West B.A., Murphy F.T. A Brief History of Australia
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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 B A 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:
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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
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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
viii
aCknowLedgMents
w
e would like to thank Michael Leigh and the Sidney Myer Asia
Centre 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.
introduCtion
a
ustralia is a mass of contradictions. The oldest land on Earth was
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