The Politically Incorrect Guide to the British Empire (44 page)

F
or a country that started out as a penal colony, without much in the way of natural resources—indeed, most of the harsh Australian landmass is unsuited to agriculture and sparsely populated—one would have to say Australia has done remarkably well. It is prosperous (one of the top fifteen economies in the world, with a population of fewer than 23 million people), free (a parliamentary democracy under the British Crown), and a responsible power on the world stage (since World War II, Australia has deployed troops in the Korean War, Malaya, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the Afghan War, the Iraq War, East Timor, and elsewhere). And few peoples have a better public image in the United States than the Australians—regarded as a friendly, hardy, sporting, down-to-earth, sort-of-Cockney-accented, surf-friendly cross between H. Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain and Owen Wister's Virginian.

The British claim on Australia came with Captain Cook in 1770, who christened eastern Australia New South Wales. The idea of Australia as a penal colony developed after Britain lost the thirteen North American colonies. The land seemed of little use for anything else, and the Empire needed a new dumping ground. Nevertheless, most Australians were
not
sent to Australia as prisoners; they came as settlers; and even those who were transported as prisoners were generally treated tolerably well on the transport
ships (known as “hulks” and judged otherwise unseaworthy), despite sensationalist contemporary reports making them out to be seaborne hells.

As ever, the British were in competition with the French—both possibly eyeing Australia merely to foil the other. But the British, as usually proved the case, won out.
¹
The first settlement was made by the high-minded Captain Arthur Phillip who hoped to make something of the convicts in his charge, landing first at Botany Bay, then at Port Jackson (Sydney Harbor), and finally at Norfolk Island. Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales (1788–95), quickly set about establishing a functioning settlement, even as it was reinforced by new convicts who proved to be an unmotivated work force. The convicts brought in smallpox and other diseases that had the inadvertent effect of knocking dead great heaps of aborigine warriors who might otherwise have attacked the settlement. Phillip, it should be noted, took a forbearing and protective attitude towards the aborigines, and also ensured that slavery was never part of the settlement of Australia. As for reformed convicts, they became free men.

Non-convict settler society was naturally always a bit worried about the convict class, especially when it was reinforced with Irishmen. Irish prisoners were more than a trifle rebellious, rising in arms and having to be put down by force. The military units of Australia were themselves not altogether reliable. Sickness forced Governor Phillip to leave New South Wales in 1792. In his absence, the New South Wales Corps took charge. The Corps was made up, in the words of Australian historian Marjorie Barnard, “of the riff-raff of the [British] Army, men who had been in trouble, even mutineers, who were misfits or so useless that their regiments wanted to be rid of them, the officers were either as unsuccessful as those they commanded, or were anxious to leave England for some personal reason, like debt.”
²
The convicts were thus overseen by men who but for the grace of God might have been in their place. The Corps
expanded the land-holdings of the colony (in order to enrich themselves), were such active importers of rum they became known as the Rum Corps, and even deposed Governor William Bligh (of
Mutiny on the Bounty
fame) in the Rum Rebellion in 1808. The Corps was disbanded and legitimate rule restored by the British with the arrival of Lachlan Macquarie, governor of New South Wales from 1810 to 1821.

It was Macquarie who transformed Australia from a ruffian's reform school into a reputable colony. He made a point of giving appointments to former prisoners, in order to show that all Australians were equal under the law whether they came originally as settlers or as convicts; in return he required that former prisoners lead upright Christian lives, which meant church attendance on Sunday. He laid out the street design of Sydney, was the first governor to call the colony Australia, and in general so improved the place that he was recalled to England for his spendthrift ways. He is nevertheless generally regarded as “the Father of Australia,” a phrase engraved on his tombstone in Scotland.

As proof of its growing muscle, Australia began to add territory. It spread across the continent; South Australia became a free colony—free, that is, of convict labor. Australians crossed the sea to settle New Zealand, which became a separate colony in 1841. Van Diemen's Land, established originally as another penal colony, became the colony of Tasmania in 1856. But what really got things moving was a gold rush, or rushes, starting in 1851. Gold seemed a quicker way to wealth than Australia's economic standby of sheep-herding, and immigrants popped up everywhere eager to stake their claim. In 1851, there were 437,665 people in Australia. In 1860 that number had nearly tripled to 1,145,585.

These were boom times for Australia, lasting until 1890; they were also Australia's version of the Wild West, including the usual cast of characters from Chinese immigrants (though these were miners rather than laundrymen) to outlaws—the most famous being Ned Kelly, an Irishman needless
to say, who wore a homemade suit of armor; but he was no knight, and was hanged. Because Australia had been a penal colony, it was chock full of Irishmen, who did not, as a rule, share the exuberant pro-British imperial sentiment of their fellow Australians. The Catholic Church proved invaluable in keeping Celtic high spirits from spilling over into riot and sedition (though many Australian administrators failed to appreciate this) and was a great anti-statist institution. Unlike Protestant denominations, it refused to shutter its own schools in favor of universal state-provided education in the latter half of the nineteenth century.