A Brief History of Australia

A Br i e f Hi s t o r y o f Au s t r A l i A A Br i e f Hi s t o r y o f Au s t r A l i A BA r ba r A A. We s t w i t h Fr a n c e s t. Mu r p h y A Brief History of Australia Copyright © 2010 by Barbara A. West All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact: Facts On File, Inc. An imprint of Infobase Publishing 132 West 31st Street New York NY 10001 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data West, Barbara A., 1967– A brief history of Australia / Barbara A. West with Frances T. Murphy. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8160-7885-1 (acid-free paper) 1. Australia—History. I. Murphy, Frances T. II. Title. DU108.W47 2010 994—dc22 2009031925 Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses, associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at (212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755. You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com Excerpts included herewith have been reprinted by permission of the copyright holders; the author has made every effort to contact copyright holders. The publishers will be glad to rectify, in future editions, any errors or omissions brought to their notice. Text design by Joan M. McEvoy Maps by Jeremy Eagle Composition by Hermitage Publishing Services Cover printed by Art Print, Taylor, Pa. Book printed and bound by Maple-Vail Book Manufacturing Group, York, Pa. Date printed: June, 2010 Printed in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Contents List of Illustrations vi List of Maps vii Acknowledgments viii Introduction ix 1 Diversity—Land and People 1 2 Aboriginal History (60,000 BP–1605 C.E.) 13 3 European Exploration and Early Settlement (1606–1850) 31 4 Gold Rush and Governments (1851–1890) 58 5 Federation and Identity Formation (1890–1919) 87 6 Realignment (1920–1946) 114 7 Populate or Perish (1947–1974) 142 8 Constitutional Crisis (1975–1983) 169 9 Contradiction and Change (1983–1996) 194 10 The Howard Years (1996–2007) 218 11 Reconciliation and Republicanism? Australia since 2007 246 Appendixes 1 Basic Facts about Australia 258 2 Chronology 264 3 Australian Prime Ministers since 1901 286 4 Aussie Terms and Phrases with Translations into American English 288 5 Bibliography 297 6 Suggested Reading 332 Index 337 List of iLLustrations Plant life of the Australian desert 3 The platypus 7 Aboriginal midden in Cape York Peninsula, Queensland 19 Traditional Aboriginal rock art 24 A replica of Captain Cook’s ship, Endeavour 37 Portrait of Bennelong 45 Ballarat goldfields 61 Engraving showing the mistrust of and discrimination against Chinese immigrants in the gold rush era 63 Photo of Ned Kelly’s armor 69 Head shot of Robert O’Hara Burke and William Wills, leaders of the Burke and Wills Australian Exploring Expedition 76 William Barak among fellow residents in the Aboriginal community of Coranderrk 80 Bob Carew repairing a telegraph line in 1921 84 Catherine Helen Spence, the first woman to seek an elected position in Australia 92 The Golden Fleece painting by Tom Roberts 104 Lieutenant Harry “Breaker” Morant 105 Melbourne’s World War I memorial, the Shrine of Remembrance 109 Scene from a cricket match 111 Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman to serve in Australia’s House of Representatives and in the cabinet 116 The jockey Jim Pike riding Phar Lap at Flemington Racetrack 123 Thylacines, also known as Tasmanian marsupial wolves and Tasmanian tigers 128 Members of the Australian Army Medical Women’s Service 138 Immigrants arriving in Sydney from Malta on the SS Partizanka 145 A migrant camp at Bonegilla, Victoria 147 Tunnels built as part of the Snowy Scheme project in 1957 157 Australian tennis stars Lew Hoad and Ken Rosewall at Wimbledon in 1952 161 Aboriginal tent embassy 165 Harold Holt, Australian politician and prime minister 166 vi Gough Whitlam speaking after his dismissal 174 Gordon River in the Tasmanian wilderness 179 Mardi Gras parade, 2008 183 Senator Neville Bonner and his boomerang demonstration 186 Cartoon depicting Prince Philip requesting Abba tickets for Queen Elizabeth II 189 Lindy and Michael Chamberlain outside court 191 New parliament house in Canberra 198 Brian Burke, Alan Bond, and the America’s Cup 198 Uluru, an iconic symbol of the Australian outback 203 Eddie Koiki Mabo, shortly before his death in 1992 208 Pauline Hanson delivering her maiden speech in the House of Representatives, September 10, 1996 219 Razor wire that holds and isolates refugee claimants 222 Sydney Harbour Bridge, site of the Reconciliation Walk on May 28, 2000 230 Cathy Freeman, Olympic track star, after the 2000 games in Sydney 237 List of Maps Contemporary Australia 2 Aboriginal Australia 14 New Holland and New South Wales, 17th–19th Centuries 32 Tasmania, 17th–19th Centuries 39 Southeastern Australia, ca. 1855 59 vii aCknowLedgMents e would like to thank Michael Leigh and the Sidney Myer Asia wCentre at the University of Melbourne for their generous support for Barbara West as an honorary fellow, which allowed us to use all the library and database resources of the university. Without these, this book could not have been written. We also thank the National Library of Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of South Australia, and National Archives of Australia for their generous permission to reprint photo images from their collections. Thank you to Claudia Schaab for offering us the opportunity to explore Australian history to this depth and guiding the manuscript through the publication process quickly and painlessly. Thank you also to Bronwyn Collie for her careful and considered editing. We dedicate this book to our mothers, Kathleen West-Hennahane and Bett Murphy. viii introduCtion ustralia is a mass of contradictions. The oldest land on Earth was a one of the last to be found by European sailors during the Age of Exploration. Members of the oldest continuously surviving culture on Earth became citizens of the country in which they live only in 1967. The sixth-largest country in the world by landmass in 2006 had only a million more people than the U.S. state of New York and just over half the population of the U.S. state of California; it is the 53d largest in the world by population. Despite its relatively low population, about 22 million in 2009, and very low population density, about 7.5 people per square mile (2.8 people per sq. km), Australia is sometimes said to be overpopulated relative to the amount of water and fertile soil available for human use. In trying to understand these and a host of other contradictory and unfamiliar aspects of the country, both academic and popular authors writing about Australia often try to pin down the entire place in a single catchphrase. The historian Geoffrey Blainey, before his reputa- tion was sullied by claims of racism in the late 1980s and 1990s, was one of the country’s most respected writers on the nature of Australian identity. He located the key to understanding the place and its people in The Tyranny of Distance (1966), that is, both Australia’s distance from Europe and North America and the great distances one has to travel within the country to move between cities. Other attempts at locating Australia’s identity in a catchphrase title include The Working Man’s Paradise (Lane 1948), The Lucky Country (Horne 1971), A Secret Country (Pilger 1992), and In a Sunburned Country (Bryson 2000). While all of these capture some essence of the place, none of them works entirely. Australia is all of these things, and more. This brief history of Australia begins with a chapter that places it in context, exploring the land and its people in broad brushstrokes. This is followed by a chapter on precontact Aboriginal culture based on the work of archaeologists and other prehistorians, as well as eth- nographers who have spoken at length with contemporary Aboriginal peoples about their histories. The remainder of the book takes a largely chronological look at Australian history since the first documented ix A BRIEF History OF AUSTRALIA sighting of the landmass by a European in the 17th century. From William Janszoon through Quentin Bryce, colonialism through gay rights, Australia’s political, economic, and social trends are explored in greater or lesser detail, depending on available resources and the inter- ests of nonspecialist readers. In conjunction with the suggested reading list, three appendixes, a chronology, and extensive bibliography, A Brief History of Australia provides a comprehensive introduction to the country and its people. x 1 diversity— Land and peopLe o have any basic understanding of Australia’s history, events in ttime and place must be put into their proper context. This chapter provides a brief overview of the land upon which generations of Australians have made their mark and some of the most important demographic features of today’s population. Land Australia is the world’s sixth-largest country by territory, more than 2.9 million square miles (7.6 million sq. km) in size. In addition to the mainland and island-state of Tasmania, about 155 miles (250 km) apart at their closest points, Australia controls 8,222 other islands, from the well-known tourist destinations of Kangaroo Island and Fraser Island to the uninhabited Nepean Island, just off the coast of the more famous Norfolk Island, site of one of Australia’s most bru- tal penal colonies.

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