The opening shot of the American War of Independence, 1776, was the signal for the settlement of the Great South Land, Australia, discovered and claimed for the British by the Yorkshire man, Captain James Cook in the year 1770. With the loss of her American colonies, Britain was compelled to ship back to their homeland tens of thousands of convicts slaving in the tobacco plantations of Virginia and elsewhere. They were dumped into filthy ships, thrown into British Gaols, and when those were full, into hulks anchored offshore. It was a crisis situation for the King, George the Third. An American-born British patriot reminded the British Government of the vast, almost empty continent south of the equator, and the suggestion worked admirably. In the year 1787 the most unpredictable convoy of the century sailed from Plymouth Sound, bound for a new world of hopes and hazards beyond conjecture.
Under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip and his officers were 11 ships of the King’s First Fleet, carrying more than 750 British convicts, over 300 military men and crew, a heterogeneous array of livestock, food and fodder for man and beast, and the wherewithal to establish a penal Colony in a strange land filled with an unknown number of natives and prehistoric animals.
After more than eight months of sailing the convoy landed in Botany Bay, Captain Cook’s landfall some 17 years earlier. The ship’s party reconnoitered and with almost providential ease discovered a wide expanse of water which Captain Phillip was to exultingly report to the Colonial Secretary in London as
“The finest harbor in the world, where 1,000 ships of the line may ride in perfect security . . . . “
The captain and his officers hoisted aloft the Union Jack of Britain and with due protocol claimed the land on which the party stood, and all contiguous land thereto, in the name of King George the Third of England. On that 26th day of January 1788, was celebrated the first Australia Day.
Within two years of that triumphant day the struggling settlement, huddled around the shores of Sydney Harbor, had almost perished, due to a lack of incoming supplies of food and competent men to provide for the needs of the colonizing party. It is a long story of intrepid leaders eventually establishing order out of chaos. As one bold writer has reported:
“The white man had moved into the Great South Land, and, like the burr of a sheep’s back, meant to stay.”
Stay he has for nearly 200 years, though the story of the first critical years shocks the sensibilities, and challenges the credulity of the average Australian today. Now housed in the Mitchell Library in Sydney, New South Wales, are charts and maps from the hands of the earliest explorers and cartographers. They provide a window on the world of their day, a priceless heritage to be valued and acknowledged by us today.
Within 60 years of the sailing of the King’s First Fleet from Plymouth Sound, the young country had established active trading partners overseas. Australia’s magnificent hardwood forests provided timber for the old, denuded lands of earth. Whaling ships plied cold, southern waters searching for leviathans of the deep, while unnumbered sheep and cattle roamed vast miles of pastureland, supplying wool, meat, leather, tallow and an amazing diversity of goods for eager markets.
Such a surge forward had not come without the dedicated effort of dedicated leaders, and the hard labor of an army of convicts, working under the direction of exacting task masters.
Then the hidden wealth of the land caused the name of Australia to flame throughout the known world; it was the discovery of gold! Strangely, the presence of gold had haunted the early governors from the first days of settlement, any hint of a rich find being hushed up, lest it cause an uprising among the increasing number of convicts arriving with every British ship. “Put it away, else we’ll all have our throats cut!” Governor Gipps is reported to have said in feigned horror when a rare specimen of gold was brought to him for his appraisal.
More surprising still is it that when a rich parcel of ore was sent to the Colonial office in London, the British Government rejected the idea of a mineral survey of the Continent giving as its reasons:
“The knowledge of the discovery of gold may prove prejudicial to the burgeoning woolen industry, which is continuing to make Australia known in overseas markets.…”
Hence the hidden wealth of the Continent was not exploited, and the most important asset of all, population, was denied the thinly-settled country. In the passing of time the name of Edward Hargraves echoed throughout the Colony of New South Wales in the notable year of 1851, when gold was found there in dry sandy washes near Bathurst. Over succeeding years the presence of gold was heralded throughout the Colony, and overseas, bringing an ever increasing number of new settlers.
In the same year the Southern Colony of Victoria was alerted by the call of gold, and the great influx of people surging and eddying from one gold rush to another raised up settlements overnight. They came from other Colonies and from overseas, and Australia’s future fame and progress was assured.
The most telling result of the widely-scattered gold discoveries, eventually in every Eastern Colony of Australia, was the evolution of the transport of convicts from British Gaols, this in and around the year 1856. One exception was the immense Colony of Western Australia, which had struggled for years without the aid of forced labor, spurning the presence of convicts. Aware of the need for more roads, bridges and other basic development, the Governor of Western Australia accepted a limited number of convict men and women in opening up miles of fertile land.
Unworthy though the transportation of thousands of malefactors and law-breakers had been, as far as the Continent of Australia is concerned, it prepared the Great South Land for a more rapid growth of worthy citizens. The stigma of the dehumanizing experiment lived long, but in many uncalculated ways Australia is now the richer for the presence of a few talented men who came unwillingly but left their mark on the land of their forced adoption.
Sketchy diaries and notes of imprisoned men tell the story of a virgin land as it was in the beginning. Skilled artisans and architects of unusual ability have bequeathed to the New World a wealth of their workmanship, carried over from older lands of earth.
Despite this slow, painful birth, Australia eventually breathed deeply the sweet smell of prosperity. The name of John Macarthur, the father of Australia’s woolen industry, was heard in many places, and the wonder of gold was gilding the image of the land once known as “Terra Australis Incognita”, the Unknown South Land. As the acclaimed Australian author, John Gunther has so fittingly written:
“The history of Australia is woven of fine wool, and touched by many colors, most excitedly, GOLD!”
