Australia

• • How has the nation performed on the ‘world stage’?

  • What is uniquely Australian?

  • have we failed?~ "to embed our national story in the histories on our own soil."

  • Welfare dependancy - https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2122/WelfareDependency

* Terra Australis incognito

From as early as 1606 Australia had been visited by Northern shipping and in the early 17th. Century, Dutch explorers had discovered "New Holland". By 1644, they had mapped territory to the West and North.

For over 2,000 years, the uncharted Southern Hemisphere was referred to by Europeans and Mediterranean people as an antipodal, great southern land. "Terra Australis incognito" - Latin for unknown southern land.

Of course this view assumed the world was a sphere, and not flat as some land locked religious zealots would have everyone believe.

The western New Holland and eastern New South Wales of the future Australia were originally occupied and managed by indigenous custodians. About the Sydney basin - Britain's landing point to this southern land - were clans of Dharug-speaking bush-dwelling people. Both in practice and in concert with myth and legend, the aboriginal bands successfully managed the land and it's rivers and coastlines, including seasonal use of fire, to stimulate regrowth of grasslands. Grains and grasses supported life on the plains and regenerative crops were processed by Aboriginal and also provided for the ruminant native animal, thus guaranteeing availability of annual food supplies.

In April 1770 Captain James Cook and the crew of the Endeavour, sailed the first European ships to shores of the east coast, uncharted land, east of “New Holland” (since 1850 known as Australia). The party made a landing at Point Hicks, then proceeding to Botany Bay.

The arrival of Captain Arthur Phillip R.N., in Sydney Cove in 1788 and the First Fleet of British ships, began the establishment of New South Wales as a penal colony. “The instructions given to Captain Arthur Phillip R.N., the first governor of New South Wales were to :

Appoint him Captain-General and Governor-in-Chief of the new colony, defined as the territory extending from Cape York in the north to South Cape in the south and extending only as far west as 135° east longitude. while the remainder of the continent continued to be known as New Holland. (Uncharted land: originally comprised land east of chartered west coast of "New Holland"). .

The name "Australia" did not come into use until after 1820 and New South Wales encompassed the eastern half of the mainlands including the Sydney basin, Two-fold bay district, Port Phillip District and the islands of Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island, Norfolk Island, Esperance and the islands of Dundas and Melville. (Northern Territory: Refer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_South_Wales.).

Considering the first 50 years of settlement, when not only a new race of people arrived here, for they brought with them different species of plants and animals. They built shelters, barracks, houses, shops and hospitals, asylums and prisons, then produced large government and public buildings, gradually furnished with goods from around the known trading world of traders. Consider also, the preferred and quickest supply route with the East India Company, operating out of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in India and that these had developed maritime connections with Canton, China and and Macau and trade to the American ports. This was the New World and in its beginnings were developed political arrangements supporting the colonial penal county in Australia and the overlords in Imperial England.

British colonial expansionist policies:

The pioneering days in New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria, resolved in a formation of States. The 1901 formation of a Federation of Australia, aligned capitalised resources through political strategies to balance national trade with fluctuation in global economies. Western liberal democracies struggled with alternative the socialist creeds and environmental humanism through the destruction of a Great Depression, two World Wars and science.

Two party political conflicts and upheavals proved that liberal capitalism would lead to relative stability, as of today, with an unsustainable future cost of welfare threatening a cycle of peace we may now enjoy. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp2122/WelfareDependency

1788 - New South Wales : founded as a British colony in 1788; The first British settlement was made by the people of the First Fleet, under Captain Arthur Phillip, who assumed the role of governor of the settlement on arrival from 7 February 1788 - 10 December 1792.

Successive separation of areas formed British colonies of:

1. 1. 1788 - New South Wales

   2. 1825 - Tasmania (established as Van Diemen's Land and a separate colony to NSW.),

   3. 1836 - South Australia,

   4. 1840 - New Zealand briefly became a part of New South Wales when it was annexed by Britain in 1840.

   5. 1851 - Victoria.

   6. 1859 - Queensland.

The state of New South Wales was formed during Federation in 1901.

1. The threefold sources of the identity of Australian peoples, can be said to be, as Miriam Dixson does (The Imaginary Australian. Ango-Celts and Identity - 1788 to the present. (1999). UNSW. / Australia and Identity. page 18): The source of our identity as Australians springs from three main streams -Indigenous, Anglo-Cetic, 'new Ethnic' Australians - and attending to identity means keeping the relation between the three in steady focus. It means attending to whatever enables them to hold together in a fragmenting world. ...The book asks how experiencing the tension between fragmentaion and co-hesion affects the sense of individual self, which, not withstanding postmodern despair, still works well enough in everyday life. And above all, for such a sense of the self, .what role does the nation play.

2. Mark McKenna suggests that since the 1960s multicultural Australian has sought agreement, on an alternative national narrative of "Australia as a ‘British’ society. "Eternally preoccupied with questions of national identity and formation:

Where and when was the nation born?

Reference:

Source book: "From the Edge : Australia's lost histories" by Mark McKenna. (2016).

Extract: Eyeing the country. (pp. 15 of 280).

Consider the first 50 years of settlement, the political arrangements between a colonial penal county in Australia and the imperialist overlords in England. Consider also, the preferred and quickest supply route with the East India Company, operating out of Calcutta, Madras and Bombay in India and consider that these had developed maritime connections with Canton, China and and Macau and trade to the American ports.

British colonial expansionist policies:

The pioneering days in New South Wales, Tasmania, South Australia, Western Australia and Victoria, resolved in a formation of States. The 1901 formation of a Federation of Australia, aligned capitalised resources through political strategies to balance national trade with fluctuation in global economies. Western liberal democracies struggled with alternative the socialist creeds and environmental humanism through the destruction of a Great Depression, two World Wars and science. Two party political conflicts and upheavals proved that liberal capitalism would lead to relative stability as of today with an unsustainable future cost of welfare threatening a cycle of peace we may now enjoy.

1788 - New South Wales : founded as a British colony in 1788; The first British settlement was made by the people of the First Fleet, under Captain Arthur Phillip, who assumed the role of governor of the settlement on arrival from 7 February 1788 - 10 December 1792.

Successive separation of areas formed British colonies of:

• • 1. 1788 - New South Wales

    2. 1825 - Tasmania (established as Van Diemen's Land and a separate colony to NSW.),

    3. 1836 - South Australia,

    4. 1840 - New Zealand briefly became a part of New South Wales when it was annexed by Britain in 1840.

    5. 1851 - Victoria.

    6. 1859 - Queensland.

The state of New South Wales was formed during Federation in 1901.

References

1. Mark McKenna (2016): From the Edge : Australia's lost histories. Eyeing the country. (pp. 15 of 280), writes

   1. "Since the demise in the 1960s of the idea of Australia as a ‘British’ society, we have tried, sometimes desperately, to agree on an alternative national narrative. Eternally preoccupied with questions of national identity and formation—Where and when was the nation born? How has the nation performed on the ‘world stage’? What is uniquely Australian?—we have failed to embed our national story in the histories on our own soil."

   2. British influence endured far beyond Australia's Federation even into the 21st. Century Australia of today. We Australians remain a member nation of the British Commonwealth. This has not served as a true basis for an Australian identity in the multicultural environment and in concerns of the 21st. millennium, which will surely, soon overshadow British influence by raising a storm of introspection and awakening, like the reformation of all Independent nations.

2. The Imaginary Australian. Ango-Celts and Identity - 1788 to the present. Dixson, Miriam. (1999). UNSW Press. Sydney.

3. Migration History Timeline: A Short History of Australia by Ernest Scott, from which this chronology was taken, was published before 1950.

   1. It contains no references to Aboriginal history and no references to the relationship between new settlers and the indigenous people. Since the preparation of this chronology there have been significant developments in the relationship between Aborigines and non-aboriginal people. A chronology published this century would acknowledge the fact that Aborigines have occupied Australia for over 40,000 years, as evidenced by the human remains found at Lake Mungo in south-western New South Wales.

4. Medicine in Colonial Australia - "the first relevant colonial legislation, An Act to define the qualifications of Medical Witnesses at Coroner's Inquests and Inquiries held before Justices of the Peace in the Colony of New South Wales, 1838, created a single register for doctors and bachelors of medicine, physicians and surgeons licensed by a medical College in Great Britain or Ireland, London apothecaries, and medical officers of the navy and army. This necessary unification predated British experience by a generation.8"

5. Disease : "Tuberculosis broke out in the colony in 1805 resulting in many deaths. The most common form attacks the lungs with symptoms being flushed cheeks, bright eyes, fever, loss of appetite and a persistent cough, which in the latter stages produces blood."

Ann Carver

Ellen Coates

First 200 Years

State Records Authority of New South Wales

Land Grants

Governor Phillip, in his Instructions dated 25 April 1787, was empowered to grant land to emancipists.

• Each male was entitled to 30 acres, an additional 20 acres if married, and 10 acres for each child with him in the settlement at the time of the grant (Historical Records of Australia 1.1.14).

To encourage free settlers to the colony, Phillip received additional Instructions dated 20 August 1789 (HRA 1.1.124-8) entitling non-commissioned Marine Officers to 100 acres and privates to 50 acres over and above the quantity allowed to convicts.

Other settlers coming to the colony were also to be given grants. Land grants issued during the Rum Rebellion 1808-09 were cancelled by Governor Macquarie but those which had been granted to "very deserving and Meritorious Persons" he later renewed (HRA 1.7.268).

In 1825 the sale of land by private tender began (Instructions to Governor Brisbane, 17 July 1825, HRA 1.12.107-125). There were still to be grants without purchase but they were not to exceed 2,560 acres or be less than 320 acres unless in the immediate vicinity of a town or village.

(Note: The Van Diemen’s Land Company, created in 1824, was granted 250,000 acres in northwest Van Diemen’s Land in 1826. It consisted of a group of London merchants who intended to create a wool-producing business to supply the demands of the British textile industry. The company’s headquarters was established at Circular Head by Edward Curr.)

The Instructions required the Governor to arrange for a new Survey of the colony and the division of the settled districts into Counties, Hundreds and Parishes.

The unoccupied lands were then to be valued and eventually sold by tender, if not otherwise reserved, at not less than the average value for that parish.

This scheme was slow in being implemented (HRA 1.16.274). In a despatch dated 9 January 1831, Viscount Goderich instructed that no more free grants (except those already promised) be given. All land was thenceforth to be sold at public auction (HRA 1.16.22).

Likewise the practice of granting land as "marriage portions" to the children of colonists was discontinued (HRA 1.16.353, 793). The new regulations were notified in a Government Notice of 1 July 1831 and published in a Government Order dated 1 August 1831.

Land Grants