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[email protected] Education Research and Perspectives, Vol.36, No.2, 2009 1 Audacious Beginnings: the establishment of universities in Australasia 1850-19001 Kaye Tully and Clive Whitehead The University of Western Australia Between 1850 and 1900, in what can only be described as distant and raw outposts of empire, no less than eight universities or university colleges were established in Australasia. In chronological sequence they comprised the universities of Sydney (1850), Melbourne (1853) and Otago (1869), Canterbury University College (1873), the University of Adelaide (1874), Auckland University College (1882), the University of Tasmania (1890) and Victoria University College, Wellington (1899). In 1870 the University of New Zealand was created based on the London model. The University of Otago was allowed to retain its name but along with Canterbury, and subsequently Auckland and Wellington, it became a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. While it is true that the second half of the nineteenth century also saw the growth of a variety of civic university colleges in Britain, by 1900 only Manchester (1880), the University of Wales (1893), and Birmingham (1900) had become new universities in their own right. In hindsight the growth of university education in nineteenth century Australasia seems quite remarkable and worthy of closer study as a phenomenon in its own right.