed to an interdepartmental framework for the management of colonial defence via the Mills Committee, the opportunity to address the policy problems in Victoria were lost to the political quagmire of the first Parliamentary crisis. When the decision was made to withdraw the imperial garrison from the colonies, Victoria’s means of redressing the deficiencies of its colonial defence policy approach was at its nadir. The next decade would further test the resolve of successive Victorian governments in their efforts to realise a genuine defence capability.

50 Chapter Three – 1870-1880

The departure of the British Army’s garrison from Victoria in the winter of 1870 not only brought about the most significant change to the management of colonial defence in Victoria since settlement, but also heralded an important change in the attitude of Victorians to local defence matters. Prevarication by successive governments in Victoria and London over the preceding decade convinced many in Victoria’s military and naval establishments that a more economical and effective local solution might be sought without a standing imperial garrison resident in the Colony. The public could now directly hold those responsible for local defence matters accountable through the ballet box. But the reality of the situation confronting Victorians was somewhat more complex than many imagined. The coming decade would prove that financial means and a sense of purpose alone were not sufficient factors to radically improve the management of its defence capability. Without a strong bureaucracy or sufficiently mature political culture on which to make and affect key public policy decisions, the defence management process could only make incremental improvements. The 1867 Parliamentary crisis had already set in motion fluctuating defence spending and political debate over Peter Scratchley’s harbour defence scheme. This trend would continue through the 1870s culminating in the second Parliamentary crisis in 1879.

Like many breaks with imperial authority, the departure of General Chute and the imperial garrison from Victoria in August 1870 brought with it an air of expectancy and anticipation. Historically, tension brought about by divergent perspectives in Melbourne, Sydney and London on the management of colonial defence issues had been cited as the primary cause of many of Victoria’s defence and security management problems. Now, with little to impede local priorities in the management of defence matters, many believed that a restructure undertaken by colonial officials would soon result in better defence management. Upon receiving confirmation from London that the imperial garrison was to be withdrawn, the Victorian Premier, James McCulloch, directed that planning commence for a new, independent Victorian defence scheme. The responsibility for undertaking the task fell to Colonel William Acland Douglas Anderson, the Commandant of Victorian volunteer forces. Anderson, a former British Army officer and local political identity, had A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter Three

been a driving force behind the founding of the colonial volunteer movement in 1855.123 In July 1870 Anderson submitted his report, advising that it was not feasible to rely entirely on the volunteer forces to man the technically sophisticated artillery systems now coming into service as part of the existing Victorian harbour defence scheme. Anderson’s report recommended the establishment of a small regular force of about 120 artillerymen to operate the main artillery fortifications associated with the harbour defences and a part- time militia (or part-paid) force of around 10,000 men to further protect the harbour defence facilities, man the navy’s growing number of vessels and to field a mobile land force capable of deterring any potential raiding force that might be landed somewhere along the Colony’s long coastline.124

Anderson’s reworked defence plan did not fundamentally alter the existing colonial defence blueprint, which had been developed by successive General Officers in command of the imperial garrison in Victoria. It sought to create two new classes of military service, a part-time militia force and a smaller, locally recruited and technically focussed permanent force. These new forms of military service, the report advised, were needed to fill the gap left by the departing imperial garrison. But the new Victorian Volunteer Force lacked experience in running an effective military discipline system as well as the necessary technical expertise to operate the newer industrialised equipment coming into service. The existing Volunteer Act of 1854 did not contain a provision to enforce military discipline amongst its rank and file, nor did it contain the necessary legal authority to compel its members to serve, even at times of national emergency. Anderson’s approach had the support of the government, and in December 1870 his report and recommendations were put to the Victorian Parliament. Despite the general agreement of the Parliament that at least some form of military discipline system was required to underpin its own colonial military force, there were enough dissenting views out-rightly opposed to the creation of any form of militia or permanent military force to limit the coercive powers of the Act.

The idea of establishing militia forces had been contentious for a long time in the Australian colonies. As far back as the early 1850s there had existed a highly charged

123 William Anderson had been the Commissioner of the Victorian Goldfields between 1853 and 1855 and a long-standing Victorian identity in the Colony’s volunteer movement. For further detail see Brian Perry, William ‘Acland Douglas Anderson (1829-1882).’ Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/anderson-william-acland-douglas-2886, accessed on 3 May 2012. 124 Report of the Colonel Commandant of the Military Forces for 1870, 4 July 1870, VPP 1874, Vol.1.

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ideological debate about the nature of military service. Many who had made the Australian colonies their new home, had done so to escape what they described as the despotism and militancy of Europe.125 Efforts to convert local volunteer forces into colonial militia forces in South Australia and Queensland during the 1860s had fell victim to such concerns.126 Now a number of individuals in Victoria’s Parliament representing groups with similar objections were also voicing concern about the establishment of both a permanent military cadre and part-time militia organisation. Legislation to support any volunteer based self- defence organisation, the argument ran, could potentially one day be expanded to compel people to serve in a military or naval force that may be put at the beck and call of an imperial government. Like many politically charged debates, much of the substantive detail seamed to be lost in the semantics of the ideological debate, both inside and outside the Parliament, and when the new Discipline Act 1870, went before the house, the government stepped away from embarking on a wholesale conversion of its volunteer force into a part- time militia.127

The new Discipline Act 1870 built on the existing Volunteer Act of 1854, by providing the Governor of Victoria the power to raise paid military forces for the purpose of defending the Colony. It also provided the Victorian government with the ability to compel paid members of Victoria’s armed forces (permanent and militia soldiers) to answer a call- out at a time of national emergency and most importantly provided local military and naval authorities with the power to establish military courts for the purpose of enforcing military discipline.128 Meanwhile, the recommendations of Anderson’s report and the employment needs of a number of British soldiers, who had remained in the Colony on the promise that they would form the basis of a new regular artillery corps, compelled the government to agree to the formation of the Victorian Artillery, a small permanent contingent of troops whose principle purpose was to man and maintain the fortification facilities of the harbour defence system. The decision was nominally undertaken as a temporary arrangement until a more detailed review of the Colony’s artillery and harbour defence needs could be undertaken. In recognition of the growing technical needs of the Victorian colonial navy,

125 To see a detailed treatment of this aspect of the militia debate in Australia during the nineteenth century, see Wilcox, For Hearths and Homes, p. 19. 126 Ibid. 127 Defence Discipline (Military and Naval) Act 1870, 34 Victoria No. 389, dated 29 December 1870. 128 In 1863, a further Bill entitled: ‘An Act to amend the Law relating to Volunteer Corps’ had also been passed, which related specifically to the number and type of volunteer Corps authorised in the volunteer force, see: 1863 Volunteer Act, 27 Victorian No. 138.

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one of the two volunteer Naval Brigades was converted to a militia force. The decision to form a naval militia force was somewhat less politically contentious than the conversion of volunteer units to militia ones. Volunteer Signals and Torpedo Corps were also established to support the growing requirements of the harbour defence scheme.129 By early 1871, the key legislative policy framework was in place to support the new colonial defence scheme. Whilst the responsible minister within the government remained the Treasurer, day-to-day management of the scheme would effectively fall to the Commandants of the military and naval forces, and their respective military staffs.

Having effectively negotiated the departure of the British garrison and avoided undue controversy surrounding the establishment of the new and all-be-it limited colonial militia force, the McCulloch government set about appointing a select committee to consider the issue of Victoria’s Artillery Corps. In September 1871, the Committee submitted its brief report recommending the continuation of the regular artillery corps under its existing structure.130 When the report was tabled before Parliament in October, it sparked a major debate over the condition and costs of the Colony’s defences. The report, presented by the Treasurer, Graham Berry, highlighted the inadequate state of the harbour fortifications. Invariably where fortifications existed, functioning artillery batteries did not exist and where batteries were in place, the defensive works had not been completed. The evidence cited in the report was heavily exploited by those opposed to the creation of a permanent military force. In a lively exchange in Parliament between Alfred Thomas Clark, the newly elected member for Williamstown, and William Collard Smith, the chairman of the Select Committee into Victoria’s Artillery Corps, the point was made that under such circumstances, it would be irrational to create a situation whereby the government was paying soldiers to maintain a capability not fit to meet its intended purpose.131 Whilst the debate raised questions over both the need for a permanent artillery force and the management of the harbour defence scheme, it did not stop the passage of the bill permanently establishing the Victorian Artillery Corps.

The debates over defence management in October 1871 did point to the growing politicisation of key policy issues in Victoria in the immediate decades after the assumption of responsible government. Without the deferential guidance of London dictating the

129 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, pp. 97-98. 130 Report from the Select Committee Upon the Artillery Corps, 12 September 1871, VPP 1871, Vol.1. 131 Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly, VPD, dated 11 October 1871, p. 1506.

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course and passage of key policy issues through the local Parliamentary system, the management of defence matters, increasingly fell victim to an immature party political system. Without the existence of two dominant political parties to advocate and oppose policy issues, as in Britain’s Parliamentary system, successive Victorian Parliaments struggled to introduce effective public policy and the necessary structural reform for necessary public institutions. The absence of a robust party discipline system meant that most issue were captive to range of special interests within both houses of Parliament. Further complicating matters was the irreconcilable social and wealth differential between the two Victorian houses of Parliament, the result of the Victorian constitution requirement that only landowners could vote and stand for the upper house seats. Such teething problems were not unexpected or unique to Victoria’s political processes during this era, but few other colonies experienced the range of problems associated with the introduction public policy as Victoria did during the twenty years between 1860 and 1880. The period between 1857 and Federation in 1901, there were no less than twenty-seven changes in government, some twenty-one occurring before 1883. Government spending on defence effectively ceased for seven out of the sixteen years between 1865 and 1881, when the Legislative Council blocked government supply between 1865 and 1868, and again between 1877 and 1881.132

In the face of this political uncertainty, funding of Victoria’s harbour defence scheme became uncertain. Originally conceived in 1860 by Peter Scratchley, the total cost was estimated to be £129,575.133 The original scheme had envisaged tweny-one fortifications around Port Phillip Bay, comprising a total of 108 artillery pieces. By the turn of the decade, however, only nine of the fortifications existed, with less than forty-five artillery pieces in place.134 Successive Parliamentary Select Committee inquiries into Scratchley’s defence scheme identified the growing cost of completing the works. By 1861, the total cost of the scheme had blown out to £204,978 and a ‘reduced’ scheme, estimated at £124,518 was agreed upon.135 Prevarication over an 1865 suggestion that the imperial government should fund parts of the scheme, followed by the 1867 Parliamentary crisis meant that by the early 1870s, when the regular artillery force was raised, there was little to show for a decade’s worth of investment in Victoria’s harbour fortifications. Much of the

132 For further details about the cause and effect of the two Parliamentary crises in Victoria see McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, pp. 58-69. 133 Defences of the Colony: Report of CAPT Scratchley, RE, 22 September 1860, p. 5. VPP 1860-1861, Vol.3. 134 Table 2.1 in Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, p. 95. 135 Report from the Select Committee into the Defences of the Colony, Report, p. 1, VPP 1861-1862 Vol.2.

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blame for this situation was attributed to ever widening technical advances in military hardware. The advent of breech-loading rifled artillery and the effects of the American Civil War on the proliferation of military and naval technology were regularly cited as the cause for delay in making decisions concerning the harbour defence scheme. Whilst these issues no-doubt added complexity to Victoria’s circumstances, the deeper truth was that Victoria’s defence problems were intimately connected to its uncertain political landscape.

The difficulties confronting the Victorian colonial defence establishment went well beyond issues of funding. The previous reliance by Victorian authorities on the expertise of the imperial garrison was beginning to become apparent by the early 1870s, particularly its oversight of institutions such as the volunteer movement. Yet, with a headquarters of thirty-six, mainly civilian staff, Colonel Anderson worked hard to modernize the volunteer force.136 With limited professional military expertise or experience in managing an effective defence bureaucracy, he and his headquarters were unable to replicate the effect of the imperial headquarters staff in Melbourne that had previously taken care of such matters. The various vested interests of the volunteer force, combined with the lack of a judicial and legal framework to enforce discipline or force change, meant that the force was ill- structured and not equipped to fulfill the role envisaged for it by Anderson and the government. Thus, in April 1875, Premier George Kerford appointed a Royal Commission to investigate the condition of the volunteer movement in the colony. The Commissioners’ covering report contained a withering critique of the Colony’s lack of preparedness to defend itself from external attack. In a section entitled: ‘Its [Victoria’s] present position and preparedness to repel attack’, the report stated that defence capabilities were almost exclusively reliant on the successful employment of the Cerberus, which had sufficient crew to support the operation of a single turret only and that the vessel was thus in turn reliant on shore defences at Hobson’s Bay to protect it. The garrison artillery manned these facilities, which were ‘significantly unprepared with no operational battery or a single defensive work of any sort in existence’.137 On the other hand, the volunteer field artillery force, numbering 1,549 volunteers, had guns, but no means to move them. Further, while

136 In 1874 Anderson compiled another report on Victoria’s Land Forces. Anderson stated that whilst the Colony’s volunteer forces were equipped with advanced breech-loading rifles, their standard of training, use of outdated tactics and overall structure made them unlikely to effectively encounter and defeat an enemy armed force; see: ‘Report of the Colonel Commandant of the Military Forces for 1874’,‘21 May 1874, copy contained in ‘The Report of the Royal Commission on Volunteer Force’, Appendix A, pp. 123-124, VPP 1875-1876, Vol.3. These views were further backed up by Anderson’s evidence before the 1875 Royal Commission into the volunteer forces; see Ibid, ‘Minutes of Evidence’, pp. 1-14. 137 Ibid, ‘Covering Report’, p. x.

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the volunteer cavalry of 250 men were well horsed, with each man providing his own mount, the horse artillery had the only gun carriage, which was rotten and in the opinion of those charged with its operation, highly dangerous.138

The 1875 Royal Commission was an important turning point in the management of defence issues in the Colony of Victoria.139 Its timing, five years after the departure of the imperial garrison and in the immediate wake of the Cardwell reforms of Britain’s Army and senior command structure, meant that the Commissioners were able to situate Victoria’s defence circumstance within the broader context of these two key events. The existing volunteer system came in for heavy criticism over its lack of accountability to centralised government authority and its inability under the standing legal framework, to enforce training standards and discipline. The Commissioners also considered the overarching structural mechanisms governing the defence institution and its relationship to government. It was by now evident to many informed observers that, since the assumption of responsible government in Victoria, defence issues had become mired in political argument and suffered at the hand of government instability. The Commissioners heard overwhelming evidence about the failure of successive government administrations to provide clear guidance on strategic matters and managerial oversight. After debating the evidence, the Commissioners recommended that a ‘military council’ be appointed to oversee management of defence issues, and that the council be exclusively responsible to the Victorian Governor.140 This was a serious recommendation given that a key part of the Cardwell reforms in Britain had been to ensure military subordination to government, not the Crown. Unsurprisingly, the recommendation of the ‘military council’ proposal in Victoria did not receive universal support. Dissenting opinions were provided by Sir George Verdon (a previous Treasurer and Agent-General) and Colonel Anderson. Both cited the confused lines of authority that such an arrangement would put in place. What would occur, for example, when the Governor and the government of the day disagreed? Both men argued precedence, for such circumstances had already occurred in Victoria with no satisfactory outcome.141 The recommendation to place the management of defence issues directly under the Governor of Victoria remained contentious, and whilst a military

138 Ibid. 139 Ibid, ‘Summary of Evidence’, pp. xxiv-xxxv. A detailed account of the proceedings of the 1875 Royal Commission can also be found in Chapter 4 of Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, pp. 131-49. 140 This ‘military council’ was to be made up of representatives of the two branches of the armed services and the responsible minister if the government; see ibid, ‘Covering Report’, p. xiii. 141 Ibid, ‘Dissenting Report of Mr. G. Verdon’, p. xvii; and ‘Dissenting Report of Colonel E. Ward’, p. xix.

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council was eventually established, the government, possessive of its political prerogatives, never relinquished direct control over the military and naval forces in Victoria.

The reinstatement of a single senior imperial officer to command both the military and naval forces, with a modern ‘defence’ staff, was also discussed at length by a number of experienced witnesses at the 1875 Royal Commission. Notable amongst these was Colonel Anderson who freely admitted that an experienced imperial general officer would be better placed to advise (and possibly command the respect of) the government over defence matters. Major Fredrick Sargood, the officer commanding the St Kilda Battery of the volunteer artillery, also spoke of the urgent necessity to place an imperial officer of experience at the top of the Colony’s military.142 Sargood, eight years ways away from being appointed the first colonial Minister of Defence, was well versed in the issues confronting the Colony with respect to defence management. Like the overwhelming majority of officers who gave evidence, Sargood spoke of a strong need for reform, particularly with respect to making the Colony’s volunteer movement more accountable for ensuring it could meet its responsibilities. In a similar vein, Major E. Pernell, commanding officer of the volunteer engineers, advocated for better staff training of paid senior military officers. He also suggested that Stores and Transport departmental staff be trained to support military planning in order to educate them in the ways and means of supporting the Colony’s naval and military forces during a time of national emergency.143 While it would take nearly seven years to achieve, many of these ideas were taken forward into the creation of the new defence department in 1883.

Two other recommendations from the Royal Commission report were notable for their implications for colonial defence in Victoria and beyond. The first was a request to the new conservative government in London through to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, requesting the imperial government reconsider the reinstatement of the imperial garrison to Victoria in-lieu of the problems the Colony was experiencing in maintaining an effective colonial defence capability. The second was the request for further technical assistance from imperial authorities to review the state of the languishing harbour defence plan. Whether Victorian authorities were aware at the time that Carnarvon would

142 To read the evidence of all of those calling for the reinstatement of an imperial officer to be appointed commandant see ibid, ‘Appendix D: Digest of Evidence’, (Colonel Anderson) p. 4, (Major Radcliff) p. 28, (Major Sargood) p. 41, (Lieutenant Colonel Mair) p. 69, (Lieutenant Colonel Hutton) p. 78, (Captain Wardill) p. 93, and (Captain Twycross) pp. 97-98. 143 Ibid, Appendix D: Digest of Evidence, (Major Pernell) p. 192.

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look favourably on such a request is difficult to say, but what is certain is that when Victoria did make its request to the Colonial Office, Carnarvon seized on it with enthusiasm. Henry Howard Molyneux Herbert, 4th Earl of Carnarvon had come to the post of Colonial Secretary with considerable experience and a favourable reputation amongst colonial governments. His delicate negotiations leading to the confederation of Canada had provided him with a strong view on the issue of imperial troops assisting in the defence of self-governing colonies. In 1870 he openly opposed the Gladstone government’s policy of troop withdrawals from across the colonies.144 Carnarvon took the proposal to reinstate the imperial garrison in Victoria to the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, and the Secretary of State for War, Gathorne-Hardy, who both initially supported the idea. A decision on the reinstatement of British troops to the colonies was put to Cabinet in early 1876, but was ultimately rejected on the grounds of its predicted cost and difficulty Britain’s Army was experiencing at the time with recruiting and maintaining sufficient men for home defence.145

Despite the fact that Carnarvon remained emphatic that the issue should stay open ‘for future consideration’, the matter of returning the regular garrisons was never seriously considered again in London. For the McCulloch government in Victoria, the decision provided clear and unambiguous evidence that even with a Conservative government in power in London, the solution to the Colony’s local defence problems were never going to be solved in Whitehall. When Carnarvon’s advice arrived in Melbourne, Victorian authorities initiated discussions with other colonial officials in Sydney, Adelaide and Brisbane over colonial defence arrangements. Further, by 1877, many Australian policymakers were aware, largely through the literature and influence of the Royal Colonial Institute, of nascent initiatives in London to formulate an empire-wide defence strategy. When officials in New South Wales suggested that the colonies seek the assistance of Colonel Sir William Jervois, the architect of Britain’s own Home Defence scheme, colonial officials in Melbourne willingly supported the proposal. In early 1877, McCulloch wrote to Carnarvon on behalf of all Australasian colonial governments, requesting the assistance of Jervois.146 In London, Carnarvon immediately sought the support the War Office, which

144 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 44. 145 Arthur Hardinge, Life of the Fourth Earl of Carnarvon, Vol. 2, Milford, London, 1925, p. 98. 146 Dispatch from Carnarvon to Bowen, dated 27 February 1877, VPP 1877-78.

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responded positively, if somewhat indifferently, having recently agreed to the secondment of Jervois to the Colonial Office to act as Governor of the Straits.147

Jervois, who had been the Assistant Inspector General of Fortifications at the War Office since 1855, had recently been passed over for promotion. About to embark on a second career with the Colonial Office, Jervois was an officer with a wealth of experience in the area of fortifications and defence. In 1857 he had been appointed Secretary to the Parliamentary Defence Committee. In 1859 he had prepared plans for the Defence Committee on the fortification of London and that same year he served as Secretary to the Royal Commission to inquire into defences of the United Kingdom. In 1862, he had assumed the role of Director of Works for Fortifications under the Inspector General of Fortifications. Having been much involved in the preparation and execution of defences for the security of the Home Islands during the period of ‘invasion scares’ in Britain between 1863 and 1874, he was now an advocate of efficient defence of the colonies. From this vantage, which saw him almost constantly travelling and advising on matters of colonial defence, Jervois gained a reputation as one of Britain’s foremost experts on defence schemes. It was Jervois, who had compiled what is widely recognised as a keystone memorandum in the evolution of an imperial defence policy with regard to defending the Royal Navy’s vital coaling stations across the Empire.148

The memorandum was important in the context of influencing the direction of colonial defence management in the three decades to come in Australia and across the Empire. Originally derived from a request by the Admiralty for army assistance in surveying Britain’s coaling stations abroad, was the first official statement identifying the requirement for Britain’s navy to effectively defend the growing global network of coaling stations, critical to the Royal Navy’s ability to protect British maritime trading interests throughout its Empire. The issue, was not new to those with connections to the Royal Navy’s intellectual circle of influence. Sir John Colomb, the retired Royal Navy Captain and author of Colonial Defence and Colonial Opinions (1873), a popular member of a group of influential maritime thinkers and a regular contributor to the Royal Colonial Institute, had been critical of the decision to withdraw imperial troops from the colonies a decade

147 Gathorne-Hardy responded to the request by stating that since Jervois was now in the employment of the Colonial Office, the proposal respecting his employment what not one upon which army authorities felt required to render an opinion in. See Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 47. 148 Ibid, p. 32. See also Crick, Ramparts of Empire, pp. 36-39.

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previously.149 Another, Sir Alexander Milne, the First Sea Lord (1866-1868 and again 1872- 1876), argued that the next war would not witness the clash of large fleets in European waters, that the enemy would confine its attacks to British shipping and vulnerable colonial possessions. Australian waters, not the Mediterranean would be the location of the next major fleet engagement for the Royal Navy.150

The ascendancy of these views in the mid-1870s, particularly as they related to colonial defence interests, were explained in part by three inter-related issues. Firstly, the revolution of military and naval affairs associated with steam power and naval gunnery had given rise to concern about the vulnerability of overseas coal supplies where the growing reliance of British Ironclads on such supplies potentially compromised the Royal Navy’s freedom abroad. Secondly, the increasing trade value of the colonies as overseas markets for Britain’s manufactured goods, and thirdly the new Conservative governments growing emphasis on the idea and ideals of Empire, highlighted by Benjamin Disraeli during his famous Crystal Palace speech of 1872. It is difficult to ascertain from the available records to what extent Jervois’s memorandum of 1875 was directly influenced by Colomb or Milne. But the strategic and operational calculus contained within its pages demonstrated the first real evidence that Britain’s War Office understood the necessity for a globally available defence strategy if it were to protect its overseas trade networks into the future. Carnarvon, who had been aware of Jervois’s memorandum since his involvement in negotiations over the annexation of Fiji in 1875, was by now actively advocating for such a scheme.151

In February 1877, Lord Carnarvon responded to McCulloch’s request to have Jervois assigned to the Australian colonies through Victoria’s Governor, Sir George Bowen. Carnarvon stated that he would place Jervois and Lieutenant Colonel Scratchley at the service of Australian authorities for the purpose of undertaking a detailed survey of colonial defence requirements, prior to Jervois assuming a new post with the Colonial Office as the Governor of South Australia. Jervois and Scratchley wasted no time in undertaking the task. By July 1877, they had completed their survey of Port Phillip Bay and its existing fortifications and fixed defences. Jervois then submitted his first report to the Victorian government, recommending that the Colony concentrate its efforts of defending

149 John Colomb, Colonial Defence and Colonial Opinion, reprinted by General Books LLC, 2010. 150 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, pp. 30-31. 151 Ibid, pp. 49-50.

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Melbourne at the heads through the use of fixed defences and torpedo depots, and that secondary fortifications along the southern coast (at Warrnambool, Port Fairy and Portland) be upgraded at minimal cost.152 Jervois estimated that such works could be completed at a cost of no more than £380,000. In November 1877, Graham Berry’s government approved Jervois’s scheme, and passed the Forts and Armaments Bill.153

Once again the imperative for the Victorian government to pass important defence legislation, in the form of the Forts and Armaments Bill was the advent of developing international events in Central Asia. In London, concern over the possible implications of war between Russia and Turkey, and in particular the fear that the Russians might seize the Suez Canal, were evident in light of the outbreak of hostilities between the two powers in April 1877. Concern that Britain could possibly be dragged into the conflict had given further impetus to the coaling station issue originally raised by Jervois in his 1875 memorandum. Anxiety over growing Russian military and naval capability in Central Asia and the Pacific created a sudden surge in interest over the topic of colonial defence at the War Office. Defence planners, working under the Duke of Cambridge, the army’s commander-in-chief who chaired the Defence Committee, further developed the concepts in Jervois’s original defence of coaling station memorandum by grading each outpost against a set of criteria designed to quantify the relative risk associated with its loss to a potential adversary. From the corresponding score assigned to each station, planners derived a list of strategically important stations linking colonial outposts.154 Fifth on the War Office list was King George Sound at Albany in Western Australia. This was a strategically important harbour for Victorians, located as it was on the exceptionally long sea route from the Cape to Melbourne. Since King George Sound was located outside the self-governing colonies, responsibility for its defence technically resided with the imperial government. As such, the outcome of negotiations over its protection would be seen by many colonial governments as a key litmus test for any new imperial defence initiative in the years to come.155

By January 1878, tension between Britain and Russia began to escalate again when the British government threatened to send its Mediterranean fleet to Constantinople, in

152 ‘Defences of Victoria’, Report by Colonel Sir W.F.D. Jervois, July 1877, VPP 1877-78, Vol. 3. 153 Victorian Hansard, Legislative Council, VPD, 22 November 1877, pp. 1562-63. 154 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, pp. 53-54. 155 Western Australia was not granted self-government until 1890.

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order to protect the city from Russian invasion. As the War Office began to mobilise the British Army’s 1st Division for possible deployment, many colonial governments, including Victoria’s, grew concerned at their own inadequate defence capabilities. Internal Whitehall correspondence from this period demonstrates both the genuine fear that War and Colonial Office officials held concerning the vulnerability of existing colonial defence arrangements particularly in light of the growing reach of Russia’s navy.156 By 1878, there was a common agreement between the three key departments (the Colonial Office, Admiralty and War Office) in London on the need to adequately protect coaling stations and colonies abroad, it however become increasingly obvious that the defence measures in place to protect these outposts were woefully inadequate. Furthermore, not only were the defences of coaling stations largely non-existent, but the lack of detailed knowledge regarding local defences for the colonies created significant problems for each department. Both issues were further compounded by the lack of available ordinance within Britain to adequately equip the overseas bases and colonies should hostilities eventuate. By February 1878 the British government’s handling of the crisis with Russia had cost Carnarvon his position as Colonial Secretary, having been replaced by Sir Michael Hicks Bach.157 Robert Herbert, the permanent undersecretary at the Colonial Office, wrote to the War Office in February stating:

‘…in view of the fact that many of the more important Colonial ports are now unprovided [sic] with any adequate system of defence, it would be advisable to cause an inquiry to be held and a report to be made as to the most pressing requirements of this nature and the best means of meeting them in any sudden emergency; in order that Her Majesty’s Government may be in a position to consider any demands from the Colonies for assistance in this matter, and any action it may be necessary to take on the subject.’158

The War Office agreed to the necessity of an interdepartmental committee to consider the issue of colonial defence and Lord Milne was quickly appointed to chair it. The Committee held its first meeting on 5 March 1878 and while the War Office provided much of the horsepower behind the Committee’s work, the actual appointment and

156 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, pp. 62-63. 157 The resignation of Carnarvon was caused by his opposition to Disraeli policy on the ‘Eastern Question’, the diplomatic negotiation over managing the decay of the Ottoman Empire and containment of Russia. Colonial matters were not a factor in his resignation. 158 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 62.

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instruction to the Committee came from the Colonial Office.159 In late March Disraeli’s decided to transfer 7,000 Indian troops to Malta in a signal to Russia that Britain was prepared to utilise the resources of its global Empire if necessary in order to achieve the outcome it sought. The decision by Disraeli was announced on 27 March 1878 and caught many in the government by surprise. It was debated in both houses of Britain’s Parliament for three nights, the opposition claiming that the decision was unconstitutional and contravened the Mutiny Act. Hicks-Beach, as Colonial Secretary, stated that the scheme could, if necessary, be expanded to include troops from the colonies. These events are the first tangible signs of what was to become the Empire policy toward colonial and dominion troops being used by Britain in a wider European conflict.160

The Milne Committee subsequently produced three detailed reports on the state of the defence situation across the colonies. One of these, published in April 1878, dealt specifically with the defences of Victoria and the other Australasian colonies.161 The Committee had previously had the opportunity to hear firsthand evidence from Jervois, who was at that time on leave in England, about the state of colonial defence works in the Australian colonies. Perhaps with some understandable self-interest, Jervois told its members that the defence schemes in the Australasian colonies, namely Victoria and New South Wales, were far in advance of what many in Whitehall presumed to be the case.162

Unbeknown to Victorian officials, the Milne Committee’s focus on the Australasian colonies prompted serious interdepartmental discussions between the Colonial Office and two service branches over the future of the coaling station at King George Sound and the provision of state-of-the-art torpedo technology to Victoria and New South Wales. The principle issue in dispute was the cost of resourcing scarce equipment and personnel to support the capability requirements required in both instances. As tension with Russia faded, the Colonial Office agreed that the provision of the new ‘Whitehead’ torpedo to the Australian ports, and the continued use of King George Sound coaling station should be abandoned. Perhaps fearing that Australian colonial governments would withdraw their

159 Ibid, p. 61. 160 See Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp. 60-62. 161 The Second Report of a Colonial Defence Committee on the Temporary Defences of the Australian Colonies, Tasmania and New Zealand, (hereafter cited as Carnarvon Commission Second Report), dated 12 April 1878, The National Archives (TNA) CAB 7/3. 162 See Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 66. See also Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870- 1914, p. 64.

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support for such a scheme if they knew that the imperial government did not intend to defend the one point that they regarded as their greatest weakness, King George Sound, the Colonial Office chose not to advise colonial Governors of either decision.163 The Milne Committee sat until 28 April 1879, its impetus having dissipated after war with Russia was averted with the signing of the Treaty of Berlin in July 1878. Whilst the Committee did not come close to resolving the many and varied issues associated with standing up a complete imperial defence scheme, its creation did signal an important political acknowledgement that Britain was once again prepared to offer assistance to the colonies in developing colonial defence capability and that colonies, such as Victoria, might be called upon to assist the Empire if required. Furthermore, its constitution marked, possibly for first time, an important evolution in interdepartmental cooperation and coordination essential to the effective management of colonial defence issues and relations with individual colonial governments.

By the time that the Milne Committee concluded, Victoria was in the midst of its second Parliamentary crisis. This new impasse had been prompted by the Legislative Council’s refusal to extend temporary legislation originally passed in 1870, relating to the payment of Members of Parliament. The effect of this second Parliamentary stalemate was again to cause uncertainty over the funding of Jervois’s revised harbour defence plan laid down in the preceding year’s Forts and Armaments Bill. The matter was so pronounced, that the Governor, Sir George Bowen, wrote to Hicks-Beach at the Colonial Office explaining that owing to the Parliamentary situation in Victoria, the Defence Bill which contained the budgetary mechanism to support costs associated with constructing forts and armaments recommended by Jervois and Scratchley, had been rejected out of hand by the Legislative Council.164 In London, Hicks-Beach was understandably reluctant to take action to direct the resolution of matters based on the residual acrimony caused in Victoria after London’s handling of the previous crisis of 1867. The failure of the Berry government to pass successive appropriation Bills resulted in the summary dismissal of large numbers of public servants in January 1878, colloquially known today as ‘Black Wednesday’. It also meant that the annual concentration of volunteer forces at the Easter encampments did not occur between 1879 and 1881, resulting in further atrophy of the volunteer force and public

163 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, pp. 66-68. 164 Dispatch from Hicks-Beach to Bowen, 17 July 1878, VPP 1878-79, Vol. 3.

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antipathy toward the government’s handling of defence issues in general.165 Meanwhile, Jervois’s return to Australia in late 1878 prompted the compilation of a further report on Victoria’s harbour defences. Equipped with the latest information from England on the technical advances in naval artillery and sub-marine torpedos, Jervois updated his 1877 plan by recommending that facilities for a torpedo depot be established on Swan Island in-lieu of his previous proposal for a floating fort.166

As Milne’s Defence Committee was approaching its conclusion in late 1878, many of its members were under no illusion as to the necessity for something more permanent, and by the end of the year there were suggestions circulating within the responsible departments that a permanent Colonial Defence Committee ought to be established. Hicks-Beach, the Colonial Secretary, was convinced, probably through the work of the Royal Colonial Institute who favoured such course of action, to recommend a Royal Commission rather than the establishment of a permanent committee. Captain Colomb had held the view that only a Royal Commission could adequately investigate the situation satisfactorily.167 In any event, by July the former Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon had been approached to preside over such a commission, and his suggestions of the inclusion of two Liberals, Hugh Childers and Thomas Brassey, to maintain a bipartisan spirit of the issue was quickly accepted. The Royal Commission into ‘the state of defences of British commerce and possessions abroad’, later popularly known as the Carnarvon Commission, produced three detailed reports on various aspects of colonial trade and the defence of trading routes. The third and final report concentrated largely on the problems of the defence of Australia.

Unlike the Milne Committee, the Carnarvon Commissioners heard evidence from a diverse group of dominion representative’s from each of the major colonies. Fredrick Sargood, in his capacity as one of Victoria’s most experienced volunteer officers, represented the Victorian government. They also interviewed the Agents-General of New South Wales and South Australia, as well as local volunteer representatives of Queensland and New South Wales, and heard evidence from the Governor of Queensland.168 The

165 Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 102. 166 Report on the Defences of Victoria by Colonel Sir W.F.D. Jervois, 1 March 1879, VPP, 1879-80, Vol. 1. 167 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 84. 168 The ‘Third and Final Report of the Royal Commission Appointed to Inquire into British Possessions and Commerce Abroad’ (hereafter cited as ‘Carnarvon Commission Third Report’), dated 22 July 1882, Digest of Evidence, p. 619, TNA CAB 7/4. The evidence of Sir Daniel Cooper, Agent-General of New South Wales

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Commissioners also drew heavily on the recent reports of Jervois during their deliberations. The third report in large measure confirmed the standing position that the Royal Navy should be broadly charged with the duty of protecting Australian trade routes. This was a general principle, however, not a hard and fast rule, since the report hinted that it would be ‘not unreasonable’ for the colonies to make some common contribution to general naval upkeep in Australasian waters.169 Colonial views on this point differed. Victoria, with the most capable of the colonial navies, was less inclined to take issue with this suggestion than colonial representatives, such as Henry Parkes of New South Wales, who was of the opinion that such an arrangement would be unpalatable to many Australians.170 On the general issues of greater colonial assistance and the acceptance of responsibilities for Empire defence more generally, there was a more common consensus amongst the colonists. Both Sargood and Parkes stated that there did exist a common will in their respective colonies to share the burden of Empire defence, even to come to the aid of Britain if required, but that this understanding came with an expectation within the Australian community that colonial governments should have some say in the shape of imperial defence and foreign policies.171

Just what the Carnarvon Commission made of the colonial expectation of input concerning British strategic decision-making is not apparent, but the second report eloquently avoided the issue by stating: “It is not yet possible to define with accuracy the conditions upon which to determine the relative apportionment of the burdens as between the mother-country and the Colonies…”.172 The final recommendations of the Commission stressed the importance of maintaining a network of safe coaling stations and colonial outposts across its Empire. The three reports also confirmed the British

was heard on 08 Jun 1880, that of Sir Henry Blyth, Agent-General of South Australia on 14 Oct 1880. See Ibid. p. 626. The local militia representatives were Lieutenant Colonel E.R. Dury, commanding Queensland Artillery (19 May 1880, ibid., p. 631), Major G.J. Airey, New South Wales Artillery (10 Jun 1880, ibid, p. 621), and Major F.T. Sargood, Victorian Field Artillery (01 June 1880, ibid, p. 616). Sir Arthur Kennedy, Governor of Queensland, was interviewed on 08 June 1880 (ibid, p. 620), cited in Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, pp. 104-05. 169 Toward the latter part of 1881 the New South Wales Legislature debated the possibility of making an annual contribution to the Royal Navy Australian Squadron. Cost apportionment presented an insuperable problem. The information was passed to the Admiralty where naval staff welcomed the trend that such a debate indicated, but the First Lord maintained that such a scheme could never be worked satisfactorily owing to the fact that colonies contributing to squadron upkeep would want some voice in its disposition even in wartime. Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 105. 170 Ibid, p. 44; and Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 65. 171 Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 65. 172 Carnarvon Commission Second Report, p. 338, cited in Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870- 1914, p. 67.

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government’s position on a series of vexing issues relating to the restoration of imperial garrisons within colonies, which was definitively rejected, and the question of who should command colonial troops in the self-governing colonies. The answer – a colonial officer in peacetime and an imperial officer in war – demonstrated both insight and sensitivity to colonial views over the issue, as did its further recommendation that an imperial inspector of training be designated an imperial adviser rather than a commander of colonial troops.173 The work of the Carnarvon Commission had its critics, many from within Britain’s new government (Gladstone’s liberals having come to power in April 1880 mid way through the course of the Commission). Yet in the final assessment, historians largely agree that the work of the Commissioners further elevated the importance of colonial defence within Britain and individual self-governing colonies.174 For Victorians, particularly the likes of James Service and Frederick Sargood who were in England at the time of the inquiry, the Commission provided tangible evidence of the potential for a new imperial defence relationship with the colonies; a relationship codified by a sense of interdependence, rather than reliance. A greater say in imperial defence matters would always be welcomed, but the implication for wealthy colonies like Victoria was also evident – greater influence would demand more effective investment by the colonies in the area of self-defence.

In Melbourne, the political circumstances were still far from ideal to achieve such an outcome. Despite the best efforts of the Premier, Graham Berry and his supporters the Parliamentary deadlock was still in place. After assertive efforts to break the impasse, Berry made a personal visit to London to appeal to the Colonial Office to force the passage of his reform legislation without the consent of the Victorian Legislative Council. Though sympathetic to Berry’s argument, Hicks-Beach remained reticent to directly intervene in the crisis. After his return to Victoria and a last-ditch effort to pass the necessary Parliamentary reform legislation in December 1879 failed, a general election was called in February 1880. The following year saw the defeat of Berry’s government. When his successor, James Service, also failed to break the impasse a second election was called in July, this time returning Graham Berry at the head of a tenuous coalition. Berry had been forced into a

173 Ibid. p. 106. 174 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 118; Gordon, The Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 65.

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compromise of his original position on reform, and the impasse would not be finally resolved until midway through 1881.175

As momentum toward a resolution of the Parliamentary crisis grew, and certainty over government expenditure was realised, efforts to modernise the Colony’s defence capability developed greater traction. Like the preceding decade of the 1860s, the evolution of colonial defence management in Victoria continued along its uneven trajectory throughout the 1870s. The work of the 1875 Royal Commission gave rise to the first real interdepartmental and inter-colonial coordination initiatives in Victoria and saw a basis laid for the first tangible maturing of defence policy in the Colony. These initiatives were further mirrored across other Australian colonies and even further afield in other British territories. The efforts of Victorian administrators had informed, and to some degree perhaps even prompted the actions and outcomes of both the Milne Defence Committee and the Carnarvon Commission in London, which further reinforced progress in Victoria toward modernising its colonial defence institution. But the effects of a rushed introduction of responsible government were still being felt through this period as colonial defence issues became unnecessarily entangled in the local political culture of the Colony. It would take decisive and intuitive political efforts to resolve this situation over the next five years.

175 For more detail on this chapter of Victorian history see Alfred Deakin, The Crisis in Victorian Politics, 1879- 1881: A Personal Retrospective, J. A. La Nauze and R. M. Crawford (ed.), Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1957; and Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: 1797-1901, vol. 2, chapter 7.

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70 Chapter Four – 1880-1885

With the Victorian Parliamentary deadlock still unfolding at the turn of the 1880s, the prospect of a complete reorganisation of Victoria’s system of managing its defences looked unlikely. But in the short space of five years, this is exactly what occurred in the Colony between 1880 and 1885. This period in history would be witness to the completion of the much-anticipated harbour defence scheme, the creation of a multi-tiered military and naval force (comprising militia and reserve volunteer forces) supported by a new Discipline Act, and the formation of a joint defence department under a dedicated and responsible cabinet minister. Much of the groundwork for these reforms in Victoria had already commenced in the preceding decade. The ten years after the departure of Britain’s imperial garrison had seen the Colony grapple with the challenges of managing an indigenous and self-sustaining defence capability. Successive efforts in London to redefine and reinvigorate a new imperial defence relationship with the colonies through the Milne Interdepartmental defence committee and the Carnarvon Commission had also provided both the means and the impetus for colonies like Victoria to modernise its colonial defence scheme. But in 1880, amidst the Parliamentary deadlock such incentive appeared forlorn. Ironically it would be the political intransigents of the successive Parliamentary crises’ that would come to provide the appetite for bold countervailing reform efforts involving the Colony’s defence institutions over the next five years. This expansive reform effort would come to be led by James Service and supported by Frederick Sargood, who’s combined vision of a politically federated Australian state, supported by a modern and capable defence institution, provided the catalyst for sweeping public policy and structural reform for Victoria’s military and naval services. This chapter will examine how these efforts were undertaken and seen to fruition.

Amidst the long period of continuous political interplay and factional infighting that raged in the Victorian Parliament, George Augustus Constantine Phipps, the 2nd Marquess of Normanby, replaced Sir George Bowen as Governor.176 Normanby came to the post with considerable experience as a former Parliamentarian and Governor in various

176 For further details on Normanby, his biography, experiences as Governor and legacy see Davis McCaughey, Victoria’s Colonial Governors, 1839-1900, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1993, Chapter 6. A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Chapter Four

North American as well as Australasian colonies. By appointing an officer of his experience and stature, London knew that it was appointing an advocate with both the experience to appreciate the complications associated with the early days of responsible government as well as the acumen to get things done. The choice payed off and Normanby was ultimately able to steer the divergent political interests of the Victorian Parliament to a position of compromise, without the direct involvement of London. But the path to such success was not an easy one, taking three general elections and the refusal by Normanby to allow a fourth, to eventually be resolved.

The three years of deadlock between 1878 and 1881 was the cause of significant disruption to government business. The lack of available government funds during this second Parliamentary crisis created the conditions for a minor recession in the Colony.177 In a defence context the funding uncertainty seriously eroded the efficiency of the military and naval forces and affected efforts to complete the harbour defence plan. Scratchley’s frustration over the slow progress was clearly evident. In a report to the Victorian government in May 1880, he stated that in light of slow progress at building land defences, the Colony was solely reliant on its insufficiently equipped navy.178 The crisis was also responsible for the cancellation of the volunteer forces’ annual Easter training camps between 1879 and 1881. By late 1880, a decision to disband the regular Victorian Artillery Corps had been made by the government, which not only placed further stress on the capability of the volunteer force by removing most highly trained and technically proficient troops, but added further complications to the entire harbour defence scheme reliant on such highly trained soldiers.179 The Victorian Parliament debated the decision again in February 1881, when resolution of the crisis looked likely, with a view to reinstating the force. The full-time artillerymen were eventually reinstated in 1882, under the title the Victorian Permanent Artillery.

177 The change to the Councils constituency effectively increased the number of eligible voters from 30,000 to over 100,000, about half the number on the Assembly role, for further details see McMinn, A Constitutional History of Australia, pp. 70-71; and Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: 1797-1901, Vol. 2, p. 214. A much more detailed account is also contained in Deakin, The Crisis in Victorian Politics, 1879-1881. 178 Report and Suggestions relative to the Defences of Victoria, p. 4, VPP, 1882-1883, Vol. 2. 179 By the late 1870s funding in support of the volunteer force Easter camps was looking increasingly tenuous. Camps were cancelled between 1874 and 1876 and again in between 1879 and 1881. A limited Easter camp did occur in 1880, however funding for this was supported by unit funds, see Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, p. 102. For details concerning the decision to disband the Victorian Artillery Corps see Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly, VPD, 23 December 1880, pp. 1365-77.

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The Carnarvon Commission in London, which existed during the course of these events in Victoria, provided impetus for the War Office to task William Jervois and Peter Scratchley with further reviews of the colonial defenses of all of the Australian colonies, including New Guinea and the Torres Straits. Due to the fact that his governorship responsibilities in South Australia were consuming much of Jervois’ time, the responsibility for this endeavor largely fell to Scratchley. In doing so Scratchley soon found himself performing a travelling advisory role as he consulted individual colonies on defence planning and updated the War Office on their progress. Scratchley’s advisory work in Victoria continued throughout the early 1880s. Like the growing body of work that he undertook for other colonial governments during this period, his recommendations to Victorian authorities concentrated on the need to design an integrated defence scheme, not singularly reliant on any one service branch or system of defence. His methodology reflected a growing sophistication in contemporary military and naval thinking, which favored a combination of the latest technology, mobile naval and military tactical elements and a system of fortifications providing a complimentary effect. Its proponents advocated both local and strategic defences in depth. Most importantly, Scratchley’s emphasis on building a local military and naval force that was affordable and appropriately enabled through effective organization, training, and integration with other colonial defence plans and imperial capabilities (ostensibly the Royal Navy), reflected such thinking.

Amid the various incentives for modernizing Victoria’s defence capability was a growing awareness of the Colony’s strategic circumstances in the Pacific. While developments in the Western Pacific had remained a passing matter of interest for Victorian governments since the French take over of New Caledonia, the region’s strategic relevance for Victoria began to increase throughout the 1870s. Arguments for the annexation of Pacific territories had emerged over the preceding thirty years. French, German and even American interest in the region, security of Australian trade routes, economic interests, and human rights concerns over the illegal trade in human labour, had all captured the attention of various community entities pushing for greater British regulation of the region. The 1853 annexation of New Caledonia had prompted some to call for British annexation of New Guinea, the New Hebrides and Fiji purely for military purposes. By the mid-1860s, the Presbyterian Church’s concerns over the issues associated with the growing trade in indentured labour in the Western Pacific began to gain traction in

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Wellington, Sydney, Melbourne and London.180 The Presbyterian Church in Victoria was particularly committed to these efforts, supporting the work of well-known missionaries such as John Paton, a Scotsman, who had lived and worked in the New Hebrides since the late 1850s. By the mid-1860s the Presbyterian Church had started lobbying the government of Britain directly over the matter, enlisting the support of various Victorian political identities to assist their cause.

By 1874, a confluence of strategic and human rights concerns in Britain at the time of that year’s general election resulted in the annexation of Fiji, giving hope to many interested parties that further annexations of the New Hebrides and New Guinea might soon occur. But on the whole there was reluctance in London to extend its formal control of the region any further than it already held responsibility for. Lord Carnarvon rejected a formal request by the New South Wales government, backed by South Australia, Queensland and Victoria, to annex New Guinea in 1876.181 By January 1878, the British and French governments had agreed to respect the independence of the New Hebrides through the signing of a ‘mutual assurance’ pact. In an effort to stave off further colonial pressure Carnarvon also set up the Western Pacific High Commission. Considered a cheap alternative to annexation, it provided a means of exercising legal jurisdiction for the purpose of regulating labour trade without the need to formally control large tracts of watery territory. The Commission also provided the British government with a means of limiting further pressure from specialist interest groups, such as the Presbyterian Church and the various Australasian colonies over the issue.

Economic incentives also factored into the strategic calculation confronting the Australasian colonies in the Pacific. British reluctance to support the 1878 request by New South Wales authorities to annex New Guinea, prompted the Queensland Premier, Thomas McIlwraith, to press for Queensland control of the maritime passage through the

180 The use of indentured labour in the Pacific, or ‘blackbirding’ as it became know in the Australian press had become prevalent in the early 1860s because of a growing demand for cheap labour. Driven in part by the discovery that guano (found on islands off the Peruvian coast), could be used as a fertilizer on early industrialized farms. The practice further flourished in the mid-1860s when cotton shortages induced by the American civil war caused optimistic planting in Queensland and Fiji; see W. McIntyre, The Imperial Frontier in the Tropics, McMillan, New York, 1967, p. 240. 181 There was generally wide support for the annexation of New Guinea in the Australian Colonies at this time. Out of a sample of 50 metropolitan and regional news papers between May and August 1875, 36 editorially supported annexation, see: Rodger Thompson, Australian Imperialism in the Pacific – The Expansionist Era (1820-1920), Melbourne University Press, 1980, p. 38.

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Torres Strait.182 An agreement to extend the northern limit of the Queensland boarder to the very edge of the New Guinea coastline was agreed to by London in 1879. McIlwraith argued successfully that the security of the Strait was essential to the protection and effective functioning of that Colony’s growing communications link with Europe. Queensland officials contended that the narrow maritime shipping corridor had become as busy as Bass Straight since the introduction of steam powered vessels to commercial trade. Queensland had always suffered from the fact that Sydney and Melbourne were the preferred ports of entry. Like New South Wales, but unlike Victoria, Queensland did not charge tariffs for use of its ports. Invariably, the argument went, Queenslanders were forced to pay additional routing and re-routing fees to have goods pass through the major trading ports of Sydney and Melbourne before receiving them in Queensland. Ever since the British P&O Company, which was the main carrier of mail from Britain, had relocated its principle terminus from Sydney to Melbourne, the incentive for Queensland to secure its own point of entry, via the Torres Strait, was even greater.183

Active discussion over the issue of New Guinea’s annexation continued to persist through the 1880s. Its relevance to Victoria’s defence story can be measured in two parts. Firstly, its importance as a direct issue of strategic policy generation and management provided a further level of complexity that needed to be managed by the Victorian government. Secondly, the issue necessitated greater dialogue between colonial governments over defence planning requirements. The direct relevance of this issue to Australia’s story of Federation can be found elsewhere, but its relevance for colonial defence reform, particularly that relating to Victoria has been until now largely been overlooked.184 There was by the early 1880s a growing inter-colonial political consensus over annexation of Pacific territories, provided that an impetus for Victorians to identify a need to better mange defence matters. Throughout the 1860s and 1870s divergent trade policies toward the Pacific had been a minor source of tension between the New South

182 Thompson suggests that Lord Carnarvon was generally supportive of the Queensland government’s position, however was unwilling to support the request based on the financial cost associated with annexation. His argument further suggests that Australian annexation of New Guinea may have been supported in London in 1875 if the Australian colonies had been willing to cover the cost of the policy, ibid, p. 48. 183 Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia: 1860-1900, Vol. 3, pp. 296-97. 184 For a detailed account of the annexation issue and the Federation issue see Thompson, Australian Imperialism and the Pacific, his conclusion contains a good synopsis of the key points. For a discussion on this issue through Victorian eyes see John Lack, ‘Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? Service and Gillies: The Grand Coalition Premiers 1883-1890’, Paul Strangio and Brian Costar (ed.), The Victorian Premiers: 1856 – 2006, pp. 79-84.

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Wales and Victorian governments. Sydney’s location, as a major South Pacific trading centre meant that New South Wales felt more confident of its economic influence in the Pacific than Victoria did. Furthermore, the New South Wales government’s attitude toward free-trade caused it to actively support the continued presence of the Royal Navy, without which free trade was a dubious concept. Victoria’s protective trade policies however, inclined it to favour a more self-reliant attitude toward defence, with greater inter-colonial co-operation.185

The 1881 inter-colonial conference was one such example of growing collegiality between the colonies over defence. With its emphasis on greater self-reliance, the Victorian government was opposed to payment of an annual fee attached to the cost of construction and maintenance of the Royal Navy’s Squadron in Port Jackson. While there was broad agreement from the other colonies that the expense of the Royal Navy Squadron was an imperial government responsibility, cost-sharing arrangements did have their supporters in the New South Wales legislature, which had recently debated the cost apportionment issue.186 The conference agreed to a statement attesting to the poor state of the Royal Navy’s Australian Squadron, which in the view of the premiers, placed Australian interests in the Pacific at grave risk. The premiers all agreed that the squadron needed to be strengthened, but they went on to further support the Victorian position that any costs associated with the strengthening of the squadron should be accomplished without Australian contribution.187 This position was not welcomed in London by the likes of Lord Derby, the Colonial Secretary in the second Gladstone government, or Admiral Arthur Hood, First Naval Lord at the Admiralty. The Australian colonial position on this key issue was taken into account by the Carnarvon Commission, which was at this time nearing the completion of its second report.

The efforts of Jervois and Scratchley had also assisted in the new spirit of cooperation between the colonial governments on defence issues. The patient and consistent efforts of the two Royal Engineers had by early 1882, generated greater cooperation between the colonies on many of the more technical and operational questions confronting colonial defence planners. In early 1881, Scratchley was appointed vice- president of the Military Service Inquiry Commission in New South Wales. As well as

185 Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia: 1860-1900, Vol. 3, p. 299. 186 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 120. 187 Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, p. 78.

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military staff from New South Wales, the Commission also included the commandants of Victoria and South Australia. The purpose of the Commission was to design a military force capable of supporting a localized colonial defence plan. Scratchley emphasized the importance of financial sustainability in the development of local colonial defence planning and capitol works procurement. The question of employing imperial officers to command the local forces was discussed at some length. Scratchley supported the idea of experienced imperial officers being employed in the role of military commandant, and/or as local adjutant, responsible for training standards.188 Scratchley would hereafter continually refer back to this keystone enquiry in his dealings with other colonial governments.189 Visits to Queensland and Tasmania soon followed, and Scratchley convinced the governments of those colonies to follow South Australia’s example and appoint an imperial officer to command their local military forces.190

In Victoria, the death of its military Commandant, Colonel William Anderson in January 1882, provided Victorian authorities with an opportunity to review the leadership arrangements for its military forces again. Their immediate response was to appoint Colonel Bruce Hutton, a local volunteer officer who had previously served as an imperial officer, to the position of Commandant on a temporary basis.191 Then, in March 1882, amid much public clamor over a visit by a Russian naval contingent, Scratchley wrote to the Victorian government urging them to complete the original defence works program.192 In response, and under mounting public pressure to make progress with respect to the defence management issue, Victorian Premier, Bryan O'Loghlen requested that the imperial authorities select an appropriate imperial army officer, preferably an artilleryman,

188 Report of the Military Defence Inquiry Commission of New South Wales, 1 July 1881, NSW Parliament Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Assembly (VPLA), 1881, pp. 93-95. 189 Stephen J. Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum: British Army Officers as Military Commandants in the Australian Colonies and New Zealand – 1870-1901’, PhD Thesis, University of New South Wales, 1999, p. 8. 190 South Australia had originally requested an imperial officer for this purpose in May 1877 at the height of the 1877-78 war scare with Russia. The Colonial and War Office’s had both accented to the request and Lieutenant Colonel Francis Downes, RA was appointed to the position in August 1877. For further details see Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum’, pp. 5-9. 191 T.B. Hutton was no relation to Sir Edward Hutton, the subsequently infamous British Army officer who would soon assume the position of Commandant of military forces in New South Wales in 1893. 192 Public fears concerning Victoria’s languishing state of defences had been the subject of hoax article in the Age newspaper, claiming knowledge of an intercepted cable from the Russian commander detailing Melbourne’s poor state of defences for details see Verity Fitzhardinge, ‘Russian Naval Visits to Australia: 1862-1888’, in Journal and Proceedings of the Royal Australian Historical Society, Vol. 52, Part 2, Sydney, June 1966, p. 144-152.

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for the post of commandant, together with another two imperial officers, for a period of five years.193

In an official communiqué dated 24 June 1882, to Lord Kimberley, the Colonial Secretary, Normanby stated that the appointment of an imperial officer to the post of Commandant in Victoria was the only means of securing an efficient military force. It was, he wrote, 'hopeless to expect that any officer trained in the Local Forces should possess that professional knowledge which is requisite effectually to act as Commandant'. He also dismissed the appointment of a retired officer, citing that he would be 'out of date' and would 'lack the stimulant to exertion' compared with an officer from the active list who had his 'professional reputation to maintain'.194 Normanby saw the leadership issue as analogous to resolving the harbour defence construction problems and overseeing a reorganisation of the defence force as a whole. For his part, Colonel Hutton, whilst in the role of acting Commandant, undertook a review of defence expenditure in lieu of the problems plaguing the harbour defence scheme. His conclusion, that the allocated funds had not been expended against their intended purpose, provided critics of Bryan O'Loghlen’s government, Scratchley among them, with further ammunition with which to chastise Victorian authorities.195 In London however, the War Office was struggling to find a suitable candidate to fill the appointment. Further incentives, such as pay and additional allowances were added in December 1882 when appropriate officers had still not come forward. The position was still not filled by the time of the general election in Victoria the following year.196

Local defence issues were not the only political difficulties that plagued O’Loghlen and his government throughout 1882. Controversies over the cost and effort of apprehending Ned Kelly and his gang, news of the murder of Lord Cavendish in a Dublin park, the outbreak of hostilities in Egypt, and growing animosity within certain sectors of the community about the Colony’s Chinese immigrant community, all placed additional

193 Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum’, p. 10. 194 Ibid. 195 See Victorian Defence Reorganisation Scheme: 1883, p. 3, VPP 1883, Vol.2; and Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, pp. 169-170. 196 Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum’, pp. 10-11.

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and considerable pressure on the government.197 Popular public sentiment held to the view that O’Loghlen’s narrow hold over the governing coalition was motivated by the singular political aim of keeping Graham Berry and the protectionists out of office. But by the end of the Parliamentary year O’Loghlen succumbed to the overwhelming pressure and requested that Governor Normanby allow the government to go to the polls. Normanby assented to the request and on 31 January 1883 the dissolution of parliament was gazetted and provision was made for a general election on 22 February 1883. Many in the community saw a return to politics by the popular James Service as the answer to many of the Colony’s seemingly intractable political and bureaucratic management problems.

Between 1881 and 1882, James Service had been abroad in England. His prolonged absence, attributed to illness, provided an opportunity for him to return to Victorian politics afresh, with a strong agenda for political and governmental reform.198 Service would stand for the two-member seat of Castlemaine, and many within and outside of the party political system believed that a strong consensus leader such as James Service, with such a reform agenda, might be in a position to lead Victoria out of the political quagmire that had plagued the Colony’s political system since inception.199 Service’s immediate aims were to reform the civil service, the railways and defence. He intended to eliminate political patronage in the public service and to establish a Public Service Board and Railway Commission in an attempt to engender greater meritorious values in colonial government institutions.

Exactly where Service saw the Colony’s defence issues sitting within his broader agenda for reform prior to the 1883 election is not evident from contemporary records available today. What is certain is that his attitudes and views were heavily shaped by his close friendship with Fredrick Sargood, by now a Lieutenant Colonel in the Victorian volunteer movement and member of the Victorian Legislative Council. Sargood had also been in England during 1881 and 1882; the death of his first wife Emma (née Rippon) during childbirth in 1880 had prompted his resignation from the Legislative Council and a

197 Whilst Kelly had been arrested, tried and put to death in 1880, the Royal Commission into the police handling of the events was not complete until October 1882. For further details on the effects of this and the other significant political issues of 1882, see Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 2, pp. 225-35. 198 James Service had resigned his seat in early 1881, citing illness and travelled to England. Upon his return to Victoria a year later in 1882, he was seen by many, including Normanby, as the best choice of leader, see Geoffrey Serle, James Service (1823-1899), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/service-james-4561, accessed on 19 May 2013. 199 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 2, pp. 238.

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return to England. During these intervening years in England, Sargood had given evidence to the Carnarvon Commission, and devoted a degree of time and effort to considering the question of defence reform. As far back as 1875, he had publically advocated for the reinstatement of an imperial officer to command local military forces in Victoria. He had also been amongst the minority group of volunteer officers in the Colony calling for the reform of the Volunteer Act and the establishment of a part-time paid militia, which could more readily be relied upon in a time of national emergency. As one of the Colony’s most successful and well-connected business entrepreneurs, he also possessed a unique combination of management competence and business acumen, skills that he was able to direct to driving deep reform within the government sector. The partnership between James Service and Frederick Sargood was the decisive influence amongst a range of other factors that convinced Service to include colonial defence reform as part of his election platform.

Another important calculation factoring into Service’s thinking with respect to colonial defence were his attitudes toward Federation. His views on the matter were well established by the 1883 election campaign. During his opening election campaign speech in February 1883, Service pronounced ’[i]s it not time to sink all provincial names… and have one great name in that of Australia?’200 With the new spirit of imperial and colonial nationalism prevailing in London through the Carnarvon Commission’s efforts to imbue a greater sense of imperial cooperation on colonial defence matters, Service could easily see the advantage of establishing a credible colonial defence capability in Victoria. A credible means of managing defence matters would not only be a useful tool in London, but also an effective means of exercising influence over his colonial counterparts in Australia. A respectable local defence capability in Victoria may provide an opportunity for future discussion in London about the British governments policy concerning annexation of parts of the Pacific. The Carnarvon Commission had ever so narrowly opened the door to the prospect of colonial governments having a hand in shaping imperial defence policy where relevant issues applied after all. Defining a common ‘Australasian’ approach to the Pacific might be another powerful argument for Federation. Service never publically discussed this line of reasoning, nor did he privately commit such thoughts to existing records prior to the 1883 election. But the fact that the reform efforts were embarked upon so rapidly after the election point to the fact that both Service and Sargood were pre-prepared to embark

200 The Argus, 08 February 1883, p. 4.

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on defence reform rapidly in order to provide the Service government with a means to publically sell the defence reform initiative to garner political capital elsewhere.

Quantifying just how advanced these ideas were prior to the 1883 election is difficult to gauge given the paucity of existing documentary evidence. Certainly if the ideas to establish a dedicated civil defence department or a Cabinet position were discussed prior to the 1883 election by Service and Sargood, it is evident that the concept wasn’t solidified sufficiently for it to be suggested during the election campaign. Defence management reform was, however, a key tenet of Service’s pre-election campaign. It formed one of the five main points of his stump speech given to a packed Theatre Royal in Castlemaine on the evening of 7 February 1883. In that speech he announced:

There is one other matter, which perhaps may be regarded as of very small consequence by some, but not long ago it was considered a rather important matter in the eyes of the country and in the eyes of Parliament. I allude to the defences of the Colony. Upon the subject of colonial defence we grow hot or cold alternately year by year. One year we get scared, and spend any amount of money, then we have a fit of economy and do nothing. Since I left the colony works have been going on, and so far good has been done; but there is nobody to manage the volunteer force of the colony, which from all that I can hear is rapidly falling into a state of disorganization. At present we have no proper head of the force in the colony. We want a good man from England, a good soldier, who knows how to train men and teach them the modern means of warfare and make them in fact good trained soldiers. One of our Australian statesmen told the people in England recently, whilst I was in London that the Australian colonists had not much to learn from England. I think that at all events we have to learn a good deal of soldiering, and if we had the men to teach us properly, I would defy the world to produce a better class of soldiers than those we could turn out. We are spending at present about half a million of money in works connected with our defences, £70,000 a year upon the forces of the colony, when, in point of fact, the thing is in a totally ineffective condition. It will become the urgent duty of any Government which comes into office to immediately put themselves into communication with the good old mother country, which has taught us in Egypt, I think - what the soldier is made of…201

The successful election of James Service and his coalition, including both Graham Berry and Frederick Sargood in the Legislative Council, saw the new Victorian government embark on the promised reform effort. Sargood was initially appointed as a special Minister of Cabinet, representing Cabinet in the Legislative Council. Service, as Premier and Treasurer, retained oversight of the defence portfolio.202 This arrangement did not stop

201 Ibid. 202 Service also maintained responsibility for Education. Understanding the need to keep a close hold on his coalition in order to avoid the chaos of preceding administrations appointed Graham Berry as Chief Secretary

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Sargood from leading the government’s effort to modernise and reorganise the Colony’s defence scheme. He soon commenced work on a detailed report for the Premier entitled the ‘Defence Re-Organisation Scheme’. The report was compiled and authored by Sargood and laid forth his vision for reforming the Colony’s military and defence institution over the next five years. The report not only took into account the details of preceding inquiries into the Colony’s state of defences, but also the findings of the 1881 New South Wales Military Defence Inquiry, as well as select sections of the Carnarvon Commission. Importantly, the report laid out Sargood’s plan to end the volunteer system and replace it with a multi-tiered ‘Defence Force’, underpinned by a new Discipline Act. Sargood also restated the need to appoint imperial officers to key command and training positions within the force and the requirement to establish a defence committee, or council, to advise the government on the management of key defence issues. Sargood’s report also outlined a plan to meet the financial costs attached to completing Jervois’ and Scratchley’s harbour defence scheme, as well as suggestions for the establishment of a basic, local defence industrial capability to manufacture small arms and ammunition within the Colony. The thirty-six page report became the blueprint for Victorian defence reform over the next five years.

Sargood’s report was completed in late June 1883, with details being made public one month later in July. Service agreed to all of its recommendations and efforts started in earnest to engage the War Office about the appointment of imperial officers and commence drafting of a new Discipline Act. By mid-1883, Sargood was effectively a Minister for Defence in all by name only. He occupied a Cabinet position, he was almost exclusively dealing in defence matters and his reform effort had taken him deeper than any other elected official into the day-to-day business of the Colony’s military and naval organisations. A decision to create a dedicated and enduring Ministerial position would signal to all just how central the Victorian government considered defence management to be to the function of government. In October 1883, the death of the Justice Minister, Mr Robert Anderson, provided Service with the opportunity to reshuffle his Cabinet and formally appoint Sargood to the position of Defence Minister. By late October, amidst the news of Anderson’s passing, word that Fredrick Sargood was to be appointed to be the Colony’s first Minister for Defence was circulating in the Victorian press.203 The and Post-Master General. Another notable member of his cabinet was Alfred Deakin, Minister for Public Works and Water Supply, who later became Solicitor General. 203 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria, Vol. 2, p. 241.

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appointment was made official on 13 November 1883, at a Cabinet meeting, where Sargood officially accepted the appointment as Victoria’s inaugural Minister of Defence.204

By the time of his official appointment, Sargood had already effectively undertaken the necessary work to implement what he saw as the re-organisation scheme’s two most pressing priorities; the introduction of a new Discipline Act, and the appointment of an imperial Commandant and two staff officers. The implications of the Discipline Act 1883, were far reaching. The new Act provided the government with the necessary legal and judicial powers to call out the defence forces during a time of national emergency and made militia volunteers accountable to a formal military discipline system. The powers invested in the new Discipline Act effectively made the Colony’s military and naval forces accountable in law to the government for both their service and their performance of duty. The Act also made provision for the expeditionary deployment of Victorian service personnel outside of the Colony. This decision was, until 1883, a politically contentious proposition. It’s passage into law in 1883 reflected a growing acceptance that local Victorian military and naval forces would, in all likelihood, require the versatility to assist their sister Australasian colonial services during a time of national emergency.

By November 1883, efforts to select and appoint suitable imperial military staff to the local forces were still under way in Britain. In his June report, Sargood had openly praised the efforts of the O’Loghlen government for appointing an imperial officer into the Colonial Commandant position. Sargood had long held to the view that the appointment of British officers was important, because it would enable Victoria to follow the British Army practice of changing staff appointments every five years in order to keep officers efficient and up to date with the latest management practices and technological advances occurring in Europe. For Sargood this was even more important for isolated colonies like Victoria 'so entirely removed from the centre of military knowledge'.205 In addition to the three officers already requested, Sargood proposed that an additional number of junior officers and senior non-commissioned officers be appointed to key training posts.206 He also recommended that British training staff should assist in the establishment of a military school of instruction, similar in design and purpose to the Royal Military College recently

204 The Colac Herald, 13 November 1883, p. 3. 205 Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum’, p. 11. 206 Memorandum Sargood to Service, 28 May 1883, enclosed within Victorian Defence Reorganisation Scheme: 1883, pp. 7-9, VPP 1883, Vol.2.

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opened in Kingston, Canada.207 Sargood's fellow volunteer officers approved of his plans, as did his cabinet colleagues who instructed the Agent-General to press London for the additional staff.208 In August 1883, the War Office finally selected Major (Local Colonel) Thomas Disney, as Commandant together with four staff officers and seven non- commissioned officers.209 Disney and his imperial staff arrived in Melbourne in November 1883 to begin the task of reorganising the military forces, under their new banner as part of the Victorian Department of Defence with its new legislation and Minister to run it.210

With the arrival of the military staff from Britain and the passage of the Discipline Act 1883 into law now completed, Sargood turned his attention to appointing a Defence Council to oversee the Department and provide advice to the colonial government on military matters. This model had originally been recommended in 1875 at the Victorian Royal Commission into the Volunteer Forces. Sargood’s version had one key difference in that his design for the Council, comprising the two service Commandants of the military and naval forces and the head of the newly established Ordinance Corps, placed the Council under the control of the elected government of the day, not under the Governor, as had been originally proposed in 1875. The decision was a critical one and would lead to the establishment of a fundamentally important precedent in the evolution of the relationship between the government and the military in Australia. By placing the Council under the control of the elected government Sargood sought to make the armed services responsive to the elected government of the day as opposed to the appointed Governor. To many, having the armed services at the direct beck-and-call of an elected government cast aspersions that the military and naval function would become overtly politicised. To Sargood, who had seen the effect of the Cardwell reforms in Britain the preceding decade, it was involvement of the Sovereign’s representative in the nexus between elected government and the armed services that precisely was the problem. In his original report Sargood had stated that the purpose of the Council was to ‘provide advice to Victorian

207 Royal Military College Kingston had been established in 1876 for the purpose of training young men in the technical and social sciences involved in military service. Like the Canadian model, Sargood acknowledged that it was not intended that all graduate would serve in the colonial military forces, however would prepare student for leadership roles in both military and civilian careers. Graduates not serving in the military, it was envisaged, could be called upon to perform national service during a time of national crisis. See ibid, p. 9; and Preston, Canada and Imperial Defence, p. 78. 208 'Victorian Government Defence Scheme. Resolutions passed by the Officers of the Volunteer Force at a General Meeting, Melbourne, 5 September 1883' in Cooke, Australian Defences and New Guinea, Appendix VII, pp. 400-402. 209 Ted Millar, Thomas Robert Disney (1842-1915), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/disney-thomas-robert-3415, accessed 15 Mar 14. 210 The Argus, 30 July 1883, p. 5; and the Argus, 18 August 1883, p. 10.

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governments on military matters, free of political influence or patronage’.211 He again reinforced the point publically in Parliament in October by stating that Ministers and government officials often lacked sufficient knowledge of defence issues.212

Tension between Disney and the government escalated almost immediately after the new Commandant arrived in the Colony. The flashpoint came when Sargood decided that the new Commandant ought to be housed in government offices in Spring Street, not in its traditional headquarters at Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Rd.213 Colonel Disney objected to being directed by a local politician, whatever link he held with the military, over an issue as profound (or as petty) as where his office should be. The disagreement set the tone for tense relations between Sargood and the new senior military officer that would permeate the reform effort over the next three years in Victoria. When Sargood later requested copies of Disney’s orders, for example, the Commandant told the Minister that he could get his own clerk to copy the orders. Unable to gain the cooperation of Disney, Sargood asked a subordinate officer for assistance in obtaining copies of the orders.214 Upon hearing of this request by Sargood, Disney objected to the Minister approaching his military staff directly, citing concerns about being bypassed. Disney’s intention was well understood as a strategy to exorcise ministerial influence from within the Department. Disney took his concerns directly to the Governor, claiming that since the Governor, was the commander-in-chief of all military and naval forces, he was in effect his superior officer and the only individual to whom he as Commandant should report. The Governor was sympathetic to Disney’s position, but Sargood had a different view on the matter, stating to the Governor and Disney that under Section 40 of Discipline Act 1883, the term ‘Governor’ referred to ‘Governor in council’ not ‘the Governor’.215

Disney’s frustrations stemmed from a belief that imperial control over colonial garrisons should be exercised in a manner similar to its function in the colonies prior to 1870 when the British Army had maintained its own military garrisons. It also highlighted a degree of ignorance of the evolving nature of military command and control in more fundamental terms. Sargood’s vision of the relationship between elected governments and

211 Victorian Defence Reorganisation Scheme: 1883, p. 9, VPP 1883, Vol.2. 212 Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly, VPD, 3 October 1883, p. 1739. 213 The Age, 28 November 1883, p. 5. 214 Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”, p. 224. 215 Ibid, pp. 224- 25; and Clarke, ‘Marching to Their Own Drum’, pp. 140-142.

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the armed services closely followed that of the British government’s new system of controlling its military in the wake of the Cardwell reforms. Under this new regime military command was no longer a royal prerogative or ‘shared’ between the Commander-in-Chief and the Minister for War, but a clear responsibility of government through the responsible minister. To Sargood’s mind the civilian political supremacy should be clear to all. Political command of military, and naval forces now implied both administrative and operational control in times of war as well as peace. Many officers and administrators, Colonel Disney among them, did not realise that command of forces raised by self-governing colonies was quite different in nature from the command of British forces sent overseas as garrisons of non-self governing territories of Empire. The new paradigm would emphasise administrative, rather than operational control of military and naval forces. Commanders in all instances would now be expected to refer to local colonial authorities that raised and paid for them, rather than to imperial authorities at Government House.216

It was against this backdrop of tension that the new Council of Defence came into being. Having been officially appointed by Sargood on 28 December 1883, it met for the first time on 4 January 1884.217 Its composition included the Minister, Sargood, the military and naval commandants of the Colony, Colonel Disney and Captain C.T. Manderville, RN; and senior local militia officers, Captain Robert Fullarton of the Naval Reserve and Lieutenant Colonel John Montgomery Templeton of the newly established militia land force.218 The minutes of the Council’s first year of meetings reflect the contested state of the new command arrangements between local military and naval forces and the government.219 This was largely driven by the fact that most members of the new Council were unclear on the essential role of the Council. Most (like Disney) viewed it through the traditional prism that it, rather than the government, would direct the operational activities of the service branches. The Council’s 1885 annual report bemoaned the fact that its limited discretion over defence expenditure or Defence Regulations relegated it to little more than an advisory role, there simply to add legitimacy to government decisions.220

216 Gordon, The Dominion Partnership in Imperial Defence, 1870-1914, pp. 224-225. 217 The Argus, 16 January 1884, p. 6. 218 The Argus, 5 January 1884, p. 9. 219 See Council of Defence Minute Book (1884-1901), National Archives of Australia, CRS CA6761. 220 The Council of Defence Annual Report – 1885, p. 1, VVP 1886, NLA, SRf 355.009945 V645.

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Sargood responded by establishing a new position of departmental secretary. A move that illustrated both technical and political shrewdness, Sargood selected Major General Francis Downes, the recently retired Commandant of South Australia to take up the inaugural appointment of Secretary of Defence.221 The stated role of the new portfolio position was the integration of military and naval functions with that of government, similar to secretarial appointments at the top of other civil departments. The position carried the added responsibility of chairing the Defence Council, thus removing the Minister for Defence from many of the technical control aspects of departmental business. The new role also provided a further partition between the politics of government and departmental business.222 The selection of Downes to undertake this new role was also important. As a career officer and former colonial Commandant, Downes not only had enormous experience in managing colonial military forces but he also out-ranked Disney in both military and civil authority. Downes appointment to the new role effectively nullified Disney’s ability to obfuscate the colonial government’s control of the military from this point forward. By 1886, when Sir James Lorimer replaced Sargood as Minister for Defence, the relationship between the Council and the government was on a far stronger footing. The Council would remain an important institution in the management of the defence department, meeting a total of 498 times until February 1901, when its role was subsumed into the federal Department of Defence.223

The passage of the Discipline Act through the Victorian Parliament in late 1883 also provided the government with the legislative mechanism to commence the much deeper structural reform of the Colony’s military and naval forces. Having successfully introduced the Act into law, the Service government decreed that the existing Volunteer Force would be abolished with effect on 1 January 1884. Those wishing to continue to serve in the Colony’s armed forces were encouraged to enlist for five year fixed terms within a newly established part-paid militia force. Despite objections from a vocal minority group from within the Volunteer Force, many did transition between the volunteer force and new militia force. In September 1884, Service announced to the Legislative Assembly that nearly 3,000 men had volunteered to serve in the new militia force.224 The ease with which the new military and naval force was established was testament to Sargood’s experience and

221 Warren Perry, Major Francis Downes (1834-1923), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/downes-major-francis-3439, accessed 16 Mar 14. 222 The Council of Defence Annual Report – 1885, p. 1, VVP 1886, NLA, SRf 355.009945 V645. 223 Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, p. 190. 224 Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly, VPD, 18 September 1884, p. 1461.

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understanding of the sentiment of those serving within the ranks of the volunteer force, and also the government’s swift, and well designed policy to implement reform. It also contrasted markedly with efforts to wind down volunteers in favour of militiamen in the other Australian colonies. The defence reorganisation scheme was also well supported through a public information campaign that involved public meetings, discussion in the Parliament, as well as wide, and mostly positive, coverage in the press. The new Defence Force model developed by Sargood built on the early work of Jervois and Scratchley. It was billed as a multi-tiered force, comprising a small full-time cadre of 139 military (mostly artillery) and 119 naval staff (the crew of Cerberus).225 The intended role of these permanent forces was the preservation of key technical trade skills, such as technical gunnery and seamanship, as well as maintaining more effective training and administrative functions. The permanent forces were in-turn supported by an additional 3,175 military and 227 naval militia personnel.

The Service government also sought to capitalize on the growing sense of community investment into the Colony’s new defence forces by creating a third tier, or ‘reserve mobilisation force’. Again the idea was not new. The 1875 Royal Commission had considered the use of the police force as a reserve paramilitary force, but the suggestion had been disregarded due to opposition from the Colony’s police force. The new ‘reserve’ concept would build on the popularity of rifle clubs by enrolling their members as ‘reservists’ and incorporating recently retired members of the full-time and militia force.226 The policy, when it was announced in parliament, was contentious in part because some who had disagreed with the disestablishment of the volunteer force had viewed the rifle club movement as an alternative to being involved in the militia movement.227 The initiative, however, was brought into effect in November 1885, with the inducement of subsidised ammunition and rifles for club members. The government also set about formalising the school cadet movement, which provided basic military training to school age boys between the ages of twelve and eighteen. Individual cadet units had existed as far back as the 1860s but they had not, as yet, been integrated into a consolidated colonial defence scheme such as this.228 The initiative was well supported in Victoria, and in 1906

225 Victorian Defence Reorganisation Scheme: 1883, p. 34, VPP 1883, Vol.2. 226 By 1884 there were 105 rifle clubs registered in Victoria. See Victorian Hansard, Legislative Assembly VPD, 18 September 1884, p. 1462. 227 Ibid, pp. 1461-1463; see also the Argus, 26 September 1884, p. 7. 228 For details see Stockings, The Torch and the Sword, Chapter 1; and Millar, ‘History of the Defence Forces of the Port Phillip District and Colony of Victoria’, Chapter 7.

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the Commonwealth government adopted the cadet scheme into the federal defence department. This new multi-tiered military and naval force continued to evolve over the coming years to Federation. Responsive to the growing industrialised and technical nature of warfare it adopted more specialised combat and combat support corps, including mounted and light infantry, torpedo and submarine mining corps and signals, as well as new support and logistic functions like; medical, field ambulance, ordinance and transport corps.

Sargood also expended significant effort in establishing the requisite financial and fiscal mechanisms to pay for the harbour defence scheme as originally envisaged by Jervois and Scratchley. The Defence Reorganisation Scheme, tabled before parliament in mid-1883, included a detailed statement of works for the completion of the scheme. In it Sargood had noted that whilst £71,756 had already been spent on the fortification works at Queenscliff, Point Nepean and Swan Island, a further £58,000 was required to completed the planned works at Port Phillip Heads and further along the coast at Portland, Warrnambool and Belfast. By the end of 1883, a total of £198,711 had been spent or committed to the completion of the defence scheme.229 In the five years since Jervois had made his recommendations on the harbour defence scheme, successive Victorian governments had committed over £448,711 to defence related expenses. These had included the purchase of key military and naval hardware and the upgrade of facilities. It did not account however, for the cost of Sargood’s proposed defence reorganisation scheme. In order to meet these costs, Service agreed to the expenditure of an additional £110,000 per annum over the next five years. To reconcile the remaining deficit, Sargood implemented a local defence bond scheme, which raised an additional £400,000. By the end of the decade annual defence spending in Victoria had risen to £135,000 per annum, and the Colony also possessed one of the Empire’s most advanced colonial fortification systems.230

Sargood’s 1883 report also recommended the establishment of a small arms factory.231 The issue of ammunition stocks and reliance on overseas supplies had played in the media for years. Yet Sargood would need to wait until his second term as Minister for Defence between 1890 and 1892, to see the fruits of this initiative realised. The proposal had not received much attention until after Sargood’s departure as Minister of Defence in

229 Victorian Defence Reorganisation Scheme: 1883, pp. 4-5, VPP 1883, Vol.2. 230 Ibid. 231 Ibid, p. 10.

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1886, when the growing number of rifle clubs caused a shortage of ammunition in the Colony. The demand for government subsidised ammunition had outstripped supply, causing the government to suspend its supply to the rifle clubs.232 The ensuing controversy over available ammunition quantities gave many observers cause for concern that limited supplies of ammunition could be endangering the defence needs of the Colony.233 The Victorian government soon sought tenders for the building of such a factory and, in 1887, it accepted the proposal of Captain John Whitney to build a local ammunition factory at Maribyrnong. The government agreed to the supply of the land and propellant for the factory, as well as to purchase torpedos from the entrepreneurially minded partners of John Whitney and the Greenwood and Batley Company in Leeds England. By the 1890s, Victoria was able to support its own small arms ammunition needs and began exporting to other colonies.234

In and of themselves, the Sargood led reforms of defence administration in Victoria were critical to the evolution and modernisation of defence management in the Australian colonies. But the fact that Victoria took such reform so far, when other colonies were less so inclined was the other important aspect of reform program. Within a month of coming into office, James Service was quick to capitalise on his efforts to defining a common Australian focus by supporting Thomas McIlwraith, Premier of Queensland’s decision to annex New Guinea.235 The annexation question had continued to circulate since 1878, inspired, in the main, by newspaper editorials in Germany, Britain and Australia appealing to the nationalistic sentiment growing in each country over the issue. For Service, the issue represented an opportunity to progress his well-established views on federalism. Over the coming three years, the annexation issue served Service as a mechanism to define a common ‘Australian’ approach to the mounting disparity between Australian and British strategic interests in the South Pacific. Geoffrey Serle later recounted, that the annexation issue served as the means by which Service could ‘drag the Australian colonies on to the international stage and to instigate the first sustained campaign for federal union.’236

232 The Argus, 4 June 1886, p. 9. 233 Ibid. 234 Marmion, ‘Gibraltar of the South’, p. 224. 235 Paul Strangio and Brian Costar (ed.), The Victorian Premiers: 1856 – 2006, p. 79 236 Geoffrey Serle, ‘James Service’ in The Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol. 6, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976, p. 109.

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In certain colonial quarters, the question of federalism remained far more divisive than did the question over annexation. As concern over German and French intentions in the Pacific grew through 1883, Service convinced his cabinet to release Victorian funds to assist the Queensland government raise sufficient monies to support the establishment of a British Protectorate in New Guinea. Service was soon lobbying for the establishment of an Australian ‘Munroe’ doctrine in the South Pacific, convincing enough colonial representatives of other Australian colonies that a federal council was needed to represent common Australian interests to the British government.237 The argument that colonial and imperial influence in the Pacific should be formalised through such a policy gained popular support in the media. In May 1883, the Age newspaper’s editorial carried the line that an ‘Australian Munroe doctrine in the South Pacific’ should be carried through, regardless of British policies.238 The progressive stance by Service on policies in the South Pacific and Federation were only strengthened further by the premise that Victoria and the Australian colonies were now developing their own colonial self-defence capabilities in anticipation of participation in a greater imperial defence cooperative.

This premise was later further reinforced by the offer of colonial military support to the imperial governments decision to send troops to the Sudan in 1885. Victoria, like New South Wales, offered assistance to the imperial government in the form of a troop commitment. The New South Wales government offer was accepted by imperial authorities, arriving before the Victorian governments offer, which was declined; as sufficient troops had already been made available. The national sentiment and domestic interests were beginning to align on the issue. Service was openly supportive of the concept of colonial defence contributions to imperial requests where such requests could be accommodated. There was by the early 1880s, a growing discourse in the Australian colonies about potential troop commitments from the colonies to imperial defence needs on a more enduring basis. That common agreement on this issue (like the 1887 naval agreement), could not ultimately be accommodated was not yet clear to those supporting such a proposition. The establishment of a permanent Colonial Defence Committee in 1885 was another important pointer to the growing impetus of collective colonial defence cooperation. Borne out of the most recent war scare between Britain and Russia, the

237 The idea for an Australian Munroe Doctrine had first publically originated from Graham Berry in 1877. It was a policy that Service quickly adopted once appointed as Premier. For details see Thompson, Australian Imperialism in the Pacific, p. 45. 238 The Age, 29 May 1883, p. 4.

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Penjdeh (Afghanistan) border incident, the Committee was designed in the words of Carnarvon to capture the ‘spirit of departmentalism’.239 This committee has generally been regarded as marking the beginning of imperial defence planning as it came to be understood between 1897 and 1914.240

Though Service’s federation initiatives would not be realised during his term in office, his efforts at engendering a collective Australasian view of external affairs and modernising defence management did establish both a context and momentum toward political federation on which others would later build. In the near term, collective Australian interests in the Pacific were only partly supported by Britain. After rejecting Queensland’s 1883 effort to annex New Guinea, it annexed the south-eastern portion of the island only after recognising German annexation of the north-eastern portion (including the islands of New Britain) in November 1884. It also only agreed to consult the Australian colonies in general terms over its intentions in dealing with the French in the New Hebrides. Resistance from New South Wales at the November 1883 Inter-colonial Conference toward Service’s vision for imperial control of the near Pacific, and for his stance toward Federation became a source of considerable frustration for him. With the failure of the South Pacific policy went any real chance of success for Service’s campaign for Federation. Yet his efforts showed early signs of promise, with the agreement of Gladstone’s Liberal government to pass a Constitutional Bill through the British parliament in 1885, establishing the Federal Council of Australasia. It met eight times to discuss common colonial issues of interest, and made inroads into a range of economic, trade and defence matters. Key amongst its achievements on common defence issues was the eventual establishment of federal garrisons at Thursday Island and King George Sound in 1892 and 1896 respectively.241 But without a guaranteed means of raising revenue, or the support of the New South Wales, New Zealand and South Australian colonial

239 Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887, p. 134. 240 The Colonial Defence Committee was founded largely on the initiative of civil servants: Sir Andrew Clarke of the War Office, and undersecretaries Herbert and Meade at the Colonial Office, using the possibility of war with Russia as an excuse to secure some interdepartmental cooperation in colonial defence. The accomplishments of the 1885 Colonial Defence Committee are described by George Sydenham Clarke (Lord Sydenham of Combe) in My Working Life, and in Schurman, Imperial Defence: 1868-1887. 241 See J. Whitelaw, James Clarence Hawker (1859-1951), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hawker-james-clarence-6606, accessed on 26 Jan 14.

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governments, the initiative lacked the impetus needed to realize Service’s ultimate objective of the establishment of a federated Australian state.242

With only limited success at forging a common foreign policy in the Pacific and on the federalism front, Service tendered his resignation as Premier in early 1886. Sargood soon followed, handing over the Minister for Defence portfolio to Sir James Lorimer under the new Premiership of Duncan Gillies. It would be another thirteen years before popular opinion in New South Wales (at least partially stimulated by the defence issues espoused in Henry Parkes’ famous Tentafield Speech) gave the Federation movement the impetus it required, and another generation before imperial defence relations with the dominions, as they become known, resembled anything close to co-dependency. But the founding of a dedicated defence department in Victoria was one important milestone in the evolution of public policy surrounding defence administration in the Australian colonies. While the Victorian defence department’s fortunes were to oscillate over the coming sixteen years prior to Federation, it remained essentially true to the model first established by Sargood in 1883.

As unlikely as it may have appeared at the turn of the decade, the intervening years between 1880 and 1885 were in many respects, the period that came to define Victoria’s defence legacy in the annals of Australian military history. These years had been whiteness to deep structural reform that had seen the establishment of a dedicated civil defence department, overseen by a Minister for Defence and formalised through the establishment of a relationship that emphasised the primacy of civil political control of the armed forces. This relationship was the first of its kind in the Australian colonies and is reflected to this day in a similar constitutional relationship between the modern day ADF and the Commonwealth Government of Australia. Frederick Sargood’s deep appreciation of the technical issues that confronted Victoria’s armed forces in the early 1880s, and his pragmatic opinions on how to redesign its organisational and structural architecture provided the solution to James Service’s problem of finding a means by which to define a common Australian purpose. Service’s vision to bring about Federation by forging a common colonial policy toward the near Pacific, and providing a respectable contribution

242 To read a contemporary assessment of the success and failures of the Federal Council of Australasia, see Alfred Deakin, The Federal Council of Australasia, first published in 1895, reprinted by University Sydney Library, Sydney, 2000

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towards imperial defence, were only ever partially met, but they had provided Sargood with the purpose and mandate to force his crucial defence reforms in Victoria.

94 Conclusion

At a dinner in Melbourne in early 1886, to mark the occasion of James Service’s departure to England, friends and supporters contemplated Sargood’s legacy in government. Prominent Victorian banker, and later historian, Henry Giles Turner, declared that in advocating for the annexation of South Pacific Islands, Service ‘had given Australia, for the first time in its history, a distinctive independent national foreign policy’.243 Other commentators cited his efforts at establishing the Federal Council of Australasia as his greatest legacy. Others postulated that reform of Victoria’s public service would be remembered as his most important and enduring contribution. But as the 1880s drew to a close and the deep economic recession of the1890s began to bite, few in Victoria would associate Service’s short period in government and its reform effort with a legacy worthy of remembrance. By the early 1890s, public sentiment had shifted against Service’s reform of the public service; many critics argued publically that the drive for meritocratic methods of advancement had resulted in a bloated civil service, where seniority rather than merit was the key to success.244 By then the much publicised 1889 Tenterfield oration by Henry Parkes had tapped into the growing public sentiment concerning Federation, retaining its place in popular history as the turning point in Australia’s move to political union. Even Henry Turner, who later chronicled the history of the Victorian Colony from settlement to Federation, had a more measured verdict on Services period in office, entitling this chapter of Victorian history as the era of ‘peace, progress and prosperity’.245 But somewhere amidst the immediacy of events in Victoria in the 1890s and early 1900s, Service’s contribution to defining the parameters through which national defence issues should be undertaken was lost.

When, in July 1901, Victoria’s colonial defence department was subsumed into the federal department, there was little emotion or festivity to mark the occasion. Victoria’s colonial defence department had not existed long enough to warrant great fanfare upon its transition and most in the community were captured by the coming challenges of nationhood ahead, rather than remembering the legacies of the past. As the first Minister

243 Thompson, Australian Imperialism in the Pacific, p. 222. 244 Lack, ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? Service & Gillies: The Grand Coalition Premiers, 1883-1890’, p. 83 245 Turner, A History of the Colony of Victoria: 1797-1901, vol. 2, Chap 8, pp. 219-252. A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

for Defence in the Australian colonies, it would be Frederick Sargood’s name that would become synonymous with Victoria’s colonial defence legacy, not James Service’s. The intervening years between the formation of Victoria’s Department of Defence and federation were witness to a growing cooperation between the various Australasian colonies on defence issues, as commitments to the war in South Africa and the prospect of political federation approached. Victoria remained at the forefront of many of the efforts to grow defence cooperation between the Australasian colonies. But it remained the only single Colony to utilise a departmental model to coordinate the management of its armed services.

New South Wales, the only other colony with military and naval establishments commensurate to those in Victoria, retained its original colonial command structure, with few deviations from the model put in place in 1870 when the imperial garrison departed. The existence of the Royal Navy’s Pacific Squadron at Port Jackson also provided New South Wales authorities with greater assurances that local defences, and their management were sufficient. In 1893, the New South Wales government appointed it’s first imperial Commandant from the British Army’s active list, most other colonies having made this move prior to this.246 Lieutenant Colonel Edward Hutton was quick to favour the development for a federalised scheme for defence, with a Defence Committee similar to that operated by Victoria comprising military and naval commandant and responsible for the formulation of national defence policy. He restructured the colonial headquarters staff and persuaded the government to transfer the Department of the military secretary from the Chief Secretary’s office to his own headquarters thus better aligning the administrative services to support the colonies field force.247 Hutton though, clashed publically with local colonial authorities over the severity of military cuts during the recession of the mid-1890s. Little appetite existed in the New South Wales Colony for the establishment of a civil defence department. By the time that the economic down turn in the Australian economy had ended in the mid to late-1890s, momentum for political federation was beginning to supersede military arguments for federation.248 Under such circumstances, arguments for the establishment of a defence department never flourished in New South Wales.

246 Grey, A Military History of Australia, p. 54. 247 A.J. Hill, Sir Edward Thomas Henry Hutton (1848-1923), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/hutton-sir-edward-thomas-henry-6779, accessed on 26 January 2014. 248 Ibid. 96 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

Arrangements for the oversight and management of defence issues in the other colonies faired similarly to that of New South Wales. South Australia, the first Colony to appoint an imperial Commandant from the British Army’s active list in 1877, also went as far as establishing a Minister for Defence in 1896. James O’Loghlin assumed the role under a government led by Charles Kingston, but the Colony did not go as far as to establish a defence department.249 Queensland, Western Australia and Tasmania retained sufficiently small military forces that establishment of a government department seamed unnecessary. Military administration remained the purview of the locally appointed Commandant of military forces, both Queensland and Western Australia also appointing imperial officers to the role in 1883 and 1886 respectively. In most cases the absence of a colonial navy and the relative small size of local military forces meant that the respective Chief Secretaries and Premiers continued to manage the administrative responsibilities associated with defence matters.

The existence of a defence department in Victoria did attract questions over its cost. The Department itself become an obvious target for cost cutting in the 1890s when many in government were searching for expedient ways to reduce the cost of the Colony’s defence budget. In March 1885, the Secretary of the Department was forced to expressly defend the existence of departmental arrangement in light of the growing fiscal pressure wrought by the recession. In a memorandum dated March 1885, the Secretary of Defence stated that; ‘

‘The Department was formed under a separate Ministerial Head because it was considered that under the old system the control both over expenditure and stores was faulty and insufficient.

‘Any persons wishing to satisfy themselves as to the unsatisfactory state into which the Stores Branch had been brought when solely under Military control have only to refer to the report of the Board appointed by the “Service” Government in 4 Dec 1883.’

It further states that:

‘In New South Wales there is no Defence Department as a separate Department, the administration being under the control of the Military Commandant… such a course does not tend to economy either in cost or in the Administrative and Stores Branch, which is in excess of what we have here.’250

249 Peter Travers, James Vincent O’Loghlin (1853-1925), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, ANU, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/ologhlin-james-vincent-7905, accessed on 28 January 2014. 250 Memorandum, dated March 1895, Australian Archives, Melbourne, item B3756 (1895/52N). 97 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

Despite the added economic scrutiny brought about by the recession of the 1890s, Victoria retained its defence department, which played a significant role in increasing cooperation between it and other colonies as momentum toward political federation grew. At the 1887 Colonial Conference in London, the Australian colonial representatives requested the assistance of an inspecting British General officer to assist in their efforts in developing a better basis for defence cooperation between the colonies. Major General Bevan Edwards, the commander of Britain’s imperial forces in Hong Kong arrived in Australia in 1889 to undertake a general inspection of colonial defences across the continent. Like many who had visited before him, he left with a positive impression of the efforts of individual colonial governments to build and improve the state of their own defences. His one overriding observation related to the capability of the collected colonies to rapidly expand their individual defence capabilities in aid of each other should such a need ever arise.251

Progress on colonial defence matters in Australia during this period also compared favourably with that of other dominion colonies. In Canada, where a federal system for managing its defences had been adopted as far back as the 1850s, progress toward an imperial defence strategy slowed in the later decades of the nineteenth century. There, imperial defence matters were dominated by the proximity of an expanding and unpredictable United States. The conclusion of the American Civil War, without serious incident for Canadians, added credence to the view that local strategic interests were best served by accepting, not challenging, the preponderance of growing American military power. Subscribing to the Scratchley and Jervois fortification and naval defence strategy may only served to undermine the delicate nature governing relations between the two countries.252 It was therefore in large part the strategic interests of the Australian and New Zealand colonies that revived a sense of imperial nationalism in defence issues in the later part of the nineteenth century. After 1885 the standing Colonial Defence Committee was established to progress and promote colonial defence matters in London on a permanent basis. The tentative signing of the 1887 naval agreement at that year’s Colonial Conference was another visible sign of such cooperation during the late 1880s. But such efforts were limited in what they could achieve given the idiosyncratic nature of imperial relationships

251 See Report on the State of Victoria’s Defences by Major General Edwards to the Acting Governor of Victoria, dated 9 October 1889, Australian Archives, Melbourne, item B3756 (1889/2684). 252 Preston, Canada and “Imperial Defence”, p. 226 and Schurman, Imperial Defence 1868-1887, p. 153. 98 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

during this period. Efforts to resolve the entrenched positions on the responsibility for defending King George Sound in Western Australia at the same conference was not successful proving that an imperial defence approach would only work where a common interest could be established.253

The federation of the Australian colonies though, an arrangement that had received broad support in Britain for some time on both sides of politics, added a degree of gravitas to Australia’s negotiating position in London. The formation of a modern defence department, with attendant Minister for Defence in its federal parliament represented a stronger, more organised negotiating platform from which to present defence matters to officials and government’s alike in London and elsewhere. It not only provided Australia with a single voice in negotiations but also closely mirrored the approach taken by Canada.

The establishment of a federal department of defence in 1901 occurred very smoothly in some part due to the existence of Victoria’s defence department. With the emergent federal bureaucracy installing itself in Melbourne, Victoria’s defence department provided a pre-existing basis of the new federal department. Transitioning from colonial administrative entity to federal department, retaining the same bureaucratic model, the same public servants, and even same location in Melbourne’s Victoria Barracks on St Kilda road meant that the pre-existing model could easily be grown to fill the new national need. Like its predecessor, the federal department contained twelve public servants to perform its administrative role. It was headed by a Secretary and its military and naval forces were commanded by Commandants, the military Commandant remaining an imperial officer.254 It did take time however, to forge an appreciation of the other colonial military and naval forces now under a single Commonwealth banner. Echoing Victoria’s experience, the passage of the first national Defence Act was slow, not occurring until 1904. In 1905 the federal department established a Council for Defence, and military and naval boards were created as sub-committees to administer land and maritime forces.255 These arrangements

253 Schurman, Imperial Defence 1868-1887, pp. 144-148. 254 The first Commandants were Major General Sir Edward Hutton, the former military Commandant in New South Wales and Vice Admiral Sir William Creswell, retired Royal Navy officer and former Naval Commandant in Queensland. 255 Peter Dennis (et al.), The Oxford Companion to Australian Military History (2nd edn.), Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 2008, p. 179. 99 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

remained largely unchanged until the commencement of the First World War, when separate departments for the navy and the army were created in July 1915. 256

In the fifty years marking the period between European settlement in Victoria 1835 and the establishment of the first year and a half of operation in 1885, Victorians wrestled with the concepts surrounding effective management of its own defences. Complicating matters, defence and security priorities were only one in a broad suite of administrative and regulatory issues that colonial administrators needed to grapple with as the settlement rapidly transformed from colonial frontier outpost to an economic juggernaut and independent colonial entity in its own right. Through the first period of its existence as an administrative outpost of New South Wales, effective management of internal security and protection of its civil population was its greatest concern. The experiences of colonial administrators in Port Phillip district through the 1830s and 1840s, demonstrated the necessity for authorities to effectively manage internal law and order as well as growing public dissent before it could seriously commence addressing external defence priorities. The compounding effects for local authorities of the discoveries of gold, civil unrest at Eureka and the implications of a war in the Crimea, forced authorities to take the decision to move the imperial garrison headquarters to Melbourne. This decision provided authorities in Melbourne with the means to engender more informed discussion and interest in military and defence issues through the availability of a professional and experienced military garrison headquarters.

Such advantages though, had to be managed against the effects that the rush to responsible governments had imposed on the development of Victoria’s mechanisms of governance. The speed and method in which responsible government was introduced into the Colony resulted in a series of complex relationships and competing expectations between government officials in Melbourne and London concerning the on-going development and management of local defence capabilities. The focus on constitutional systems and execution of executive authority, came at the expense of developing a deeper appreciation of just how local systems of defence functioned in the Colony. As the fallout from the Crimean war and the growing tension with France over the Orsini affair gave credence to Britain’s military withdrawal from the Australian territories, protracted political debate obfuscated efforts to put in place an effective local defence capability prior to the

256 For detailed treatment of this period in Australia’s defence history, see Stockings, The Making and Breaking of The Post Federation Army, 1901-1909. 100 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

imperial garrison withdrawal. Political tension in London over the extent of self- determination was mirrored in Victoria, leading to an unrealistic appreciation of how to develop and manage a local defence capability with ancillary policy, funding and governance frameworks. By the mid-1870s, fluctuating defence spending, an ill-defined harbour defence scheme and disorganised volunteer military and naval forces began to generate successive Parliamentary enquiries into the management of defence issues in the Colony. The immature state of a colonial party political system further compounded these problems by over-politicising the simplest defence management issues. The absence of an appropriate bureaucratic entity to manage the most routine, but increasingly administratively complex defence issues became progressively evident, as successive Parliamentary committees, delegations and Royal Commissions were forced to review defence related matters.

By the advent of the 1875 Royal Commission into the condition of the volunteer movement in the colony, many personalities closely associated with the volunteer movement were calling for a complete overhaul of the volunteer force, as well as the entire defence management system within the Colony. The 1875 Royal Commission became a forum for the airing of many keystone issues that went beyond the immediate issues confronting the volunteer movement. Issues such as the relationship between the armed services and the executive function of government, the use of imperial officers to exercise command and control of local colonial forces and the creation of a dedicated government department were all discussed by the Commissioners. It was during this critical period that a group of likeminded Victorian officers, lead by Fredrick Sargood began to actively lobby the government to reform defence. Sargood’s role in arguing the case for the necessity to modernise the management of defence was also paired with a deep understanding of the technical means by which such reform could be introduced. His presence at both the 1875 Commission in Victoria and at the hearings of the Carnarvon Royal Commission into imperial defence management in London, provided opportunities for him to consider the issue from both its narrowest and broadest vantages. Armed with such expertise, Sargood was able to command sufficient credibility within the Parliament and within the rank and file of Victoria’s colonial military forces to generate and implement his reform plan.

But the political deadlock of the late 1870s in the shape of the second Parliamentary crisis in Victoria, had only served to further delay reform of defence

101 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

management in the Colony. In the end it took the election and reformist approach of James Service in 1883 for Sargood’s ideas to be provided the opportunity to be realised. In Sargood’s reform program, Service recognised a connection between modernising local defence capabilities and a method of establishing common interest amongst disparate colonial Australian governments over the Federation issue. By promising defence reform and a willingness to share greater responsibility for managing local and regional defence obligations in the Southwest Pacific to imperial authorities in London, Service hoped to entice greater political cooperation between the independent colonies in Australia, through the promise of a greater influence over imperial economic and defence policy in the Pacific. And whilst Service’s ultimate ambition for a politically federated Australia would not be immediately realised, his role in sponsoring Frederick Sargood’s reform of the Colony’s defence scheme was an important legacy in the evolution of defence public policy and management in Australia.

When Service departed for England in the late summer of 1886, few appreciated the ultimate influence that Victoria’s defence department would play in the evolution of Australia’s national defence institution. Historians and popular culture alike have continued to widely associate Sargood, as the first Minister for Defence, with the credit for founding the Victorian defence department. But Service did play an equally decisive role in the emergence of the Department. For while Victoria’s political and economic circumstances differed marginally from other Australasian colonies, its overriding strategic and military situation differed little. Service’s decision to extend his governments defence reform effort beyond their immediate context and to develop a new architecture for the Victorian governments management of defence is a testament to his belief in the power of reform. The creation of a dedicated defence department to resolve the immediate problems confronting the management of the Colony’s defence organisation and as a means of uniting national sentiment through the creation of a truly national institution was both ambitious and modernistic. In this endeavour James Service, along side Frederick Sargood, did play a direct and ultimately important role in the evolution of Australia’s national defence institution.

This thesis commenced by stating that too little historical attention has been dedicated to examining the influences that have shaped the development of Australia’s national military institution out of its colonial past. This exploration of Australian history

102 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

has highlighted the influence played by this period in forging one small aspect of the identity that became modern Australia through an examination of a narrow but significant thread in the tapestry of Australian nationhood, the genesis of Victoria’s defence department. By advancing the historical interpretation of how colonial and imperial administrators met the challenges and complexities of planning, developing, funding and, ultimately, managing Australia’s first defence department, it is hoped that this thesis has provided greater insight into the understanding of Victoria’s, and Australia’s military past.

103 A History of the Genesis of the Victorian Defence Department – Conclusion

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