What do you know of Australian history?

Captain Arthur Phillip worked as a spy for the Secret Service of the Office of War and the Colonies, under Secretary of State, Lord Sydney.

Arthur Phillip was paid the equivalent to a navy admiral’s salary for his employment as the Governor of New South Wales and went home with some US$3 million (at today’s value) in his bank account.

William Dampier was the greatest of pirates ending his life at sea with a tote of some US$40 million (today’s value) from a Spanish galleon off Mexico.

The Australian Colony’s first party was on the night that all the convicts and marines came ashore. All were equal under the stars and in front of a band. The revelry was only stopped in the middle of the night by a thunderstorm.

Napoleon Bonaparte wanted to join Count La Perouse’s venture to claim Australia for France but he was considered too young for the voyage at age 15 years.

Napoleon kept his interest in Australia sending spies in 1800 to investigate a possible French invasion. If it had not been for British Navy victories over the French, particularly the Battle of Trafalgar, Napoleon would certainly have invaded Sydney.

The Act for further preventing Robbery, Burglary, and other Felonies, and for the more effectual Transportation of Felons, as amended in 1784, made provision for youth between the age of 15 and 21 to voluntarily be transported and assigned to a contractor for employment and care. The purpose of the Act was to give people sentenced to transportation a ‘second chance’ at life by removing them from their deprivation and give them employment and an opportunity to improve their lives in the colonies. This law determined who was transported to Australia and how convicts were managed.

People sentenced to transportation to the colonies were not sentenced to incarceration but sentenced for assignment to work for private land owners or business people. In Australia, initially, they were assigned to work for the governor. When assigned to private employment, they were to be provided with food, clothing and housing. They could have their family live with them and could complain to the governor if mistreated.

The proposal to start a colony in New South Wales was not to establish a penal settlement. The British Parliament thought this was a laughable notion because it was a very expensive, ridiculous undertaking. First and foremost, the colony of New South Wales was a military outpost to fight the French. Furthermore, Australia was colonized to form a civil society, based on enlightened thinking, whereby transported convicts could be set free as soon as possible to own land and develop a new life for themselves. Eighty five percent (85%) of transported convicts had been set free by the time Arthur Phillip returned to England after his five year term.

Governor Arthur Phillip’s Aboriginal name was Wolawaree - given to him by Bennelong - also known as Wollarawarre of the Wangal tribe, making him a member of his family and community.

There was to be no slavery in the colony – 45 years before it was abolished in England, and no incarceration of convicts, other than those sentenced for crimes by the New South Wales courts. Australia was the first place in the world to prohibit slavery.

The British Government would not allow Europeans to come to Australia to live until the gold rushes of the 1850s, and even then, less than 2% of the Australian population came from anywhere but Britain. In the 1901 Commonwealth Census, there were still less than 2% of the population that had immigrated, or were born to immigrants, from Europe.

People in Britain thought that the discovery of gold in Australia was an exaggerated story until six ships arrived in 1851 carrying eight tonnes of gold each. During 1852, more than 150 ships loaded with gold arrived in London carrying 174 tonnes (174,000 kilos) of gold, worth £14 million (US$26 billion). The gold rush was on.

By 1860, Australia was supplying 40% of the world’s gold per year, having shipped £124 million ($236 billion) to London in ten years.

The first Australian brewery was established and operated in Parramatta by the government and had a capacity of 1,800 gallons of beer per week. It was established to curb the colony’s problem of drunkenness caused by the consumption of high alcohol content rum. However, all reports suggest the government was unsuccessful in its attempt to have people drink beer instead of rum and thereby reduce drunkenness: People continued to overindulge regardless of the fluid.

The uprising by Irish convicts in the New South Wales Colony at Castle Hill in 1804 was an insurrection whereby the Irish declared Philip Cunningham ‘King of Australia’ and the districts of the Colony were declared to be in a ‘state of rebellion’. Their battle with the mishmash military of 79 men against 233 Irish rebels lasted 15 minutes.

The Eureka Stockade at Bakery Hill of 1854, was another attempted insurrection. Irishman, Peter Lalor, called for armed resistance against the tyranny of the [British] Victorian Government. Again, the battle was over in 15 minutes. Lalor ran from the fight. Two years later he found that he could earn more money by pledging allegiance to Her Majesty as a member of the Victorian Parliament than being a rebel. The Eureka Stockade did not make one stick of difference to the progress of Australia.

Australia’s richest man was Samuel Terry, who was sentenced to transportation for stealing socks, but died owning the equivalent of US$24 billion in today’s currency.

Australia’s second richest man was William Wentworth, who was born out of wedlock on Norfolk Island, went on to be instrumental in the writing of the New South Wales Constitution, and who died owning some US$22 billion in cash and property. He also tagged along behind young Hamilton Hume to cross the Blue Mountains.

Throughout the nineteen century, 20% of the Australian adult population died of alcohol intoxication.

Land grants to Aboriginal tribes began as early as 1820 with Governor Macquarie, who also had 350 suits of clothes sent from England each year for Aborigines because he said ‘the weather was cold in winter’.

The American War of Independence to gain economic and political independence from Britain came to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. But as the United States’ largest foreign investor and primary trading partner, the economic –trade relationship with Britain was restored in 1794, ending the divorce of only 11 years, with the signing of Jay Treaty.

Prime Minister Disraeli said in 1863 “Colonies do not cease to be colonies merely because they become independent”.

The Australian Agricultural Company was formed in 1824. When gold was discovered on its land near Tamworth in 1852, the Company’s shares sold on the London Stock Market for the equivalent of US$40,000 a share.

When the New South Wales Legislative Council was considering Queensland becoming an independent colony, William Wentworth was reported to say: “the only result of this miserable policy would be that a series of petty, paltry, insignificant states would be created which would necessitate the creation of a federal government …” He was right.

In 1866, the Aborigine cricket team was put together by Tom Wills, of Victoria. His father and a company of 18 others were massacred by Aborigines a few years earlier.

At the time of Federation, no state (colony) had racial or financial restrictions on British male subject’s ability to vote. In Western Australia and South Australia, women were able to vote in state elections. Aboriginal men were eligible to vote at state elections. From 1858, in New South Wales, all men over the age 21, including Aborigines, were granted the right to vote. Women with property were allowed to vote in South Australia as early as 1861. Women gained equal suffrage with men to vote in all state and Commonwealth elections by 1902.

Henry Parkes was Premier of New South Wales four times, bankrupt four times and married three times. Two of his wives attended his funeral as he was buried next to his first wife. He died in 1894, six years before the Commonwealth of Australia Act and had nothing to do with its composition.

Andrew Inglis Clark, from Tasmania, was the brains behind the Commonwealth of Australia Act. He proposed the name for the federation – ‘The Commonwealth of Australia’, and wrote 86 of the clauses in the Constitution, along with another 10 which were amended. And, he supplied the design for the Australian flag.

When the Commonwealth Government passed its first legislation - the Immigration Restriction Act in 1901, restricting Chinese immigration, all the States (colonies) already had such legislation as did New Zealand, Canada, the United States, and Britain soon followed.

The colonial governments were, from the time of settlement, concerned about the welfare of children, women, delinquents, the homeless and Aborigines in need. By the 1870s, the New South Wales Government operated nearly 100 homes and institutions.

Australia becoming a republic has little chance of eventuating because the Commonwealth of Australia is a political system of shared sovereignty. As a federation, the Commonwealth and States have sovereignty within their own spheres and continue have independent relationships with the Crown.