THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

ALSO IN THE SERIES

Geoffrey Bolton Spoils and Spoilers
Richard White Inventing Australia
Richard Broome Aboriginal Australians
Henry Reynolds Dispossession
Stephen Garton Out of Luck

2
GEOFFREY SHERINGTON

AUSTRALIA’S
IMMIGRANTS 1788–1988

Allen & Unwin

Sydney London Boston Wellington

3
© Geoffrey Sherington
This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. No
reproduction
without permission. All rights reserved.

First published in 1980

Fifth impression 1989
Second edition 1990
Allen & Unwin Australia Pty Ltd
An Unwin Hyman company
8 Napier Street, North Sydney NSW 2059 Australia

Allen & Unwin New Zealand Limited

75 Ghuznee Street, Wellington, New Zealand

Unwin Hyman Limited

15–17 Broadwick Street, London W1V1FP England

Unwin Hyman Inc.

8 Winchester Place, Winchester, Mass 01890 USA

National Library of Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

Sherington, Geoffrey.
Australia’s immigrants, 1788–1988.

2nded.

Bibliography.

Includes index.

4
ISBN 004 4422040.

1. Australia – Emigration and immigration – History.

I. Title. (Series: Australian experience; no. 7.)

325.94

Set in 10 on 11.5 Times by SRM Production Services Sdn

Bhd, Malaysia
Printed by Chong Moh Offset Printing Private Limited,
Singapore

5
To Lisa and in memory of Marjorie Frances Sherington

6
CONTENTS
Preface

1 BRITAIN’S OVERSEAS PENAL COLONY

The Law Breakers

The Beneficiaries of Patronage

Elements of Change

2 THE FORMATION OF COLONIAL SOCIETY

‘Criminal Influx’

Immigrants of Choice—‘Squatters and Gentlemen’

Immigrants of Choice—‘The Assisted and Hopeful’

‘Cultural Baggage’

3 VICTORIAN BRITAIN OVERSEAS

The Generation of Gold

Institutions and Ideologies

7
The Ties of Kinship

Taking Stock

4 AN IMPERIAL DOMINION

The Call of Empire: The Pre-War Years

The Call of Empire: Post-War Years

Immigrants from Outside the Empire

5 A MULTI-CULTURAL SOCIETY

The Renewed Search

Refugees from War

People from Many Lands

The New Stocktake

Into a New Era

Notes

Further Reading

Index

8
PREFACE
It is a decade since the first appearance of Australia’s
Immigrants. Since then a number of special and general
studies have been added to the literature on immigration to
Australia, the most important being The Encyclopaedia of the
Australian People, published in the bicentennial year 1988.
An opportunity has been taken here to incorporate some of
this new research in what remains a general overview of the
immigration and settlement of Australia since 1788. Parts of
the original text have been rewritten, and in particular, a new
section has been added to Chapter 5 outlining those recent
changes to immigration and immigration policy which have
brought Australians much closer to a realisation of their place
within the Asia-Pacific region.

While this remains essentially a history of immigration to

Australia over two centuries, it is also set within a larger
context of the overall movement of peoples. The history of
humanity is in many respects the story of immigrations.
Australians are only now coming to realise that this continent
has been settled by peoples both within its own Asia-Pacific
region and from much farther afield. At least 40 millenia ago,
the ancestors of the Aboriginal people of Australia traversed
the land bridge from Asia. These original inhabitants of the
continent remained relatively undisturbed until the vast
diaspora of the peoples of Europe began in the sixteenth
century. The British and European settlement of Australia
since 1788 was itself part of the transplantation of peoples
and cultures into all parts of the ‘new world’. As the preface
to the first edition of Australia’s Immigrants suggested, the

9
institutions that now form the basis of modern Australian
society were drawn from the many cultural fragments that left
the ‘old world’ of Britain and Europe during the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries. The dynamic of change continues
today, albeit under new circumstances.

As Australia enters the third century of this new settlement of

the continent, it is important to understand how this past and
continuing
arrival of peoples and cultures both creates and transforms the
social and economic fabric of our society. The ‘new’ social
history of the past two decades has made us aware that that
the lives of ordinary men and women are an intimate part of
any national experience. It is their hopes, expectations and
understandings that form the basis of material change and
cultural identity—and no more so than in a nation of
immigrants where at least the majority of the population now
has a parent or grandparent who arrived from overseas.

10
1

BRITAIN’S OVERSEAS PENAL

COLONY
The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into
commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is
the preservation of their property.

John Locke

The Law Breakers

The original Aboriginal inhabitants of the Australian

continent had no understanding of private ownership. Their
relationship to the land was both collective and spiritual. In
contrast, the new settlers who arrived in the late eighteenth
century came from a world where individual lives revolved
around material possessions. It was no accident therefore that,
for the first twenty years of their existence, the British
colonies in Eastern Australia were primarily gaols. Of the
1000-odd settlers who landed at Port Jackson in 1788,
three-quarters were convicts. They and their fellow exiles
who followed them had been expelled from the British Isles
for transgressing the law, a law which revolved around that
great principle of the eighteenth century British constitution
— property.

The possession of property was the most obvious form of

social gradation in eighteenth century British society.

11
Property was ‘the great source of distinction among
individuals’, observed a late eighteenth century Scottish
philosopher.1 Of all the forms of property, landed wealth was
the most significant. The vast estates of the nobility and
gentry provided the profits for investment in expanding
commercial ventures and the lever for political influence and
social prestige. One contemporary estimate of the income of
English society suggested that in 1803 about 1 per cent of the
population received one-seventh of the national income.2
Further down the complex social pyramid were the vast
numbers of ‘middling ranks’ distinguished from the
aristocracy and gentry by the need to earn their living through
some form of occupation. At the base of the pyramid,
constituting almost one-third of the population but earning
only one-sixth of the national income,3 were the ‘labouring
poor’, men and women with no particular skills or influence.

The defence of property was enshrined in the criminal law. In

an age of growing agricultural and commercial wealth
amongst the
higher ranks of society, the law was to become the chief
means of ensuring due deference from those who might
threaten property ownership and the very social order itself.4
As one commentator wrote in 1788, the ‘increase of
commerce, opulence and luxury’ over the eighteenth century
had ‘introduced a variety of temptations to fraud and rapine,
which the legislature had been forced to repel, by a
multiplicity of occasional statutes, creating new offences and
afflicting additional punishments’.5 From the
mid-seventeenth century until the early nineteenth, the
numbers of criminal offences in English law for which the
death penalty could be imposed grew from around 50 to over
200; most of these offences were for crimes of property.6

12
The harshness of the criminal law was intended primarily as a
deterrent, a means of intimidation. Probably less than half
those condemned to death were actually executed. The
‘justice’ of the law was tempered by ‘mercy’, partly on
humanitarian grounds but mainly as a means of maintaining
respect for legal processes. In the absence of any effective
form of imprisonment, the alternative to execution by hanging
became transportation, generally for sentences of seven or
fourteen years, or for life. It was hoped thereby to deter crime
and possibly to reform the prisoner in a new environment; at
the least, transportation removed the offender from ‘civilised’
society.

The eighteenth century penal code may thus be described as

an attempt by those in authority to control elements of social
change which they ill understood. The most prominent and
inter-related of these elements were population growth,
migration and urbanisation.

During the eighteenth century population in the British Isles

expanded rapidly.

Population7

An expanding population always brings associated social

problems. Pressure on land and resources in certain regions
can induce migration. Many in the eighteenth century were
internal migrants, ‘people on the move’ often from the
countryside to growing urban

13
areas. By the end of the century the proportion of the British
population living in towns had increased from 13 per cent to
25 per cent of total population.8

It was significant, therefore, that crime was increasingly seen

as an urban phenomenon. The economist Adam Smith
observed that a man was ‘sunk in obscurity and darkness’ in
the city: ‘his conduct is observed and attended to by nobody
and he is therefore likely to neglect it himself, and to abandon
himself to every sort of low profligacy and vice’.9 Of all the
urban concentrations in Britain, London, the metropolis, was
the most important. During the first half of the eighteenth
century, over half a million people moved into London and
the surrounding counties of Middlesex, Essex, Kent and
Surrey.10 The increasing opulence of London life was
matched by a growth in criminal prosecutions. By the late
eighteenth century, criminal indictments (formal charges laid
by the authorities) for offences against the person had fallen
but for property offences they had risen three-fold in the
country of Surrey, while even in the more predominantly rural
county of Sussex they had doubled.11 Such trends gave rise to
a concern that there were intractable criminal groups preying
on the rest of society. Patrick Colquhoun, a London police
magistrate, wrote in the 1907s of Cheapside in East London:

a multitude of thieves and pickpockets, exhibiting in their

dress and exterior, the appearance of gentlemen and men of
business, assemble every evening in gangs, watching at the
corners of every street, ready to hustle and rob, or to trip up
the heels of the warehouse porters and the servants of the
shopkeepers carrying goods; or at the doors of warehouses, at
dusk and at the time they are locked, to be ready to seize
loose parcels when unperceived; by all which means, aided by

14
a number of other tricks and fraudulent pretences, they are but
too successful in obtaining considerable booty . . . Many of
these atrocious villains, are also constantly waiting at the
inns, disguised in different ways, personating travellers,
coach-office clerks, porters and coachmen, for the purpose of
plundering every thing that is portable; which, with the
assistance of two or three associates if necessary, is carried to
a coach for the purpose, and immediately conveyed to the
receiver.12

In effect, despite these concerns, overall crime in England

probably did not rise throughout the eighteenth century. An
expanding population explains much of the apparent rise in
crime. Nor was there a growing ‘criminal class’.13 For many
of the labouring poor, crime was sometimes a necessity.
There was little protection against fluctuating food prices,
while the sixteenth century Poor Law,
designed to provide relief on a parish basis in times of social
distress, was ill adapted to a period of social change and
urbanisation. For those of few skills, employment was
haphazard and infrequent. As a result, criminal prosecutions
in the London area often grew during periods of social
distress, particularly during the depressions which followed
the conclusion of wars and the release of soldiers on to the
labour market.14

Yet a criminal sub-culture was emerging in eighteenth

century London. This worried those in authority, particularly
in regard to the number of young offenders. With a
population growing increasingly younger and with no
schooling regularly provided for the poor, it appeared that
crime was becoming a way of occupying time and earning a
living for many young people. During the parliamentary

15
debate on London crime in 1785, the solicitor-general
informed the House of Commons:

there was at this time a growing crop springing up, consisting

of between two and three thousand lads, from the age of ten
to fifteen, who every night were in employ in their pernicious
practices, and, who, in the day, slept in cellars, in barns, in
coal sheds, and in the corners on and about the metropolis,
and several of whom were to be found in the hollow trees in
Hyde Park.15

Such was the social background of many of the early

Australian convicts. About 40 per cent of those transported on
the First and Second Fleets had been tried in the London
area;16 by 1809 approximately 27 per cent of the male
convicts and 39 per cent of the female convicts had been
convicted in London.17 Not all who were sentenced to
transportation were actually transported. Generally, it was
only those under the age of fifty who had been convicted at
least twice. It can be assumed then that many of these London
convicts were part of the criminal underworld which
concerned respectable society. Large numbers of Australian
convicts were young. Over the period of transportation up
until 1851, between 27 per cent and 30 per cent of London
convicts were under nineteen years of age.18 Their former
occupations, when known, included such unskilled and
transistory work as errand and stable boys. Many had lived in
the London districts which contained those areas known as
‘rookeries’ where habitual criminals lived and sought to avoid
the law. Such districts included Stepney and Poplar,
Clerkenwell, St Giles, Seven Dials, Soho, Bermondsey and
Marylebone.19 These were areas of poverty as well as crime
and many of the London convicts were of poor physique.

16
In view of their guardians in Australia, the London convicts
were ill disciplined. Such a view may be an indication of a
sense of camaraderie necessary for survival in a harsh penal
atmosphere in foreign surroundings. Most convicts were put
to work for the government or for private individuals. They
formed an unpaid workforce which helped farm the colony
and create the early buildings and streets around Sydney cove.
A few did escape such a fate but often because they stood out
from their fellow exiles. Michael Robinson, blackmailer,
lawyer and Oxford University graduate, arrived in Sydney in
1798 after a voyage in which his ‘superior manners won him
the special consideration of the captain; he was permitted to
take his meals with the petty officers, a bottle of wine and a
dinner being sent daily from the captain’s table’.20 In
Australia, the new colony made use of his legal talents,
employing him in public office (even though he sometimes
returned to old habits of fraud and malpractice). For a few
other convicts, the new environment provided opportunities
not open to them in England. Those who in the mind of the
authorities behaved themselves were granted ‘tickets of leave’
and later conditional or full pardons for their past offences.
Some returned home but most remained. Reporting on the
system of emancipation, the Select Committee on
Transportation noted in 1812:

At the expiration of the time to which the convicts have been

sentenced, their freedom is at once obtained, and they are at
liberty either to return to this Country, or to settle in New
South Wales; should the latter be their choice, a grant is made
to the unmarried, of 40 acres of land, and to the married, of
something more for the wife and each child: tools and stock
(which they are not allowed to alienate,) are also given to
them, and for 18 months they are victualled from the

17
Government stores. In this manner, they have an opportunity
of establishing themselves in independence, and by proper
conduct to regain a respectable place in society; and such
instances, Your Committee are glad to learn, are not
infrequent.21

Some convicts seized the opportunity of freedom to become

very rich through trade. One was Simeon Lord. A
Yorkshireman who was convicted of stealing cloth, he arrived
in Sydney in 1791 aged twenty. Assigned as a servant to a
military officer, he received an early pardon and began a
‘shadowy career’ retailing spirits and general merchandise.
By the early 1800s, he had formed a partnership with Henry
Kable and James Underwood, two other ex-convicts, and
engaged in boat building and sealing. Branching out into
industry, he employed labour to manufacture cloth, blankets,
soap and candles. As one of the first Australian entrepreneurs,
Lord ‘helped to transform a prison farm into a flourishing
colony capable of attracting men of capital. With a few
others, he srikingly demonstrated what emancipists could
achieve in a new country’.22 He died in 1840, leaving a
substantial estate and heirs who were to play a prominent part
in colonial pastoral life and politics.

Lord was a success story among the early convicts. Few of his
fellow exiles equalled his achievements, although at least one
more than matched his wealth. A former labourer in
Manchester, Samuel Terry, ‘The Botany Bay Rothschild’,
arrived in Sydney in 1800 at the age of twenty-four. A shrewd
property investor, by 1820 Terry owned almost half of all
land owned by ex-convicts in the colony. On his death in
1838, he left an estate of £250,000 ($500,000) and an annual
income of £10,000 ($20,000) from rent.23

18
For most ‘emancipists’ the greatest opportunity for private
enterprise was in farming and grazing. Here circumstances
and their background counted against them. Beginning in the
1790s, some did receive small land grants, but only
one-quarter of such potential farmers had any experience on
the land in Britain. More importantly, hardly any had amassed
the necessary capital to develop their property.24 By 1821,
almost two-thirds of those convicts who had received land
grants since the founding of the colony had failed to make a
go of it and had lost their holdings. A few returned to
England, but the majority remained in the colony as
labourers, sometimes tilling the very land they had once
owned.25

‘Lady Luck’ seems to have smiled even less on the convict

women than the men. In part, this was because there were
fewer of them around. Male convicts outnumbered females by
at least three to one: a reflection of lower female crime rates
in Britain. In southern England in the late eighteenth century
women made up only 20 per cent of those charged with
criminal offences and female crimes were generally
concerned with petty theft. Overwhelmingly, female crime
was concentrated in urban areas. City life for the young single
woman of the lower orders provided escape from family and
social restraints of rural areas, but it meant also the
disadvantages of uncertain employment for those lacking
sufficient skills.26 About 65 per cent of female convicts on
the First Fleet were former domestic servants; most female
convicts were unmarried and under the age of thirty-five.27

For most convict women, the only avenue of advancement

was marriage, preferably to a military officer, free settler or
rich emancipist.

19
Ester Abrahams was a fifteen-year-old London Jewish
milliner when sentenced to seven years transportation for
theft in 1786. On the First Fleet, she met Lieutenant Johnston
and on landing in Sydney became his de facto wife. Johnston,
later to become infamous for his part in the ‘rum rebellion’
against Governor Bligh, formed a long-lasting relationship
with Ester. He married her in 1814 and on his death in 1823
left her his estate of Annandale.28

Most female convicts were not so fortunate. Rather,

numerical imbalance between the sexes and the general lack
of highly developed and appropriate skills amongst female
convicts produced unfortunate consequences. Possibly 20 per
cent of female convicts had been ‘ladies on the town’ at some
point of their lives.29 In the new colony, prostitution and
illicit sexual relations became part of female dependence on
their gaolers. One contemporary observer noted the arrival of
a transport containing female convicts:

The commissioned officers then come on board, and as they

stand upon deck, select such females as are most agreeable in
person; who generally, upon such occasions, endeavour to sell
themselves off to the best advantage. . . the
non-commissioned officers then are permitted to select for
themselves; the privates next; and lastly, those convicts who,
having been in the country a considerable time, are enabled to
procure the governor’s permission to take to themselves a
female convict. The remainder, who are not thus chosen, are
brought on shore, and have small huts assigned them; but,
through the want of some regular employment, are generally
concerned in every artifice and villainy which is committed.
Females of this description are usually employed in selling
such cargoes as are purchased by the officers who generally

20
enter into an engagement with each other, not to give more
than certain sum for every article.30

In 1804, the colonial government established the Parramatta

Factory for those female convicts not chosen to become
domestic servants or ‘marriage’ partners. Reporting on the
Factory in 1820, Commissioner Bigge noted:

On their arrival there, they are allowed to remain in a wooden

building that is near the factory; and if they have succeeded in
bringing their bedding from the ships, they are permitted to
deposit it there, or in the room in which the female prisoners
are confined for punishment. The first of these apartments is
in the upper floor of a house that was built for the reception of
pregnant females. It contains another apartment, on the
ground floor, that is occupied by the men employed in the
factory. It is not surrounded by any wall or paling; and the
upper room or
garrett has only one window, and an easy communication
with the room below. No accommodation is afforded for
cooking provisions in this building nor does there exist either
inducement to the female convicts to remain in it, or the
means of preventing their escape. The greater portion,
therefore, betake themselves to the lodgings in the town of
Parramatta, where they cohabit with the male convicts in the
employ of government, or with any persons who will receive
them. Their employment in the factory consists of picking,
spinning and carding wool. They are tasked to perform a
certain quantity in the day, and when their task is finished,
which is generally at one o’clock, they are allowed to return
to their lodgings.31

21
Male and female convicts of urban background, particularly
from London, formed a distinctive pattern amongst
Australia’s first European settlers. The majority had been
tried in England. Scottish criminal law was milder than its
English counterpart, granting judges discretionary power to
modify sentences according to the youth, condition or
temptation of the prisoner. Few Scottish criminals were
hanged and those transported were only 3.5 per cent of the
total numbers sent from the British Isles from 1787 to 1823.32

While the urban criminal was an important component of the

early convicts, the more unique cultural form was found
amongst those of Irish descent. A large number of Irish,
already migrants from their native isle, were transported for
crimes committed in England or Scotland. A far larger
proportion were transported directly from Ireland. By 1802,
41 per cent of convicts transported to the Australian colonies
had come from Ireland.33 Many brought with them the woes
of a troubled society.

As in the rest of Britain, Irish society was hierarchical. But

the Irish hierarchy centred around not merely property
ownership but also religion and race. Ireland had been
conquered by the Tudor monarchs in the sixteenth century,
and bloodily reconquered by Cromwell a century later. By the
mid-eighteenth century, Protestant landlords, generally
English by birth and residence, had come to dominate
Celtic-speaking Catholic tenants. The ‘Protestant ascendancy’
was enforced by the penal laws. Catholics were denied not
only political and civil rights but also access to education in
their own faith. The fusion of economic and religious
grievances prompted violence. During the 1780s and 1790s
there were a number of outbreaks and disturbances in the Irish

22
countryside and as a result, between 100 and 200 Irish were
sent out to Australia.34

Political events were to have an even greater impact on the

Irish situation. The spectre of the French Revolution haunted
those in
power who feared for the safety of their property. Thus, while
the subsequent revolutionary wars against France temporarily
interrupted transportation (by requiring the use of convict
labour in naval dockyards, bringing about ‘forced’ enlistment
in the Army and, indirectly, stimulating employment as an
antidote to crime) the new concerns helped create different
forms of political offences. In Scotland, where less than one
in 100 of the population was enfranchised, the movement for
parliamentary reform was quashed. Trials for sedition sent out
to Australia over twenty ‘Scottish martyrs’ between 1794 and
1800.35 In Ireland, political and parliamentary reform, which
began within the Protestant ascendancy itself, particularly
amongst the Presbyterian community of Northern Ireland,
stimulated Catholic demands to rid themselves entirely of
English rule. In 1798, an attempted uprising, mainly Catholic
in origin, was crushed. The rebellion of 1798 led to about 500
Irishmen being transported to Australia between 1800 and
1806.36

Political rebels were always a minority amongst the convicts,

but one should not underestimate their influence in this early
period, particularly in regard to the Irish. The Scottish and
English political offenders who were transported were few in
number and often distinguished by social background. Many
soon re-established their social position in Australia, often in
spite of the disapproval of the colonial authorities. William
Redfern, a naval surgeon, was convicted of inciting riot in the

23
mutiny of sailors of the fleet in 1797. He was sent to Australia
in 1801. In 1802, he became assistant surgeon on Norfolk
Island, the beginning of a distinguished medical career in
Australia which would see him caring for the welfare of the
convicts, both in the service of the government and in private
practice.37 Of the ‘Scottish martyrs’, Thomas Fyshe Palmer,
an English-born Unitarian minister, was convicted in Scotland
in 1793 of ‘seditious practices’. Although ill treated on the
voyage to Australia, ‘During his seven years of exile in
Sydney Palmer was free from the usual convict restraints and
engaged in various enterprise to supplement his private
means’.38

Although many of the Irishmen of 1798 were also, in the

words of Governor Hunter, ‘bred up in genteel life or to a
profession unaccustomed to hard labour’,39 their political
commitment found common cause and sympathy with their
fellow countrymen. An Irish labourer may have had little
understanding of political ideology but he often knew that an
English landlord was his enemy. Overall, nearly one-third of
the 2086 offenders transported from Ireland between 1791
and 1803 had been convicted of riot or sedition.40 The
early colonial governors, English or Scottish by birth and
Protestant in religion, distrusted the Irish in their charge.
Their fears were well founded. In March 1804, 250 Irish-led
convicts rose against their gaolers in a brief but unsuccessful
revolt at Castle Hill. The revolt was crushed, its leaders
executed, and other participants were sent to the new harsh
penal settlement at Newcastle.41

Many of the Irish rebels later enjoyed a peaceful and

prosperous existence in their new environment. Edward
Redmond, an uneducated Irish labourer and rebel of 1798,

24
had by 1815 become ‘prosperous and respectable’. A pub
owner, he was also one of the original shareholders in the
Bank of New South Wales.42 Another rebel of 1798, Andrew
Doyle, had by 1809 acquired property in the Toongabbie
district near Sydney, the foundation of property holdings by
his family which by 1880 stretched into northern New South
Wales, southern Queensland and the Gulf of Carpentaria
country.43

Despite such personal successes, the events of 1798 in Ireland

and 1804 in Australia were long lasting in their impact,
particularly so when supplemented by a further grievance
between Irish convictism and English authority. Distrustful of
the seditious influence of convict Irish priests, Governor King
banned Catholic religious observance. Although Catholic
services were later re-instituted, it was not until 1820 that
official sanction was granted to the establishment of an
Australian Roman Catholic chaplaincy.

Economic, political and religious conflict in Ireland was thus

carried over into the new colony. The events of the 1790s and
early 1800s helped create a tradition of antagonism between
English and Irish-born in Australia. In New South Wales,
where all convicts tried in Ireland were sent up until 1840,
religious and ethnic differences became identifiably
associated.

The Beneficiaries of Patronage

The convicts were generally unwilling emigrants pushed out

of their homelands as social or political outcasts. In contrast,

25
many of the civil and military officers were drawn to the new
colony by the prospects of social and economic advancement.
Those in positions of authority in the colonial civil and
military establishment had achieved their posts through the
exercise of that second great feature of eighteenth-century
Britain — patronage.

Patronage was the means whereby those in power dispensed

favours to their friends, family, retainers and useful
acquaintances.
Phillip, the first governor of New South Wales, was appointed
on the recommendation of George Rose, treasurer of the
Navy: Phillip and Rose were fellow land owners in the county
of Hampshire.44 For most of the Australian governors and
their executive officials a colonial posting was one avenue of
progress from the ‘middling ranks’ of society to positions of
greater social prestige. Of those governors appointed in the
foundation years of settlement from 1788 to 1820, all had
army or navy backgrounds. Overall, the governors and
executive officials were predominantly born in the south of
England or the lowlands of Scotland and were
over-whelmingly Anglican or Presbyterian in religion. In
short, they were often men of some attainment, but with little
in common with those over whom they ruled.45

With a few exceptions, the early Australian governors were

competent even if somewhat limited in outlook. So much
could hardly be said for appointments at lower levels of
government. There were those who did display ability under
adversity. One was David Collins, first judge advocate in
New South Wales and later its unofficial historian. Appointed
initially through the influence of his father, he rose to become
lieutenant-governor of Van Diemen’s Land. Other

26
appointments were far less satisfactory. In Van Diemen’s
Land, Collins was plagued by an attorney-general who knew
little law, a chaplain who was intemperate, and medical
surgeons who had ‘social connections’ but few skills.46 As
isolated remote outposts, the early Australian colonies offered
little to talented professional men. Instead, they were a
convenient dumping ground not only for convicts but also for
certain incompetents whom those in authority wished to
favour.

Some of these early officials were hardly interested in ‘public

service’. In 1804, John Ingle was appointed ‘inspector of
public mechanics and artificers’ in Tasmania. A year later he
resigned to become a private settler. He left Tasmania in 1818
to return to England, having made his fortune in trade and
shipping. He was the most successful of the early Tasmanian
merchants, though Governor Macquarie described him as a
‘low, vulgar man who has Accumulated a Considerable
Property by Carrying on Trade at the Derwent’.47

Money making was not confined to the civil officials. For

almost twenty years, the duties of supervising the convicts
were carried out by the New South Wales Corps, a regiment
formed specifically for this purpose. Its commander, Major
Grose, lived the life of a gentleman in Sydney enjoying
‘plenty of fish’ and the ‘good shooting’.48 In charge of the
colony after Governor Phillip had returned home to England,
Grose granted land generously to his fellow officers. They
were able to draw on convict servants to work it, thus laying
the bases for private enterprise and family fortunes.49

27
Convicts in New Holland. Most convicts arrived in Australia
unmarried or having left their married partners behind. Some
established temporary and permanent relationships with their
fellow exiles, but most remained single.

From the print published by the State Library of New South

Wales.

28
English officer and lady in New Holland. Some English
officers brought their wives with them. Others established
liaisons with convict women. As the partners of officers with
land grants, many of these women showed themselves to be
shrewd entrepreneurs. Some managed family estates while
their husbands were away in England.

29
From the print published by the State Library of New South
Wales.

Perhaps the most successful military capitalist was the then

young lieutenant John Macarthur. Upon leaving England, his
wife Elizabeth commented that they were ‘destined for New
South Wales, from which we have every reasonable
expectation of reaping the most material advantages.’50 In the
colony, Macarthur and his fellow officers, many of whom had
commercial experience in the United Kingdom, soon joined
together to monopolise trading arrangements, conducting a
very profitable business in the importation of liquor which
was to become a major staple of colonial commerce and
social intercourse. Appointed Inspector of Public Works in
the area of Parramatta, Macarthur also helped dispense land
grants to his fellow officers, ex-convicts and the few free
settlers. By the early 1800s, Macarthur had resigned from the
army to take up a large pastoral holding of 5000 acres (about
2000 hectares) at Camden, so laying the foundation for a
wool empire and family dynasty.51

As with the officials in the civil establishment, the officers of

the New South Wales Corps were generally men from the
middling ranks of British society, prepared quite naturally to
take advantage of the opportunity to make money in the hope
of raising their social position on retirement. The soldiers they
commanded were of a quite different social origin. The
eighteenth century peacetime British Army had a low
reputation. The ‘very scum of the earth’ was the judgement of
the Duke of Wellington: ‘Some of our men enlist from having
got bastard children — some for minor offences — many

30
more for drink.’52 There was certainly a link between the
criminal court and the ranks of the Army. At times prisoners
were given the option of enlistment as an alternative to civil
punishment. Conversely, the end of wars dumped on the
labour market ex-soldiers who, with the lack of any definite
skills, turned to crime. As such, many in the ranks of the New
South Wales corps were not very dissimilar from those
convicts whom they were supposed to guard, although rather
more probably came from rural districts and small towns than
from urban areas. The identification in social terms between
convicts and soldier was made even a little closer by the
recruitment of military prisoners and ex-convicts to the New
South Wales Corps.53

Despite their lowly social status, the soldiers of the New

South Wales Corps did receive some fragmentary benefits of
patronage. They had access to convict women while
non-commissioned officers and some privates were granted
land and the use of convict labour. When their regiment
returned home in May 1810 about a third of the Corps
decided to stay in Australia.54 Amongst them was William
Faithful, a private in the New South Wales Corps who was
granted 25 acres (10.1 hectares) of land on his discharge from
the Army in 1799, and a further 1000 acres (405 hectares) in
1803. By 1828, Faithful owned 2190 acres (about 880
hectares) in the Richmond district.55

Throughout this period 1788 to 1815 government officials

and members of the New South Wales Corps constituted by
far the major section of the non-convict population of the new
colony. Initially there was no provision for free immigrants
except for wives and servants accompanying those who came
in the service of the government. An occasional wife or

31
husband was granted permission to follow a convict spouse
and some artisans were encouraged to settle because of the
need for their specific skills. Between 1800 and 1806 free
immigrants totalled 296, including women and children.56

Opportunities for trade slowly attracted a new group of

immigrants to the colony. The Blaxland brothers, John and
Gregory, came as potential ‘gentlemen farmers’ in 1806 with
the blessing of that important patron, Sir Joseph Banks. They
soon went into trade.57 An equally influential group was
comprised of the merchants associated with that great trading
enterprise, the East India Company: Robert Campbell,
Richard Jones, Alexander Riley, and William Walker. These
men came with the capital and initiative to organize trade
within the colony and to develop export staples. Along with
some former members of the New South Wales Corps, such
as John Macarthur, and emancipists, such as Simeon Lord,
they were to form the important merchant class which would
develop the colonies’ staples in sealing and whaling,
sandalwood and wool.58

By 1810, the colonies of New South Wales and Van

Diemen’s Land were still small isolated outposts of the
British Empire. The total population of New South Wales was
only 10 454 and of Van Diemen’s Land (founded in 1803)
1321.59 In two decades, patterns of settlement had begun to
form beyond the centres of Sydney and Hobart. The crossing
of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales allowed for the
movement into the inland. Certain social patterns had also
been established which were to affect future development.
The distrust and conflict between English authority and Irish
convictism was one such legacy. Sexual relations had
assumed a form which would prejudice the moral reputations

32
of not only the female convicts but also later free immigrants.
Generally, ‘social distance’ between the governing authorities
and the convicts was carried over into the next generation. As
early as 1789, the colonial government provided financial
support for the schooling of the sons and daughters of
convicts, ex-convicts and soldiers in order to bring them up in
orderly habits and proper moral behaviour.60 In contrast, the
children of the military officers and others in authority were
educated privately or sent home to schools in Britain.

The former military and civil officials and the small groups of
merchants who had arrived by 1815 made up an emerging
gentry class who soon solidified their position in other ways.
By 1818, eleven families of the New South Wales colonial
elite were interlocked by marriage. Of the 100 largest
graziers, ten were enmeshed in this marriage network. To this
elite were dispensed most of the positions of high office in the
colony. In return, they themselves were asked to give away
crumbs of patronage: in 1827 the now well-established
landowner, John Macarthur secured civil service jobs for two
sons of an ex-convict clergyman.61

33
Source: S. H. Roberts, The History of Australian Land
Settlement, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1968, p.11.

In such ways, the pattern of colonial life reflected the home

background. Yet, even as these social relationships were
being established by the new settlers, the British Isles they
had left behind were changing in a manner which would have
profound impact on colonial society.

Elements of Change

The late eighteenth century was the period of ‘take off’ in

Britain, of that complex process known as the industrial
revolution. The ‘machine age’ was to transform society. Of
equal significance was the revolution in moral and religious
behaviour. Throughout the eighteenth century the established
Church of England had been in decline, subjected to various
forms of abuses, and encountering in consequence popular
apathy and indifference in religious observance. Religious
revival appeared with the emergence of John Wesley,
Methodism, and the rise of evangelicalism. This ‘new’
religion of the late eighteenth century laid stress on man’s
sense of sin, and the necessity for individual commitment and
conversion of Christianity. Such movements were to have
far-reaching implications. By the early nineteenth century,
despite the presence of evangelical influence within its ranks,
the established Church was only reaching about half the
population. In contrast, the evangelical nonconformist
religions, Wesleyans, Primitive Methodists, Baptists and

34
Congregationalists, were rapidly capturing new ground,
particularly amongst skilled artisans and craftsmen.

Religious revival has been described as the ‘midwife’ in the

birth of a new social order.62 The dissent from religious
conformity, which was associated with the stress on
individualism within evangelicalism, challenged the notions
of patronage and dependency which provided the rationale for
the functioning of the old society. The stage was set for the
emergence of the new society emphasising the horizontal
social relationships of ‘class’ rather than the complex vertical
connections of the old hierarchy.63

Associated with the new social order was the triumph of a

new social ideal: the economically independent individual,
espousing the ideal of moral self-improvement. It was an
ideal primarily of the middle class, the origin of which must
be sought in both the middling ranks of eighteenth century
British society and the new social groups brought into being
by the processes of industrialisation. The new ideal was to
become a means of implanting social and
moral discipline throughout society in a time of change. It
also influenced the treatment of criminals through a greater
stress on the moral reformation of each individual prisoner. A
search began for new forms of punishment to carry out such
aims. Increasingly, incarceration in home-based prisons
would be put forward as the proper alternative to
transportation.

These new influences were still muted in early

nineteenth-century Australia. Richard Johnson, the first
Anglican chaplain in New South Wales, was an evangelical
who wished to reform the manners of those under his pastoral

35
care. He was soon depressed by the vice and degradation of
the colony and angered by the activities of the officers of the
New South Wales Corps: ‘their extortion, their despotism,
their debauchery and ruin of the colony, driving it almost to
famine by the sale of liquors at 1200 per cent profit’.64 The
general moral tone of the new colony was certainly low, and
liquor consumption per head of population was up to twice
the United Kingdom level, although due allowance must be
made for the large number of single adult males.65 Little
assistance in improving morals came from the home
government at least in the sense of supplying the settlements
with adequate numbers of chaplains.

In 1809, after the ‘rum rebellion’ against Governor Bligh, the

United Kingdom government decided to ‘improve the morals
of the convicts . . . and to prohibit the use of spiritous liquors’
and to return home ‘every officer belonging to the New South
Wales Corps’.66

The man chosen as governor of New South Wales in 1810

represented both the functioning of the old social order in
Britain and the aims of the new. Born in 1761, son of a poor
Scottish farmer but nephew of an important Highland laird,
Lachlan Macquarie had become an officer in the British
Army, serving in North America, India, Egypt and Europe.
His rise in the Army was in part due to his own abilities but
also to the influence of the Abercromby family of military
fame with whom Macquarie was intimately acquainted
through his military service. In New South Wales, Macquarie
did little to disturb the system of government patronage
around which the economic and social life of the colony
revolved. He did, however, bring into the colony new ideals,
and he attempted to improve the moral habits of the convicts

36
and to encourage the emancipists towards self-improvement.
His efforts were to meet strong resistance in Australia and
Britain. Nevertheless, it might be said that the appointment of
the new governor marks the beginning of the transition of a
penal colony into a society which would reflect the strains,
tensions and ideals which would go to make up Victorian
Britain.

37
2

THE FORMATION OF COLONIAL

SOCIETY
Civilisation and religion will advance, until the spires of the
Churches will guide the stranger from hamlet to hamlet and
the shepherds’ huts become homes for happy men and
virtuous women.

Caroline Chisholm (on the need for women and the institution
of the family in Australia.)

‘Criminal Influx’

The period of international peace following the Napoleonic

Wars was accompanied in Britain by economic dislocation
and unemployment. In contrast to the pattern of the
depressions which followed wars in the eighteenth century,
the era of social distress and tension continued much longer.
A reflection of this intense economic and social crisis was the
growth in crime. The English population doubled between
1805 and 1842, but criminal prosecutions increased 600 per
cent.1 The growth of crime was not even and steady. Rather,
the peaks of prosecutions for crime followed downturns in the
economy. It was only after the 1840s, in the period of
mid-century economic stability, that crime noticeably
declined in Britain.2

38
While crime increased, modes of punishment underwent
reform. Between 1821 and 1841, in the climate of the ‘moral
revolution’, hanging was abolished for over two hundred
criminal offences.3 In the long term, imprisonment would
replace the noose as the punishment deemed fit for most
forms of crime. In the short term, transportation provided the
answer to the growing criminal population.

For the small Australian colonies of the 1820s and early

1830s, the subsequent flood of transportees had profound
consequences. Two-thirds of the 160 000 convicts sent to
Australia arrived in the three decades between 1820 and 1850.
Not only did the total numbers of convicts rise but their
percentage of the colonial population, which had been
declining since the 1790s, rose steeply in the 1820s.

Criminal law reform meant that increasingly only those

convicted of serious crimes were transported. Those with the
worst records or those who were convicted of the most
serious offences were sent to Tasmania. In New South Wales,
however, even in the 1830s a high proportion of convicts
were first offenders. Overall, during the period 1815–40
probably fewer convicts than previously had led a regular life
of crime. One former convict, Mellish, whose ‘Recollections’
were published in 1825, wrote of his fellow exiles in a way
which constrasted with the stereotyped image of the convict
as habitual city thief which had been held by Phillip and the
early governors:

Convict Population4

39
It is very seldom that any thieves is sent up the country, as
most of the gentlemen resides in Sydney, and would sooner
take for his servant a man that he knows been a regular thief
at home than one of those born done [sic] gentlemen . . . you
never hear tell of a thief getting into any trouble; but there is
very few goes, when I went, out of the two hundred men,
there was but five regular thieves in the whole.5

The post-1815 English convict often came from the industrial

towns of Lancashire. During the early nineteenth century the
most rapid growth in population was in the north and
north-west counties. The population of County Lancashire
expanded 23 per cent in the decade 1801 to 1811.6 As the
centre of population growth shifted north, the cotton
manufacturing centre of Manchester came to rival London as
the English criminal capital: If the London criminal was often
part of an urban sub-culture, his Manchester male counterpart
was usually drawn from an emerging industrial working class.
Young, unmarried and quite often conditioned by the harsh
environment of the cotton mills from an early age, he may
have engaged in crime as much as a form of social protest as
from want. One particular case, James Ingham, a young
Manchester cotton spinner, committed his first offence at the
age of nineteen. Sentenced to transportation for life in 1823,

40
in Australia Ingham was to be in constant trouble with the
authorities.7

In general, as recent research suggests, the convicts of the

years after 1815 were not that different in background from
many others in the early nineteenth century British working
class. Not all had engaged in a life of crime in Britain. Large
numbers had industrial and craft skills. They were often men
and women ‘on the move’ before being transported to
Australia, with almost 40 per cent being convicted outside
their county of birth.8

Many convicts had been transported for engaging in more

direct forms of social protest, arising out of the early stages of
industrialisation. The Luddite riots of 1812 to 1813, involving
the smashing of machinery as a way of protecting jobs, led to
the transportation of 55 men.9 Disturbances in the immediate
aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars brought a further 160
convicts to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land. The
most famous group of transported ‘protesters’ was the six
‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’. They were farm labourers in
Dorchester, who in 1834 in the midst of official fear of
sedition spreading from the town to the countryside, were
convicted of uttering secret oaths.

As in the 1790s and early 1800s, the Irish made up a

considerable proportion of those transported as a result of
political or social protest. Perhaps one-fifth of Irish convicts
who arrived after 1815 had been sentenced for such offences.
Others were sent out as an indirect result of the social
conditions in which they found themselves.

41
The Irish countryside was still in a vexed state in the early
nineteenth century. Growing population placed great strain on
scarce land resources and the survival of most of the Irish
peasantry depended literally on a good potato crop. In such an
environment, age-old violence flourished. Irishman fought
Irishman in numerous family feuds, and a large number of
Irish were transported along with their relatives. One ship in
1830 brought to Australia nine men in four family groups, all
of whom had been convicted of murder. Another transport in
1835 landed six pairs of brothers, two father-and-son sets and
one group of three brothers, while of the 100 Irish female
convicts on board the Minerva in 1839, twenty-one had
relatives on board, in transit, or already in New South
Wales.10

Protest and violence in the British Isles were also transported

into New South Wales. The large numbers of convicts were
difficult to control. Punishment for offences was often brutal.
Amongst those convicted in the mid-1820s in New South
Wales were:

James Pharos having confessed to a robbery before a

constable, and afterwards denied it before the Court, a
sentence was pronounced to be flogged every morning until
he confessed where the property was; and he gave up a watch
in consequence of that sentence . . .

James Blackburn, attached to the prisoners barrack; ordered

to receive twenty-five lashes every morning, and be kept on
bread and water, until he tells who were the four men that
were in company with him gambling . . .

42
William Earles, attached to the clearing gang on the estate of
the Reverend Samuel Marsden; ordered to be confined in a
cell on bread and water, until he tells where an absolute
pardon is, given to him by John Durrah, to take to Dr
Douglass.11

The worst offenders were sent to the harsh penal settlements

at Port Macquarie, Moreton Bay, Norfolk Island or Port
Arthur. Under Governor Darling in New South Wales and
Governor Arthur in Tasmania life was made difficult for most
convicts. Chain gangs were organised to work in government
service, building the roads and bridges needed with the spread
of settlement.

Some convicts who managed to escape became bushrangers.

By 1825 bushrangers were so active that a unanimous
resolution of the New South Wales Legislative Council called
for ‘prompt and decisive measures’ to suppress ‘the daring
Robbers who have formed themselves into Bandittis in these
parts of the Colony’.12 One of the most celebrated was the
‘wild colonial boy. . .Bold Jack Donohoe’. Born in Dublin,
Donohoe was convicted of ‘intent to commit a felony’ in
1823, arriving in Australia in 1825. For two and a half years
from 1827 to 1829, he and his gang of fellow escapees
roamed over New South Wales from Bathurst to Yass, from
the Illawarra to the Hunter Valley. In September 1830, he was
killed in a shoot-out with police at Campbelltown.13

Few convicts were as daring as ‘Bold Jack Donohoe’. Nor did

all identify with his exploits. Some ex-convicts became the
hunters rather than the hunted. Israel Chapman, a London
coachman, was transported in 1818 for highway robbery.
Granted a conditional pardon in 1821, he entered the police

43
force. Primarily a detective attached to the Sydney station in
George Street, he became known as the ‘George Street
Runner’. Chapman returned to London in 1829, but came out
again as a free immigrant in 1832. A year later, the colonial
government appointed him one of the six wardsmen in the
police force.14

For those convicts still assigned to private individuals, life

also could have its comforts. One, Henry Tingley, wrote
home to his parents in Sussex:

Ansley, 15 June 1835.

Dear Mother and Father,

This comes with my kind love to you, hoping to find you in

good health as, thank God, it leaves me at present very
comfortable indeed. I have a place at a farm-house, and I have
got a good master, which I am a great deal more comfortable
than I expected. I works the same as I were at home; I have
plenty to eat and drink, thank God for it. I am allowed two
ounces of tea, one pound of sugar, 12 pounds of meat, 10
pounds and a half of flour, two ounces of tobacco, the week;
three pair of shoes, two suits of clothes, four shirts, a year;
that is the allowance from Government. But we have as much
to eat as we like, as some masters are a great deal better than
others. All a man has got to mind is to keep a still tongue in
his head, and do his master’s duty, and then he is looked upon
as if he were at home; but if he don’t he may as well be hung
at once, for they would take you to the magistrates and get
100 of lashes, and then get sent to a place called Port Arthur
to work in irons for two or three years, and then he is disliked
by everyone. I hope you will study these few lines which I

44
have wrote to you, my dear mother and father, brothers and
sisters and all my friends belonging to me in that country; this
country is far before England in everything, both for work
and money. Of a night, after I have done my work, I have a
chance to make a few shillings; I can go out hunting or
shooting of kangaroo, that is about the size of a sheep, or
ducks or swans, tigers, tiger-cats or native cats; there is
nothing that will hurt a man but a snake, they are about five or
six feet long, but they will get away if they can. I have dogs
and a gun of my own, thank God for it, to make me a few
shillings, anything that I want; thank God, I am away from all
beer-shops, there is ne’er a one within 20 miles of where I
live. I have a fellow-prisoner living with me, which he is a
shoemaker, and he is learning me to make shoes, which will
be a great help to me; in about two years I shall be able to
make a pair of shoes myself; then, thank God for it, I am
doing a great deal better than ever I was at home only for the
wanting you with me, that is all my uncomfortableness is in
being away from you. Dear father and mother, I hope you will
understand it what I have wrote to you in this letter, as it gave
me much pleasure in writing it, and always will, let me be
where—15

Once pardoned or freed, some former convicts could still find

individual opportunities in their new environment. A few took
up trades and skills learnt in the British Isles. William Moffitt,
an apprentice bookbinder in Liverpool, was transported in
1827 for stealing tea. He married a free immigrant in 1829.
On expiry of his sentence, he set up as a bookbinder,
stationer, engraver and copper-plate
printer in King Street, Sydney. In the expanding commercial
life of the 1830s, he found many customers. By 1845, his
shop was described as the ‘handsomest’ in Sydney; three

45
years later, the artist Joseph Fowles wrote of the ‘elegant
design’ of his row of four houses in Pitt Street.16

There were, however, few opportunities for the post-1815

generation of convicts to become rich in the manner of such
earlier arrivals as Samuel Terry. The Select Committee on
Transportation in 1837 remained only half-hopeful of the
prospects of most emancipists:

The greater portion, however, of this class are labourers and

small shopkeepers; and if industrious, they have every facility
for making an honest livelihood, but as, on the expiration of
their sentence, they are exposed to every description of
temptation, the greater portion of them retain the habits of
profligacy which first led them into crime, and become still
more worthless and dissipated. Of the numerous crimes
committed in the colony, the greater portion are prepetrated
by this class. Among the emancipists and ticket-of-leave men
are to be found the cattle-stealers, receivers of stolen goods,
keepers of illicit spirit-shops, and squatters, of the number
and extent of whose offences every witness spoke in the
strongest terms. In Van Diemen’s Land the number of
expirees or emancipists probably does not exceed 3,000. Sir
George Arthur described them as the worst class in the
colony.17

On completion of service many old ‘lags’ lived unremarkable

and most likely very lonely lives. Few of them could expect
to find marriage partners when they so outnumbered their
fellow female convicts. The majority dispersed into the lower
ranks of society taking work as it was available, often the
outback jobs of no great attraction to the free immigrants who

46
had come with hopes of advancement. At the end of the road
for the aged and the lonely there was only the state asylum.

For female emancipists, opportunities were particularly

limited. The one escape to respectability was marriage, but
not many could find partners. This was despite the fact that
the ratio of male and female convicts actually increased from
three to one to seven to one between 1817 and 1834. The taint
of their former lives remained, even when freed. By 1828,
only 42 per cent of the women transported prior to 1826 had
wed. As Commissioner Bigge noted, marriage with the native
and free-born males was almost out of the question:

The marriage of the native born youths with female convicts

is very rare, a circumstance that is attributed to the general
disinclination to early marriage that is observable amongst
them, but chiefly to a sense of pride in the native born youths,
approaching to contempt for the vices and depravity of the
convicts even when manifested in the persons of their own
parents.18

Yet communities did form out of the mixture of convicts,

emancipists and low-born freemen. In the words of Manning
Clark:

While the gentry, the civil and military officers, and the
clergy of the Church of England, were attempting to
reproduce in the ballrooms and drawing rooms of Sydney and
Hobart Town the fashions and gaieties of the London season,
out on the streets, in the tap-rooms, pot-houses, bush huts,
amidst all the uproar, commotion, the lust, the thirst and the
hunger, the world of Betsey Bandicoot and Bold Jack
Donohoe was being fashioned.19

47
Amongst the Irish at least, familial and other associations
were an important foundation for creating a community.
Overall, the high proportion of Irish amongst the female
convicts meant that many Australian-born children in the
colony were of Irish ancestry. In rural areas particularly, the
economy of family farms depended heavily upon the
productive labour of men, women and children. Pockets of
community settlement had formed by the 1820s, partly the
result of Irish emancipists having been granted land. The
Camden and Appin areas south-west of Sydney had a high
proportion of Roman Catholics. As news filtered back to the
home country, such settlements laid the basis for receiving
others who came as part of that great stream which would
soon make up the vast proportion of the Australian
population—the free settlers.

Immigrants of Choice—‘Squatters and Gentlemen’

Most convicts came from the lowest ranks of British society.

A few had found opportunities here not imagined when they
had been expelled from Britain. In the three decades
following the end of the Napoleonic wars in 1815 significant
numbers from the more ‘respectable’ parts of British society
came to Australia because of the opportunities of which they
had heard before leaving Britain. The opening of the western
districts of New South Wales after the crossing of the Blue
Mountains in 1813 and the expansion of the
profitable wool industry provided promising new fields of
investment. Such opportunities could appeal not only to those
seeking to create new wealth but also to others who feared

48
loss of financial security and social status if they remained at
home. After the wars, many ex-army officers were
unemployed. In southern England, agriculture was
undergoing a period of depression and re-adjustment. Under
such circumstances, Australia was attractive.

Typical of those facing economic pressures were the Hentys,

a gentry family in Sussex since the fourteenth century.
Thomas Henty was a merino sheep-breeder. By the early
1820s, he had sold some of his flock to Australian buyers,
including John Macarthur. He also kept regular
correspondence with John Street, a fellow Sussex farmer who
had settled in New South Wales in 1821. By the late 1820s,
faced by a continuing uncertain economic situation in Britain,
Thomas had decided that he and his family of seven sons and
one daughter should also move to Australia. As his eldest son,
James, told his brothers:

I have almost come to the conclusion that New South Wales

will do more for our family than England ever will,
considering the means we have to commence business with. I
have had several conversations with Father upon it since I
saw you and the more I think of it the more it does appear to
me likely to answer our purpose. Father says he has no doubt
he can land in New South Wales with £10,000 independent of
Freighting a Ship out, Stock, both Sheep and Horses and other
investments—if so, we might be enabled very soon to get a
large Stock and Farm on a most extensive scale if we thought
it desirable when we get there. What can we do in England
with £10,000 amongst all of us. . .Look at Street—an instance
before us of what a man even with little energy and small
capital can do. He is now possessed of 2,000 acres of fine
land, 1,600 sheep and 200 cattle, a House and all the comforts

49
(to use his own words) he can either expect or desire. Our
situation as compared with his will be vastly superior we go
out with 12 or 13 times the amount of capital he did, our
name is already well known in the Colony, and immediately
we get there we shall be placed in the first Rank in Society . .
.20

Leading a vanguard of the family and their retainers, James

sailed for Australia in 1829 with two of his brothers. Their
original destination was the newly founded colony of Western
Australia where prospects for profit appeared even better than
in New South Wales. Disappointed there, they soon moved to
Tasmania where Thomas and almost all the rest of the family
joined them in
1833–34. Learning to their dismay that the government had
decided to restrict large land grants, the family simply moved
across the Tasman and ‘squatted’ as the first settlers in the
Port Phillip district.

Seeking new grazing lands, other gentry investors like the

Hentys also squatted not only in the Port Phillip district but
also throughout New South Wales and what was to become
Queensland. Escaping an emerging industrial society in
England, they have been seen as rural romantics pushing back
the frontier of settlement.21 Born Englishmen, they retained
the habits and attitudes of their old life. One contemporary
noted that ‘New England’ ‘is considered the most Aristocratic
part of New South Wales, almost all the young settlers are
either Oxford or Cambridge’.22 To the south in the Riverina,
an English squattocracy had come to dominate social and
political life by the 1850s. They continued to expect
deference from their employees. They were also prepared to
carry out their own responsibilities to the less fortunate:

50
Despite the increased number of colonial born they were
‘Englishmen’—a ‘nice set of men of the true British type’.
English in speech, loyalties and social attitudes. Nor did they
pre-empt this for themselves. Informed local opinion recorded
that the ‘squatters as a class. . .regard their men, not as slaves,
as is often alleged, but as Englishmen, entitled to all the
kindness and consideration which, in the old country, are
extended to the working class’.23

Some of the gentry settlers brought with them retainers and an

established workforce. Thomas Potter Macqueen, an English
land-owner in Bedfordshire, and a member of parliament,
obtained a land grant of 10 000 acres (4000 hectares) in 1823.
In 1825, he sent out to the Hunter Valley a party of
mechanics, farmers and shepherds. Between 1825 to 1838, he
spent £42 000 ($85 000) on plant, stock and improvements.
He lived in Australia for four years in the 1830s and
encouraged and advocated planned immigration.24

Other gentry immigrants in the 1820s and 1830s came from

Scotland. A commercial and agricultural revolution in early
nineteenth-century Scotland brought new wealth for some and
declining opportunities for others. Such trends, combined
with a new awareness of the potentiality of the Australian
colonies, led to the migration of considerable numbers from
Edinburgh and its surrounding districts. The Australian
Company of Edinburgh and Leith was formed in 1822 to
exploit trading possibilities in Australia. Many of the Scottish
immigrants of the 1820s were from a commercial middle
class or gentry background, the latter taking a number of
their retainers with them. At first, Tasmania was their
preferred destination but a growing number settled also in
New South Wales. The three Imlay brothers, Peter, George

51
and Alexander, arrived from Aberdeenshire during the late
1820s and early 1830s. They soon owned property in
Tasmania and in the Two-fold Bay and Bega districts of New
South Wales.25 In both colonies the proportion of Scots-born
among land holders rose from one-sixth to one-third during
the 1820s.26 Overall about 3000 persons of Scottish birth
migrated to Eastern Australia during the 1820s.27

Many Scots-born settlers went first to Tasmania, then crossed

the Tasman to the Port Phillip district. A Port Phillip
Association was formed to promote settlement and from this
emerged the Clyde Company with financial connections in
both Tasmania and Scotland. Other gentry farmers went
directly from the Lowlands of Scotland to what was to
become the colony of Victoria. Neil Black, the son of a
Scottish farmer and partner in a pastoral company, described
Melbourne as a ‘Scotch settlement’ when he arrived in
1839.28 Of the early farmer settlers of the lush western
districts of Victoria, probably two-thirds were Scots-born.
Many were ‘gentlemen, worthy and excellent men, of
undoubted character and well connected at home’.29 Equally
notable was the Scotswoman, Anne Drysdale, a farmer on her
own account in Scotland, who decided for health reasons to
migrate to Port Phillip. Arriving in 1840, she formed a
successful pastoral partnership with an English-born younger
woman, Caroline Newcomb.30

Pockets of Scottish communities formed throughout the

Australian mainland. The green grass of northern New South
Wales and the Darling Downs of southern Queensland
provided new homes, and new sources of profit:

52
they believed in land—these Scotch pioneers, and in sheep,
and in wheat, and in horses, and cows—in all things in fact
pertaining to the soil—and the soul.31

The Archer family from Perth, Scotland were some of the

first settlers of southern Queensland. Of the thirteen children
in the family, nine spent time in Australia. One of the
brothers, Archibald, later occupied a seat in the Queensland
parliament for a total of eighteen years, while another was
Queensland agent-general in London during the 1880s.32

Large land holdings were not confined to settlers of English

and Scottish descent. The O’Brien brothers, Henry and
Cornelius, migrated from County Mayo, Ireland, with their
uncle in 1814. Established originally in the Irish settlements
around Appin and the Illawarra, they later moved beyond the
Blue Mountains and into the Yass area.33 More spectacular
were the successes of the Lawless brothers, Clement and
Paul, born in County Cork. They sailed from Liverpool in
1840. After experience in the Hunter Valley they moved into
the Moreton Bay district of Queensland. By the late 1850s
they had ‘runs’ totalling 281 square miles (about 725 square
kilometres). Following a pattern of other settlers, both
brothers returned in their forties to marry Irish brides.
Thereafter they moved between Ireland and Queensland and
both eventually died in Ireland. Their descendants remained
Australian, establishing an extended family still occupying ‘in
an unbroken line of descent the stations originally taken up by
their pioneer forbears’.34

53
Immigration from the Scottish Highlands to northern New
South Wales. The movement of people from one particular
region in Britain to a new specific location in Australia was a
marked feature of even early nineteenth century immigration.
This was a forerunner of the later ‘chain migration’ of
extended families and communities.

Source: B. L. Cameron and J. L. McLennan, Scots Corner, B.

L. Cameron, Armidale 1971.

54
Elizabeth Day House. The house was built in 1835–1837 for
Scottish-born Alexander McLeay, Colonial Secretary in New
South Wales, 1825–1837, philanthropist and patron of the
arts and sciences. Now restored, it stands not only as a
symbol of imported ideas on architectural style but also as a
reminder of the wealth of some of the early Australian gentry
immigrants.

Not everywhere did gentry and other investors succeed. One

significant early failure was the planned settlement on the
Swan
River in Western Australia. In 1829 an effort was made to
establish a colony in the west by attracting the same type of
gentlemen investors who were migrating to the east of the
continent. Land was to be granted on the basis of wealth and
the number of workmen each settler brought with him. One of
the largest allocations was 250 000 acres (about 100 000

55
hectares) to the English land owner Thomas Peel and his
partner, Solomon Levey, an emancipist who had done well as
a merchant. Peel was. promised a further 250 000 acres once
he landed 400 settlers and another 500 000 acres (about 200
000 hectares) after 21 years, provided improvements had been
carried out on the original grant. The venture failed.35 What
they could grow, they could not sell. Western Australia
languished. In 1850, there were only 5886 persons in the
colony.36

Elsewhere, Australia attracted not only settlers on the land but

others who profited from catering for the activities of the
squatters. The Canadian-born Frederick Dalgety arrived in
Sydney in 1834. Moving to Melbourne in 1842, by 1848 he
was a successful merchant, concentrating on the ‘settlers
trade’, supplying merchandise to the squatters and buying
their wool. By the 1880s, his firms handled both Australian
wool exports and investments from Britain.37

Other immigrants also aided rural and commercial

development. Much has been written of the explorers and
surveyors who opened up the country. Less has been written
about those who followed in their wake, the bridge and road
designers. David Lennox, a Scottish master mason, arrived in
Sydney in 1832. A year later, he was appointed to design and
build bridges. His work included the still-standing ‘Lennox’
bridges at Lapstone and Parramatta, and the Lansdowne
bridge near Liverpool.38 Equally important were the city
architects. The convict Francis Greenway designed much of
the early stone architecture of government buildings in early
Sydney. One of his architectural successors who specialised
in private work was John Verge, an English architect and
builder, who had retired from his practice and arrived in

56
Australia in 1828, intending to farm the land. He turned to
architecture again in the 1830s. He adapted the Regency style
and his work included Elizabeth Bay House and Camden
Park, the home of the Macarthur family.39

The stylish homes built by Verge and others reflected the

wealth in the Australian community in the 1830s. In the
outback settlements, the squatters lived roughly but still with
a view to establishing ‘polite society’ in the future. Of a
squatter’s home in the Moreton Bay district in the mid-1840s,
it was noted:

Captain Griffin’s house was of the same primitive character

as those of squatters generally, consisting of rough slabs fixed
to sleepers below, and in a grooved wallplate above, and
roofed with large sheets of bark, supported by rough saplings
for rafters. Mahogany tables, chairs, sideboards, etc., and the
other moveables of a respectable family in a town, appeared
rather incongruous articles of furniture in such an extempore
structure; but they gave promise at least of a better house,
which I was told it was intended to erect as soon as the more
important outdoor operations of the establishment should
afford the requisite leisure for the purpose, the present house
being intended eventually for the barn.40

Some immigrants realised that profit might be made in

catering for the consumer needs of both the squattocracy and
commercial classes. David Jones, born in Wales and
employed in the retail trade from the age of fifteen, arrived in
Sydney in the mid-1830s with the intention of establishing ‘a
house on the principles of the respectable London firms’.
After financial difficulties in the 1840s, he bought out his
partners, so laying the foundation for the retailing empire of

57
David Jones Limited.41 By the late 1830s, many other free
immigrants of urban background had also come to Australia
to make money.

Immigrants of Choice—‘The Assisted and Hopeful’

The nineteenth century was the age of the vast exodus from
Europe. Of all Europeans, the British were the most
prominent in leaving their homes to settle elsewhere. By
1900, two-thirds of the English-speaking world lived outside
Europe. Most of this migration was westward towards the
Americas. Between 1815 and 1912, twenty-one and a half
million persons migrated from the British Isles and half of
these went to the United States.42 In comparison, migration to
Australia was minute and marked by various phases of
interest and neglect.

In the period from 1815 to 1840, one million emigrants left

the British Isles. Most were migrating across the Atlantic, not
only to the United States but also to the British dominion of
Canada. The passage across the Atlantic was far from easy
but it was relatively cheap compared with the long arduous
journey to the Antipodes. The cost of a steerage passage to
Australia was £40 ($80), to the United States and Canada £5
($10).43

U.K. Emigration 1815–4044

58
Canada 499,000
U.S.A. 417,000
Australia 58,000

A partial solution to the cost of travel to the Antipodes came

in the form of government assistance. The motivating force
behind this change in policy was not so much the needs of the
Australian colonies as the fears of the ruling authorities in
Britain. In the era of economic change after 1815 an
expanding population appeared to contemporaries to be
outstripping available resources. At the same time, large
numbers of an alienated working class posed a threat to the
security of property. The growing cost of caring for the lower
orders of society through the Poor Law was a related cause
for concern. In the 1820s the principle of ‘shovelling out
paupers’ lay behind a scheme to assist migration and
settlement in Canada. In 1832, a similar scheme was
established for Australia. A Land and Emigration
Commission was formed under the auspices of the Colonial
Office to stimulate and assist migration.

The establishment of the Land and Emigration Commission

was important in developing migration from the British Isles
to Australia. In contrast to the large but ill-organised
migration across the Atlantic, the commissioners were able to
conduct an orderly system. By control and management, by
the end of the 1860s they had reduced the death rate on the
long voyage from 5 per cent to 0.5 per cent.45 By 1869, the
Commissioners had carried 339 000 British emigrants in 1088

59
shiploads at a cost of almost £5 million.46 Most of the finance
for their schemes came from the sale of land in Australia.

The requirements of the Australian colonies were twofold:

labour, particularly skilled labour, and single women. The
first was to prove somewhat difficult to attract: the second
somewhat less so. Between 1832 and 1836, 3000 single
females were assisted to migrate to the Australian colonies.
The British Colonial Office ran the scheme but relied on
charitable institutions, and a group known as the London
Emigration Committee, to select the immigrants. Large
numbers of these women came from working class
backgrounds, but some were middle class ladies.47
Nevertheless, many colonists complained about the character
of the newly arrived immigrants. The inimitable Presbyterian
minister, J.D. Lang, himself not long settled in Australia, later
claimed that the influence of
female immigration had rendered the ‘whole colony, and
especially the town of Sydney, a sink of prostitution’.48 In
Tasmania, Governor Arthur was highly critical of the way in
which female immigrants from different social classes had
mixed freely on board ship. He believed that respectable
women were being led astray by others who were ‘far more
depraved than the generality of convict women’.49 Governor
Richard Bourke of New South Wales informed the Colonial
Office of a somewhat different problem:

A good deal of disappointment has I think arisen both on part

of the emigrants and the colonists from the want of a correct
understanding in England as to the persons in request here.
The demand for governesses is limited and may be easily
over-supplied. Those who can connect the rudiments of
instruction with the care of children may find more frequent

60
employment. Milliners and dressmakers are already too
numerous, and there is hardly any demand for a description of
upper females servants, too refined for hard work, who are
very often candidates for emigration. Those women who are
willing to go into the country and understand the management
of a dairy and the various female avocations are the most
wanted and would be the most readily employed.50

The difficulty of reconciling the aspirations of immigrants

with the opportunities which awaited them was to remain a
perennial problem. Contemporary aspersions upon the moral
character of female immigrants were much less well-founded.
It is the judgement of one recent historian of the female
assisted migration scheme that it was a general success,
providing the colonies with domestic servants, and opening
up for many of the women opportunities not available in
Britain.51

Concern for the plight of single female immigrants was taken

up by the Roman Catholic philanthropist Mrs Caroline
Chisholm. She aimed to find immediate suitable employment
for recent arrivals. Her ultimate intention was that they should
marry. The formation of families would thereby ensure the
moral fibre of Australian society. Mrs Chisholm went on to
establish the Family Loan Colonization Society. Founded on
the principle that the best form of emigration should take
place in family groups, the society provided loans to those
families willing to help themselves move to the colonies. The
first of the Society’s immigrant ships arrived in Australia in
the early 1850s bringing principally ‘cabinet-makers and the
higher class of tradesmen and also gardeners, footmen,
butlers, milliners, dressmakers, and needle-women. Most
were exceedingly

61
well dressed in frock coats and black beaver hats’.52
Eventually, it was estimated that the Society had assisted at
least 5000 immigrants by the time it wound up in the 1860s.

By the late 1830s, the colonial governments had also started

general schemes of assistance. In 1836, the New South Wales
government devoted all land revenue to immigration. A
bounty system supplemented direct recruitment by
government agents. Bounties were paid to colonial settlers
who imported married couples, single women (under the
protection of married couples) and single males provided that
they were mechanics or farm labourers. It was hoped that
young couples would come, and start families once settled. In
practice, many children accompanied their parents as
immigrants.

Under these schemes, the character of Australian immigration

changed. In contrast to the ‘gentlemen investors’ of the
1820s, many Australian immigrants during the late 1830s and
early 1840s were from lower down the social scale, including
sections of the urban working class and labouring population
of Great Britain. Economic conditions and social distress
aided the process. Unemployment was high in England during
this period, particularly in the hard years of 1839, 1842 and
1848. In Ireland, population pressure continued to force out
peasant farmers. Some came to Australia with the support of
local gentry. At Kiama on the south coast of New South
Wales, Henry Osborne from County Tyrone, Northern
Ireland, brought out Irish Protestants to work on his new
estates.53 In Scotland, the continuing ‘clearances’ of the
Highlands for purposes of sheep farming had a similar effect
on small crofters, forcing many to emigrate first to North
America and later to the Antipodes. In Australia, many settled

62
on the frontier in areas which were soon to become part of the
new colony of Victoria.54

Source: D.N. Jeans, Historical Geography of New South

Wales, Reed Education, Sydney. 1972, p.98.

Many of those who emigrated to Australia in these years thus

came from a humble background. Some probably came to
Australia simply because they could not find work at home.
Some had received encouragement from those wishing to
relieve themselves of financial burdens. Emigration seemed
the best solution for all concerned. One Member of
Parliament told the House of Commons in 1843:

63
Imagine in some village a couple of young married men, a
weaver and a farm labourer, both of whom are unable to get
work. Both are in the workhouse, and the spade of the one
and the loom of the other are equally idle. For the
maintenance of these two men and their families the parish is
probably taxed to the amount of £40 per year. The
farm-labourer and his family get a passage to Australia or
Canada. . .the parish gains £20 a year by being relieved of one
of the two pauper families. The emigrant gets good
employment. . .he finds that he has where-withal to buy him a
good coat. . .to supply his children with decent clothing;
instead of letting them run about in rags. He sends home an
order for a good quantity of broad-cloth, and this order
actually sets the loom of his fellow pauper to work and takes
him, or helps to take him out of the workhouse. Thus, the
emigration of one man relieves the parish of these two
paupers and furnishes employment not only for one man, but
for two men.55

Such views notwithstanding, it would seem that emigration

was more often the decision of the adventurous to escape
limited opportunities than the fate of the destitute. The
colonies complained that they were forced to receive the
paupers of Britain. A
more accurate view appears to have come from one
commentator noting the departure of Irish emigrants, ‘If only
the idle, the dissolute and the disaffected were induced to quit
the country, good could only follow, but it is notorious that
every ship which conveys migrants to foreign climes carries
away the sober, steady and industrious people of the
Kingdom.’56

64
Two ‘bounty immigrants’ of these years were the future
premier of New South Wales, Henry Parkes, and his wife,
Clarinda. Born in Warwickshire, and brought up in the
political radicalism of Birmingham, Parkes found he could
not make a living as an ivory turner during the hard times of
the 1830s. He went to London but still found conditions
difficult. On 6 December 1838, he wrote to his sister:

My expectations of London have met with disappointment in

nearly every particular, but I will not talk of that. You will
remember that I hinted to you that, in case I did not succeed
in London, I should go further. I had almost forgotten that I
ever had such thoughts, among the fresh and astonishing
scenes of this strange, glorious place, till it seemed as if there
was no place for me among the countless multitude of its
inhabitants. My thoughts then returned to emigration.

The information which we have obtained since we have been

here respecting Australia has determined both Clarinda and
myself to make up our minds to emigrate to a land which
holds out prospects so bright and cheering to unhappy
Englishmen, though at the distance of sixteen thousand miles.
I have been to the Government emigration office to ascertain
what assistance they afford to mechanics wishing to emigrate,
and we can have a free passage, being young and having no
children.57

A day later, Parkes wrote again to his sister setting out his
expectations of Australia:

65
I am in high hopes of Australia, as well I may be when I
compare my chance of living there with my chance of doing
so here; but I cannot give you much information now or I
should be up all night. The colony of New South Wales is
three times as large as England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales,
and as beautiful a country as this. The soil produces almost
everything which this produces, together with pomegranates,
oranges, lemons, figs, &c. Land can be brought in some of the
towns for seven pounds per acre, in the second town in the
colony for twenty pounds, and in some parts of the country
for five shillings per acre. Mechanics can get forty and fifty
shillings a week, and buy sugar for two shillings a pound; tea
for two shillings; beef, twopence a pound; wine, sixpence per
bottle;
rent, four shillings per week. Sydney, the capital of the
colony, contains 25,000 inhabitants. However, my hopes are
not extravagant, though I make sure of getting rich and
coming over soon to fetch all of you. I had forgotten to say
the climate is the healthiest in the world.58

Despite such expectations, economic conditions in Australia

initially failed to match the high hopes of Parkes escaping his
limited prospects. The depression of the 1840s revealed
lessons which would be repeated in the later crises in the
1890s and 1930s. Australia remained tied to Britain not only
through people but by dependence on British investment and
markets. The changing economic climate in Britain soon
made its impact felt. In late 1841, Parkes wrote home:

Sydney
September 15th, 1841.

My Dear Sister,

66
You will perceive by a newspaper of to-day’s date, which I
shall post with this, that hundreds of emigrants are at the
present time starving in the streets of Sydney, so great has
been the over-supply of labour here since my last. Of this
deplorable fact I could send you other and stronger proof had
I leisure to do so, but I write this away from home, not
deeming it right to delay a moment in letting you know. A
week ago there were eight vessels riding at anchor in the
harbour, all crowded with emigrants! And though many of
them have now been engaged to go into the interior, I am
afraid great numbers will not be able to obtain employment.
By the emigration regulations they are only allowed to remain
on board their respective vessels ten days after their arrival in
Port Jackson, and at the expiration of that time they are
invariably turned adrift to provide for themselves in the way
they best can. If they cannot get employment, and have no
money, of course they must starve! I saw a case in the
newspapers last week of a young woman who was turned out
of one of these emigrant ships when the ten days were up, and
was found by a policeman sitting on the Queen’s Wharf, and
taken to the watchhouse. The next morning she was brought
before the magistrate, charged with being drunk; and though
she stated that it was faintness, and that she was meditating
suicide when the policeman came to her, yet she was
sentenced, on the oath of the policeman, to sit one hour in the
stocks! What encouragement for persons to come to
Australia!

I must now conclude, hoping that you are all in the enjoyment
of health. Our little Clara is getting quite well again, Clarinda
and myself are quite well. The merchants of Sydney are all in
a state of bankruptcy.

67
Yours affectionately,
H. Parkes59

His early experiences in Australia helped shape the radicalism

of Parkes. His belief on leaving England that land was cheap
and easy to obtain in Australia proved unfounded. To many
recent arrivals such as he the whole issue of economic
opportunity was related to the question of land ownership. In
Eastern Australia at least, many of the arrivals of the late
1830s and 1840s believed that the squatters had expropriated
most of the land, while the masses could not afford to buy
what was now offered. The emigrant mechanic, Alexander
Harris, wrote that the land had become the birthright of gentry
settlers. Those who had come with wealth had been given
large grants of land and then were able to buy more ‘because
the very condition of purchase is that the purchaser be rich’.
He also noted that these rich graziers were not interested in
agriculture. The poor man ‘having no stock or but little,
would naturally betake himself to the agriculture use of the
soil; but the land being put up for sale only in such large
tracts he cannot buy’.60

The issue of the price of land and the size of allotments would
remain a continuing problem throughout the nineteenth
century. In the mid-1830s one answer seemed to be offered
with the founding of the new province of South Australia.

The concept of ‘systematic colonisation’ was associated with

the name of Edward Gibbon Wakefield. During a period of
imprisonment for forced abduction of a minor, Wakefield had
time to formulate and propound ideas which were to find a

68
favourable reception in the Colonial Office. The basis of his
scheme was that there should be an equitable balance between
land and labour in any colonial settlement. The price of land
was to be kept high, but not too high. The main aim was to
provide a pool of labour from those immigrants seeking to
save and buy their own property. Hopefully, this system
would stimulate the transference from Britain of not only the
gentlemen investors and the ‘paupers’ but also those of
meagre fortune who aspired to improve their station in life.
As with Caroline Chisholm, Wakefield believed that these
‘respectable’ immigrants must include both men and women
who would:

lead and govern the emigration of the other classes. These are
the emigrants whose presence in a colony most beneficially
affects its standards of morals and manners, and would supply
the most beneficial element of colonial government. If you
can induce many of this class to settle in a colony, the other
classes, whether capitalists or labourers, are sure to settle
there in abundance.61

The Wakefield plan succeeded only in part. Although assisted

immigrants of meagre means comprised about three-quarters
of the
early settlers of South Australia, few became land-owners. By
1870–71, most rural holdings in South Australia were owned
by settlers who had come with capital. As elsewhere, the
majority of assisted immigrants in South Australia continued
to remain in and around the towns.62

The other hope behind the establishment of South Australia

related to religious freedom. Of all undeclared battles in
nineteenth century Britain, religious conflict was probably the

69
most protracted. Civil rights, including the rights to hold
public office, had been granted to both Protestant
Nonconformists and Roman Catholics by 1829. The Reform
Act of 1832 had extended the franchise to many of those in
urban areas where Nonconformity held its strength. But
grievances remained. The Anglican Church was still the
established church with a right to collect tithes and with a
favoured position in such areas as government grants to
church schools. The aim of the founders of South Australia
was to end such privileges and create the new colony as a
haven for religious dissent. To George Fife Angas,
Commissioner of the South Australian Company which had
been formed under government auspices to promote
settlement:

My great object was, in the first instance, to provide a place

of refuge for pious Dissenters of Great Britain, who could in
their home discharge their consciences before God in civil
and religious liberties without any disabilities.63

As ‘a paradise of dissent’, South Australia also became

notable in accepting the first major group of non-English
speaking settlers in Australia. From the late 1830s, emigrants
from the north-west and south-central areas of Germany
began to arrive in the new colony. As in Ireland, pressure of
population and the precarious state of a rural economy
induced many German peasant farmers to leave their
homeland. Religious oppression was a related factor for many
of the older Lutheran sects. A further similarity between
German and Irish settlement in Australia was the importance
of family connections in both encouraging others to come and
in easing their difficulties on arrival. In the period 1847–51,
4000 German settlers arrived in South Australia.64 Most had

70
received some form of assistance. Yet, being unable to speak
English, almost all were dependent on already settled
relatives or friends for knowledge of the local scene. A
considerable number of town-bred Germans adapted well to
living in Adelaide but others from rural Germany tended to
congregate in farming districts with neighbours from the same
region of their homeland. Once established, such rural
communities remained generally stable and closely entwined
in their own traditions.

Two of the leaders of the German community were August

Kavel and Gotthand Fritzsche. Lutheran pastors, they had
arrived in Australia with their respective followers in the
years 1838–41. Although disputes between the two men later
helped cause a split within the Lutheran community in
Australia, they also helped to preserve traditions in the
German settlements at Hahndorf and in the Barossa Valley.65
As has been pointed out, the aim of the South Australian
Germans was not to achieve easy wealth but:

to found settlements wherein they could realize the ancient

peasant virtues of industry and thrift, of planning their farms
and homes slowly but surely for future generations, regarding
their property not as a temporary thing to be exploited but as a
Divine trust for the future.66

The conservatism of the Germans in this respect was marked

but not unique. The tension between the desire for a fresh
start and the predilection to retain the virtues of a former life
was ever present in most immigrant communities. In 1837,
John Lille, the new Scottish Presbyterian minister in Hobart,
called in his inaugural sermon for the transplanting to
Australia of ‘the Parish Kirks and their constant and befitting

71
companions, the Parish school-houses. . .providing men of
lowly origin, but noble minds’.67

The home background still held sway even over those who
had little to be thankful for in their past lives. Colonisation
thus meant much more than the settlement of large numbers
of people. It involved the importation of a whole outlook on
life which grew as much out of the culture of the old world as
from the environment of the new.

‘Cultural Baggage’

The immigrants who arrived in Australia during the years

1815–50 had come from a variety of social backgrounds.
Nevertheless, whether gentry farmers, aspiring tradesmen, or
rural labourers, they all carried with them a view of what the
world was or what it should be. Such images were as much a
part of their lives as their personal possessions.

The early settlers, amongst the colonial elite at least, had

brought with them a late eighteenth century view of the world
which was regular and uniform. They tried to impose this on
the Australian
landscape. The colonial administrators attempted to ensure
that land grants would be neat, regular blocks. The policy
failed principally because of the pressure of immigration. In
the first place, many of the squatters simply out-distanced the
surveyors, laying claims to large irregular land holdings.
Secondly, the need to finance mass immigration meant that
the government after 1831 was anxious to sell crown land
rather than apportion it in equal holdings. Nevertheless, when
the land was finally surveyed the policy of ‘the straight line’
prevailed. The Australian Continent was cut up into parcels

72
and blocks with scant regard for the irregularities of the local
landscape. Similarly, although styles changed throughout the
nineteenth century, the Australian colonists designed and built
houses in ways which reflected British and European
traditions. It was not until the early twentieth century that a
more distinctive form finally emerged for the urban
Australian home.68

Emigrants on board a ship to Australia, 1849. The long

voyage to Australia was arduous and boring. The one avenue
of escape was above deck where family groups could gather
together. Sometimes, even formal schooling was carried on
for children.

From the print published by the State Library of New South

Wales.

Attitudes toward the environment showed a continuity and

consensus amongst the Australian colonials. Far less

73
agreement could be reached on the sort of political and social
arrangements which should operate in Australia.

The nature of this ‘cultural baggage’ with which immigrants

landed in Australia was related not only to their social
position in the old society, but also their geographical place of
origin and date of departure. In time, industrialisation would
impose a general uniformity throughout society but, in the
early nineteenth century, regional and local variations were
still an important feature of British and European life. The
pace of social change varied over place and time. An
immigrant leaving rural Britain in the period of political and
economic re-adjustment in the 1820s carried a set of values
quite different from his counterpart from the industrial areas
of the North of England. Those who departed before or during
the 1830s, years of political and administrative change and of
the expectations embodied in such measures as the 1832
Reform Act, held a view of society at some variance with
their fellow immigrants who departed in the years of
economic hardship in the late 1830s and early 1840s.

74
Emigration of Distressed Needlewomen, 1850. Following the
example of such figures as Caroline Chisholm, numerous
charitable organisations in Britain assisted single women to
migrate. Many came from ‘respectable’ backgrounds but
were unable to make a living in Britain.

Source: The Illustrated London News, August 17, 1850.

It is thus difficult to generalise. What is certain is that the

social distinctions of the old society continued to be carried
over into the new. The ‘gentlemen investors’ who arrived in
the 1820s saw themselves as an elite who could enter into the
highest ranks of the colonial social hierarchy. Not that such
entry was always easy. Those of the colonial establishment,
made up principally of those ex-army officers, free settlers,
and certain ex-convicts who had acquired large landholdings
in an earlier period, often resisted the intrusion of strangers.
One merchant trader later wrote:

to obtain admission to good society in Sydney when my

family first arrived there, was no easy matter. Not that there
was any lack of it in the place but the residents were, very
properly, shy of strangers, unless provided with testimonials
as to their respectability.69

To preserve its own identity, the colonial establishment

created institutions mirroring ‘respectable’ society at home.
The Australia Club in Sydney, founded in 1838, and the
Union Club in Hobart, became the social meeting places of
the colonial gentry. The former had an initial upper limit on
membership of 200, later raised to 300, and election by ballot.

75
Any candidate for membership could be ‘blackballed’ by 10
per cent of the voting membership. ‘All the aristocracy are in
it’ wrote the organiser of the Club, Stuart Alexander
Donaldson.70 The Melbourne Club, also established in 1838,
was a similar institution designed for both townsmen and the
Scottish immigrant squatters. Original membership was
limited to 150 with a £25 ($50) entrance fee and annual sub of
£5 ($10).71

Of equal, if not more, importance was the provision for the

schooling of the sons of the colonial gentry. In 1832 The
King’s School, Parramatta, was opened with the aim of its
Anglican founder, Bishop Broughton, to give ‘a good
classical, scientific and religious education to the sons of
parents in the higher ranks of life’ in preparation for their
careers as ‘the future legislators, magistrates, and other public
functionaries’.72 In Tasmania, Governor John Franklin,
attempting to establish a grammar school, sought the advice
of the great reformer of the English public school, Thomas
Arnold of Rugby.73

It was in the area of education that the established Anglican

Church in Australia was first challenged and defeated. During
the
1820s, Archdeacon Scott, the predecessor to Bishop
Broughton as Anglican head in New South Wales, had
attempted to preserve the Anglican monopoly over the
education of all colonial children. The changing patterns of
religious observance in Britain laid low these plans. In 1833
the British Parliament voted funds to support not only the
National Society of the Church of England but also for the
dissenter-supported British and Foreign Schools Society
which offered a non-denominational education. In the

76
Australian colonies, the leaders of the non-Anglican
Churches, particularly the Presbyterian J.D. Lang, resisted the
attempted Anglican domination of colonial education. As the
opponent of Lang, Broughton informed the poet Coleridge,
The question now at issue is really a very great one: no less
than whether pure Christianity shall flourish or not over a
sixth part of the habitable world’.74

In the short term, in New South Wales neither ‘pure

Christianity’ nor its detractors really triumphed. An attempted
solution to the division of views was propounded by
Governor Richard Bourke in a scheme formulated on the Irish
national schools which offered a basic literary education for
all children; religious instruction would be imparted by priests
and ministers of the separate denominations. This idea was
damned by both Broughton and leaders of the Protestant
denominations, including Lang. Protestants feared that the
major beneficiary of Bourke’s scheme would be the Roman
Catholic community. Bourke was forced to abandon his
suggestions. Instead, the principle of state aid for educational
and other efforts of all the churches was more firmly
established. In New South Wales, it was only in 1848 that the
government began to establish its own schools and not until
1880 that state aid for religious education stopped.

Religious conflict over education was merely one side of a

general social ferment. The decades of the 1830s and 1840s
were a period of political intensity in Britain. The 1832
Reform Act, which had redrawn the electoral map and
extended the franchise in an effort to respond to both
demographic change and social demands, was as much the
progenitor of this intensity as its culmination. This period saw
the rise of large popular movements. The Anti-Corn Law

77
League was an expression of radicalism with its main support
in the middle class; Chartism was an attempted focal point for
a new political consciousness amongst the working class. In
both of these cases, there was a search for mass support and
national organisation. Attempts were thus made to break
down the local allegiances upon which the old aristocratic
eighteenth century politics of deference had rested.

In the Australian colonies, the 1830s and 1840s were also a

period of wide-ranging discussion of the form government
should take. Responsible government could only be extended
to Australia once the British were themselves certain of the
nature of their own Constitution, particularly in regard to the
powers of the monarch and the question of ministerial
responsibility to parliament. Both issues were still not settled
in Britain even by the late 1830s. Yet the prospect of
self-government prompted demands. The colonial elite aimed
to restrict change by reserving political power for themselves.
In 1838, the government-appointed but non-official members
of the New South Wales Legislative Council, sponsored a
motion,

that, in the opinion of this Council, the numerous Free

Emigrants of character and capital, including many officers of
the Army and Navy, the East India Company’s Service, who
have settled in the Colony, with their families, together with a
rising generation of Native-born subjects, constitute a body of
colonists, who in the exercise of the social and moral relations
of life, are not inferior to the Inhabitants of any other
Dependency of the British Crown, and are sufficient to
impress a Character of Respectability upon the colony at
large.75

78
This exclusivist view of political privilege was opposed by
the middle and lower orders of society, particularly from
among the immigrant waves of the late 1830s and 1840s. As
such, they were carrying forward the British radical tradition
of individual rights and of government serving the interests of
the whole population rather than being reserved as the domain
of the few.

In Britain during the 1830s, a radicalism uniting the middle

and lower social groups in opposition to the aristocracy had
foundered on the working class sense of betrayal over not
obtaining the vote in 1832. After 1832, the labour movement
in England became more concerned to represent the interests
of the working class alone. English working class radicalism
became mainly focused on trade unions or Chartism with its
six principles of universal manhood suffrage, annual
elections, the secret ballot, equal electoral districts, abolition
of the property qualifications for members of the House of
Commons and payment of members.

In contrast, Australian radicalism continued to provide a

moderate and united alliance of the middle and working
classes in opposition to the social and political privileges of
the Australian gentry and large landholders. In part, this
situation was the result of the more fluid social conditions in
the colonies where groups literally lived closer together and
craftsmen could more easily become self-employed.
Equally significant was the fact that the attitude of many
English immigrant workers still reflected a pre-1832 view of
society. One contemporary commentator noted of the
immigrant worker ‘If his industry raised him, he yet retained
the sympathies of his early life: he remained distrustful of the
rich, jealous of rank, and fond of the equality of human

79
rights’.76 The political campaigns of Australian radicalism
were thus drawn as much from perceptions of a British social
structure dominated by an aristocracy as from experiences of
the Australian situation. The solution to the problem of the
large land holdings of the colonial gentry was often described
in peculiarly English terms. The ‘land monopoly’ was posited
as a denial of a traditional right of an Englishman to his own
agricultural plot. In 1835, recent immigrants petitioned the
Colonial Office protesting that the conditions in the colony
were inferior to what had been promised and calling for
‘thriving farms and neat cottages’ on ‘our fertile plains’.77

Changing economic conditions could alter the perception of

the immigrant workman. In Britain the working class political
movement embodied in Chartism flourished in the years of
hardship in 1839, 1842 and 1848. Chartism influenced some
immigrants of these years, including Henry Parkes. The
1843–44 depression in New South Wales led to the formation
of the ‘Mutual Protection Association’ with an expressed
concern for the ‘condition of the Working Classes’.78 But the
program of the Association was framed not so much in
working class terms as those providing for middle class aims
of individual liberty and the rights of man.79 In 1848, the
establishment of the radical Constitutional Association
appeared to mark a further development in New South Wales
politics, particularly when one of the leading members of the
Association, E.J. Hawksley, advocated the six points of the
People’s Charter in England and specifically the principle of
universal male suffrage. Again, however, the main enemy of
the ‘artisan, the mechanic, and the labourer’ was seen as the
‘idle, assuming and unproductive aristocrat’ rather than the
middle class employer.80

80
Outside of New South Wales, the impact of Chartism was
more muted. In South Australia, an Elective Franchise
Association was formed in 1851 with a platform embodying
such traditional religious dissenter aims as the abolition of
state aid to religion plus certain points of the People’s
Charter, including universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and
annual parliaments.81 Its influence was slight, however. Most
South Australians did not come from the ranks of the northern
industrial workers and the hand loom weavers which made up
the
strength of English Chartism. Rather they embodied the
‘virtues’ of rural provincial life in southern England. Of the
initial group of South Australian immigrants in the late 1830s
to early 1840s, over 75 per cent had come from England but
less than 5 per cent from countries north of Derbyshire. The
south-western counties of Cornwall, Devon, and Somerset
accounted for 15 per cent, the towns of Gloucestershire,
Wiltshire, Dorset, and Hampshire had provided a further 20
per cent, while the remaining 35 per cent had been distributed
through the ‘home counties’ surrounding London.82 Most
appear to have come to Australia from a rural background but
via a life in a provincial town for a while. In South Australia,
they were to try and create a countryside mirroring rural
England.

Their ideal was the closely worked fields of England and

Europe, so South Australia’s country did not look like real
country. Ward of the ‘Farmer’s Weekly Messenger’ longed
for the day when the ugly post-and-rail and wire fences would
be replaced by hedges.83

Through such groups of immigrants, and through Australian

colonial society in general, conservative influences ran

81
strong. In England, as in Australia, such people were
concerned not so much with restructuring the social system
emerging out of industrialisation as accommodating to it.

The concept of ‘self help’ was espoused as the potential

solution to social problems. All that was required was greater
effort from individuals. ‘There is no reason’ wrote Samuel
Smiles, ‘why the condition of the average workman in this
country should not be a useful, honourable, respectable and
happy one’.84 The ideal of ‘self help’ formed the basis of the
moral rationale for the new social order in England. In more
practical terms, ‘self help’ gave rise to institutions of mutual
aid which provided necessary support and assistance in times
of distress. Working class fear of the ‘workhouse test’ in the
New Poor Law of 1834 led to the growth of friendly societies
with members insuring themselves against sickness and
unemployment. In 1838, Manchester Unity, the largest of the
affiliated bodies of friendly societies, had 1200 lodges and 90
000 members; in the decade 1835–45, 1470 lodges of the
society were formed.85

A branch of the Manchester Unity had been established in

Sydney by 1839.86 A similar form of mutual aid was
provided through the building societies, first formed in
Britain in the 1840s.
The money paid in by members supplied each in turn with the
finance for a home. The importation of the idea into Sydney
allowed the artisan to achieve, in times of prosperity, what
was often beyond his means in England: property ownership.
By the end of the 1840s, one observer of Sydney noted
‘humble cottages springing up in thick clusters in the Surry
Hills, at Chippendale, at Pyrmont, at Balmain’.87

82
Self-help did not only mean provision of institutions for
mutual aid. Intellectual and moral improvement were
involved also. Education and its practical application became
the ideal of the self-made man. Mechanics institutes were
established with an aim to educate the artisan class. In
practice, such institutes were frequented more by clerks and
others of the lower middle class aspiring to better themselves
than by the practical working man. In New South Wales, the
great supporter of adult education during the 1830s and 1840s
was Henry Carmichael, who had been deeply influenced by
Jeremy Bentham, the English apostle of utilitarianism.
Carmichael established the Sydney School of Arts in 1833,
the aim of which was the ‘diffusion of scientific and other
useful knowledge as extensively as possible throughout New
South Wales’.88 By 1836, Carmichael was complaining that
‘so few of the mechanics of Sydney’ for whom the institute
was intended were actually members.89

If the desire for education was one mark of

nineteenth-century respectability, then sobriety was another.
Drunkenness was a major source of concern in nineteenth
century industrial Britain. It was estimated by 1850 that
annually nearly £3 ($6) per head of population was spent on
drink in Britain: that was more than the average labourer’s
rent for a year.90 Drunkenness threatened the stability of
society and was thought to be a major cause of crime. The
attempt to wean the working man away from drink began in
the United Kingdom in the 1830s. Temperance organisations
had started in Sydney by 1837 and eight years later 3000 were
reported to have signed the pledge to forgo liquor.91

The appearance of the temperance societies was an indicator

of the new set of values percolating throughout colonial

83
society. This sense of moral vigour helped strengthen the
campaign against the ‘abomination’ of convict transportation.
The campaign also demonstrated the growing colonial
consensus that the Australian colonies had so changed
because of free immigration that they could no longer be
regarded as a dumping ground for ‘criminals’. Even James
Macarthur, a representative of the landed class which had
much to lose if convict labour disappeared, argued against its
retention not
only because it was economically inefficient (as well as
potentially increasing the influence of emancipists) but also
because it tainted society and widened the gap between
England and the colonies.92

Convict transportation was thought to discourage free

immigration. The attempts of the British government to
re-introduce transportation to New South Wales in the 1840s
met firm opposition. As a mass meeting in Sydney in 1850
declared:

That while a return to Transportation, would not only be

revolting to the feelings of the existing population of New
South Wales, it would from its tendency to destroy the
attraction of the Colony as a field for emigration, ultimately
greatly diminish that very supply of labour which forms the
chief recommendation of the measure to its advocates in the
Colony, while in regard to Great Britain, the enormous
revenues hitherto wasted in the maintenance of her
unemployed population, and in the detection, imprisonment,
trial, and transportation of offenders, provide ample means for
establishing when more judiciously applied, a vast system of
national Colonization, which would relieve the Mother
Country from far more of her misery and crime than she has

84
hitherto succeeded in discharging by means of Transportation,
upon her Colonies, since it would remove, by anticipation, the
very causes of these evils, and transmute them into the seeds
of the greatest blessings, supplying the Colony with all the
labour required to develope its resources, and yielding to
Great Britain in return an incalculable increase of national
influence and commercial prosperity.93

The anti-transportation campaign was the one major success

of Australian radicalism. Convictism lingered on in Tasmania
until 1856 and then was banished to the far reaches of
Western Australia.

By the late 1840s moral forms imported from overseas were

affecting all social relations in the colonies. The ideal of
women as chaste ladies protecting family life, an ideal
developed principally amongst the middle class of southern
provincial England, was now being portrayed as the necessary
foundation of colonial society, even though conditions in the
‘back blocks’ often rendered it impracticable. Despite the
experience of colonial life, the belief of ‘respectable’ colonial
society that males and females had different social roles
would influence the socialisation and education of colonial
boys and girls whatever their social class.

The new moral climate in the colonies did not necessarily

mean that a harmonious society had emerged. Differences
remained between Australian-born and immigrant, and
amongst the immigrant
groups themselves. The new set of cultural values was only
weakly found among one large immigrant group—the Irish
Catholics.

85
The tie of family rather than individualism was the mark of
nineteenth century Irish emigration to both North America
and Australasia. In part, this was a reflection of the continuing
rural nature of Irish society. It has been noted of the Irish
emigrants to the United States:

Of all emigrants the Irish have done most in the way of family
self help. One Irishman would no sooner find wage labour at
the high colonial rate than he would save money to bring out
his friends and family. Thus the migration gained momentum
and the newcomers found friends to receive them in the new
lands.94

In Australia, government assistance supplemented family help

for intending immigrants. From the late 1830s to the early
1850s, the Irish constituted a fluctuating, but generally high,
proportion of immigrants who received assisted passages to
New South Wales.

Assisted Migration to New South Wales Percentage of Irish

1839–1851

86
Note: During the years 1843, 1846 and 1847 assisted
immigration was suspended.

Source: R. B. Madgwick, Immigration to Eastern Australia

1788–1851, Longmans Green, London, 1937, repr. Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1969, p.234.

The identity of the Irish community in Australia became

associated with religion. Buttressed by the granting of full
civil liberties in the United Kingdom in 1829, Roman
Catholicism in Australia now achieved new confidence. It
was a Roman Catholicism predominantly Irish in tone: the
laity came overwhelmingly from Ireland; the priests of the
Australian Roman Catholic Church increasingly so.

The strength and unity of Irish Roman Catholicism in

Australia contrasted sharply with other religious
communities. Anglicanism still nominally represented the
bulk of the population but many of its adherents were lax in
their commitment. Presbyterianism was weakened by schisms
in Scotland and Australia. Methodism had a high degree of
commitment but except in South Australia its numbers were

87
small. In comparison to Protestant divisions and size, the
Roman Catholic community seemed strong and gained added
cohesion from the bigoted response of others in the new
Australian community.

During the 1840s, sectarianism overlaid and confused all

political issues. The Presbyterian leader, J. D. Lang, was a
radical republican who spoke of the freedom and
independence of Australia. He was also a bigot who raised up
hatred against Irish Roman Catholicism. To Lang, the ‘real
object’ of Irish emigration:

was simply to supply Roman Catholic wives for the English

and Scottish Protestants of the humbler classes in Australia
and thereby to Romanise the Australian colonies through the
artful and thoroughly jesuitical device of mixed marriages.95

In the colonial society of the late 1840s such old-world

prejudices were just as important as the creative attitudes and
values which had been landed in Australia.

88
3

VICTORIAN BRITAIN OVERSEAS

. . . it was English life over again: nothing strange, nothing
exotic, nothing new or original, save perhaps in greater
animation of spirits. The leaves that grow on one branch of
an oak are not more like the leaves that grow upon another,
than the Australian swarm is like the hive it sprung from.

J. A. Froude (Oceana, 1886)

The Generation of Gold

It was the discovery of gold which launched Britain and

Australia into a new and closer relationship. In Britain, as in
Australia, the first half of the nineteenth century had been a
period of rapid social and economic change. The four decades
after 1850 were marked by social stability and, in Australia at
least, continuing economic growth. Australian society became
interlocked to Britain through a process of interchange of
goods, money and people. Just as British investment provided
the means for the expansion of the Australian economy, so
did the migration of tens of thousands of Britons become the
base for both economic boom in the cities and elsewhere and
the continued implantation of British institutions.

Australian Population1 Australian Residents2

Born in United Kingdom

89
1851 437,665 not known

1861 1,168,149 612,531

1871 1,700,888 673,517

1881 2,306,736 689,642

1891 3,240,985 821,166

By the beginning of the 1850s the British economy had begun

to reach a stage of balance after the initial period of social and
economic dislocation during the early industrial revolution. In
many areas of Britain, however, trade was still depressed. To
those who sought to better themselves, opportunities were
limited and prospects seemed gloomy. A tailor in the town of
Macclesfield, Lancashire, wrote to his brother in Melbourne,
‘trade and wages are very bad. . .there is but little chance. . .to
rear a family with any respectability’.3 For such men, the
discovery of vast gold deposits in the colonies was an
invitation to move to the Antipodes. For the
first time, Australia supplanted Canada as the main place of
destination within the British Empire. During the 1850s and
early 1860s, British emigration to Australasia even reached
almost half the total numbers leaving for the United States.

British Emigration

90
source: W.A. carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles.
Londen: P.S. King, 1929, p.215.

The news of the important gold lodes in the colony of

Victoria reached England in late 1851 and early 1852. By
May 1852, one visitor to London:

found the train lengthened by many waggons filled with

working men bound for the other side of the world. That’s the
sort of home I shall have out yonder’ I heard one
strong-handed mechanic saying to another on the swarming
platform, as he looked up at the new station-house with its
barge-board and bayed windows. From London, as from
Newcastle, people of every condition and age were
embarking.4

Even those unused to manual labour were drawn by the hope

of easy wealth. The novelist Charles Dickens described
crowds ‘struggling and elbowing’ at the offices of the
shipping merchants.

Legions of bankers’ clerks, merchants’ lads, embargo

secretaries, and incipient cashiers; all going with the rush, and
all possessing but faint and confused ideas of where they are
going,

91
or what they are going to do; beg of hard-hearted shipbrokers
to grant them the favour of a berth in their last-advertised,
teak-built, poop-decked, copper-bottomed, double-fastened,
fast-sailing, surgeon-carrying emigrant ship.5

Gold had been found in both New South Wales and Victoria.
But the rich lodes in Victoria attracted most new arrivals. In
the years from 1852 to 1860, 290 000 people migrated to
Victoria from Britain and Ireland. This was over half the total
British emigration to Australia and New Zealand in these
years.6 Although assisted immigration continued many paid
their own passage (about four-fifths of the immigrants to the
Antipodes in the 1850s were not financially assisted).7
Having arrived in Australia these immigrants of independent
means often moved freely throughout the colonies, attracted
to new gold finds.

Many diggers were skilled miners. Villages in Derbyshire

were reportedly deserted and the lead-mining industry all but
collapsed. Other miners came from Cornwall and Somerset.
Some diggers brought with them values formed in the
previous turbulent decades. On the gold fields themselves,
there was talk of democracy and the rights of the working
man as defined by English Chartism. Irish diggers carried on
a tradition of resistance to what they saw as English tyranny
and unjust laws. Such influences formed part of the
background of the unrest caused by the Australian authorities’
insistence on the possession of a licence to dig for gold.
Unrest culminated in the brief and abortive uprising at the
Eureka stockade in December 1854. But what was generally
remarkable was not the radicalism of the diggers, but a high
degree of respectability amongst the new immigrants. Despite
early fears of social disruption, order generally prevailed and

92
religion flourished on the gold fields. By 1861, one-quarter of
the Victorian population, and more than one-third of adults,
were attending church regularly.8 The great beneficiaries of
this increase were the evangelical sects, particularly the
Methodists with their stress on individual salvation.

While working class emigration was significant,

contemporaries were also quick to note a new class of
immigrant amongst the new arrivals:

A new class of people, better educated and perhaps, more

desperate, and needing only the powerful inducement that
gold alone can supply, has for the first time found its native
land too small and too poor to contain it. The middle stratum
of society has been stirred.9

These immigrants were drawn from a range of occupations.

Many came not so much to dig gold as to seek profit by
providing goods and services for an expanding community.
Some were skilled tradesmen such as Benjamin Backhouse, a
stonemason in England who set up as an architect in Geelong,
moving later to Brisbane and then to Sydney. He helped
establish the New South Wales Institute of Architects and
later in life entered the New South Wales Legislative
Council.10 Graham Berry, a Chelsea draper, arrived in 1852
aged thirty and opened a grocery in South Yarra.11 Many
were young and unmarried, perhaps uncertain of their future.
David Syme had been unable to settle down to the study of a
career. He came from Scotland, having gone first to the
goldfields of California. After three years on the Victorian
diggings and a brief career in contracting he entered on his
life’s work as publisher and editor of the Age.12

93
Throughout the nineteenth century there was a continuing fear
in British society regarding the ‘overcrowded professions’.
The 1840s had appeared just as gloomy for the middle class
professionals as for many lower in society. In his Parent’s
Handbook, which appeared in 1842 as a guide for those
concerned over the future of their children, J. C. Hudson had
observed:

whatever differences of opinion may prevail on the subject of

increase of population, no such difference exists with respect
to the difficulty which is felt by the middling classes quite as
keenly as by the lower . . . 13

As with the earlier generation of gentry farmers, professionals

unable to find employment faced a loss of status. Economic
growth in Australia provided the means of escape from such a
predicament. One notable group of unemployed professionals
who migrated in these years were Anglo-Irish lawyers
educated at Trinity College, Dublin. Partly as a consequence
of reforms in the Irish legal system, they were unable to make
a living in Ireland. Men such as George Higinbotham were to
be active members of the Victorian Bar. Higinbotham arrived
in Victoria in 1854, aged twenty-eight. As well as practising
law, he became editor of the Argus newspaper. Entering
Victorian politics in the 1860s, he played a prominent role in
framing legislation to establish a state school system. He later
became chief justice in Victoria.14

Considerable numbers of women also arrived in these years.

For unmarried middle class ladies in mid-nineteenth century
England, there were few respectable occupations to which
they could turn. Teaching as a governess was one, but the
prospects here of an ‘overcrowded profession’ were very real.

94
There were too many applicants for too few posts. According
to the Quarterly Review, some lower middle class families
had been ‘educating their daughters for governesses as a
mode of advancing them a step in life and thus a number of
underbred young women have crept into the profession who
have brought down the value of salaries’.15 The fate of these
unfortunates attracted the attention of Maria Rye, a spinster,
aged thirty-three, and the oldest of nine children of a London
solicitor. In 1862, she helped found the Female Middle Class
Emigration Society, the first in a line of a number of
philanthropic emigration societies designed to assist single
women of respectable background. According to Miss Rye,
the constant advice she received was:

George Baxter, ‘News from Home’ (1854). Many immigrants

of the 1850s came to Australia with hopes of becoming rich
quickly. Large numbers expected to return soon from where

95
they had come. Letters and newspapers remained the main
way of keeping in touch with relatives and events ‘back
home’.

From the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

Teach your proteges to emigrate: send them where men want

wives, the mothers want governesses, where the shopkeepers,
the schools and the sick will thoroughly appreciate your
exertions and heartily welcome your women.16

George Baxter, ‘News from Australia’(1854). Many

immigrants kept in close touch with their relatives and friends
in their country of origin. Personal news and financial
assistance helped bring out new immigrants to Australia.

From the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

96
Those governesses who did emigrate could earn more money
than in England but often only by undertaking more menial
work. One governess, sent out in 1864, wrote home:

Were I in the position of the 3rd and 4th rate governesses (I

was almost going to say 2nd) in England, I would
unhesitatingly become a domestic servant in Australia in
preference. Here housemaids have from £25 to £30 a year,
good cooks £35 or £40. It is pitiable to think of young
women, nominally governesses yet little more than nurse
maids, toiling for perhaps only £10 a year—£20 would be
quite a large sum. I have known and still know some cases in
Wales where respectable decently educated young women
earn only those sums. I have no doubt it would require some
common sense and humility for such a Governess to become
a servant, but she would find herself infinitely better off
(salary apart). Servants are more considered,
there is more freedom and independence than at home. If my
words could reach some of my toiling sisters at home, I would
say ‘Be sensible undergo a little domestic training and come
out here to take your chance with others with a certainty of
succeeding withal’.17

The value of female domestic labour in the colonies was due

in part to the gold discoveries which had exacerbated the
existing imbalance between the sexes. By 1861, the
proportion of females to males in Victoria had risen to 70 per
cent but it was only 55 per cent in the 21–45 age group; over
half the men over twenty were unmarried but only 15 per cent
of women.18

97
Gold brought not merely the British-born to Australia. Until
the 1850s the numbers of immigrants from outside Britain
were only a small minority in the colonies. Amongst the
convicts perhaps 2.5 per cent or about 3000 had been born
outside Britain, mainly in other parts of the growing British
Empire, such as Canada, India, the West Indies and South
Africa.19 The German settlers of South Australia were the
first major group of non-British, but most of these remained
in small contained rural communities even when they moved
across colonial borders into Victoria and New South Wales.
The gold rush generation were far more diverse in
background.

At the Victorian census of 1861, overseas-born made up over

70 per cent of the population. Of every 100 persons in the
colony, twenty-nine were born in Australia, thirty-three were
born in England and Wales, sixteen were born in Ireland,
eleven were born in Scotland and nine were born elsewhere.20

Of those whose birthplace was outside the British Empire, 18

000 in Victoria in 1861 had arrived from Europe. The period
of social and political unrest in European states, culminating
in the revolutions of 1848, led to many seeking safer havens
in North America and even Australasia. The 1848 emigrants
from Germany and central Europe began to arrive in the
1850s. By the 1860s there were 6000 Germans on the
goldfields. Many soon moved into Melbourne, bringing a
cosmopolitan nature to the city. A German language press
was established in both Adelaide and Melbourne during these
years. German clubs and associations became a part of
Australian urban life.21 Settling alongside the Germans were
other European communities, including Scandanavians and
Central Europeans such as Swiss and Hungarians. Many

98
contributed to the intellectual life of Melbourne. Sigismund
Wekey, a Hungarian refugee after the revolution in his
homeland in 1848, arrived as an assisted immigrant in
1854. During the 1850s and 1860s, he served as secretary to
the Philosophical Institute of Victoria. He travelled widely,
managed a mine, became involved in a dispute over patents
and later returned to Budapest where he died in 1889.22

During the goldrushes, Australia also received its first large

numbers of immigrants from its own region of the Pacific and
Asia. About 2500 Americans had settled in Victoria in 1861.
Many had moved across from the goldfields in California.
With their ideals of democratic liberties, Americans were
prominent in the revolt of the miners at the Eureka stockade
in 1854. Others stayed to establish entrepreneurial businesses.
Freeman Cobb came to Melbourne in 1853. With a number of
his fellow countrymen he established the coaching firm of
Cobb and Co., using Concord coaches similar to those
running routes in North America. Freeman Cobb returned
home in 1856, but the business would remain in existence
until 1924 and the name itself lived on in a Motor Coach
line.23

The most important change in the composition of immigrants

in these years came with the arrival of Chinese to work on the
goldfields. A few immigrants from Asia had come before
1840, and J.D. Lang reputedly employed two Chinese
labourers in 1827.24 But most Chinese would come to
Australia from the late 1840s. China in the nineteenth century
was in constant turmoil, subjected to the imperialist demands
of Britain and other European powers and from internal
unrest, particularly the Taiping Rebellion from 1851 to 1864.
The growing pressures of population led many in south China

99
to look overseas for better opportunities. Most would come to
Australia from the provinces of Fujian (Fukien) or
Guangdong (Kwantung) where there was already established
a tradition of migration on either a short-term or
labour-contract basis. Some paid their own passages to
Australia, or borrowed from friends and relatives; many
others used the services of an emigration agent who provided
passage on the basis of a labour contract requiring the
emigrants to work to repay their passage money with interest.

Shiploads of Chinese arrived in both New South Wales and

Victoria during the 1850s. By 1859, the Chinese made up
almost 20 per cent of the male population in Victoria,
although only 8 per cent of Victoria’s total population and
about 3.3 per cent of the total population in the Australian
colonies in 1861.25 It was the concentration of the Chinese on
the goldfields that led to trouble. Europeans and Americans
were generally tolerated, if not accepted as full equals, by
British immigrants and the Australian-born. The presence of
the Chinese prompted both cultural and economic
insecurity. They were accused of affronting civilised
behaviour by wearing baggy pants and of threatening the
economic livelihood of other gold diggers. There were
anti-Chinese riots at Buckland River, Victoria, in 1857 and
again at Lambing Flat, New South Wales, in 1860–61.

Following these riots, the governments of both Victoria and

New South Wales tried to control the numbers of Chinese
immigrants by providing for poll taxes and residence fees on
the Chinese. Defending themselves in part against such
regulations, but more in response to actual physical attacks by
other gold diggers, the leaders of the Chinese community
cried out:

100
nearly all of us left our native land at the solicitations of
Europeans, to seek abroad that prosperity which we could not
find at home, on the assurance that we should receive the
protection of your laws. . . since our arrival, we have been
subjected to a series of insults and oppressions from the
ignorant, the cruel and the malicious.26

Many Chinese immigrants of the gold rush years would

eventually return home. By 1881 only 12 000 remained in
Victoria and the Chinese made up only 1.7 per cent of the
total Australian population.27 Those who stayed on had
moved into country towns or into the growing ‘Chinatown’ in
either Melbourne or Sydney. Here they became merchants,
shopkeepers and cabinet makers. One was the famous Louis
Ah Mouy who had arrived in Melbourne in 1851 as a
carpenter under contract to a builder. The news of the
discovery of gold soon after his arrival had been conveyed to
his brother in Canton, reputedly leading to many thousands of
Cantonese migrating to the Victorian gold fields. Making his
fortune in the gold rush, Ah Mouy later became a merchant
and leader of the Chinese community in Melbourne, investing
also in mines, manufacturing and property.28

The discovery of gold in Queensland brought other Chinese

to Australia in the 1860s to 1880s. The Chinese soon came to
play an important role in North Queensland agriculture. By
1891 there were over 8500 Chinese in Queensland, located
principally in the north of the colony. Cairns had a flourishing
Chinatown.29

The continuing arrival of Chinese immigrants eventually led

to further restrictions. In Australia, as in the United States of
America and Canada, the ‘Great White Walls’ were being

101
built against Asian migration by the late nineteenth century.30
Conferences of the colonial premiers held in 1881 and again
in 1888 agreed first to extend the poll tax system and then to
limit the actual numbers who could actually arrive in any of
the colonies. By so doing they were reflecting the racial fears
expressed by a member of the Victorian Legislative Assembly
during the gold rushes:

source: Arthur Huck, The Chinese in Australia, london, 1967,

p.8.

[he] anticipated the arrival of the day when this continent

would be peopled by millions of pure caucasion blood,
speaking the English language, and maintaining the laws and
institutions on which they prided themselves, and which had
placed them in their present position as a wealthy, an
influential nation. It was in the power of this House to
determine whether the colony should thus perpetuate the
greatness of the English nation, or become merely an outlet
for the teeming millions of China.31

102
A great fear had been laid in the Australian psyche. It would
remain here for over a century.

Institutions and Ideologies

By the early 1860s the Victorian and New South Wales gold
rushes were over. In the following decades other discoveries
in Queensland and Western Australia would bring further
hopes of easy wealth. Few, however, of the 1850s gold rush
generation had become rich. Some turned to the legendary
Australian way to quick
riches—bushranging. John Gilbert, born in Hamilton, Canada,
had arrived with his family in 1852. After a period of loose
living on the goldfields, he joined up with the New South
Wales bushranger, Frank Gardiner. After several years and
numerous hold-ups and robberies, a policeman shot him in
1865.32

Whatever their successes or failures, on or because of the

gold-fields, few of the British-born returned home. They
scattered throughout the Australian colonies but their impact
was probably most felt in Victoria where their sheer numbers
overwhelmed the small population resident there prior to
1850. The 540 000 colonists in Victoria in 1861 accounted for
46 per cent of the total Australian population.33 The large
influx of the years of gold posed problems for the future.
There was the difficulty of finding employment for the many
thousands who had been disappointed in their search for a life
of economic independence. In Victoria a peculiar distribution
developed in the age structure of the population. Immigration
into Victoria declined during the 1860s. After the high peaks

103
of the 1850s and early 1860s there was a sharp drop in the
marriage and birth rates of the late 1860s and early 1870s. By
the mid-1870s, the Victorian population was made up
predominantly of the middle aged and their children. In most
aspects of life, the generation which arrived during the 1850s
would preside over the affairs of Victoria for at least the next
three decades.

Immigrant domination of Victorian parliament and politics in

the late nineteenth century was most pronounced. Between
1870 and 1893, all eleven Victorian premiers were
immigrants, nine of whom had arrived in the 1850s. In
contrast, only one of the twenty premiers of New South
Wales and South Australia in this period was an immigrant of
the 1850s and five had been born in Australia.34 Immigrant
aims were reflected in the increasing ‘protectionism’ of the
Victorian tariff system designed to provide employment for
the gold rush generation. In ‘protectionism’ the former Scot
David Syme found a cause which he could support in building
up that great publishing empire associated with the Age
newspaper. There was much talk of ‘radicalism’ but it was
framed in an aura of respectability, as befitting British
immigrants of middle class background. The Oxford don and
Australian radical Charles Pearson summed up Victorian
political achievements to the 1880s as carrying forward the
program of middle class British radicalism formed in the
1830s and 1840s:

the carrying out by Englishmen, Scotchmen, and Irishmen, on

virgin soil, of the reforms they had dreamed of at home.
Grote’s vote by ballot; the manhood suffrage, which was an
article in the Charter of 1848; (Fox’s) ideal seperation of
Church and State; O’Connell’s Home Rule; the Birmingham

104
League’s free and secular and universal education; John
Mill’s yeoman proprietorship, have all become realities here,
while they are for the most part still nothing more than
aspirations in England.35

That past Chelsea draper, Graham Berry, who rose to become

Premier of Victoria, had a reputation for radicalism, but he
claimed that his aims was merely to look after the ‘good of
the working classes’ by providing for their material, mental
and moral improvement.36 A like aim was revealed in the
social legislation of this period. Victoria was the first of the
Australian colonies to provide for universal elementary
education. Similarly, the 1870s saw the political rise of
temperance and other organisations which sought through
legislation the moral wellbeing of the coming generation.
‘Wowserism’ became associated with the ideals of a
British-born generation which aimed to impose the values of
its youth upon its own young.

The contact between middle class immigrants and the ‘home’

culture was reinforced in a number of ways. As early as 1854,
Australia was buying one-third of British book exports.37
Desire for ‘things British’ helped stultify an indigenous
colonial culture. The Victorian historian Geoffrey Serle has
commented, ‘The pattern of Melbourne’s cultural life for the
rest of the century has already taken shape: its feature was the
contrast between the size of the sophisticated audience and
the poverty of creative work’.38 There were exceptions, but
mainly because of the importation of talent. The English-born
sculptor, Charles Summers, had arrived in Melbourne in
1852. By the mid-1860s, he was a leading figure in
Melbourne artistic circles. He later left to take up a successful
career in England and Rome.39 His brother Joseph, a

105
musician, also migrated to Melbourne in 1865. He was to
achieve fame as a pianist and composer.40

A further attempt to infuse the values of home was shown in

middle class provision for the education of their own young
sons. In this respect, they were emulating the ideals of earlier
gentry immigrants. As in Britain, the Australian version of the
‘public school’ became a place where those of established
rural background and new urban wealth might mingle
together. Again, it was in Victoria that the most significant
developments took place. Scotch College had already been
founded in 1852, and Geelong College in 1861, to
serve the interest of the Presbyterian Scottish gentry of
western Victoria. Over the 1850s to 1860s, Melbourne
Grammar, Geelong Grammar and Wesley College were
established to meet the needs of the middle class sections of
the Anglican and Methodist communities. Xavier College was
opened in 1878 to perform a similar function for Roman
Catholics. On the establishment of Geelong Grammar in
1858, the Anglican Bishop Perry expressed his glad tidings at
seeing a school founded:

on the plan of their good old English public schools, and he

hoped that this institution would bear such a character as that
parents need no longer send their sons home to Harrow and
Eton [and] that it would attract here all those who valued
sound learning and a religious education, and who desired to
have their children brought up in a manner worthy of the
descendants of British parents.41

Over the ensuing years such an aim would be furthered by

drawing most of the headmasters of these schools from the
United Kingdom.

106
In girls’ schooling, governesses and ladies’ academies taught
the basics of an ‘English education’ through the study of
English literature, grammar and history. The ‘polite
accomplishments’ of music and art were reinforced through
the role of European women in mid-nineteenth century
cosmopolitan Melbourne.42

In higher education, the British influence was perhaps more

pronounced. The staff of the Universities of Sydney and
Melbourne, both founded in the 1850s, were drawn from the
United Kingdom. The aim was to turn out gentlemen who
could provide social leadership in the colonies. The curricula
focused on the study of the classics and mathematics,
although the colonial Arts degree was modelled more on the
Scottish ideal of general education than the specialisation of
Oxbridge. Only slowly were vocational interests recognised
by the introduction of more professionally directed training.

The leaders of the churches in Australia, particularly the

Anglican and Roman Catholic, were still overwhelmingly
immigrant in composition. Amongst the Anglicans, doctrine
often reflected the inclination of the immigrant episcopate. In
Sydney, the high church views of William Broughton were
succeeded by the evangelical Frederic Barker, Bishop of
Sydney from 1855 to 1882. Mrs Barker found on her arrival
that most of the colonial clergy were ‘drones’.43 Barker tried
at first to recruit immigrants of his own doctrinal leanings and
later to establish training for colonial clergy along low
church lines. His long tenure of office helped smooth over
differences with other Protestant sects but it also left a low
church evangelical tradition within the Sydney archdiocese.
In Melbourne, Perry, Bishop from 1848 to 1876, was also an
evangelical. But he was succeeded by James Moorhouse, an

107
energetic man who ascribed to the ‘broad’ church view of
Anglican theology embracing a range of doctrinal positions.
The son of a Sheffield cutlery manufacturer, Moorhouse was
part of that generation of late nineteenth century churchmen
who believed that Anglicans had to come to terms with the
social problems posed by industrialisation. He provided new
vigour to the Church in Melbourne and improved the quality
of his clergy by insisting on a three-year training period, and
preferably a university degree.44

In the Roman Catholic Church, the former English

Benedectine leadership was being replaced from the 1860s by
an Irish episcopate. The aim of these Irish Bishops was to
‘build up in Australia an Irish Church, that in the coming time
will rival in sanctity and learning the unforgotten glories of
the ancient Church of Ireland’.45 Through their experience of
the national education system in Ireland, the new Australian
Catholic hierarchy had come to be strong opponents of any
form of state-controlled education. Reinforced by directives
from Rome, the Australian bishops refused to participate in
the educational settlements which established
nondenominational instruction in government-run schools.
Forced back upon their own financial resources, the Catholics
had to find other ways to support the schooling of their
children in their own faith. One of the answers became the
recruitment of the Irish and other religious orders who came
to Australia to take up the call of teaching. For colonial
children, the split between the Catholics and the rest of the
community over the question of education was profound. In
the government schools children were taught the glories and
virtues of the British Empire; Catholic children learnt that
British tyranny was oppressing Irish freedom.46 Such
contrasting views of the world would influence those who

108
came of age not only in the late nineteenth century but also
well into the twentieth.

Religion was still a great divider in the late nineteenth

century. There were, however, new ideological influences
filtering in. The 1860s and 70s had been years of crisis for
those coming of age in Britain. The ideas of Charles Darwin
challenged religious faith. Collectivist solutions were being
proposed for social problems. The age of individualism was
passing. By the 1880s, such influences were beginning to
have some impact in colonial Australia. Not all were
welcomed by the immigrant generation of the 1850s who
were now pillars of society. In Melbourne, the Presbyterian
minister Charles Strong was condemned and ostracised for
appearing to flirt with textual criticism of the Bible.

Even those who might benefit by the new ideas were often
deaf to their message. Throughout Australia, but particularly
in Victoria, the labouring population was represented by a
trade union movement dominated by skilled tradesmen, men
who in the 1850s had fought for the eight-hour day and higher
wages but who now had become moderates. The trade
unionist Benjamin Douglass reflected such trends. Arriving in
Victoria in 1855 as a bricklayer, he soon took up the cause of
the eight-hour day. An active organiser of trade unions in
Victoria during the 1860s, and a protectionist in politics,
Douglass was President of the Melbourne Trades Hall
Council in 1884–86 and chairman of the 1884 Intercolonial
Trades Union Congress. By the 1890s his earlier radical
opinions had changed and he revealed himself as an opponent
of strike action. When he died in 1904, a member of the
Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers noted, ‘the men who

109
were mixed up with the eight hours’ movement in the early
days were different to what they are new’.47

The Ties of Kinship

Contact with Britain in the last half of the nineteenth century

was maintained not merely through institutions and the ideas
of the leaders of society. Although the vast flood of the 1850s
did not reoccur, the ‘crimson thread of kinship’ was preserved
by a steady stream of immigrants leaving Britain for Australia
over the next half a century. Many came from those areas of
Britain which already had links with Australia. The southern
counties of England, particularly London, Middlesex and
Kent, were very prominent as sources of assisted and
unassisted immigrants. It has been estimated that almost
one-fifth of Australians living in the 1990s have an ancestor
from southern England. Throughout the nineteenth century
the south was providing the basis of a common English
culture which was also reflected in transplantation to
Australia, and not least in the emergence of an Australian
accent of speech.48

The Australian colonial governments had continued assisted

migration schemes during the gold rushes and throughout the
remainder of the century. The labour shortages of the gold
rush years
had itself encouraged special arrangements such as the
formation of the Highland and Island Emigration Society
which brought almost 6000 Highlanders from Scotland to
Victoria between 1852 and 1854.49 Not all the colonies were
consistent in the application of such schemes, but a significant

110
feature of most was the provision for resident Australians to
nominate relatives and friends as immigrants and contribute
towards the cost of their passage. Families were thereby
reunited and the ties of kith and kin maintained. Over the
whole period 1860–1919 about 38 per cent of Australian
immigrants who received government assistance were
‘nominated’.50 The system was used primarily in the colonies
of New South Wales and Victoria where patterns of
settlement and family ties stretched back over at least a
generation. In other colonies, there was more selection of
immigrants with specific economic purposes in mind, most of
which were principally rural in nature.

Encouraged by such schemes, many came to rejoin their

families. Amongst those of more fortunate circumstances,
Marcus Clarke, the future Australian novelist, was sent out to
Melbourne so that his uncle could keep an eye on him.51
Others learnt of Australia through their family connection. In
1862, H. C. Corfield of Maryborough, Queensland visited his
nephew, William, in Somerset. Inspired by his uncle, the
younger Corfield decided to ‘seek his fortune’ in Australia.
By the 1880s he had become prosperous and had entered the
Queensland parliament.52

Family ties and economic prospects were important in

attracting migrants though not all colonies were equally
attractive. In Victoria, particularly, there was pressure from
trade unionists, themselves drawn in the main from the
immigrant generation of the 1850s, to limit the number of
new arrivals lest they affect employment. In South Australia
and Tasmania the good land was taken and there was little
industry to provide employment (although the discovery of
copper at Moonta in South Australia brought out Cornish

111
miners53 and the discovery of tin and zinc in the rugged west
of Tasmania gave a stimulus to the economy of the island
colony). Both Tasmania and South Australia lost population
to the other colonies. Until the gold rushes of the 1890s
Western Australia would remain an isolated outpost with few
attractions for immigrants. In order to obtain labour, Western
Australians turned to another source. From 1850 to 1868,
almost 10 000 convicts were sent to the West from Britain.54
With restricted opportunities elsewhere, the majority of free
immigrants looked to rural and commercial opportunities in
New South Wales and Queensland.

Immigrants and Population Growth 1860–1890

112
Sources: C.M.H Clark, Select Documents in Australian
History, vol 11, 1851–1900, Angus and Rebertson, Sydeny,
1977, pp.664–65 and Gordon Greenwood and Charles
Grimshaw (eds) Documents on Australian International
Affairs 1901–1918, Nelson, Sydeny, 1977, p.421.

Of all the Australian colonies, Queensland grew most

spectacularly through immigration during these years, and
particularly in the 1880s. In 1891 almost half its population
had been born overseas.55 Queensland searched far and wide
for new settlers, advertising in Europe as well as in Britain.
Immigrants came from Germany to join some of their fellow

113
countrymen who had arrived in the 1850s as shepherds for the
squatters on the Darling Downs. By the 1890s, German-born
Lutherans and their children made up 10 per cent of the
Darling Downs population.56

Immigration to Australia and the United States. Throughout

the late nineteenth century, the vast majority of British and
European emigrants went to the United States. Some believed
that land legislation in the United States, particularly the
Homestead Acts, providing for cheap land to small
landholders, were a great attraction. In contrast, the
Australian immigration assistance schemes helped reunite
families and provide labour to industry but gave little hope of
early property ownership to the prospective immigrant. For
what might have been, if Australia had devoted more
resources to assisted immigration and had also lowered the

114
price of land, see Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance,
Sun Books, Melbourne 1966.

Source: The Bulletin, 24 March 1883.

More controversial was the importation of Pacific Island

labour to serve the interests of squatters and owners of sugar
plantations in north Queensland. Pacific Islanders began to
come in large numbers from the 1870s on. For the next three
decades their numbers fluctuated, but by 1901 there were still
9324 islanders in Queensland.57 Most were later deported
under legislation passed by the new Commonwealth
parliament. About 1000 remained: a ‘forgotten
people’ striving to maintain their island culture well into the
twentieth century.58

For those with capital, or good fortune, Queensland was a

place of opportunity in the late nineteenth century. Frederick
Brentnall, a Wesleyan minister, arrived in 1863 to serve in
New South Wales and Queensland. Retiring from the ministry
because of illness in 1883, he expanded his business interests,
speculating in mining, and becoming a journalist and director
of the Telegraph newspaper. An early settler in the prestige
suburb of Coorparoo in Brisbane, he sold some of his blocks
in the boom year of 1888.59 Angus Gibson arrived with his
family from Scotland as an assisted immigrant in 1863. By
the 1880s he and partners had a well-established sugar mill
near Bundaberg, owning 2658 acres (about 1000 hectares)
and employing ninety-eight Europeans, eight Chinese, and
200 Kanakas.60

115
For the majority of Australian immigrants, the ‘push’ of the
home situation was probably as important as the ‘pull’ of a
new, expanding colony such as Queensland. Economic
conditions in late nineteenth century Britain often fluctuated.
During the 1860s and early 1870s conditions improved for
most of the British working class, but those in skilled
occupations appear to have benefited most. Through trade
unionism and collective bargaining, skilled craftsmen were
able to improve their pay and conditions. In comparison, the
‘Bob Cratchit whose skill went not beyond letters and
ledgers’61 and members of the overcrowded and gentlemanly
professions had an insecure existence. As a result, emigration
was still a tempting prospect for that ‘middle stratum of
society’ which the discovery of gold had stirred to emigrate.

Australian residents often complained about the nature and

skills of immigrants in these years. In 1867, Sir James Martin.
Premier of New South Wales, suggested that one of the
reasons for colonial unemployment was that there was a large
class of persons in Sydney and other urban areas who were
‘mostly fit for employment as clerks, storekeepers, or in
mercantile houses, or to follow some other city occupation,
but quite unsuited for country pursuits’.62

In reality, most immigrants had little or no skill and no

capital. As the following table shows, at least half of those
who arrived from Britain in the 1860s were general labourers.
Land settlement schemes in the colonies were designed to
attract skilled labour and agricultural workers. In the main,
however, immigrants of such background probably turned to
Australia only when the long
twenty-year depression in British agriculture and indestry
began in the 1870s.

116
U.K. Emigration to Australasia Occupations per 10,000 Adult
Males63

For the general or agricultural labourer in Britain, life was

uncertain even in times of relative prosperity. At no stage in
the late nineteenth century was there full employment in
Britain. Even those who had certain skills could become
redundant. The decline of the old hand craft industries are still
being felt, and pockets of distress remained as much in
semi-rural areas and villages as in the large industrial towns.
In Cornwall, the tin mining industry collapsed dramatically
during the 1870s, leading to a considerable migration to New
South Wales.64 After the mid-1870s, Britain met increasing
industrial competition from Germany and the United States
and there was a general down-turn in the economy.
Agriculture, also, was in a slump, threatened by imports and
declining prices. Rural labourers faced a far from idyllic life.
Housing was a particular cause for concern. One English
commentator noted at the turn of the twentieth century:

Of course the lowness of the wage and the lack of prospect

will always cause a great number, perhaps a majority, of the
more enterprising spirits to desert the land, but I am
convinced that there are large numbers who would bide in
their villages if only they could be sure of constant work and

117
find decent homes in which to live. . .Let anybody who is
curious to know leave the main roads and the more populated
villages where there are resident gentry. . .Let him examine
the hamlets for himself—those of the stamp of Cratfield by
Halesworth for instance—and ask for a few particulars from
the parson or from any old fellow whom he meets upon the
road. Then, in nine cases out of ten, he will hear that there
used to be more houses than there are now, that so many have
fallen down and never been rebuilt and that certain young folk
have gone away because they could find no cottage decent
enough to
live. . .There are the dwellings that look so pretty in summer,
with roses and ivy creeping about their crumbling stud work
and their rotten-thatch, but which often enough are scarcely
fit to be inhabited by human beings.65

Encouraged by the spread of the railways, during the late

nineteenth century an exodus began from the villages of
southern England. Not all found their lives improved by a
move to English cities. Ironically, what increased the
difficulty of finding decent housing was the impact of
railways on established urban environments. In London, it has
been estimated that between 1840 and 1900, 120 000 persons
were forced to move home to make way for the construction
of railways.66

One survey of 470 Australian immigrants from London in the

late nineteenth century indicates that while few had come
from the worst slum districts, almost half had been living in
poverty. Of those who came from inner-London, five-sixths
had moved house at least once before leaving for Australia
around the age of twenty-five.67 Very few had entered an
occupation higher up the social scale than that performed by

118
their fathers, while almost half had gone down the social
scale.68 As in the early nineteenth century, immigration
seemed to hold most attraction for those seeking both to
escape poverty and to improve themselves. Above all, a better
environment was one theme upon which emigrant annuals
played:

What do our struggling thousands gain by emigration to such

lands as Australia and New Zealand, and what do they lose?
For the foggy uncertain climate of Great Britain they will find
one equally healthful and invigorating; they will exchange a
miserable subsistence for a comfortable living; they will
acquire health, strength, and happiness. For the civilization
they leave behind they will be welcomed by all its
blessings—political, educational, and religious on the shores
of their new homes. ‘In fact they will find all the elements of
nature and the advantages of civilization to make life
prosperous and happy.’69

One of those who left Britain for Australia in 1879, was the
twenty-three year old Edward Hufton who had been
employed in the steel industry in Northern England. After
being unemployed for fourteen weeks, he decided to emigrate
to Australia with his wife and her young sister. They paid £4
($8) each for a government assisted passage on the three and
a half month journey to Australia. Within two years of his
arrival in Australia, Hufton was employed as a lecturer
assistant at the newly expanding University of Sydney. He
remained in this post until his death in 1917 at the age of
sixty-one.70

119
Glebe Point Road, Glebe, 1882. Most late-nineteenth century
immigrants settled in the growing Australian cites. Suburbs
like Glebe provided terrace housing for a burgeoning Sydney
population in the 1880s.

From the Mitchell Library, Sydney.

Few immigrants were as fortunate as Edward Hufton.

Nevertheless, until the 1890s, Australian economic conditions
appeared bright. An agricultural labourer in southern and
south-western England in 1880 could earn 13 shillings
($1.30) or 14 shillings ($1.40) a week; in New South Wales a
general labourer could expect 7 shillings (70 cents) to 9
shillings (90 cents) a day and a farm labourer £30 ($60) to
£45 ($90) a year plus board.71 Yet not all the newly arrived
found ready work. Even the skilled were sometimes
unemployed. When this happened attempts were made to
warn fellow-workers in Britain. The Amalgamated Society of
Engineers had branches in Australia which reported back to

120
England. The Adelaide branch sent word in 1876 that ships
were arriving ‘at the rate of one or two per month with from
four to nine of our trade in each ship, of course, not all our
members’.72 The miners also sent back reports and from time
to time the Trades and Labour Councils petitioned the
government to stop assisted immigration.

If work was sometimes scarce, so also was home-ownership.

In the inner city areas of Sydney where most immigrants
congregated probably less than one-third of houses in the late
nineteenth century were owner-occupied.73 Following the
construction boom of the
1870s and the 1880s most immigrants nevertheless could
expect to rent a house which was rather more inhabitable than
houses in the rural and urban slums back ‘home’.

By the 1880s, more immigrants were arriving from the

industrial and mining communities of north and north-east
England. In some areas, kinship and employment allowed for
the transmission of a complex set of cultural values. The
expansion of coal mining in New South Wales is perhaps the
best example. The Newcastle population grew from 3562 in
1861 to 40 000 in 1891.74 Patterns of work and leisure were
imported directly from the coal fields of Britain. Mining
villages in Australia as in Britain were closely integrated in
their economic and social life. The principle of unionism
bound men and their families together:

The origin of unionism in the Australian mines scarcely needs

explanation. The idea came with British miners from Britain,
and the purposes and attitudes generated in Northumberland,
Durham, and Fifeshire, were as appropriate at Newcastle on
the Hunter as at Newcastle-on-Tyne. Methods of working the

121
coal, the life in mining villages, and the outlook of the
management were imported direct from England. Throughout
the nineteenth century the majority of the union leaders had
begun their working lives as pitboys in the old country. The
leading mining companies had their headquarters in Britain
and the managers received their training there.75

James Curley was one immigrant miner who took an active

part in union affairs and community life in the Newcastle
district. Born in Durham, he began work in a Northumberland
mine at the age of eleven. Arriving in Australia in 1873, in the
1880s and 1890s be became a leading union representative on
the Northern coalfields. Generally moderate in outlook,
Curley also remained an active lifelong member of the
Methodist Church.76

What distinguished these new trade union representatives

from the skilled craftsmen generation of the 1850s was not so
much a commitment to social change (many remained
cautious in their aims and respectable in their methods) as a
greater sense of working class solidarity. The 1880s in Britain
saw the rise of the ‘new unionism’ of unskilled workers. Even
amongst skilled tradesmen economic depression and high
unemployment created a new sense of class solidarity which
could stretch across the seas. In 1889, Australian
sympathisers donated £30 000 to strikers on the London
docks.77 The ties of brotherhood were being found as much in
class as in race.

Overall, however, it was the Irish who remained the most

distinctive and visible cultural group in late nineteenth
century colonial society. The Irish made most use of the
nomination system of assisted immigration. Moreover, many

122
Irish-born residents helped their own kin to emigrate by
sending money back home. In the six years from 1875 to
1880, the Irish in Australia remitted to Ireland over £250
000.78

Togetherness in the Australian Irish community was fostered

by common places of origin in their native isle. Most Irish
immigrants to Australia during the late nineteenth century
came from the south. The small Irish community in Victoria
before the gold rushes was mainly composed of Munstermen.
As in New South Wales during the early nineteenth century,
personal news of the new environment seems to have helped
sway other southern Irish to follow their kin. What pushed
them on were conditions in Ireland. During the great famine
in the 1840s most went to the United States. After the famine
the reconstruction of Irish land-holding created the
circumstances which induced more to undertake the longer
voyage to Australia. Landlords evicted tenants in order to
increase their profits. The peasantry rejected customary
sub-divisions of their land amongst all children in favour of
primogeniture and through marriage attempted to consolidate
land-holdings. The pressures who felt especially by young
sons and daughters. Those who were single were more
prepared than their elder married brothers and sisters to
migrate to Australia. (Probably 85 per cent of the Irish who
came to Australia in the two decades after 1850 were
single).79 By 1871, there were 100 000 Irish-born in Victoria
and they and their children made up the vast proportion of the
170 000 Roman Catholics in that colony.80 Two-thirds of the
Irish immigration after 1850 had come from the south-west
counties of Cork, Kerry, Clare, Limerick, Waterford and
Tipperary, Galway in Connacht, and Kilkenny on the

123
south-west edge of Leinster. One in five come from Tipperary
alone.81

Unlike other immigrants, many Irish settled in country

districts, but often in areas where the English and Scots did
not. They tended, however, not to be pioneers but to take up
farming in regions near populous towns. Of those who moved
to the cities, many lived in the inner-city close to their places
of work. Yet, in contrast to the situation in North America,
there were very few Irish urban ghettoes in late nineteenth
century Australian cities. More than anything else, the
common English language formed a bond
between most from the British Isles. Even amongst the Irish
few knew or understood Gaelic, while Irish culture was itself
being Anglicised throughout the nineteenth century. As a
result, a number of Irish Roman Catholic girls in the cities
found Protestant marriage partners.82 Thus J.D. Lang’s earlier
prophecy was partially fulfilled but in a way which may have
promoted social harmony rather than hindered it.

Amongst the Irish, a few pioneering families did stand out.

Michael Durack and his family arrived in Australia in 1853,
escaping the effects of the great famine and following in the
path of his brother Darby who had arrived three years earlier.
His son Patrick made a profit of £1000 in the gold rushes and
established himself as a farmer in the Goulburn district.
Patrick and other members of his extended family later
moved to Queensland. By 1879, he was ‘on his way to his
first half million’. During the 1880s the family expanded its
enterprise to the Kimberley district of Western Australia. Yet,
these ‘Kings in Grass Castles’ were hard hit by
over-speculation in Queensland and the general slump in
eastern Australia during the 1890s. From then on, the family

124
centred on its Kimberley holdings, but despite better times, it
still struggled to revive its earlier fortunes.83

The story of the Duracks held lessons for others. With much
of the good land already taken by the squatters and earlier
settlers, most immigrants were not prepared to take the risks
involved in moving into the outback. The discovery of gold
did lure some to Western Australia in the 1890s. The vast
majority of few arrivals, however, stayed near the cities and
towns where there was at least hope of a job. As a result,
immigrants helped stimulate the building boom which marked
late nineteenth century urban growth. In Queensland, the
colony of vast empty spaces, the greater population increase
in the 1880s took place in Brisbane or the other urban centres
along the coast or in the near inland.

Queensland: Population Increase, 1881–189184

There was money to be made in the city building booms.

Some immigrants benefited. In Melbourne during the 1880s, a
large number of new builders operating in the expanding
suburbs were recent arrivals. The majority were British-born,
and over one-third had arrived during the 1880s. Many had
left Britain in the early 1880s at a time of general slump in the
British building industry.85

125
In the main, however, the controllers of urban economic
growth were the banks and financial institutions. Most of
these institutions were dominated by those now-respectable
pillars of society who had arrived in the gold rush days.
Backed by British investors and connections, by the 1880s
these men were beginning to supplant the squattocracy as the
men of wealth.

One such example was James Munro. A Scottish printer by

trade, he had arrived in Melbourne in 1858. After reading
printing proofs on the regulations of a terminating building
society, he decided to form his own, the Victorian Permanent
Building Society (established 1863). He soon became a
leading figure in the Victorian temperance movement. By the
1880s, he was an important politican, encouraging and
building ‘coffee palaces’, hotels without liquor licences.
Munro speculated heavily in the Melbourne land booms of
1880s, starting a new bank and another building society. In
1890, he raised more finances in England to support his
ventures. In the same year, he became Premier of Victoria.
With an impending financial crash, Munro rushed through
parliament legislation designed to allow financial firms and
building societies ‘to wind themselves up’ without paying
their creditors. He thence appointed himself as agent-general
in London. Eventually, he was forced to return home to face
financial ruin.86

For at least some of the gold-rush generation, the depression

of the 1890s brought difficulties, although perhaps not as
much hardship as was suffered by more recent arrivals now
put out of work.

126
Taking Stock

In 1888, Australia celebrated a century of migration and

settlement. For those born in Australia and overseas it was a
time to reflect. The previous four decades had been overall an
era of fairly continuous migration into the Australian
colonies. The demographic impact of the mid-century
migration was not quite marked. By the census of 1891,
Australian-born sons and daughters of migrants made up the
vast majority of the population. Of those born outside
Australia,
approximately half had been born in England. There were,
however, significant variations in the composition of the
overseas-born in each of the colonies. South Australia and
Tasmania had a strong English element; in Victoria the
influence of Scottish-born was marked; while the Irish were
more numerous in New South Wales, Victoria and
Queensland than in the other colonies. There were important
German settlements in South Australia and Queensland and
sizeable numbers of Scandinavian-born in Queensland and
Western Australia.

Overseas-born in Australia, 189187 (Percentage in each

colony)

127
The Australians of the late 1880s were still fairly confident of
their future. Most were also proud of their origins. The
patterns and associations of the past were still strong. The
squatters’ earlier romantic vision of Arcadia in Australia had
not been fulfilled, but they themselves lived on in the legend
of ‘the pioneers’. Their legacy became the high culture of
Australia, for many of their children and descendants became
the twentieth century poets and artists striving to understand
the Australian experience and environment in a way which
had eluded their colonial forbears.88

The gentry image was also preserved in more tangible

fashion. The government house scene provided a focus for
those who wanted to maintain the atmosphere of high society
back home. The governors and their aides still came from
Britain, and they were expected to entertain. In July 1899,
Lady Audrey Tennyson, wife of the recently appointed
Governor of South Australia, wrote home to her mother:

2 July 1899, Sunday, Government House

I just finished up my letter last mail telling you the ball was a
great success. Since then we hear that everybody has been
talking about it & saying it was the nicest & best arranged
ball they had ever been at, & that everything had been thought
of,
the flowers also were greatly admired, in fact they liked
everything apparently, the champagne, too, was so good. We
opened up more rooms than they have had before so that they
could circle round, & arranged seats in every possible place
for sitting out, & we had nearly 500 people, quite a hundred

128
more than has ever been before, & there was far less crush
than there has been before. . .89

At the other end of the social scale, the legacy of the convict
days still remained. Ned Kelly, the last of the bushrangers,
believed that he spoke for many of his kind in his published
letter of 1879:

I have been wronged and my mother and four or five men

lagged innocent and is my brothers and sisters and my mother
not to be pitied also who has no alternative only to put up
with the brutal and cowardly conduct of a parcel of big ugly
fat-necked wombat-headed big bellied magpie legged narrow
hipped splay-footed sons of Irish Bailiffs or English landlords
which is better known as officers of Justice or Victorian
Police. . . What would people say if they saw a strapping bit
lump of an Irishman shepherding sheep for fifteen bob a week
or tailing turkeys in Tallarook ranges for a smile from Julia or
ever begging his tucker, they would say he ought to be
ashamed of himself and tar-and-feather him. But he would be
a king to a policeman who for a lazy loafing cowardly bilit
left the ash corner deserted the shamrock, the emblem of true
wit and beauty to serve under a flag and nation that has
destroyed massacreed and murdered their fore-fathers by the
greatest torture as rolling them down hill in spiked barrels
pulling their toe and finger nails and on the wheel and every
torture imaginable was transported to Van Diemand’s Land to
pine their young lives away in starvation and misery among
tyrants worse than the promised hell itself of true blood bone
and beauty, that was not murdered on their own soil, or had
fled to America or other countries to bloom again another day
were doomed to Port McQuarie Toweringabbie Norfolk
Island and Emu plains and in those places of tyranny and

129
condemnation many a blooming Irishman rather than subdue
to Saxon yoke were flogged to death and bravely died in
servile chains but true to the shamrock and a credit to Paddys
land. . .90

The Irish-Australian tradition Ned Kelly represented was one

important part of late nineteenth century cultural patterns.
Opposed to this tradition were the views of other
immigrant-born, some of whom wished to have little to do
with the convict days. Henry Parkes had, by the end of the
1880s, become the most important politician in New South
Wales, but he still retained anti-Catholic
views first formed in his days in Birmingham. He told the
Legislative Assembly of New South Wales in 1881:

I say that I want to preserve a majority of Englishmen and the

descendants of Englishmen in this country. I say, moreover,
and, unpleasant and painful as it may be, it is a matter which
ought not to be shirked, and I want to preserve the teaching
and influence of the Protestant religion in this country, and I
would lend no assistance whatever to any scheme which
would have a tendency to depress the Protestant elements
now in existence. For this reason I am an advocate for the
immigration to this country being regulated by whatever the
census returns will show to be the elements of the population
of the three kingdoms (England and Wales, Scotland and
Ireland) now existing in the colony.91

Throughout the nineteenth century, motives for migration had

been complex. Those who had chosen Australia rather than
anywhere else had often been encouraged by the availability
of government assistance and the prospect of meeting
relatives and friends who could help them settle into their new

130
homeland. Crucial for most was the prospect of available
employment. In the four decades of economic growth after
1850 jobs had been generally available. In the early 1890s the
economic climate changed. For the first time since the 1840s
the Australian colonies experienced a serious depression.
Governments stopped assisting immigrants and few were
prepared to pay their passage when work was scarce. The
number entering Australia from Britain fell from 29 981 in
1889 to a low of 7899 in 1893, rising slowly back to just over
10 000 by 1899.92 Even after the worst was over, economic
recovery was slow. As a result, in the early years of the
twentieth century more people left Australia than entered the
country. If nothing else, the depression showed that economic
conditions could be of prime importance in deterring
migrants.

Immigration into Australia93

The 1890s were years when Australian society turned

inwards. Strikes and disruptions marked political and
economic life. By the turn of the century, Australian loyalties
were coloured by recent class tensions. When Britain went to
war with the Boers in South Africa most Australians pledged
their support. Australian nationalism found part of its
meaning within a wider Imperial sentiment. Over 16 000

131
Australians fought in the Boer War. Yet there were
generational differences over the war. Amongst politicians
who were native-born or pre-1870 immigrants, support for the
war was high; amongst the more recently arrived far less so.
The reason was to be found not so much in a test of loyalty to
Britain as in what Australia had offered the different
immigrant generations. Most employers, managers or higher
professionals were to be found amongst the native-born or
pre-1870 immigrants; post-1870 immigrants were more likely
to be manual workers.94

Late nineteenth century Australian nationalism can therefore

be seen as much an expression of the former high hopes of
immigrants as of the frustrated pride of those who, though
native-born, were less well-off than their successful
neighbours. Throughout the nineteenth century most
immigrants had come to Australia with the idea of bettering
themselves. Many had been disappointed. Increasingly since
the 1820s those who had already established themselves in
Australia were better placed than new arrivals to take
advantage of economic opportunities. Some immigrants soon
looked to other ways of reformulating the dream of
advancement for all.

A political party of the working man seemed the answer. Of

the first thirty-five New South Wales Labor Party members of
parliament elected in 1891, twenty-five had been born in
Britain and of these eight had arrived in Australia during the
previous decade.95 The strikes of shearers and others in the
1890s gave a particular national flavour to the Australian
scene. Yet, the influence of the overseas-born in the Labor
movement remained strong. In time, immigrants would
become the first three Labor prime ministers of Australia (J.

132
C. Watson, Andrew Fisher and W. M. Hughes). For all three,
and for most Australian ‘nationalists’ of the late nineteenth
century, the hope was to find a means of creating a ‘New
Britannia’ which would revive disappointed hopes and cloak
them under the guise of a common brotherhood.

This new vision was drawn not so much from socialism as

more traditional concerns. Significantly, many of those to
whom the Labor Party appealed came from an Irish Catholic
background. Encouraged by their leader, Cardinal Moran, an
Irish-born prelate
who had arrived in Australia in 1884, many Catholics sought
to find their identity in Australia through the medium of the
Labor Party. Equally significant were the changes occurring
in some sections of the Protestant churches. The industrial
revolution in England had been founded on the ideology of
individual improvement which was an integral part of the
faith of early nineteenth century Nonconformity. The crisis in
late nineteenth century industrialisation, including the 1890s
depression in Australia, convinced some members of the
Nonconformist churches of the need for change. It was now
believed that salvation and hope for all could only be secured
by state action. The ‘social gospel’ began to emerge as the
answer to evil in the world. By the early twentieth century the
Labor party itself responded to these changes with a moderate
platform based on a democracy of universal property
ownership. As the New South Wales branch of the party told
the electors in 1901, the new hope for Australians would be
the creation of Christ’s Kingdom here on earth,

The Labor party substituted for that hideous doctrine which

put Things before Beings a Gospel which might have been
founded on that preached on the Mount. It demands for all

133
electoral equality, equality before the laws, equality of
citizenship, equality of primary education, equality of
opportunity, so far as may be, and all the time declares a
trumpet tones that every human being who enters the world
has a right to be there and therefore has not only a right to
those things of earth necessary to civilised existence but also
a right to those things of the mind and soul whose rational
employment alone elevates man above the beasts of the field.
And here the Labor Party only recognises man — it knows
naught of sexual, social, religious and fiscal differences. Its
texts are taken from the Book of Human Kinship and the
Keynote of its discourse is Love.96.

It was to be a Kingdom intended for white citizens only.

134
4

AN IMPERIAL DOMINION
Natural resources and their development are a fruitful theme
for discussion. It is clear, however, that this development
cannot be achieved without adequate manpower. Hence it
comes that of all the problems which lie before Imperial
statesmanship none is more important and fascinating than
that of migration.

(Final Report of the Royal Commission on the

Resources of the Dominions, 1917)

The Call of Empire: The Pre-War Years

In 1901, Australia became a Federation. Still uncertain as to

what made them a nation, most Australians at least agreed on
whom to exclude from their midst. After over a century of
settlement, the new arrivals had displaced the Aboriginal
inhabitants from most of the land their ancestors had occupied
for over 40 000 years. The surviving Aboriginal populations
were gathered together into reserves, obstensibly to protect
them, but in effect as a means of segregating most of them
from the rest of the community. Exclusion also applied to
new arrivals. A ‘White Australia’ was the one policy which
almost all Australians accepted. Earlier colonial legislation
restricting first the entry of Chinese and then, later, Indians,
Japanese and other Asians was to be enshrined in one of the
first legislative measures of the Australian Commonwealth

135
parliament: the Immigration Restriction Act of 1901. After
1901, non-whites could only enter Australia on a temporary
basis under a permit. Justifying the policy, the Bulletin, so
often seen as the prophet of Australian nationalism, wrote in
1901:

It is impossible to have a large coloured alien population in

the midst of a white population without a half-caste
population growing up between the two. India proves that;
would prove it much more conclusively only the white
population isn’t large enough to be a very extensive parent to
the Eurasian mongrel. Spanish and Portuguese America show
it. The United States show it. Queensland [by importing
Pacific Island labour] shows it already to an alarming extent.
And Australia thinks highly enough of its British and Irish
descent to keep the race pure.1

As a means of maintaining the British race, many sought

closer associations within the British Empire in terms of
trade, finance and migration. Such views were not confined to
Australia. The dream of Federation of all the Empire was held
strongly in Britain and Canada. After a century and more of
colonisation, it was hoped to bring together the mother
country and the ‘British overseas’.

Population of British origin in Four Dominions compared

with Scotland and Ireland

136
Source: C. E. Carrington, The British Overseas, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p.507.

The outlook on emigration . . . was becoming more Imperial.

The main aim was no longer to get rid of the surplus
population of the Mother country; it was to bring about a
more economic distribution of the whole population of the
Empire. Attempts were being made to keep immigrants in the
Empire.2

The 1890s had been years of depression not only in Australia.

Throughout the 1890s and early 1900s world trade was

137
depressed. Migration to other countries, such as the United
States, failed to match the high levels of previous decades.
When world trade revived in the early twentieth century, it
was accompanied by a marked shift in emphasis in British
emigration. The United States no longer held its previous
overwhelming attraction. The great nineteenth century exodus
from Ireland was over. The United States itself was emerging
as an industrial civilisation which held attraction for southern
Europeans who, like the Irish previously, were escaping rural
poverty. For city-born Englishmen, however, the
opportunities were now presented as lying elsewhere. The
new frontier of North America was western Canada.

With the rise in imperial sentiment, Australia benefited also.

Overall, the proportion of British emigrants going to places
within the Empire rose from 28 per cent in 1890–1900 to 63
per cent in 1901–12.3 The British government and voluntary
organisations aided this trend by providing limited financial
assistance. Under the terms of the Unemployed Workmen Act
of 1905, £200 000 ($400 000) was spent in the years
1905–12, assisting 21 000 workmen to emigrate, most of
whom went to the dominions.4

British Emigration (000’s)5

The slow recovery of the Australian economy in the early

1900s led to the Australian federal and state governments also

138
welcoming immigrants once again. In certain areas,
particularly rural districts, the depression had been left a
shortage of labour. A number of states began schemes for
land settlement. Western Australia, after an influx of
population in the gold rushes of the 1890s, embarked on a
policy of encouraging wheat growers. In New South Wales,
attempts were made to break up the large estates and put
small farmers on the land. Equally significant were the
beginnings of large-scale manufacturing in Australia. By its
policy of national
protection introduced in 1907, the Commonwealth
government helped the growth of industry. The state
governments responded by increasing financial assistance for
immigration.

Government (Assisted) Immigration into Australia from the

United Kingdom, 1905–19146

The efforts of individual governments and organisations were

matched by attempts at closer imperial co-operation. At the
1907 Imperial Conference in London, the Australian
representatives brought up the question of Empire migration.7
A resolution was passed that ‘it is desirable to encourage
British emigrants to proceed to British colonies rather than to

139
foreign countries’.8 The issue was revived at the 1911
Imperial Conference. It was decided to appoint a Royal
Commission to investigate the resources of the British
Dominions of Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South
Africa, and to report as to how best to develop them both in
the interests of each and the Empire as a whole.9

The upbringing of the young was a prominent issue behind

both voluntary and government schemes of migration. In an
age of imperial rivalry, there was much focus on the health
and physical fitness of British youth. Many believed that the
wide open spaces of British dominions were far more healthy
than crowded cities in the United Kingdom. In 1909,
Kingsley Fairbridge, a Rhodesian, founded the Child
Emigration Society. The aim was to build large farm schools
in the dominions. In 1912 Fairbridge started such a school
near Perth.10 In New South Wales, from money raised
initially to buy a dreadnought for Britain, a fund of £45 000
($90 000) was established to ‘equip a farm or farms upon
which worthy British boys can be received, taught and
boarded free for six
months or a year, and distributed to the farmers of the
State’.11 Before war broke out in 1914, 1787 boys had been
settled in this way.12 After starting in 1911 an immigration
program to recruit British agricultural labourers, the South
Australian government in 1913 also instituted a scheme of
farm apprenticeship for boys.13

140
Scheyville Agricultural Training Farm, 1912. The
Dreadnought Scheme, inaugurated in 1909, brought out to
Australia adolescent boys for agricultural training. Many
were sent to Scheyville Agricultural Training Farm, just
outside Sydney. W. F. Schey, Director of Labour in New
South Wales, and after whom the farm was named, took a
personal interest in the scheme, often visiting the boys on the
farm.

Source: W. F. Schey, The Government Agricultural Training

Farm, W. A. Gullick, Government Printer, Sydney, 1912.

For adult British emigrants, the move to the dominions was

probably as much the result of social unrest at home as of
rising imperial sentiment. The decade preceding World War I
was marked by social tension in Britain. In the organised
labour movement unrest was prompted by rising inflation and
ostentatious affluence amongst the more better off. Between
1900 and 1914 in Britain, wages failed to keep up with prices.

141
One contemporary commentator wrote of conditions just prior
to the war:

Trade had been improving, but employers thought too much

of making up for some lean years in the past, and of making
money, without sufficient regard for the importance of
considering the position of their work-people at a time of
improvement of trade. Prices had been rising, but no
sufficient increase of wages and certainly no general increase
had followed the rise.14

Not only were real wages falling. Formerly well-paid skills

were becoming redundant. The nature of the British economy
was changing. Machines continued to replace skilled
craftsmen; large factories were displacing small workshops; a
sense of community between employer and employee was
being lost.

Equally significant was the unrest being felt amongst the

growing army of clerks, schoolteachers and white collar
employees in early twentieth century Britain. Uncertain of
their place and status in society, many of the lower middle
class were ready targets for emigration propaganda. This was
particularly so in regard to single women. In the years just
prior to World War I, women in Britain expressed
dissatisfaction with their social condition by campaigning for
the vote. For the woman schoolteacher or office worker,
however, it was suggested that the prospect of the vote was
often not the answer. The London typist ‘may have a few
women friends, but too often a normal human society of both
sexes is beyond her reach’, wrote one commentator. ‘The vote
will not touch the causes, social and economic, that make for
hardship in the existence of the woman-worker’. Rather, she

142
should look overseas to a ‘well-organised Community’ in the
colonies where there were new opportunities, and particularly
prospective husbands. In the process, she would also be
carrying forward the civilising mission of English
womanhood which had lain behind much of the nineteenth
century efforts to encourage female emigration.15

Increasingly, those voluntary societies assisting female

emigration were finding their ‘customers’ more from among
the employed and upwardly mobile women than within the
class of distressed ladies which had been the feature of the
mid-nineteenth century. Although the proportion of
‘professionals’ amongst women leaving Britain was still
small, the total numbers were growing quickly in the years
just prior to World War I.

A similar trend can be seen amongst male emigrants. The

proportion of male white collar employees in the British
workforce had grown in the forty years after 1870 from 3 per
cent to 7 per cent.
Yet the proportion of ‘commercial and professional’ amongst
prewar emigrants was at least 10 per cent.16 Obviously, the
quest for status and opportunity, which had lain behind much
nineteenth century migration, now affected these new masses
in the suburbs, ‘the families of the imperfectly educated but
fairly well-paid manager or clerk, of the tradesman who has
‘got on’ pecuniarily but hardly ‘gone up’ socially . . . ’17

Occupations of British Emigrants18 (in 000’s)

143
Pre-war tensions elsewhere in Britain were sometimes
imported into Australia. Throughout the late nineteenth
century the chapel and the union had played an important part
in the lives of coal-miners, particularly those in Wales.
Associated with their religion was a loyalty to the tradition of
English Liberalism. In 1909, the Miners Federation of Great
Britain decided to transfer its allegiance from the Liberal
party to the newly founded Labour party. On the eve of war,
the miners were becoming restive. So it was in Australia. As
before, leadership and aims in the Australian labour
movement often had overseas origins. As the biographer of
Albert Willis noted:

When Albert Willis emigrated to Australia in 1911 and

immediately went to work in the State-owned Balmain
Colliery, he was merely continuing a pattern of life which had

144
begun when he entered the Welsh pits as a boy of ten . . .
there were various opportunities offering in this new land, but
it did not occur to him to explore these avenues, for coal was
never far from his conversation. Representing the British type
of trade unionist at his best, Willis soon became prominent in
the affairs of the local miners’ lodge before shifting to the
South Coast of N.S.W., where there was a higher percentage
of Welsh miners.19

Willis helped bring together the various mining unions in

New South Wales. By 1916, he was one of the major
industrial organisers in New South Wales and a leading
member of the New South Wales Labor Party. His political
views reflected his upbringing. Political and industrial action
was related to a Christian social gospel which he had learnt
from the tradition of Welsh Nonconformity.20

Willis was not unique amongst Australian trade union leaders.

Immigrants were often active in industrial disputes. In 1909, a
five-month long strike at Broken Hill was directed in part by
the English socialist, Tom Mann.21 Peter Bowling, an
immigrant of the 1880s and leader of New South Wales
coalmincrs, was imprisoned for his part in a strike in 1909.22

For others less politically committed, Australia still held

hopes of individual success, but these hopes were not easily
fulfilled in the years just prior to World War I. Despite the
policy of national protection, industry was still small scale
and located mainly in New South Wales and Victoria
(although the basis for heavy industry was being laid in the
foundation of the iron and steel giant, B.H.P.).
Unemployment nationally remained around 6 per cent. One

145
young immigrant who arrived in Western Australia in 1912
later recalled of his last days in England:

My father having come to Australia a year or two before us

and not become rich, as we had all dreamed he might, the
remaining family was sometimes poor. My mother had a great
faith that something would turn up, even in the worst of
times, and we did survive.23

Dissatisfaction with the existing social order in Britain and

Australia often did little to undermine the patriotism founded
on loyalty to the British race. In 1909 the English-born labour
leader, W.G. Spence, an immigrant of the 1860s, wrote that
Australia’s ‘great national ideal’ should be ‘purity of the race
and preservation of Greater Britain for the Anglo-Saxon
stock’.24 Like Spence, most immigrants were still proud to
call themselves Britons. Amongst the newly arrived, the
attachment to Britain itself was strong. The peak of the
pre-World War I British immigration to Australia was
reached in 1912 when the number entering Australia from
Britain exceeded, for the first time in over seventy years, the
number of British-born entering the United States.25 When
the mother country called the Empire to arms in August 1914,
many of those who had recently left Britain were among the
first to respond.

146
Arrivals from Scotland, 1911. In the three years prior to
World War I, New South Wales received over 50 000
immigrants. The hope was that many would settle on and
develop the land but most came from British cities.

Source: The Sydney Mail, 30 August 1911.

147
Survey Sample of First Four Battalions of 1st Division
A.I.F.26

British immigrants played a vital role in the Australian effort

in the World War I, particularly in the years 1914–15. In the
early months of the war there were many more volunteers for
service than were actually accepted. Recruitment was highly
selective. The Australian Army was built around those who
had previous service in the official or civilian forces and the
best available physical specimens. It is significant therefore
that a sample survey of recruits in New South Wales shows a
high proportion of immigrants being accepted. From a one in
ten random sample survey (approximately 400 recruits) of the
members of the first four battalions of the First Division
A.I.F., it would appear that at least one-third were born
outside Australia. Of the overseas-born, almost all had been

148
born in Britain or the British Empire. Two-thirds of them
were aged between twenty and thirty, but few were under
twenty, an indication that most of these immigrants had
arrived as young men in the years prior to 1914. Judging from
this sample, young immigrants were represented
disproportionately amongst A.I.F. recruits. (At the 1911
census, the overseas-born, both male and female, made up
only 6 per cent of the 20–24 age group, and 11 per cent of
those aged 25–29.)27

Harold Aslatt was a recent British immigrant who served with

distinction with the Australian forces. He had arrived in
Australia in 1908 aged twenty-three, and he had worked as a
teamster and station hand near Griffith, New South Wales. He
enlisted in November 1914. The historian of his battalion
described his action at Gallipoli as the unit’s ‘most
distinguished in those early days’. Later, in France, he was
promoted to sergeant and received the Military Medal,
Meritorious Service Medal and Distinguished Conduct
Medal. After the war, he returned to Australia and worked as
a bush worker and prospector.28

After 1915, the proportion of overseas-born amongst recruits

began to decline. The overall figure of British-born in the
A.I.F. for the entire war was approximately one-fifth of
enlistment.29 Nevertheless, it may not going too far to suggest
that because of their role in the early years of the war,
immigrants almost as much as native-born were to help from
the ANZAC legend; a legend which became so much a part of
Australian nationalism in the twentieth century.

Not all recruits joined for the love of the Empire. Some recent
immigrants were disappointed by what they had found in

149
Australia. Enlistment for those meant a more secure
occupation and the opportunity of a trip back home. Two days
before landing at the Dardanelles, a young Englishman told
his parents:

things were so bad in Melbourne . . . and they are a jolly site

worse now for I saw a Melbourne paper a few days ago . . . so
wear would I have been, not too well off, eh . . . every day
that passes 4/- goes down to me and this war is bound to last a
good while yet, so I will have a few £ for you, if this war last
12 months they will owe me £60 but I think it will last a little
longer than that don’t you, but of corse if I am killed you will
get what is due to me just the same, as it goes to the next of
kin.30

If recent arrivals did much of the fighting in World War I,

then an earlier generation of immigrants still made many of
the decisions at home. For such men and women, birthplace
became a test of loyalty. As one example, in Melbourne a
tight network of eighteen individuals was involved in
decisions to expel a German lecturer from the university and
also to close Lutheran schools, so denying Australian-born
children the right to learn the language of their forefathers. Of
these eighteen individuals, at least ten had been born in
Britain, and five in Australia. Of the latter group, all five were
children of immigrants. They all thought of Britain as
‘home’.31

The crisis of the war also tested the White Australia policy
itself. Who was European and who was Asiatic had been a
problem for the administrators of immigration before 1914.
They had come to accept a small group of settlers from Syria
(in reality ethnic Lebanese) as essentially white Europeans.32

150
Less tolerance was shown towards other Mediterranean
settlers, even though they were British. A few male labourers
from the British colony of Malta had come to Australia before
the war. The union movement condemned them as ‘cheap
labour’ and others called them ‘coloured’, ‘semi-white’,
‘black’ and even ‘Oriental’. In 1916, anti-Maltese feeling led
the Hughes federal government to turn back a shipload of 200
who had tried to land from the French mail boat Gange.33

The Gange incident revealed the increasing commitment to an

Australia for ‘Australians’. As the war progressed,
camaraderie amongst themselves rather than any form of
Imperial loyalty held the troops together. Even immigrants
returning home to Britain were often disappointed at what
they found. By 1917, the old tune of ‘dear old Blighty’ had
become:

Blighty is a failure

Take me to Australia.34

In Australia itself, the war helped to divide the nation, partly

along lines of ethnic origin. Deep-seated differences came to
the surface. The Easter uprising in Dublin in 1916 found
sympathy and support amongst Australians of Irish
background. The Irish-born Archbishop Mannix called upon
his fellow Australians to support the cause of Irish freedom.
Others damned him as a traitor to Australia and the British
Empire. In the bitter campaigns over conscription in 1916–17,
ethnic and sectarian differences became pronounced. ‘It has to
be remembered that Roman Catholics are

151
voting for Ireland, not Australia, on Saturday’35 wrote a
pro-conscriptionist pamphleteer in 1916.

The ghosts of division over conscription continued to haunt

Australia for the next three decades. The issue split the Labor
party, often along sectarian lines. As a group, Labor members
who supported conscription were more likely to be born in
Britain than Australia and they were usually Protestant in
religion.36 In New South Wales, at least, the conscription split
left the Labor Party with a strong Roman Catholic element. In
1920 half the Labor Party members elected in New South
Wales and five of the new cabinet were Catholics.37

Such developments were a reflection of the changing status of

the Irish in Australia. Despite a few success stories, most Irish
immigrants in the nineteenth century had not found positions
of influence outside their own ethnic community. After World
War I, this exclusion from the mainstream of Australian
society began to change. Through their connections in the
Labor Party, Irish-Australians achieved recognition and
acceptance.

From the war there therefore emerged two different forms of

Australian nationalism. Those with continuing sympathies for
the Imperial idea thought of themselves as independent
Australian Britons. Those associated with the Labor Party
condemned all forms of Imperialism.

The Imperial politicians, however, had a different view of the

wartime experience. They believed that the war had brought
the Empire more closely together. Post-war migration was
seen as the necessary step to continue this development. In

152
July 1917, a British committee appointed to consider the
possible migration of ex-servicemen reported:

In the course of our investigations we have been greatly

struck by the profound change which has taken place recently
in the attitude of the people of the United Kingdom towards
emigration. Not long ago it was regarded as more or less a
necessary evil, which, during times of stress, resulting from
unemployment, was tolerated as a National convenience.
Small account was taken of the fact that to it was largely due
the rise of those Dominions and Colonies which today
constitute the British Empire. If a subject of the Crown chose
to leave these shores, it was a matter of comparative
unconcern to the Home Government whether he settled
elsewhere under the flag or in some foreign country. As a
result millions of men of British birth or parentage have
become citizens of other lands.
Only within the last few years have the problems of
population begun to be studied in the light of Imperial
necessities.

Since the outbreak of war, from every part of the Empire the
children or grandchildren of those whose enterprise or needs
caused them to leave the United Kingdom in past years have
rallied to the support of the Empire in this day of decision and
struggle for existence. They have risked their fortunes with
those of the Mother Country. They have shed their blood with
her blood. They have shown that, though seas separate the
Empire, and, in some respects, the interests of one part may
differ from those of another, it is still one and indivisible; that
together we stand, or together we fall. In short, it has come to

153
be understood that the man or woman who leaves Britain is
not lost to the Empire, but has gone to be its stay and strength
in other Britains overseas. The only risk of losing such an one
is when the new home is shadowed by some other flag.38

Behind this ideal of imperial brotherhood lay more

self-interested motives. By exporting men and money, Britain
hoped to find ready markets for its industrial goods, looking
to the dominions to take immigrants to develop their national
resources and especially rural-based industries. A
self-sufficient Empire would emerge— Britain as the
industrial mother country tied to her agricultural dominion
daughters through trade and common racial origin. Such was
the dream. The reality was to prove somewhat different.

The Call of Empire: Post-War Years

The end of the war in Europe allowed many of the plans for
extended Imperial migration to come to fruition. As a first
step, the British government initiated an emigration scheme
for ex-servicemen. Men with war service could lodge
immigration applications with a dominion government. If
accepted, the British government would pay their passage.
The scheme operated from April 1919 to the end of 1922.
About one-third of applicants were accepted and a total of 82
196 men and their families sailed for some parts of the
Empire.39 With the onset of post-war recession in Britain,
emigration for some was the only alternative open. After
surviving the four years of war one young soldier, aged in his

154
twenties, found himself unemployed. Finally, he came to
Australia with his wife, a woman who, as a young girl of
fifteen, had worked during the war in a munitions factory
twelve hours a day for only six shillings a week.40

The ex-servicemen scheme helped to re-establish the flow of

immigration into Australia. By the early 1920s, the number of
assisted immigrants was beginning to revive after the lull of
the war years.

Assisted Immigrants, 1919–192241

Note: The males and females figures for 1922 exclude

Victoria.

Significantly, Britain itself was now prepared to play a major

role in assisting Empire migration. After considerable
discussion of immigration at the 1921 Imperial Conference,
the British parliament passed the Empire Settlement Act.
Coming into force in May 1922, the Act provided for the
British government to co-operate with dominion
governments, public authorities, or private organisations, in
developing migration schemes. The aim was either to develop
land settlement in the dominion or to assist individuals in
their overseas passages or training.42

155
The Act came at a propitious time. After almost a century of
unrestricted immigration, the United States decided to
institute a quota system. Legislation passed in 1921 and 1924
was intended mainly to deter southern Europeans but it also
placed a limit on the number of persons of British origin who
could become permanent residents of the United States. For
British emigrants, the Empire was becoming the most
welcome haven. The pre-World War I peaks of Empire
migration were not reached again. Nevertheless, the trend was
fairly clear. The typical British emigrant of the nineteenth
century had left for the United States; those who departed in
the 1920s were more likely to be going to Canada or
Australasia.

Despite the continuing shift towards settlement within the

Empire, the levels of British emigration in the 1920s were a
disappointment to many who had high hopes for Empire
settlement. Writing in 1932, one observer blamed the state of
the economy in both Britain and the dominions:

U.K. Emigration, 1876–1930

156
Source: C.E. Carrington, The British Overseas, p.505.

It has already been pointed out that prosperity and not

industrial depression leads to large emigration from Great
Britain. That the same is true with regard to immigration into
the Dominions need hardly be stated. When times of
prosperity at home coincide with times of agricultural and
industrial progress abroad, migration proceeds rapidly and
needs little assistance from the State. Thus, in the years
immediately preceding the war some three hundred thousand
people left Great Britain annually, about three quarters of the
number bound for other parts of the Empire. Such happy
coincidence of prosperity does not often occur. Prolonged
industrial depression in Great Britain has prevented
emigration from attaining much more than half its pre-war
numbers, while the number of immigrants entering the
various Dominions has fluctuated widely in accordance with
the measure of prosperity each enjoyed.43

157
Of the 282 000 British immigrants who entered Australia in
the years 1922–31, 212 000 received assistance under the
Empire Settlement Act.44 Most arrived in the period 1921–27.
New South Wales
and Victoria received about a third each and half the
remainder went to Western Australia.

Assisted British Migrants

March 1921–31 December 192745

State

New South Wales 53,374

Victoria 56,024

Queensland 16,314

South Australia 10,777

Western Australia 32,023

Tasmania 1,993

A.C.T. 24

158
170,529

From the official viewpoint, the main aim of Empire

settlement was to encourage farms in the dominions. The
British cabinet minister L. S. Amery told the 1923 Imperial
Conference:

It was clear from the outset that in all the Dominions

represented the openings available for workers of other
classes depended upon the increase in the number of primary
producers. It was, consequently, agreed that the problem . . .
of establishing settlers from this country as primary producers
upon the land overseas, must be the basis of any policy of
State-aided Empire Settlement, and that the facilities for
inter-Imperial migration generally . . . would only be of
limited values unless granted as a part of a policy based on
land settlement.46

Land settlement was encouraged in part by the continuation

and development of schemes begun before the war. Of
specific interest were juveniles and the young. From 1921 to
1929, the Dreadnought Trust, formed in 1909, aided in the
settlement of over 5000 boys in New South Wales. Selected
by Australian authorities in Britain, the boys were granted
passages at assisted rates and then given preliminary training
in such matters as the use of farm tools and the management
of horses.47 Many of these youths had come from working
class backgrounds and the aim was that they become good
rural workers. One young arrival from Birmingham recalled
later:

159
I didn’t know what I was coming to, and I had no experience
of the land, but I was young, and the world was my oyster. I
was going to Australia whatever happened. I arrived in 1926
when I was seventeen and a half and went to a training school
in New
South Wales. There were about a hundred or more of us. It
was a really good scheme; most of the personnel on the
training farm were English, Irish or Scottish. You got a
week’s training on this and a week on that. A fortnight
dairying, a week ploughing, a week in the orchard, in the
garden. We were all new chums of course.48

There were similar schemes in the other states. Premier

Barwell of South Australia re-established the pre-war
apprenticeship scheme in order to replace soldiers the state
had lost in the war. Just over 1400 ‘Barwell boys’ arrived
from 1922 to 1924 when a Labor government suspended the
scheme. The Church of England brought out 4000 farm boys
to Queensland between 1922 and 1930 and the Young
Australia League in Western Australia also imported a few
hundred. The best known ‘boy migration’ scheme was the Big
Brother Movement which the Liberal politician Richard
Linton formed in 1924. The movement concentrated at first
on boys from English public and grammar schools, although
many also came from working class backgrounds. By 1930,
1059 Little Brothers had arrived in Victoria and a further 765
had come to New South Wales.49

Such schemes gave some British boys a ‘new start in life’.

However, despite their early rural training and experiences in
Australia, few seemed to have remained on the land. A survey
of over 200 Dreadnought boys in the 1980s showed that only
15 per cent had stayed in agriculture. Instead they had

160
followed careers in over eighty different occupations. About
half served in World War II while three-quarters had married
Australian-born wives. One Dreadnought boy who had
arrived in 1912 had over sixty descendants seventy years
later.50

The immigrants who received most public attention were

those brought out under land settlement schemes sponsored
by some of the Australian states in co-operation with the
British and Commonwealth governments. The most ambitious
of these was instituted in Western Australia. The aim was to
settle 75 000 migrants from the United Kingdom. It was
hoped that the most suitable of these migrants would be
formed into groups of twenty and sent out to develop dairy
farming in the south-west so that Western Australia could be
self sufficient in milk products.51

The Western Australian Group Settlement Scheme was a

disaster. Bad planning and unsuitability of the soil counted
against the settlers. Only 2442 holdings were taken up; by
1942 there were only 1144 occupants of former group
settlement blocks.52

Other schemes in the eastern states also failed. The Victorian

government intended to settle 10 000 ex-army officers on the
land. Instead, by 1930 the state had gained only 200 farming
families at the then-enormous cost of £400 000 ($800 000).
Settlers complained of false advertising and some were later
awarded compensation.53

The end result of immigrant land settlement sponsored by

government represented a heavy financial cost with few of the
expected gains. The sum total throughout Australia was,

161
according to one historian, ‘the establishment of 478 farms at
a cost of £14m [$28m] . . . there is no doubt that the amount
of organization and expenditure was disproportionate to the
achievement’.54 Many of the prospective settlers had come
from modest middle class backgrounds in Britain. They had
some justification for believing that they had been misled
over prospects available in Australia:

My husband and his brother had a wonderful business in

England. We sold furniture and china— things for the
home— and they bought another two shops in Kentish Town.
I didn’t want to come but my hubby wanted our sons to have
a different life, an open air life. And there was all this
propaganda about the bright future in Australia. You would
be trained. So we walked out of the business and left every
penny there.

You had to have enough money to start on. Younger men

needed four hundred pounds, but if you were older— my
husband was forty-two— you had to have at least twelve
hundred. We had more— two thousand pounds. They said
that a knowledge of farming wasn’t necessary because you
could afford to pay for help. First there was a three months’
training course to teach you about farming, then you were
placed on a block of land with a new house on it. Our block
was twenty-four acres. It was supposed to be for market
gardening and poultry . . . Market gardening? To grow peas
we had to buy a drill— and they sent an expert! This man had
been a ganger on the railways and a relative in the public
service had got him a job as a market gardening expert to
advise the settlers! There was an expert to tell you what cows

162
to buy too, but when people knew you were buying the prices
went up.

The land was no good for market gardening— ‘hungry spew’

the expert at the Royal Commission called it— so they said to
try pigs and cows. You could get twenty-seven shillings for
little piglets then, but by the time we were selling all we could
get was eight shillings.. . .

It was really a wicked scheme, but it was so hard to get

anything done about it. It was impossible to get anything in
the papers even. When we tried to make it known, they even
said we were Bolsheviks. People wrote letters, went on
deputations, did everything possible. They made nuisances of
themselves. And eventually we got a Royal Commission. But
it took years.55

Prospective female immigrants outside Australia House,

London. Opened in 1918, Australia House in London became

163
a centre during the 1920s for the dissemination of official
information for prospective British immigrants. Much of the
information was often misleading.

From National Library of Australia Collection.

Not all immigrants under the land settlement schemes could

claim that they were the ones who had been deceived. In
1925, the Victorian branch of the Electrical Trades Union
complained that ‘The constant stream of electrician ‘farmers’
from overseas is also helping to swell the already overstocked
labour market’.56 In 1927, a welfare officer of the Western
Australian government was quoted by the Age as saying that
fully 50 per cent of a group of 450 migrants on the Burnabook
‘had no intention of going on the land’.57

As in the nineteenth century, most British migrants came

from an urban background. It could hardly be expected that
they would take easily to the Australian outback. The real
contribution inter-war British migrants made to the Australian
economy was in the area of secondary industry.

164
Albert Fullick, third from the left, an immigrant from London
who came out under the ‘Big Brother’ scheme. Pictured here
with his adopted farm family, ‘just home from work’, he later
deserted farming and settled for a period in the Northern
Territory.

In Britain itself, the old staple industries of coal, textiles and

steel were in decline. After the war a brief period of
prosperity was followed by a twenty-year depression.
Throughout the inter-war years, one in three workers in these
industries was unemployed. The English commentator, J.B.
Priestley, wrote of his home town, Bradford, in 1936:

Not only have nearly all the big merchanting houses

disappeared but a great many of the English firms too. Wool
merchants, whose names seemed to us like the Bank of

165
England, have vanished. Not one or two of them, but
dozens.58

In contrast, the Australian cotton and worsted industry

prospered under the protection of high tariffs. Primarily
centred in Victoria, employment in the Australian textile
industry grew from 3090 in 1913 to 11 068 in 1929–30.59
This growth was much dependent on the importation of
English capital and English labour and management
skills, a practice which persisted even when sometimes not in
the best interest of the industry itself. ‘Bradford experience’
was generally regarded as the criterion for promotion;
sometimes it also led to poor management.60

The numbers employed in Australian manufacturing grew

from 368 500 in 1919–20 to 459 800 in 1926–27.61 In the
mid-1920s immigrants probably accounted for 60 per cent of
the increase in manufacturing employment: ‘immigration was
the main and indeed the vital source of labour supply’ for the
general Australian expansion of the 1920s.62 English skills
were specifically prominent not only in the textile trade but
also in engineering and the metal trades. Under the terms of
the Empire Settlement Act, organisations could nominate
individuals for an assisted passage. Certain types of skilled
workers were nominated en masse. During the 1920s, of the
60 303 ‘breadwinners’ nominated for migration, 26 per cent
gave their occupations as being in manufacturing.

Total ‘Nominated’ Migrant Breadwinners in Australian

Manufacturing 1920–2963

166
Manufacturing trade Total

Wood, furniture 1,394

Engineering, metal workers 7,764

Food, drink, tobacco 1,118

Clothing, hats, boot3 3,776

Books, printing 495

Other manufacturing 1,135

15,682

As before World War I, some British immigrants of the 1920s

came to play important roles in organising industrial labour.
Charlie Oliver came to Australia in 1920. As a miner in
Western Australia, he joined the Australian Workers Union.
By 1940, he had entered the Western Australian parliament as
a Labor member. He later moved to New South Wales and
became president of the state Labor Party from 1960 to 1970.
In the late 1970s, he was still a power in the Australian labour
movement.64

The contribution of British migrants to Australian industrial

growth was the opposite of what generally had been intended

167
under the terms of the Empire Settlement Act. As the
dominions industrialised, it would become more difficult to
sell British goods there. Harmony of interests between the
mother country and the rest of
the Empire was proving hard to achieve. The onset of the
worldwide Depression in 1929 made the task even more
difficult. With almost one-third of its own workforce
unemployed, Australia could not afford to import even
industrial skills. At the same time, the Depression revealed
the long-term need for a self-sustaining economy based on
expansion of Australia’s manufacturing sector.

The Depression was a personal tragedy for many of the recent

arrivals. Large numbers were put out of work. Often without
family or friends for support, they joined the long queues ‘on
the road’. For those who kept a job, they suffered the
accusation of having been the cause of all the troubles
Australia was facing. ‘People would say, “The Poms came
out here and took our jobs”’ a teenage boy at the time recalled
later.65

Despite such claims, the real power and influence now

belonged firmly to the Australian-born. The ‘men at the top’
were often the children of mid- to late-nineteenth century
English immigrants— men such as Stanley Melbourne Bruce,
prime minister of Australia from 1923 to 1929. The son of an
immigrant who had arrived in the 1850s and then done well in
the succeeding years, Bruce had the advantages of privilege
and wealth from birth. Yet while he maintained social and
business connections in England, his constant aim was to
serve Australian national interests.66

168
Similar trends can be discerned in the labour movement.
When Australia elected its fourth Labor Party prime minister
in 1929, he was, unlike his three predecessors,
Australian-born. The first son of Irish parents who had arrived
in the 1860s, J.H. Scullin had spent most of his life enmeshed
in the experiences of the local labour movement in Victoria.
His Australian patriotism was coloured by the events of
World War I, particularly the Easter uprising in Ireland and
the split in the labour movement over conscription.
Throughout the 1920s he criticised the policy of Empire
migration as designed to worsen unemployment in Australia.
One of his first acts as prime minister was to abolish the
scheme of government assistance for British immigrants. As a
result, the number of assisted immigrants entering Australia
fell from 13 000 in 1929 to 2700 in 1930, 275 in 1931 and
only 175 in 1932.67

If British migrants were unwanted in the 1930s, then it also

seemed that fewer would want to come in the future.
Although unemployment was a continuing inter-war problem
in Britain itself, another trend seemed to count against the
desirability of sustained emigration. The birth rate had
declined markedly. By the 1930s there was concern over a
shrinking population in the British Isles. As in the nineteenth
century, most interwar British emigrants were young. About
68 per cent of males leaving Britain in 1920–30 were aged
under thirty-one, a similar proportion to those arriving in the
decade before the war. It now seemed, however, that in the
future there would simply not be enough young people to
sustain growth in England let alone populate the Empire.68

169
Source: R. T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia,
Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1964, p.5.

In 1932 in Britain, the Committee on Empire Migration stated

the dilemmas for future policy:

We are now confronted with a profound disharmony between

the economic needs of Great Britain on the one hand, and the
Dominions on the other in regard to migration. During the
next few years emigration might be of substantial benefit to
Great Britain; but over a longer period it may not represent a
desirable policy for a country which is moving towards a
stationary population. The Dominions, on the other hand, are
unlikely for some years to be in a position to absorb
immigrants on a considerable scale, though their capacity to
do so will certainly revive later on. Now that it might suit us
to send large numbers of our people to the Dominions, it does
not suit the Dominions to receive them. When the time comes
when the Dominions will again welcome immigrants, it may
not be to our economic interest to supply the need.69

170
The dream of a self-supporting British Empire was over. By
the early 1930s it was becoming obvious that economic
priorities were
overwhelming the hopes to build a nation of common British
background. Australia would have to look beyond the British
Isles if it wished to sustain a large program of immigration.

Immigrants from outside the Empire

Although only partly recognised, a new source of supply of

immigrants was already at hand. Often unassisted by
governments, and sometimes unwanted. European immigrants
had been coming to Australia in increasing numbers since the
late nineteenth century.

Non-British European migration had played a small but

significant part in the growth of the Australian population in
the nineteenth century. In 1891, about 10 per cent of
Australian residents born overseas had come from outside the
British Isles.70 The descendants of the South Australian
German settlers of the 1840s had been joined by other settlers
during the gold rush years and beyond. The Scandinavian
connection of the gold rush years was reinforced through the
Queensland assistance schemes of the late nineteenth century.
Many of these immigrants later moved south to New South
Wales and Victoria. Overall, some 10 000 Danes, Norwegians
and Swedes came to Australia during these years.71 Many of
these late nineteenth century northern European immigrants
were single males. In 1891, the ratio of males to females
amongst the European-born in Australia was approximately
3:1. Lacking marriage partners of similar ethnic origin,

171
Scandinavians in particular chose brides from the wider
Australian community, and tended quickly to lose their group
ethnic identity.

Australian government authorities tended to regard northern

Europeans as acceptable because their cultural patterns and
way of life was not all that dissimilar from British-Australian
civilisation. In contrast, most migrants from southern Europe
arrived in Australia unassisted. There were Italians on the
gold fields of Victoria in the 1850s. Others came to
Queensland from the 1860s.72 In 1881, a group landed in
Sydney after the failure of an expedition to New Zealand.
They moved to the Richmond River, establishing what was to
be one of the first of many Italian ‘colonies’ in Australia.73
By 1891, there were approximately 4000 Italians in Australia,
the vast majority having settled in New South Wales or
Queensland.74

The depression of the 1890s interrupted European migration

to Australia. When the numbers of immigrants revived in the
early twentieth century, many European migrants chose not to
settle
permanently in Australia. From 1901 to 1920, the numbers of
European-born in Australia declined from 80 000 to 71 400.75
An exception, however, was the Italian community. The
numbers of Italian-born in Australia increased from 5700 in
1901 to 8100 in 1921.76 Such growth in numbers was partly a
reflection of the vast emigration from Italy in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Population pressure
had led the Italian government in 1901 to adopt a policy of
sponsorship and assistance for intending emigrants. The
overseas destination of most was the United States but the
Immigration Restriction Acts of 1920 and 1924 closed off the

172
United States to many who wished to go. America’s loss was
Australia’s gain. Despite a quota system imposed by the
Australian government to restrict so-called ‘cheap labour’,
Italian immigration rose sharply from 163 in 1919 to an
inter-war peak of 7884 in 1927.77 From 1921 to 1930, there
was a net gain of 23 928 Italians in Australia. There were now
settlements in Fremantle, the Riverina and North
Queensland.78

The inter-war Italian communities in Australia came from

specific regions in their homeland. As in the United States, a
process of ‘chain migration’ was begun by the early arrivals
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. A ‘pioneer’
settler would write home to his local village relatives and
friends, telling them of the prospects in the new land. During
the nineteenth century, letter writing and personal news had
played an important part in bringing to Australia other groups
such as the Irish. Amongst Italians, personal contacts were
primary:

That letter [said the U.S. Commissioner General for

Immigration in 1907] is read by or to every inhabitant of the
village, or perhaps even passed on to neighbouring hamlets.
Others are thus induced to migrate—selling their belongings,
mortgaging their property, almost enslaving themselves to
procure the amount of the passage. They come, find
employment at what seems to them to be fabulous wages,
then write letters home; and so the process goes on and on . . .
These letters constitute the most extensive method of
advertising that can be imagined; almost innumerable
‘endless chains’ are thus daily being forged link by link.79

173
Most inter-war Italian immigrants had to rely on a friend for
support because government regulations required them to
have a sponsor. One young Italian, recently discharged from
the army and disturbed by economic chaos in post-war Italy,
was typical of many
who came to Australia in the early 1920s, following the trail
of relatives and friends:

Obviously the times were bleak, and it was while I was with
the Ufficio Municipale that I conceived of the idea of
emigrating to a young country capable of offering me better
opportunities for the future. I thought of Canada, New
Zealand and Australia, but I had no friends or relatives to turn
to in either of the first two countries. My eldest brother,
Angelo, however, had a friend who had emigrated to
Australia a few years before and with whom he had been
corresponding regularly. My brother’s friend lived in
Lithgow, N.S.W. and worked at Hoskin’s Steel Works.

If he could help me, then Australia would be my natural

choice. I decided forthwith to write to him at his Lithgow
address and ask him to sponsor me as an immigrant to
Australia if he were in a position to do so. There were no
air-mail services then and I had to wait a long, long time for a
reply to my letter, but when it finally arrived T was delighted
with its contents. He informed me that he had just bought a
house and was, therefore, capable of supplying me with
accommodation on my arrival in Australia—a sponsor had to
guarantee accommodation for a sponsored migrant. He further
expressed the desire that my brother, Angelo, should come to
Australia with me or follow me as soon as he could (In actual

174
fact Angelo was to follow me about two years later,
sponsored by me.)80

Many of the pre-1920 Italian immigrants to the United States

came from the plains of southern Italy. In Australia, the
pre-1939 Italians came predominantly from ‘fringe’ areas
along the coast or the mountain valleys of the north. Whereas
many southern Italians were escaping rural poverty, those
from the north who departed for Australia were more likely to
be attracted by the prospect of economic opportunity as
presented by a friend or relative already here. Of particular
importance in this respect was the Italian immigration into
Queensland (which by 1933 contained one-third of
Italian-born in Australia). Those who went to north
Queensland did so with the expectation that, helped by friends
and relatives, they would buy farms. It was not the poorest
agriculturalists who came from Italy in this period but those
with some degree of independence and a desire to improve
their situation. Those who came from Sicily came from the
eastern seaboard where poverty was not as severe as
elsewhere on the island.81 Their ability to move themselves
from labourer to landowner brought criticism on them from
Australian union leaders who were more intent on raising
living standards for those who failed to make the move to
self-employed.

Italian Immigration into Queensland

175
Source: W.D. Borrie, The Italians and Germans in Australia,
p.78.

The process of Italian immigration was matched by other

southern Europeans in the inter-war years: Maltese,
Yugoslavs, and particularly Greeks, Seafarers from the Greek
islands arrived in Australia from the late nineteenth century
on. Many decided to settle, thereby laying the basis for further
‘chain migration’. Even the occupations the pioneers decided
to enter established a pattern for later settlers. In the 1870s,
two pioneer Greek immigrants from the small island of
Kythera opened a fish shop in Sydney. By 1911, there were
400 persons of Kytheran birth in New South Wales, almost

176
three-quarters of whom were working in oyster bars, fish
shops and restaurants.82

Nicholas Laurantus came to New South Wales with his

brother from Kythera in 1908. He started work in a fruit shop
at Grenfell.
By the 1920s he had investments in country town hotels, had
built a number of country cinemas and had put money into
grazing properties. During the 1960s and 1970s he established
a number of charitable bequests, including a chair of Modern
Greek at the University of Sydney and a retirement village at
Lakemba. Maintaining his contacts with Greece, he built a
school on Kythera. He was decorated by the King of Greece.
In 1979, at the age of 89, he received a knighthood in the
Queen’s Birthday Honours list.83

Other Greek immigrants had been pushed out of their

homeland. On the Greek island of Kastellorizo, which was
under Turkish and then Italian rule, restrictions on
commercial activities led to a decline in the population from
10 000 in 1908 to 2000 in 1917.84 Some came to Australia
following the path of early Kastellorizans in Australia,
settling in Perth, other mainland capitals and in Darwin, Port
Pirie and Innisfail. Other Greeks from Asia Minor followed in
the wake of war with Turkey in the early 1920s.

Although southern Europeans generally relied on relatives

and friends for financial and other support, some had to
compete for jobs with the Australian-born. Intolerance thus
developed an economic face. In debates in the Australian
parliament in 1925, it was claimed that the typical southern
European was a ‘cheap foreign immigrant who can live on the
smell of an oil rag’.85 One member cited the case of Greeks

177
on shift work in a South Australian country town, ‘The beds
they occupy never get cold. As soon as one man leaves his
bed, it is occupied by another of his fellows, and it is
practically always in use. How can we expect such people to
adjust themselves to our standards of living’.86 The general
conclusion drawn was that ‘the private life of these Southern
Europeans is far below the standard of the private life of our
people’ and that they were ‘quite unsuited, because of their
former environment and general outlook on life, ever to
become worthy citizens’.87

Sometimes, Europeans were seen as ‘scab’ labour or strike

breakers. Being generally unskilled, they formed a pool of
labour the employers could draw upon. As such, they earned
the hatred of unionists. Often, however, they were simply
resented as foreigners. On one notable occasion, Australian
distrust of southern Europeans burst into violence. In January
1934, in the town of Kalgoorlie, an Italian barman fought and
knocked down a local Australian miner. The man died as a
result of hitting his head on a concrete curbing. On Australia
Day 1934, the local population retaliated and went on the
rampage against all southern Europeans. A bloody battle,
involving the death of one man, ensued. Two reporters on the
West Australian newspaper recorded the riot which stretched
over several days:

At Boulder last night miners who were concerned in the riot

on Monday night came into savage conflict with the
foreigners who defended their homes and property with rifles
and knives.

178
As a result of the affray, which was still continuing early this
morning, one man, a Montenegrin, was killed . . .

. . . the main street of Kalgoorlie, resembled a shambles, and,

with the returning day, the full extent of the previous night’s
rioting was visible. The concrete pavements were deeply
stained with looted wine, while plate-glass, smashed into
hundreds of fragments, was scattered over the roadway.

Fruit, chocolates, crockery, linen, legs from chairs and tables,

ornaments, fish, paper bags, cruets and trays, strewed the
footpath or were piled in front of the wrecked shops.88

Despite such violence, many southern Europeans remained to

settle permanently in Australia. Of Italians who entered
Queensland in the years 1927–43, one-third returned to Italy
after three to six years in Australia, but three-quarters of these
later came back.89 The Depression of 1929–33 restricted the
flow of southern Europeans. However, after the early 1930s,
European migration recovered far more quickly than British,
supplying two-thirds of a total net migration of 43 000 in the
years 1936 to 1940.90

A failure as a means of establishing British emigrants on the

land in the 1920s, ‘group settlement’ became the way
whereby the majority of southern Europeans adjusted
themselves to their new environment. Over 80 per cent of
southern European settlement in Australia in the inter-war
period was concentrated in ethnic groups. The failure to
assimilate quickly brought further criticisms from the
Australian-born. What was not realised, and is still not often

179
understood, was that ethnic concentrations, so often adopted
by the Irish, Scots, Germans and others in the nineteenth
century, was a natural way of smoothing the difficult path of
transition from one culture to another:

Non-British Minorities in Australia 1861–1947

Source: W.D. Borrie, Italians and Germans in Australia,

p.41.

whatever force or combination of forces controlled the

assimilation of any particular migrant chain, the challenge for
probably 90 per cent of settlers was met through the medium
of an ethnic group settlement. These were the fortresses
erected by immigrants in their fight to adapt themselves to
Australian conditions. These were the guardians of the
European dialect or language, ethnic clubs and organizations,
the centre of the struggle over in-marriage or out-marriage.
They were, in short, the heart of the movement to preserve
those things that British-Australians so disliked about

180
Southern Europeans . . . Had British-Australians invariably
welcomed Southern Europeans with open arms the same
separatist forces would still have been at work. What pre-war
British-Australians failed to realize— and in many cases still
do not realize— is that ethnic group settlements were not
directed against British-Australian culture but were an
inevitable and necessary accomplishment of migration to a
new land. Necessary, because arrivals in a strange land cannot
strip themselves of their old world overnight; they need
companionship with people of their own kind, people who
speak the same language; people who can come into the home
with understanding and help when there is trouble, people
who have the same background and experience and can
therefore appreciate reminiscences, jokes, and familiar
hospitality. Such companionship is quite essential to the
normal immigrants’ sense of security and happiness; any
attempt to interfere with it will, in the opinions of competent
psychiatrists and in the experience of other countries of
immigration, add to the difficulties of adjustment and increase
the dangers of mental instability, alcoholism, and even
suicide.91

For those in the 1930s who still thought of Australia as a

British imperial dominion, those lessons were hard to learn.
For some Australians today, they are still difficult.

Southern Europeans were not the only non-British immigrants

of the inter-war years. A Jewish community had been formed
in the nineteenth century, principally of settlers from Britain
and
Germany. Many followed ‘migration chains’ similar to those
of the Italians and Greeks. They settled first in the inner-city
suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne before moving out to the

181
more wealthy eastern suburbs of those cities.92 By the early
twentieth century other Jews from central and eastern Europe
were also arriving. Some came because of persecution, others
for more personal reasons. Judah Waten, one of Australia’s
most successful writers, has left an account of his own
family’s experiences. They were Jewish immigrants who
arrived before World War I. His mother had urged that they
leave Russia; his father came reluctantly. In Australia, they
adapted quite differently:

Gradually Mother reached the conclusion that only migration

to another country would bring about any real change in their
life, and with all her persistence she began to urge him to take
the decisive step. She considered America, France, Palestine,
and finally decided on Australia. One reason for the choice
was the presence there of distant relatives who would
undoubtedly help them to find their feet in that far-away
continent. Besides, she was sure that Australia was so
different from any other country that Father was bound to
acquire a new and more solid way of earning a living there. . .

. . . in the end he did what Mother wanted him to do, though

even on the journey he was tortured by doubts and he
positively shouted words of indecision. But he was no sooner
in Australia than he put way all thoughts of his homeland and
he began to regard the new country as his permanent home. It
was not so different from what he had known before. Within a
few days he had met some fellow merchants and, retiring to a
cafe, they talked about business in the new land. There were
fortunes to be made here. Father very quickly concluded.
There was, of course, the question of a new language but that

182
was no great obstacle to business. You could buy and sell— it
was a good land, Father said.

It was different with Mother. Before she was one day off the
ship she wanted to go back.

The impressions she gained on that first day remained with

her all her life. It seemed to her there was an irritatingly
superior air about the people she met, the customs officials,
the cab men, the agent of the new house. Their faces
expressed something ironical and sympathetic, something
friendly and at the same time condescending. She imagined
everyone on the wharf, in the street, looked at her in the same
way and she never forgave them for treating her as if she were
in need of their good-natured tolerance.

Nor was she any better disposed to her relatives and the
small delegation of Jews who met her at the ship. They had
all been in Australia for many years and they were anxious to
impress new-comers with their knowledge of the country and
its customs. They spoke in a hectoring manner. This was a
free country, they said, it was cultured, one used a knife and
fork and not one’s hands. Everyone could read and write and
no one shouted at you. There was no oppressors here as in the
old country . . . Mother never lost this attitude to the new
land. She would have nothing of the country; she would not
even attempt to learn the language. And she only began to
look with a kind of interest at the world around her when my
sister and I were old enough to go to school. Then all her old
feeling for books and learning was reawakened. She handled
our primers and readers as if they were sacred texts.93

183
By the 1930s, events in Europe added to the Australian
Jewish community and brought here other non-Jewish
Europeans. Persecuted in Germany, many looked for homes
overseas. They were joined by others from central Europe
after the German invasion of Austria and Czechoslovakia in
1938.

The Australian government responded coolly at first to the

critics and victims of Nazi Germany. In 1935, Egon Kisch, a
Czech communist, was refused permission to land in
Australia. Kisch was a noted scholar and linguist. In a
celebrated case, he was excluded under the terms of the
Immigration Restriction Act by being given the dictation test
in Gaelic.94 On appeal the High Court disallowed the test. By
the late 1930s, however, opinion towards Nazi Germany had
begun to change. Some Jewish and other refugees found
friends in Australia to help them. The situation of many was
desperate as there were restrictions on their entry to Palestine
and England, France and the United States would take only a
limited number. In 1939, the Australian government
announced that it was prepared to accept 15 000 refugees over
three years though each immigrant had to have ‘landing
money’ and be nominated by someone in Australia. Because
of the outbreak of war, only about one-third of that numbered
actually landed in Australia.95

While relatively few in numbers, the refugee immigrants of

the late 1930s added to the diversity of European settlers in
Australia. Their arrival has sometimes been seen as part of a
cultural renaissance in Australia in the late 1930s. With
hindsight it might even be said that on the eve of World War
II, the British Imperial Dominion of Australia had taken the

184
turn towards a more cosmopolitan society. If so, few
Australians at the time were prepared to recognise
or accept such a change. In a society now dominated by the
Australian born, sure of their identity as Australians distinct
from the home culture of Britain, new influences were
generally unwanted. ‘Australia for the Australians’ was the
catch cry for most. Mateship did not allow for a diverse
Australian culture.

185
5

A MULTI-CULTURAL SOCIETY
To the average Australian whether ‘old’ or ‘new’, terms like
‘assimilation’, ‘integration’, ‘homogeneous’ or ‘pluralistic’
society are probably meaningless. The concept I prefer, the
‘family of the nation’, is one that ought to convey an
immediate and concrete image to all. In a family the overall
attachment to the common good need not impose a sameness
on the outlook or activity of each member, nor need those
members deny their individuality and distinctiveness in order
to seek a superficial and unnatural conformity. The important
thing is that all are committed to the good of all.

(A. J. Grassby, 11 August 1973)

The Renewed Search

As in the war of 1914–18, World War II interrupted the flow

of immigrants. With the background of the Depression and
low birth rates throughout the Western world, some were
prepared to argue that the great age of Europe emigration was
over. It seemed best that in the post-war world Australia
should concentrate on developing its resources for its own
citizens.1 The lessons of war soon showed otherwise.

For those in authority, World War I had seemed to cement the

bonds of Empire. World War II revealed that Australia could
not depend solely on Britain and the Empire for security and

186
defence. For the first time in their history, white Australians
faced possible invasion. A small nation of only seven million
persons was seen to be vulnerable. Prime Minister John
Curtin told the nation in December, 1943 that a population of
twenty million was essential to Australian security; several
months later he increased the number to thirty million.2 From
out of the wartime experience there emerged a commitment to
increasing the population. In August, 1945, the acting Prime
Minister Francis Forde made the first major statement on
Australia’s post-war immigration policy:

Australia has an area of 3,000,000 square miles, but carries

only 7,300,000 people. In pre-war days, the sharp fall of the
birth rate pointed to a decline of the Australian population
within the next three decades. History will some day reveal
how close Australia was to being overrun. Divine providence
was on our side. We might not be given another chance. The
cost of this war, and of future defence schemes for this
country, must be borne by a greatly increased population.
Whilst everything possible should be done to increase the
birth rate, we must also be realists in regard to the necessity
for a scientific migration policy. . . we must guard against a
repetition of the mistakes that were made in connexion with
migration after the last war. . .3

The grandiose schemes of Empire settlement were not to be

repeated. Nor could they be. Australian needs in manpower in
1945 were no longer what they had been perceived as being
in 1918. The war had helped the further industrialisation of
the economy. Australia needed industrial workers but because
of low birth rates in the 1930s during the Depression these
were often not available. At the same time the war had
delayed the construction of new buildings, particularly of

187
schools and hospitals. ‘Economic development’ as a basis for
security and prosperity joined ‘defence’ as the twin aims of
immigration policy. Industrial and agricultural growth within
Australia were to complement one another as the basis for a
balanced economy. Announcing that Australia would receive
30 000 immigrants in 1947, the Minister for Immigration,
Arthur Calwell, hailed them as:

the vanguards of the hundreds of thousands, and ultimately

the millions, of new citizens who will push back our frontiers,
expand our industries, bring more and more of our virgin soil
into production and build us into a powerful nation.4

The post-war search for new citizens still began where it had
all started—in Britain. Although the war had strained official
ties between the British and Australian governments, it had
not shaken the belief that the Australian heritage was still
predominantly British.

The immediate post-war goal was for 70 000 immigrants per

year. This would amount to an annual immigrant intake of 1
per cent of the Australian population, bringing annual
population increase to 2 per cent. British immigrants were
preferred. Non-British of European ethnic origin were second
preference. ‘It is my hope,’ stated Arthur Calwell in
November, 1946, that ‘for every foreign migrant there will be
ten people from the United Kingdom.’5

In Britain, emigration was a theme popular with the public.

During the war, many servicemen had travelled overseas for
the first time in their life. Large numbers had been posted to
the Middle East or Asia, coming into contact with different
cultural patterns and with fellow soldiers from other British

188
Commonwealth nations (as the Empire now became known).
More generally, war had disrupted lives. Many were prepared
to start afresh. A contemporary noted:

The war itself has been the first and in many ways the most
important influence in overcoming inertia. . . the war has
operated as an uprooting force upon minds as well as upon
bodies; it has cut violently across settled ways and compelled
people, willy nilly, to start new lives. Thousands of young
folk started their adult civilian careers upon demobilisation.
Thousands more decided not to return to their former jobs and
sought something ‘more interesting’ or ‘with more of a future
in it’. To them, going to a Dominion does not seem a sudden
break; they have in any case to resettle—what they have to
decide is where.6

If the war had an unsettling effect, then the post-war world

seemed just as uncertain. Even the British weather was more
troublesome than usual. The harsh winter of 1947 was in
sharp contrast to the image of the ‘sunny Antipodes’
presented by Australian government authorities. A more
persistent annoyance were the food rationing and other
shortages:

The adult world continued to be one of queues and shortages:

where the Ministry of Health was advising women to book a
maternity bed not as soon as they were pregnant, but as soon
as they were married; where the first concern of the new
British international cross-country team was to find the 1,816
clothing coupons needed for all their shorts, vests and track
suits. It seemed sometimes as if no one could go anywhere or
do anything without producing some kind of permit or
coupon.7

189
Shortages in Britain continued into the 1950s. Not
unnaturally, dissatisfaction remained a feature of British
social life in the decade following the war. To many,
emigration seemed the answer. Opinion polls taken on six
different occasions between 1948 and 1957 indicated that as
many as 42 per cent and no less than 28 per cent of the poll
sample would emigrate if given an opportunity.8 In the 1940s
interest in emigration often followed periods of severe
shortages or international crises such as the Berlin airlift. In
the 1950s the Suez war made many Britons think of leaving.9

In contrast to the situation after World War I, the British

authorities were unenthusiastic about encouraging emigration.
In the period of post-war reconstruction and labour shortages,
Britain required all her skilled workers. There was also a
continuing fear of a declining population. Nevertheless, the
government of the United Kingdom was prepared to assist
migration as a gesture towards maintaining co-operation
within the British Commonwealth. A free passage scheme for
ex-servicemen, similar to that instituted in 1919, was begun.
The Australian and New Zealand governments also decided to
establish their own plans of assistance. For the sum of £10
($20) for each adult and £5 ($10) for each child aged 14–18,
British migrants were given a passage to the Antipodes. The
only condition was that they remain in Australia for two
years. As a means of retaining vital skills, the British Ministry
of Labour did reserve the right to require ex-servicemen and
ex-servicewomen to obtain permission to apply for the
ex-servicemen’s passage, while civilians with qualifications
needed in Britain were also required to seek permission to
apply to the Australian authorities for the £10 passage.10

190
Reginald Morgan, a British migrant, working in Naval
Dockyards near Melbourne. As in the 1920s, British industrial
skills were an important contribution to Australian post-war
economic growth. Engineering talents in particular were at a
premium.

191
Source: Australia and the Migrant. Proceedings of the 1953
Australian Institute of Political Science Summer School,
Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1953.

For those who took the opportunity to migrate to Australia,

the £10 passage scheme was a great attraction. Of the British
settlers who entered Australia in the period 1945–58 with the
intention of staying twelve months or longer, the majority
received assisted passages.11 A survey carried out in the late
1950s indicated that most assisted immigrants were young
married couples or single persons (only 8 per cent were aged
over forty-five compared with 33 per cent of the total British
population).12 Most came from the suburbs of British cities
and very few were unemployed. The majority did not have a
secondary education; the ‘skills’ they possessed were usually
acquired through apprenticeship’.13 Significantly, 80 per cent
of married men were ex-servicemen, while almost
three-quarters of all males had travelled outside the United
Kingdom on military service or private visits.14

In many ways, the post-1945 British immigration continued

the processes begun in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries. Contact with friends and relatives in Australia was
again important. Over half those who received assisted
passages in the period 1947–58 had been nominated by
persons already in Australia. Most of the others were
nominees of the Australian government, but one-sixth were
brought out under nomination by Australian employers. As in
the 1920s, Australian manufacturing was acquiring British
skills.15

192
Those who arrived from Britain during the late 1940s and
1950s came here at the beginning of an economic boom. They
helped start that boom. The first group contained many
building workers who were themselves housed in camps no
longer required by the army while their labour reduced the
backlog in building. The annual completion of new homes
soon rose to 80 000.16 The exceptional immigrant found in
the expanding economy opportunities to make a fortune. Alan
Bond began work in Western Australia in 1952 at the age of
fourteen as an apprentice signwriter. By 1957, he had formed
his own sign-writing company. From there he branched out
into property development and soon became a millionaire.17
Different
opportunities awaited these new arrivals depending on their
backgrounds. On the other side of the continent, John Ducker,
an English boilermaker, arrived in 1950. He took work in a
foundry and became a shop steward for the Federated Iron
Workers Association in 1952. By 1961 he was an organiser
for the New South Wales Trades and Labour Council and by
the late 1970s, secretary of the Trades and Labour Council,
President of the New South Wales Labor Party and
Vice-President of the Australian Labor Party. In 1979, he was
appointed to the New South Wales Public Service Board, a
position with high salary and great power.18

The main difference in immigration before and after the war

was in the overall pattern of newcomers. During the late
1940s and the 1950s British immigrants made up only
one-third of the new arrivals in Australia. Australian
immigration patterns were beginning to approximate those of
Canada which, since the early twentieth century, had taken a
significant portion of non-British immigrants.

193
Permanent Arrivals from United Kingdom in Canada,
Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, 1948–195719

The expectation of Arthur Calwell that British immigrants

would outnumber other immigrants by ten to one had failed to
materialise. Not that the demand was not there. In 1946 there
were over half a million Britons registered for assisted
passages at Australia House in London.20 The problem was
partly transportation. The shortage of shipping between
Britain and Australia in the immediate post-war years made
the task of mass migration impossible. By 1947, the
Australian government had already begun to look outside
Britain for an available source of new citizens.

Refugees from War

In World War II Australian were threatened but never

invaded. Other people were not so lucky. For many in
Europe, the war
meant personal tragedy and loss. Over ten million persons in
1945 had been displaced from their homes, more than the
total population of Australia.

194
The problem of refugees began before the outbreak of war.
During the war, Australia received a number of Jewish
refugees and others who had been interned in England. In
1940 over 2000 German ‘aliens’ were transported to
Australia. Amongst these were many intellectuals and
professionals who later played an important part in the artistic
and academic life of Australia. As one young refugee of the
time has recalled of his experiences on board ship:

There was a ship’s university. You could learn any language

you liked, listen to a talk on the politics of the Austrian
Government before the Anschluss, on Ancient Greece, on the
Napoleonic Wars, on scientific subjects. These lecturers went
on right through. There were quite a lot of people on board
who were quite famous of course: authors, academics,
musicians and scientists, philosophers, painters. I learnt a lot
on the Dunera.21

Jewish refugee immigrants had come to Australia partly

through lack of any other choice. A similar dilemma faced
those people displaced from their homes during the war. For
political or personal reasons over one million Europeans
could not or did not wish to return home. Large numbers had
come from eastern and central Europe or the former Baltic
states of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania. Their fate resided in
the hands of the International Refugee Organisation, a body
set up under the auspices of the United Nations.

In Australia, the federal government announced in November,

1946 that it would continue in part its pre-war refugee policy:

The Government feels. . . that Australia should on

humanitarian grounds make some contribution to the relief of

195
certain of the distressed peoples of Europe. Approval has
therefore been given for the admission of a limited number of
these people, provided they are nominated by relatives in
Australia who are in a position and willing to accommodate
and maintain them.22

This was a response to pressure both inside and outside

Australia. Within twelve months, Australia had adopted a
refugee policy framed in terms of its own priorities in
immigration.

Despite fears of post-war recession, the Australian economy

soon faced labour shortages. By early 1947, Arthur Calwell
had become aware of the ‘splendid human capital’ to be
found in the refugee camps of Europe. Visiting Europe to
arrange shipping for migrants
from Britain, Calwell contacted the International Refugee
Organisation and agreed to take 12 000 Baltic immigrants.23
So began the process which would bring over 170 000
displaced persons to Australia during the years 1947–54.
Priority was given first to those with skills. Preference went
principally to Baltic peoples and later Czech, Slavs and Poles.
At the same time, a campaign began to convince the
Australian public that these ‘aliens’ or ‘D.P.s’ (displaced
persons) could benefit the community.24

Australia gained greatly by the post-war influx of refugee

immigrants. In the first place, the United Nations arranged the
shipping of displaced persons. Secondly, the refugees were
required to spend two years in employment selected by the
Australian government. Many were sent to newly developing
centres of heavy industry. At Port Kembla on the south coast
of New South Wales, employment in the steel works grew

196
from 3690 in 1948 to 6800 in 1952.25 Contributing to a
discussion on post-war migration, Neville Wills, manager of
B.H.P.’s Commercial Research Department, pointed out:

Until migrants began to arrive in Australia in substantial

numbers after 1948 it had proved almost impossible to build
up an adequate labour force at the steelworks. The existence
of so many unfilled jobs, however, not only in iron and steel
but in heavy industry generally, fitted in satisfactorily with
the Commonwealth’s migration programme so that it has
been a relatively easy matter for them and kindred industries
to absorb a large number of New Australians.26

What was perhaps most noticeable about the refugee settlers

of these years was the variety of their origin and background.
What most of them had in common was a lack of familiarity
with anything Australian. A general cross-section of much of
pre-war European society was represented. Amongst the
refugees from central, eastern and south-eastern Europe were
many young, single persons conscripted for forced labour
during the war. Many came from rural backgrounds and they
had few formal qualifications. Other east Europeans,
particularly from Hungary and Czechoslovakia, came from a
more sophisticated pre-war society, many with university
training and professional qualifications. Many of the Baltic
peoples had left home of their own free will, often in family
groups. Some had worked in Germany during the war. Others
had fled before the armies of the Soviet Union. A large
proportion of them came from middle class or skilled working
class occupations.

197
The arrival of ‘New Australians’. During late 1947, the first
group of post-war refugees landed in Australia. Some
Australians greeted them with suspicion and even hostility.
The Commonwealth government initiated short courses of
instruction in the somewhat naive belief that this would lead
to early assimilation into the main Australian community.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 1947. Australia and the

Migrant.

Professional and trade qualifications were not always much

use in Australia. For example, medical doctors amongst the
refugees were denied registration and placed in other work.

198
After serving their compulsory two-year labour contract they
had to re-do university courses before being allowed to
practise.27 Such injustices gave rise to ill-feeling. In the
words of Dr Laszlo Benyei of the Australian Council of
Churches:

The reception and administration of the labour contract by the

Australian authorities between 1949–51 gave rise to a distrust
with a cautious and suspicious attitude towards the
Department of Immigration, and towards the Australian
people in general.28

Others had a training that was simply not wanted in Australia.

Some 75 000 former officers of the Polish Army and 33 000
women and children had been interned in Russia during the
war. Released after the war, some eventually made their way
to Australia. Dispersed into the Australian countryside under
the terms of their two-year contract, they often found that
they had exchanged one form of forced labour for another.
Few in Australia could understand or sympathise with their
situation.29

This initial contact with Australia was unfortunate, for almost

all the refugees came from areas of Europe which had no
previous long-term connection with their new home. Unlike
the earlier prewar settlements of northern and southern
Europeans, there were few if any friends here to greet them.
For many, Australia was the best available alternative to a
refugee camp in Europe; for a few, the isolation of the
Antipodes was a means of escape from unhappy memories. A
1953 study of displaced persons revealed that for most
Australia had been their second choice after the United States,
Canada or South America. A few had preferred Australia for

199
its remoteness from troubled Europe, or in the belief that
economic opportunities were greater in an undeveloped
country.30

In 1949, the Australian Government created the Good

Neighbour Council to assist the assimilation of refugees into
the Australian community. Two years later a National
Advisory Committee was formed to act as a liaison between
the Good Neighbour Council and the various national
minorities amongst the refugees. Initially, however, as with
the southern European migration of the inter-war years, there
was a need for many refugee settlers to cling together. For
those from eastern Europe who practised the Orthodox
Christian faith, generally foreign to pre-1945 Australia, the
church and related cultural associations became particularly
important. Of refugees who settled in Adelaide, it had been
noted:

In the early days, when most of them were poor, badly

housed, unsettled, lonely and incompetent in English, these
Eastern European immigrants founded embryonic groups in a
search for companionship and for relief from the dreariness
and frustration of their daily round. Before long these needs
became
absorbed into the more self-conscious aim of preserving
ethnic cultural traditions and identity. Most minorities soon
set about establishing choirs, folk-dancing groups, theatres,
Saturday schools, and Scout groups. They were meticulous in
observing anniversaries, holy days and national celebrations.
At this time — the early 1950s—there seems to have been a
high degree of consensus within minorities on the form these
group efforts should take and solid support for communal
events. Many immigrants also saw these activities as a means

200
of creating a favourable image in the eyes of Australians.
Choir-singing and folk-dancing best served this purpose,
since the impact of these arts was not diminished by the
barrier of language. After it was established in 1960, the
biennial Adelaide Festival of Arts provided a special occasion
for new arrivals to advance their claim to recognition by these
means.31

Not all refugee groups continued to maintain such close

cultural contacts. By the early 1960s, some had withdrawn to
more private lives, attached and committed to their own
family rather than any ethnic association.

Different national groups often adapted in differented ways

because of the skills they had on arrival in Australia. In the
period of economic growth in the 1950s engineers and skilled
tradesmen were in demand. As a result, those D.P.’s with
such qualifications often did get good jobs and were thus able
to move out into the wider Australian community. By the late
1960s, most of the former Baltic immigrants in Adelaide,
many of whom came from middle class or skilled tradesmen
backgrounds, were no longer living in ethnic concentrations.
With the general urban growth in the postwar years, they
were now scattered throughout the suburbs, although they still
maintained informal social contact with each other. In
contrast, it seemed much more difficult for those of rural and
peasant background to come to terms with the emerging
industrial civilisation in post-war Australia. The eastern
Europe refugees in Adelaide more often lived together in
neighbourhoods. Similarly, while many of the former Baltic
people took out Australian citizenships, those from eastern
Europe accepted naturalisation far more slowly.32

201
The success of individual refugees depended much on how
well their former lives had prepared them for the expanding
capitalist economy in post-war Australia. It would seem that
those from northern or central Europe had a better chance in
this sense than many of those from Poland, the Ukraine or the
Balkan areas. One
example of success amongst the Baltic immigrants is Arvi
Parbo. He came to Australia in his twenties, upgraded his
qualifications here, and joined Western Mining Corporation
in 1956 as an underground surveyor and technician. In the
mining boom of the 1960s, his company was in the forefront.
By 1968 Arvi Parbo was General Manager of Western
Mining, later becoming chairman and managing director.33
The Hungarian, Paul Strasser, who arrived in Australia in his
late thirties, pursued a more individualistic entrepreneurial
line. During the mid-1950s, he founded the companies of
Finance Facilities and Parkes Development. His interests
quickly expanded from building development projects to
mining, oil exploration, hotel and motel chains, meat
processing and merchant banking.34

For those who maintained close cultural and social

associations with their fellow countrymen, the past had a
strong hold. As with the immigrants from nineteenth century
Britain, disputes and controversies drew their ultimate
meaning from overseas. The leader of the faction-ridden
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Australia has noted:

The maladies and weaknesses of our Church life did not arise
on this continent. We brought them here with us from Europe,
and perhaps even from the lands we were born in.35

202
Denied access or often unwilling to participate in Australian
social institutions because of the barrier of language, many
immigrant groups became obsessed with conflicts within their
own local community. One issue in particular provided a
bridge with the general Australian community. Fear of
communism led many former refugees, particularly those
from the Baltic countries, to take an active part in Australian
politics. The Association of Captive European Nations was
formed in New York in 1954 and branches were established
in Australia soon afterwards. It denounced Soviet
Communism, making its aim the ‘restoration of
self-determination and personal freedom to the peoples’ of the
‘captive nations’ of eastern and northern Europe.36 Many
former refugees co-operated with those who were organising
resistance to communism in the Australian trade unions. One
of the results of this activity was the formation of the
Democratic Labor Party and its affiliated body, the New
Australia Council.37 Some Australian-born resented such
overt political activity amongst migrants. Others were pleased
to recognize that some of the refugees of the 1940s were
coming to play an active part in the political as well as the
economic and social life of the nation.

People from Many Lands

The British and European immigrants of the immediate

post-war years had come in an atmosphere of high hopes for
economic expansion. The economic recession of the early
1950s caused some in Australia to have second thoughts over
the advisability of long-term, large-scale immigration. For
those in power, doubts meant a slight review, but not a
full-scale dismantling of the immigration program. In August

203
1952, Howard Beale, the acting Minister for Immigration
announced that the federal government would reduce its
projected intake of immigrants from 150 000 to 80 000 a year.
Half would arrive from the United Kingdom. Of the other
half, 20 000 would be ‘landing permit holders’, most of
whom would be relatives nominated by southern Europeans
living in Australia. The remaining 20 000 would come under
agreements signed with a number of European
governments.38

Population Gain from Migration

204
Source: Commonwealth Department of Immigration
(Immigration Planning Council), Australia’s Immigration
Programme for the Period 1968 to 1973, Canberra, 1968, p.
17.

This particular government statement has been described as ‘a

milestone in Australian immigration policy’.39 It set the
pattern for government policies for much of the next two
decades. With an overall target of 2 per cent population
growth, immigration was to contribute 1 per cent. As a result
there was a shift towards encouraging families, particularly
from Britain, and of allowing non-British males to bring out
wives and dependants. This policy was generally framed on
the hope that a bigger population would stimulate consumer
demand and thereby help create jobs.

Australian post-war immigration never neatly fitted the hopes

of the planners. In the twenty years from 1945 to 1965, net
immigration (arrivals in excess of departures) fluctuated
above and below the projected figure of 1 per cent annual
population growth from migration. Economic recessions in
the early 1950s and 1960s changed government priorities and
discouraged immigrants.

Despite fluctuations, immigrants nonetheless played a

dominant role in Australian economic growth from the 1950s
to the mid 1960s. In the years 1947–66, the total Australian
workforce increased by almost one million, from 2 479 269 to
3 421 808. Of this increase, 59 per cent came from the
overseas-born. In the female workforce, 293 760 or 41 per
cent of the increase came from the overseas-born.40 Most

205
industrial growth has been centred in the cities. As in the late
nineteenth century, urban growth in Australia has been much
the result of continuous immigration.

Immigration and Australian Metropolitan Growth

1947–196641

City Overseas-born %Totalpopulation

increase increase

Sydney 329,321 42.28

Melbourne 409,724 51.11

Brisbane 58,265 18.62

Adelaide 164,736 47.89

Perth 83,056 35.63

Hobart 10,661 24.83

Canberra 22,843 29.60

Major
non-metropolitan

206
Newcastle 10,881 16.87

Wollongong 40,097 37.77

Geelong 22,470 31.84

Many non-British immigrants who have arrived since 1945

were the friends and relatives of those who had landed here
before 1939. During World War II many Italians resident in
Australia had been interned. Some who had been in Australia
contributing to economic growth for over two decades found
themselves declared ‘enemy aliens’. Some internees were
even Australian naturalised citizens. To those in particular,
injustice was done:

there were those internees who, like myself, had renounced

allegiance to their mother country and had become Australian
citizens, and they received no more consideration than the
others. Their Naturalisation Certificates were not worth the
paper on which they were written, and their cherished rights
as Australian citizens disappeared overnight.42

Despite such experiences, Italian immigration into Australia

revived quickly. In post-war Italy, ravaged during the last
years of war and facing shortages in the era of reconstruction,
the desire to emigrate was strong. A survey carried out in
1953 indicated that about 1 800 000 were willing emigrants.
About half had relatives who had left Italy since 1945.
Between half and three-quarters of the group who knew
Italians overseas received frequent news and letters from
them.43 In Australia, the process of chain migration,

207
interrupted by the war, was soon re-formed. Even in the
period of the high numbers of British and refugee settlers in
the years 1947–51, Italian nationals constituted the second
highest proportion of the non-British European-born.44

It has been estimated that 337 000 persons of Italian origin

arrived in Australia from 1947 to 1970.45 Most settled in
areas near where their fellow countrymen resided, but
whereas prior to 1939 Queensland had over one-third of
Italian immigrants in Australia, by 1954 the proportion living
there had dropped to 14 per cent, and by 1966 was only 8 per
cent.46 In contrast, the proportion residing in Victoria had
risen to 42 per cent in 1966, and most were living in the
inner-Melbourne suburbs of North Melbourne, Carlton and
North Carlton.47 Overall, while only a minority of the
pre-war Italians in Australia lived in metropolitan areas, by
1966, 75 per cent did so.48 This shift is an indication of new
arrivals being attracted to where the jobs are. Yet, even in the
cities, the paths of earlier generations are still important. The
present day concentration of Sydney Italians in Leichhardt
results from the settlement before World War I of immigrants
from the Lipari Islands, Sicily and Vicenza and Udine in
northern Italy. In the outer-metropolitan area, the Italian
communities
in Penrith, Fairfield and Holroyd were formed from market
gardeners who had come from Sicily and Reggio Calabria.49
By the 1970s, some Sydney and Melbourne suburbs had an
appearance similar to that of the urban ‘Italian villages’ of
Chicago or New York of the 1940s.

The other major group of southern European immigrants

which has grown markedly since 1945 has been the
Australian Greek community. In the immediate post-war

208
years, emigration from Greece was slight. In 1945–49, civil
war disrupted Greece. Only 8952 permanent arrivals from
Greece landed in the years 1946–52. Many of these were
families of the 15 000 Greeks who had settled in Australia
prior to the outbreak of the war.50 Because of the 1930s
Depression and then the war, some families had been waiting
a long time. One Greek woman who arrived in 1951
recounted:

My father came to Australia in 1927, when he was eighteen

years old. He worked for a few years and returned to Greece
in 1931, and then came back to Australia in 1937. My mother
and my young brother and I came to Australia in 1951 my
father sent us the money.51

These early post-war years saw also the forming of

substantial new Greek migration chains, including arrivals
from Cyprus (4670 immigrants in 1947–52) and from Egypt
(whose number in Australia had risen to 5988 by 1954).52

The signing of an immigration agreement between the

Australian and Greek governments in 1952 initiated further
and larger migration. Assisted passages were granted only to
heads of households and single males. After a period in
Australia many sent home for their families or made
arrangements to bring out brides. Thus from 1953 to 1956
Australia received a total intake of 29 344 Greeks, 16 833 of
whom arrived on assisted passages. Amongst these early
arrivals, males outnumbered females by five to one!53

As with the Irish and other immigrant groups of the

nineteenth century, many Greeks came to Australia because
of family ties and some prospect of better economic

209
opportunities. One Greek male who arrived in 1955 was fairly
typical:

I had two brothers here and one sister. There was not very
much work in my country. There were only ten men who
owned big business, and there were some farmers, butchers. .
. I worked five days, but the boss only paid me for two and
would promise to pay me the rest next week. So I end up with
half pay for a whole week. . . In Australia I get paid for the
week every Friday and I don’t have to wait.54

210
Croatian folklore group, Zagreb, Shell National Folkloric
Festival. By the late 1970s, the cultural pluralism of Australia
was most readily identified through the folklores of the
various immigrant groups. Dance was a popular way of
taking overseas customs to the people, and also preserving
traditions amongst the young.

Source: Ron Patten Publicity Pty Ltd.

211
Initially, most Greeks moved near to where jobs were
available. As before 1939, the early post-war immigrants
determined places of settlement for later arrivals. The assisted
Greek immigrants of the years 1953–56 left the reception
camp of Bonegilla in Victoria for different parts of Australia.
Large communities from the regions of Sparta, Messinia,
Pontus and Macedonia ended up in the Melbourne suburbs of
Prahran, Yarraville, Fitzroy and Collingwood. In Sydney,
Mytileaneans, Cretans, and Peloponnesians established
homes, cafes and clubs in the suburbs of Surry Hills and
Redfern.55 Others, longer established in Australia, moved into
the nearby but wealthier eastern suburbs of Sydney. Values
have thus sometimes become related partly to money and
social position. Wealthy Greek-Australians have supported
archaelogical ‘digs’ in their homeland; the factory workers
are more concerned to preserve the structure of family.56 As
with the ‘D.P.s’, Greek migration to Australia has also been
marked by internal conflicts in both the community and
religious life.

Immigrants from Southern Europe have formed the backbone

of the post-war Australian blue collar workforce. Those
recent arrivals who have done well have generally been able
to build up small businesses in the period of post-war urban
growth. At the 1961 census, 20 per cent of Greeks and
Italians were in the ‘employer’ and ‘self-employer’
categories, an indication of the high numbers running
espresso bars, cafes, groceries, market gardens or poultry
farms.57 One example of this form of successful small
businessman is Andrew Vass. Arriving in Australia as a
young Greek immigrant in 1950, he started as a cleaner on the

212
railways. After driving a cab, he moved into real estate,
opening his own agency at Paddington. By 1978, his real
estate agencies employed 32 people.58

Greeks and Italians have constituted the majority of

European-born immigrants to Australia since the war. But
sizeable groups came from other areas during the 1950s and
1960s. Population pressure and lack of economic
opportunities on the island of Malta had led the British
authorities there to sign a migration agreement with Australia
in 1949. As with other southern Europeans, the Maltese
tended to live close together. In the outer western suburbs of
Sydney, the Maltese population grew from 750 in 1947 to
nearly 10 000 by 1970.59

The heaviest concentration of immigrants from northern

Europe was during the decade following the early 1950s. In
the period of post-war reconstruction in Germany,
employment prospects were gloomy. Under the terms of an
agreement between the Australian
and West German governments, signed in 1952, 81 000
German nationals received assisted passage up until the
mid-1960s. A further 18 000 paid their own way.60 Even
more numerous were the numbers of Dutch immigrants who
arrived during those same years. Pre-war Holland was not an
area of emigration. Nevertheless, the impact of war combined
with growing concern over a high birth rate and population
pressure on the small country had its effect. As in post-war
Britain, ‘restlessness’ became a feature of Dutch social life:

Before the war, and certainly before the economic depression

of the thirties, there was a resistance to rapid changes in
personal life and in society. The influence of the First World

213
War was superficial, and it might be said that the nineteenth
century ended only in 1930 in the Netherlands. The economic
depression of the thirties, the development of Nazism, and the
Second World War had a profound effect on the Dutch
people. These events shattered a picture of the world which
the Dutch had made for themselves during the nineteenth
century and the beginning of the twentieth. The feeling of
living in a world where people are safe, where a man can
form a picture of his future life when he is 20, where things
are going well and will certainly go better in the future, have
gone. Perhaps the Dutch, and especially the young people,
have become more sceptical; they have certainly become
more restless, more mentally mobile and active, more inclined
to take chances when they offer themselves, without thinking
too much of the petty problems of the near future and of the
past, and less afraid to burn their boats. This postwar
mentality is more compatible with emigration than the former
one.61

Most Dutch immigrants came as individuals, or in family

groups, but there were also some instances of ‘chain
migration’, from Zaandam to Maroubra in Sydney and Red
Hill in Melbourne, and from Tilbury and Eindhoven in the
Dutch province of Noora Brabant to the suburbs of
Campbelltown in Sydney and Frankston, Aspendale, Moonee
Ponds and Seaford in Melbourne. (A similar type of chain
migration can be seen in British immigration from Sheffield
to Wollongong and from Manchester to the new industrial
town of Elizabeth in South Australia.)62 Settling into
Australian suburbs, often they created a ‘home away from
home’:

214
Dutch homes are mostly neat and trim in appearance, and
inside are extremely neat and tidy. Many homes are furnished
in the traditional Dutch style with dark-coloured furniture and
a dark reddish-coloured thick tapestry pinned in a triangular
fashion over the mantlepiece. Easy chairs are spread around
the room, and there is usually a sideboard on which coffee
cups are stacked ready for use; a distinctive Dutch habit is to
place teaspoons in a cup on the sideboard. The heavier tones
in furnishings are usually in the homes of older Dutch
families, younger couples prefer light-coloured furniture with
a small coffee table in place of the sideboard. There are
usually many small souvenirs and national symbols spread
around the room—these mostly are plates or objects with the
name of the town in Holland engraved on it. In the better
class homes there are very small brass or copper objects
placed around the room. Other popular objects include pieces
of ‘Delft blue’ chinaware, wooden cuckoo clocks, on the
tapestry a number of objects are tacked on, e.g. clogs,
windmills and other reminders of Holland. Another
distinctive Dutch feature is the number of wall lamps which
give a soft glow. As further decoration many people hang a
thick tapestry on the walls on the lounge or entrance wall.
Two or three families visited had furniture which they had
shipped out from Holland, in this case the furniture was made
of a very strong oak wood.63

It has been suggested that many German and Dutch

immigrants were able to move easily into Australian middle
class suburbs because many received government assistance
to migrate. They thus faced few debts and settling-in costs. In
contrast, almost three-quarters of southern European
immigrants since the war paid their own way to Australia.
Consequently, often forced to pay back loans to friends or

215
institutions, they sought cheap housing in inner-city areas
near their employment. The difference between northern and
southern European employment pattern was also significant
in this respect. Coming from an already mature industrial
society, albeit still in the process of recovering from the war,
many Dutch and German immigrants brought with them
industrial skills needed for developing the post-war
Australian economy. They were able to enter highly paid jobs
and thus to save to buy a house in the better suburbs.64
Marriage patterns were influenced not only by ethnic and
family loyalty but also by social circumstances in Australia.
Many southern Europeans were in low-paid jobs, and
three-quarters of them lived in inner-city ethnic
concentrations where their native tongue was normally
spoken and there were few opportunities to mix with
Australian girls. In contrast, British and northern and eastern
European immigrants were often out in the suburbs, were
more fluent in English and had more money to attract a girl.65

The mid-1960s was somewhat of a watershed in the history of

immigration since the war. Economic conditions were
changing here
and overseas. The Australian recession of 1961 frightened
away prospective immigrants. At the same time, the economy
in northern and western Europe had recovered sufficiently to
offer opportunities to skilled workers. Some western
European countries, including West Germany and France,
began to import millions of ‘guest workers’ to fill areas of
labour shortage. Australia was thus no longer as attractive to
European immigrants as it had been in the 1950s.

216
Net Australian Immigration 1 July 1947–30 June 196968

Political and economic crises elsewhere meant that Australia

could still acquire immigrants with valuable skills.
Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, there were troubles in
Communist Europe. In 1956, the Russians crushed a
nationalist revolt in Hungary. Many Hungarians fled
overseas, about 14 000 arriving in Australia.66 A similar
exodus took place after the Russian invasion of Prague in

217
1968, when about 5500 Czech refugees came to Australia.67
Somewhat more peaceable was the move from China in the
1950s and 1960s of a sizeable community of Russians, many
of whom had originally left their homeland following the
1917 Revolution. After the Chinese Communist victory in
1949, and with deteriorating relations between Russia and
China in the 1950s, these ‘White Russians’ had moved once
again. Unlike many other refugees they generally came in
family groups, including grandparents.

Elsewhere, economic crisis had more impact. With changes in

the world economy it was significant that the main source of
immigrants in the 1960s came from Britain. Excluded from
the European Common Market, the British found their
economy in decline. The Empire had gone, but for many
Britons there still seemed the chance to escape to a warmer
climate and a society which should have been like home. An
annual average of 73 000 British immigrants arrived in
Australia from 1962 to 1969.69 A married journalist and his
family who migrated to Perth in 1965 had a fairly typical
story:

Our holiday at West Wittering in July 1964 was pleasant

enough, but only on one day in three weeks was it warm
enough to lie comfortably on a beach.

Anyone who suggests Australia’s climate is not an influence

on migration figures is either a fool or part-reptile. No normal
person enjoys being flayed by a sleet-laden wind ten minutes
after breakfast.

218
Then, Britain itself had so many troubles, so many crises.
Whichever government was in power, it warned of hard
times, tightened belts, higher taxes. We knew it would be
ingenuous to expect that none of a nation’s modern problems
would apply in Australia. But, at least, it seemed the problems
might be set in an atmosphere of expansion and hope.

So, on that Friday in April, we reached our decision and I

wrote for a job in Australia.70

Refugees: The Tatarnoff Saga

219
The Tatarnoff family of Sydney are part of the 500 000
refugees who arrived in Australia during the forty years after
World War II. Escaping the Russian Revolution of 1917, they
moved first to Harbin, Manchuria and then to Shanghai
before fleeing the Chinese Revolution of 1949 to the
Philippines and then finally to Australia. Other Russians from
Harbin and Shanghai would join them in the 1950s and
1960s.

Source: Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June, 1989.

220
Not all the Britons who arrived in the 1960s stayed. Overall,
of 2 475 000 immigrants arriving in Australia between 1947
and 1969, perhaps one-quarter (including many Britons) left
again, although one-third of these returned later.71 The
expansion of air travel during the 1960s finally conquered the
‘tyranny of distance’ allowing people to move more freely
back and forth between Europe and Australia.

The decision of many British-born to return home reflected

also the changed nature of Australian society. By the end of
the 1960s, Australian society was no longer the British
dominion it had been for almost two centuries. It was now not
possible to move 12 000 miles and still feel somehow at
home. Australia offered economic opportunities but not
necessarily emotional security for the British-born. Even
some of the earlier arrivals found it difficult to settle. A
middle-aged schoolteacher who returned home in 1967 after
seventeen years in Australia was one example. She had found
‘compatible’ work and had been able to go to university,
opportunities which may not have been possible in England.
She left with more money than she came with and would
always consider Australia her ‘second country’. Yet,

What I look forward to most in Britain is a sense of belonging

to one’s own country and a greater sense of participation in
local and national affairs. What I liked least about Australia
was the psychological disadvantage of being a
semi-foreigner.72

The difficulties of even British immigrants settling in

Australia caused some concern in official circles. Others
believed that with increasing international competition
Australia needed to change its economic priorities. The

221
Australian trading situation was entering a period of
transition. The minerals boom provided a new source of raw
material exports. Japan and other Asian countries became
important trading partners but Australia’s economic policies
tended to exclude their goods. The Vernon Committee report
of 1965 suggested that the high tariffs protecting Australian
industry, which had provided the economic shield for
post-war industrialisation and the importation of immigrant
labour, were not necessarily in the national interest. This
advice the Menzies Liberal government rejected. Instead, the
course chosen was to continue high tariffs and look overseas
for more immigrants who would come in to work in protected
industries while also providing much of the population base
for economic growth.

As a result, the Australian government in the late 1960s made

strenuous effort to attract, in addition to the British, a migrant
labour force from southern and eastern Europe and the eastern
Mediterranean. Over 50 000 Yugoslavs arrived between 1969
and 1971. Most moved to Sydney, Wollongong and
Melbourne. Coming from a country that had undergone a
post-war social transformation, a large proportion of them
were educated to at least fifteen years of age. Many had trade
qualifications.73

Australian Net Migration74 Percentage and Annual

Averages

222
The growing search for more immigrants led the Australian
government to look even further eastwards. In October 1967
an immigration agreement was signed with Turkey. By 1971
almost 10 000 Turkish immigrants had arrived. Most were
unskilled and many had trouble adjusting to Australia.
Moreover a press campaign suggested that this was the
beginning of large-scale Asian immigration to Australia, even
though it was intended as an extension of European
migration.75

These concerns came with gradual breakdown of the ‘White

Australia policy’. Alterations to the policy had come only
slowly in the post-war years. In 1956, it was agreed to grant
‘permanent residence’ to both Asian refugees who came to
Australia during World War II and to others who had been in
Australia for a considerable period. In 1958, the 1901
Immigration Restriction Act was repealed, putting an end to
the dictation test and allowing ‘distinguished and qualified’
persons to settle in Australia. By 1966, the period of residence
required for naturalisation was shortened to
five years and a wider range of people was allowed to enter
Australia. As a result, by 1969–71, the numbers of non-whites

223
into Australia had reached 10 000 a year. It was a sign of new
developments both in immigration and throughout the general
Australian community.76

The New Stocktake

By the early 1970s large-scale immigration had been in

operation for a quarter of a century. Australia had become a
society in which over one-third of its inhabitants were the
overseas-born and their children. Just as the immigrants who
arrived from the 1850s to the 1880s had transformed colonial
Australia, so the post-war arrivals had been closely associated
with the major social and economic changes of a new modern
Australia in the post-war years. As in the late nineteenth
century, with the approach of one hundred years of white
settlement, so in the late twentieth century with the prospect
of the bicentenary of the arrival of the British, both
Australian-born and new arrivals were beginning to take stock
of the social and personal benefits and costs of this new wave
in the history of Australian immigration.

The economic benefits of immigration for the Australian-born

were often more tangible than many were prepared to
recognise. With an expanding economy built upon continous
new arrivals, a generation of the native-born had moved up
into comfortable and fairly well-paid white collar jobs.
Because of their fluency in English, many British immigrants
had also done well. The ability to speak English lay behind
the recognition of many of the overseas qualifications and
skills that immigrants possessed. Thus, one study of
immigrants entering Australia in the decade 1963–73

224
indicated that 60 per cent of overseas qualifications held by
those born in English-speaking countries were recognised
within Australia. In contrast, only 40 per cent of
qualifications held by those born in such areas as the Middle
East, Greece and Yugoslavia received recognition. Quite
often, registration of trade and professional qualifications
depends upon the ability to speak fluent English.77 Thus, just
as the D.P. doctors could not practice here after the war, so
even those recently-arrived non-English speakers with skills
had to forgo their training. Like their unskilled fellow
countrymen, they often had to take what work was available.
As a result, while the Australians and British-born moved up
into the tertiary sector, the factory labour force became
increasingly composed of mainly non-English speaking
immigrants.

Average weekly earnings by country of birth

225
The salaries of Australian-born and immigrant Australians,
1979. Because of their imported skills, many immigrants from
Northern Europe and Britain by then earnt more than the
Australian-born. In contrast, many Southern Europeans were
still confined to low paid industrial jobs.

Source: Sun-Herald, 24 June 1979.

If fluency in English has been a generally important criterion

for immigrant success, then so too has been chronology. It has
been suggested that even after a considerable period of time
living here some immigrants do not substantially improve
their economic and social standing.79 But what is important,

226
as it was in the nineteenth century, is not so much how long
immigrants have been here as when they arrived. Thus, by the
late 1970s, northern European male immigrants, many of
whom had arrived in the prosperity of the 1950s, were
earning on average a higher salary than the Australian-born.
The actual time of departure and arrival is therefore as
important for later success as specific skills, even within
particular immigrant groups. The small but influential
Hungarian community is one notable example of a group who
in a short time has come to occupy important positions in
business, the arts and academic life. However, there have
been marked differences amongst Hungarians, depending not
only on social background but also on the time and manner in
which they left their homeland. Of the earlier generation of
pre-war Hungarian immigrants it has been said that their
qualifications could have been an actual disadvantage, when
compared with latter arrivals:

Distribution of Australian Work Force, 197178

227
They entered the professions, or went into business, but the
fact that they had possessions which they could lose inhibited
them in their business undertakings; the legendary business
successes were not made by them, but by the penniless
immigrants of later vintage who had nothing but someone
else’s money to lose.80

The story of the Hungarians also shows how those who are
able to dispose quickly of their preconceived notions of social
arrangements can succeed. Twentieth century immigrants are
coming into a society already formed. The ‘cultural baggage’
of the nineteenth century immigrants has now become part of
the Australian way of life. For those migrating from societies
foreign to the modern industrial nation which Australia has
become, it is not so easy to understand that their institutions
and attitudes can not now be easily transplanted to a new
land. The change from a fairly simple rural background to a
sophisticated urban society in part of the cultural transition

228
many have to undergo. Equally significant are the new
economic conditions which apply even to those who try to
take up their previous pursuits. Turkish tomato growers at
Shepparton, Victoria, may not understand legal contract
arrangements entered into with the local canneries. They may
prefer verbal agreements and handshakes, trying to impose
their traditional ways on the local environment. Even those
who understand contracts often have them revoked because
they fail to fill the agreed quotas, or sell on the open market
when prices are high.81

For those who do not have the language skills, the luck, the
‘proper connections’, or the understanding of the workings of
Australian society, the path to social mobility has been to
enter the workforce at the lower end. Those who do so hope
to ensure a better future for their families (a hope sustained by
the experience of other immigrant societies, particularly the
United States where a longer history of different immigrant
groups suggests that, while newcomers often remain in
low-paid positions, their children do climb part of the social
ladder).82 It is primarily in order to help their family that so
many immigrant women have gone into the workforce.

Since the war, the proportion of married women in the

workforce has risen sharply. The increase has come
disproportionately from migrants. In 1973, 35 per cent of
Australian-born compared with 44 per cent of overseas-born
wives had taken employment.83 Amongst the non-English
speaking, the reasons were more likely to be economic
necessity than personal fulfilment. With their limited
command of English, they tended to take up the ‘dirty jobs’
on the shop floor. As an example of the different patterns in
occupations, in the working class and European migrant

229
suburb of Kemblawarra near Port Kembla, by the 1970s only
2.3 per cent of women workers were professionals (including
teachers) and 20.8 per cent were production workers. In
contrast, in nearby Windang, an area more populated by the
Australian-born, 11.1 per cent of women workers were
professionals, and only 7.4 per cent were production
workers.84

A migrant education class in the suburb of Cringila,

Wollongong, New South Wales. While many post-war
immigrant women work, others remain often isolated within
their homes and communities. The opportunity to learn
English is a way of coming out into the wider Australian
environment.

Source: The Illawarra Mercury.

230
While the numbers of overseas-born factory women are high,
some immigrant families, even when faced by economic
necessity, are reluctant for their women to go out to work. As
a result, they forgo two incomes in order to maintain cultural
habits. This tendency appears most clearly where there is a
strong focus on the immediate family and the role of the
woman in the home. It is less pronounced where individual
immigrant families take a wider view of their place within a
larger ethnic community. Thus, of immigrants arriving
1969–73, only 54 per cent of married Italian women and 42
per cent of married Lebanese women were in the workforce in
1973, but 73 per cent of Greek married women and 67 per
cent of those from Yugoslavia were.85 For those who are,
there is often little assistance from either management or the
unions. One young Yugoslav has said:

Some of them don’t know what the union is. If they do, the
women there thought if they say anything, the union will fire
them. And mostly nobody asked them, because they thought
they won’t help them, so what’s the use? A woman, my friend
Olga, went to complain about gloves to the union man, so
then he went and had a fight with the leading hand about it.
The leading hand was very angry, nobody got any more
gloves, and the leading hand was more angry with Olga and
more hard on her in future after that. The union man can’t
help her at all. We were all women working there in that
section. You have to wear gloves because you cut yourself
very much. Some tools were specially sharp and you had to
push very hard. Sometimes the metal piece is too big for the
tool. If your gloves were cut in the first part of the day, then
after that your hands get cut. Nobody told us why no more
gloves — not the union man, not the leading hand. We heard

231
after that maybe the material to make the gloves was too
expensive.86

Both immigrant women and men often find coming to terms

with factory life a cultural shock. At the most basic level of
communication, the difficulty of the language barrier not only
between the English and non-English speaking but also
between a variety of different languages has caused numerous
problems. A young Greek who came to Melbourne in the
mid-1960s reported of his experiences in abbatoirs where
more than 70 per cent of the workers were immigrants:

To me, the worst problem is the language, the communication

barrier. I can see it in the place I work. Usually the shop
delegate is an Australian or a migrant who speaks good
English, born here or came very young. So he’s talking there,
explaining. People might understand but they never talk, the
Yugoslavs, Greeks, Italians, who are the majorities around
abbatoirs. They do care, they have ideas, but as they cannot
express themselves clearly they don’t want to talk. I
remember once, in a meeting, an Italian wanted to speak. In
English, of course. The poor man could hardly say anything.
But when he started to talk Italian, Christ! He was a bloody
good orator! That problem is common to any migrant here
and I don’t think it’s going to be overcome by the first
migrants. Because they are so many Greeks here now. In
every main factory you see many Greeks. And in lunch time
Greeks go with Greeks, Italians with Italians, and so on.87

Many non-English speaking unionists often felt that their

grievances were literally not being heard. The result has
sometimes been turbulent. Greek and Italian workers defied
union directions during

232
a strike at General Motors Holden in 1964, while in 1973
Greek workers rioted at the Ford plant at Broadmeadows,
Melbourne. At Mt Isa, the long strike of 1964–66 revolved
around the militancy of the strong Finnish community.88

By the 1970s many in both the trade unions and the labour
movement were beginning to question the general social and
economic costs of immigration. As the original architect of
the post-1945 program, the Australian Labor Party had begun
to shed some of its old shibboleths, but also its early post-war
commitments. The ALP, under its new leader Gough
Whitlam, had come to accept that its egalitarian philosophy
could no longer accommodate the racial discrimination of the
White Australia policy which it had supported for so long.
Many in the party now believed that Australia’s immigration
policy should be non-discriminatory, but unlike the post-war
Chifley Labor government, the Labor party had now come to
doubt whether either the fears of invasion or the hopes of
prosperity built around immigration were any longer justified.
Apart from difficulties in the workplace there were also the
strains on such social services as education and health which
seemed to be the direct result of the post-war years of
unrestrained growth. The election of the federal Labor
government in 1972 led to the first major post-war decline in
government efforts to attract new immigrants.

Instead, as part of its program of social justice and equity, the

new administration sought to include particular provisions for
the settlers who had arrived over the previous two and a half
decades. Programs of expanded health care and new federal
funds for schools, colleges and universities were designed to
aid the disadvantaged in the community, including

233
non-English speaking immigrants in particular. There was
also now talk of a new policy of ‘multiculturalism’.

Under the Liberal governments of the 1960s and early 1970s

official policy had supported much of the original
assimilationist policies first designed in the 1950s. As
Minister for Immigration, the later Liberal Party leader Billy
Snedden stated:

We must have a single culture — if immigration implied

multicultural activities within Australian society, then it was
not the type Australia wanted. I am quite determined we
should have a monoculture, with everyone living in the same
way, understanding each other, and sharing the same
aspirations. We don’t want pluralism.89

The new Labor administration moved to abandon such

official aims. The Minister for Immigration in the Whitlam
Labor government
in 1972–74 was Al Grassby. Of Irish and Spanish heritage,
Grassby changed immigration and settlement policies. By
1973 discrimination against all non-British immigration was
removed and a shortened period of three years’ residence was
introduced for those seeking citizenship. In a short period of
just over twelve months Grassby also sought first to awaken
the Australian community to the new society of many cultures
that was being created and then to set out to help implement a
program of social and cultural rights for all Australians.
Although defeated at the polls in 1974, he remained
influential in his new role as Commissioner for Community
Relations.90

234
While Grassby and the Labor government of 1972–75 helped
invent the concept of ‘multiculturalism’ for Australian
consumption, the new federal Liberal administration under
Malcolm Fraser from 1975–83 was responsible for the major
development of policies. New programs were aimed directly
at identifiable ethnic communities and their leaders. The most
important initiative was the review of post-arrival programs
and services which the Melbourne lawyer Frank Galbally
carried out in 1977–78. From out of the Galbally Report
emerged new provisions for the development of English
language classes for both adult migrants and their children.
There was also encouragement for ethnic radio and a new
television channel which could present programs in a number
of languages. The Fraser government also established the
Australian Institute for Multicultural Affairs to help monitor
migrant services and programs for ethnic communities.91

Throughout Australia a number of state governments during

the 1970s and early 1980s also introduced various
‘multicultural’ initiatives. In New South Wales the Wran
Labor government in 1977 established an Ethnic. Affairs
Commission to advise on policies. The most important
changes in policy at both the levels of Commonwealth and
state administration came in the area of education. During the
1950s it had been expected that the schools would be the
pathway to assimilation. To be Australian one must speak
English, it was argued. As the headmaster of a primary school
near a migrant centre in Adelaide claimed in 1951:

The child must learn to think in English from the start. . .

English is to be the basis of all institutions. It is the key to the
success of the whole immigration project. . . English must be

235
spoken to the pupils and by them, all day and every day, in
every activity, in school and out of it.92

By the 1970s a generation of migrant children had entered

and left Australian schools. Despite problems in learning
English, many non-English speaking children had high
aspirations. Their parents had worked hard on industrial shop
floors to keep them at school and much was expected of
schools to provide the entry to better paid jobs for their
offspring. Some believed, as did an Italian-born immigrant
writing in 1972, that the best prospect for change lay within
the education system:

The present batch of graduates has a tremendous number of

‘foreign’ surnames. There will be more still. They’ll also
make the political scene, a political scene which has so far
dared to do absolutely nothing new, a lilliputian political
scene that’s waiting for godot without even wondering
whether it’s got slit eyes or rosy cheeks. They’ll also make
the scientific scene, the art scene. They’ll be a different kind
of Australian because their mates will no longer be offended
by their extraction. They won’t have to hide their ancestry.
An Italian-Australian or a Greek-Australian will be allowed
the same degree of affection for the land of his parents as the
Scots or the Irish or the English were once allowed. They will
also have a greater knowledge of their partial countries and
cultures because they will have acquired it through scholastic
curricula and not only through the limited educational
resources of their parents. They will also have learnt their
parents’ language better because all sorts of languages are
now taught at tertiary, secondary and even primary levels.93

236
The policies of multiculturalism first developed in the 1970s
were often designed to assure migrant parents that it was now
possible for their children to integrate into the occupational
structure through extended schooling, yet also maintain faith
with the language and culture of their former homelands.
Thus government grants were now extended not only to
support community languages in state schools but also to
support the ‘Saturday schools’ which had grown up within
many ethnic communities.94 A few ethnic communities also
took advantage of the post-war reintroduction of state aid to
non-state schools to set up their own full-time educational
institutions. But diversity could extend only so far. In
education, as in most other areas of social and institutional
life, uniformity was imposed through the role of the state,
particularly in the area of examinations and credentials. By
the 1980s few saw multiculturalism as leading to the creation
of separate state and institutional structures based upon
ethnicity.95

Into a New Era

Whatever their views on the policies of multiculturalism, by

the late 1970s most Australian-born were coming to accept
the vast number of post-1945 immigrants as equal citizens.
The old British-Australia and Irish-Australia had become
more a country of the settlement of Europeans in the
Antipodes. At the same time, all Australians now had to
realise that the Antipodes was now becoming part of an
emerging Asia-Pacific region. And nowhere was this shown
more than in the changes in immigration.

237
By the mid-1970s, the large-scale migration from Europe and
Britain to Australia seemed to be becoming a feature of the
past. Western Europe was turning inwards to create its own
common market. Europeans would come to Australia as
tourists, but compared with the 1950s and even 1960s, fewer
and fewer wished to remain permanently. Even those of
‘British origin’ were more likely to be coming from across the
Tasman than from the British Isles. From 1974 to 1978 New
Zealand ‘lost’ a net 62 000 citizens to Australia and a further
74 000 in 1979–84. At the 1981 census, with 6 per cent of the
overseas-born, New Zealanders constituted the third largest
overseas group in Australia after those born in the United
Kingdom and Ireland (38 per cent) and Italy (9 per cent).96
Many of the New Zealanders were probably tourists,
spending a short time across the Tasman. Some were
undoubtedly ‘economic refugees’ seeking new opportunities
as the New Zealand economy began to experience difficulties
following the entry of Britain into the common market.

Increasingly, government policy in Australia had also come to

accept a growing number of refugees as part of an
immigration program. To the European refugees of the 1950s
and 1960s were now added arrivals from throughout various
parts of the world, including Latin America and the Middle
East. With the civil war in their homeland 12 000 fled from
Lebanon to Australia in 1976–77. Unlike the predominantly
Christian Lebanese migration prior to 1970, many of these
new arrivals were Muslim. Settling predominantly in Sydney
and Melbourne, they added to the growing cultural and ethnic
diversity of late twentieth century Australian suburban life.
Coming from overtly non-Western cultures, their presence,
even more than that of the more pro-Western earlier Turkish
migration, would soon raise fundamental questions regarding

238
the actual practice and prospects of multicultural policies in
Australia.97

For most Australians the major test of cultural tolerance

would come with the arrival of refugees from the ‘Near
North’. Australian troops had fought in Vietnam, but the
Australian government had at first responded slowly to the
plight of those Vietnamese who fled the country on the
victory of the communist north in 1975. Many Vietnamese
and also refugees from Laos and Cambodia (Kampuchea)
ended up in settlement camps in Thailand or Malaysia. Here
they waited for the processing of immigration applications to
Europe, North America or Australia. By the end of 1975
about 1000 Vietnamese and small numbers of Laos and
Khmer people had been admitted to Australia. Others were
allowed to come in on a case-by-case basis over 1975–77. By
then some had taken matters into their own hands.

A year after the fall of Saigon, parties of Vietnamese had

begun to arrive in boats on the north coast of Australia. They
were the forerunners of over 2000 ‘boat people’ who would
arrive in Australia over the next three years. Their plight and
the prospect of many more attempting the dangerous sea
voyage to Australia pushed the Australian government into
action. In May 1977 the Minister for Immigration, Michael
Mackellar, had announced general humanitarian support for
Southeast Asian refugees but suggested that it might be best if
they settled elsewhere. A year later, with the numbers arriving
in Darwin growing, he created a Determination of Refugee
Status Committee. By 1979 the number of refugees in
settlement camps in Southeast Asia had reached almost 200
000. Many were now ethnic Chinese whom the Vietnamese
government had expelled in the wake of its war with China.

239
Growing international attention and the threats from the
Malaysian and Thai governments to turn back a possible
flood of refugees led to the United Nations holding an
International Refugee Conference in July 1979. Australia and
other Western governments acted to expedite applications for
immigration. In 1982 agreements were also reached with the
government in Vietnam allowing Vietnamese in Australia to
sponsor their relatives as immigrants.98

Over the decade from the fall of Saigon to mid-1985 79 000

people arrived in Australia from Vietnam. About half were
ethnic Vietnamese and half were Chinese. Another 13 900
Kampucheans and 7200 Laotians had also settled here. These
total numbers were generally equivalent to the Southeast
Asian refugees accepted in France and Canada, placing
Australia among the five countries who admitted the majority
of those in the settlement camps (the other two being the
United States and China).99 As with the earlier
European displaced persons, these refugees brought with
them the tensions and conflicts of almost three decades of war
and struggle in their homelands. The ethnic Vietnamese in
particular were often divided between Catholic and Buddhist
and those who had lived in either the pre-1975 communist
North Vietnam or the pro-American South. In Australia they
settled in such working class suburbs as Cabramatta in the
west of Sydney or Richmond in Melbourne. In contrast to the
early post-war years, they had arrived at a time of economic
recession, leading to fears of them taking jobs from the
Australian-born. In the wake of the Galbally Report, and as a
specific group of refugees, they did receive government
attention and services that had not been available to earlier
generation of refugees. Unlike those under the displaced
persons program, they did not have to sign a labour contract.

240
Nevertheless, with little understanding of English and most of
their overseas qualifications not recognised, many initially
ended up on the assembly lines of Australian factories. In
1981, 70 per cent of the Vietnamese employed in Australia
were concentrated in process work or were tradesmen or
labourers, compared with only 28 per cent of the total
Australian workforce.100

The arrival of the Southeast Asian refugees in Australia

prompted some concerns. Throughout the late 1970s and
early 1980s there had been a general political consensus on
the issue of immigration. To some, this silence was a failure
on the part of government, academics and others concerned
with social policy. From this viewpoint the policy-makers
were ignoring community opinion regarding both the benefits
and the size and make-up of the immigration program.101 In
March 1984 the historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey
delivered a speech to the Rotary Club in the small Victorian
town of Warrnambool. In what soon became a much quoted
address, Blainey suggested that too many Asian settlers were
arriving, thereby straining community relations and racial
tolerance. Six months of intense press debate followed with
Blainey producing a small booklet, All for Australia, in which
he argued that there was a covert effort in the the Department
of Immigration and within government generally to change
the composition of the Australian population. In return,
another group of academics accused Blainey of encouraging
racial intolerance on grounds of flimsy evidence and
argument.102 The debate itself had political implications as
the federal Labor government elected in 1983 had altered the
rules for selecting immigrants so that there was no longer any
specific preference for English-speakers.103

241
A citizenship ceremony, January 1980. Naturalisation has
often been regarded as a test of loyalty by the
Australian-born. As with earlier refugee and immigrant
groups, many Vietnamese want to accept and be accepted in
their new homeland without necessarily losing their sense of
cultural identity.

Source: The Illawarra Mercury

The ‘Blainey debate’ tended to rouse unnecessary fears about

a rapidly changing population. Even in 1981 out of a total
population of 14.5 million there were only about 300 000
Australians of Asian origin. Some had roots stretching back
into the nineteenth century. Others had been arriving steadily
since the relaxation of the old White Australia regulations in
the 1960s. Some had come from countries with which

242
Australia had associations from the old days of the British
Empire. Indian settlers in Australia after the passage of the
1901 ‘White Australia’ Act had been generally confined to
the north coast of New South Wales in the small settlement of
Sikhs at Woolgoolga. After the independence of India in 1947
the Australian government had been prepared to accept a
number of Anglo-Indians. These numbers increased from the
mid-1960s and they were joined by other Indians, some of
whom were students who had come to Australia. In 1947
there were 8000 Indian-born in Australia;
by 1981 their numbers had grown to 42 000, of whom
perhaps three-quarters were Anglo-Indians.104

Since the mid-1970s the rapid industrialisation of much of

Asia has brought about new relationships as increasing trade
also created new interest in Australia. By 1985 Korea was the
fourth largest buyer of Australian goods and services. In 1986
there were 9000 Koreans living in Australia. More than half
of these had been residents for less than five years. Although
they often had problems with the English language they had
spent an average of more than two years in education
compared with the Australian average. As with many other
immigrant groups, their qualifications were generally not
recognised and many were working in labouring jobs,
contract cleaning and factories.105

The most dramatic change has come in the composition of the

Chinese community in Australia. The 1901 Immigration
Restriction Act had a marked impact on the Chinese in
Australia. New immigrants, such as the cooks in Chinese
cafes, could only stay on temporary permits and few males
could bring in wives. In 1947 there were only 9144 full blood
Chinese and 2950 mixed blood Chinese left in Australia. By

243
1986 it was estimated that the number of Chinese in Australia
was between 150 000 and 200 000. The vast majority had
arrived since the 1960s, and Chinese immigrants now greatly
outnumbered the Australian-born Chinese. They had come
from a variety of areas throughout Southeast Asia and the
Pacific, including New Guinea, Malaysia, Vietnam and Hong
Kong. Unlike the predominantly Cantonese-speaking
migration of the nineteenth century, these new immigrants
represented a variety of dialects and cultures of South China.
Only the Hong Kong Chinese share a linguistic background
with old-time Cantonese in Australia.106

Many of the Chinese have quickly entered and influenced the

upper ranges of the occupational and social structure. In 1981
almost two-thirds of the Malaysian Chinese held college
diplomas or university degrees and half were in professional
or administrative posts. The Vietnamese Chinese had few
educational qualifications, but they had the entrepreneurial
skills after living as a minority in Southeast Asia. They soon
began opening restaurants and small businesses in Australia,
later moving out into manufacturing, banking and real estate.
By the mid-1980s Indo-Chinese had formed the largest
Chinese food processing factory in Australia. Immigrants also
brought in overseas capital. Between 1982 and 1986 the new
government business migration program brought in 6027
settlers of whom more than half came from Asia. Investing in
real estate and
commerce, Chinese entrepreneurs from Malaysia, Singapore
and Hong Kong helped transform much of the cityscape of
Sydney and Melbourne by building new offices, shopping
complexes and hotels.107

244
Permanent Settler Arrivals by Place of Birth 1972–87108

After two centuries of non-Aboriginal occupation of the

island continent in the Southern Hemisphere, Australians
were confronting difficult issues of cultural identity and
economic survival. In the bicentennial year of 1988 it was
significant that the issue of immigration was at the forefront
of debate. The federal government established a committee
under the chairmanship of the former Ambassador to China,
Dr Stephen Fitzgerald, to recommend on future policy
directions. Its report issued in the middle of the bicentennial
year suggested the need for change. The migrant assessment
system which the former Fraser Liberal government had
established in 1982 as a means of selecting immigrants in
different categories, such as family reunion, refugees, skills
and business migration, should now be modified, suggested
Fitzgerald. While the general categories should remain, there
should now be more emphasis on bringing in skilled
immigrants and those with capital while family reunion would
be restricted to sponsorship from Australian citizens and to

245
younger and more immediate family members. Moreover, the
report suggested that, as a concept, ‘multiculturalism’
was generally misunderstood within the community and was
thus a virtual failure as a policy.

The Fitzgerald Report led to another debate over immigration

which mirrored much of the discussion of four years
previously. Ethnic community leaders criticised any
abandonment of a commitment to family reunion. More
significantly, the leader of the federal opposition, John
Howard, publically criticised ‘multiculturalism’ and
suggested that there was a need to restrict the numbers of
Asian immigrants so as to maintain a balance in the
Australian population. His views led to controversy within his
own party. Overall, 1988 ended with both political parties,
and the community generally, still not certain on the future
directions of immigration policy.109

To the historian many of the issues were not new. For two
centuries immigration has been at the heart of both the
economic and social transformation of Australia. From an
economic analysis immigrants have been the basis of the
growth in both population and the workforce. As such they
have been part of the ‘human capital’ which has developed
the natural and other resources of Australia. During the
nineteenth century many of Australia’s immigrants were
young, unmarried and relatively unskilled. Over the twentieth
century, the skills of immigrants have increased, particularly
when compared with the Australian-born. At the same time,
however, the immigrants since World War II are more likely
to be accompanied by dependants, leading to the need for the
housing, schools and hospitals which are part of the capital
investments of the modern Australian cities.110

246
While both Australian-born and those from overseas have
benefited and also suffered from the effects of economic
growth induced by immigration, the question of social
relations between different waves of immigrants has always
been problematic. The creation of Australia’s social and
political institutions in the nineteenth century did not take
place without debate and conflict over the nature of the new
society being formed. Tensions between British-Protestants
and Irish-Catholics remained institutionalised, and not least in
the schooling of the young, until well into the twentieth
century. Since 1945 the major Australian social institutions
which the nineteenth century immigrants created have had to
confront a range of different cultural expectations. Much of
the debate has focused on the public sphere of social life. But
it is at the level of personal choices in terms of marriage and
partnerships that the most dramatic changes seem to be
occurring. In this respect, immigration which helped change
the Australian social as much as its physical landscape
in the nineteenth century is now leading to the creation of a
new Australia. The rather simplistic concept of
‘multiculturalism’ belies the complexity of changes. Cultures
are never static. There is always a dynamic of change,
particularly in immigrant cultures. According to the analysis
of the demographer Charles Price, by the mid-1980s
Australians who could claim direct descent on both their
maternal and paternal lines from the predominantly British
and Irish settlers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
made up less than half the Australian population. Those with
direct descent from non-British settlers over the twentieth
century were about one-quarter of the population. But the
fastest growing group, 4.8 million or 30 per cent of the
population, were those of mixed descent of nineteenth and
twentieth century immigrants — English-speaking and

247
non-English speaking immigrants, Aboriginal and
non-Aboriginal.111

It is within this context that the debate over immigration in

the 1980s should be understood. As with other modern
immigrant societies, such as Canada, Australia will
undoubtedly continue to rely upon immigration for economic
growth. Moreover, it will be subjected to the demands and
needs of the international movements of refugees and
others.112 As the international global village grows closer,
Australians will also have to confront more clearly the
geopolitical location of the continent that they inhabit. Many
might not agree with the views of Bill Hayden, the former
Minister for Foreign Affairs and now Governor-General, but
they can not ignore their implications:

We’re an anomaly as a European country in this part of the

world. There’s already a large and growing population in Asia
and it is inevitable in my view that Australia will become a
Eurasian country over the next century or two. I happen to
think that’s desirable. This means we are becoming part of the
mainstream of this region.113

That also remains the challenge for Australians in the third

century of non-Aboriginal immigration.

248
NOTES

Abbreviations:

HS Historical Studies

JRAHS Journal of Royal Australian Historical Society

repr. reprinted

Britain’s Overseas Penal Colony

1. J. Millar, The Origin of the Distinction of Ranks, 1973, p.4,

cited in Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English
Society, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, p.38.

2. ibid., p.18.

3. ibid., pp.19–23.

4. See Douglas Hay, ‘Property, Authority and the Criminal

Law’, in Douglas Hay et al, Albion’s Fatal Tree, Allen and
Lane, London, 1975, pp.17–63.

5. ibid., p.20.

249
6. L. Radzinowicz, History of the English Criminal Law,
Vol.1, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1948,
pp.25–28.

7. Phyllis Deane and W.A. Cole, British Economic Growth

1688–1959, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1969,
p.6.

8. ibid., p.7. These figures apply to towns over 5000.

9. Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, 6th edn, (ed) Edwin

Cannon, 2 vols, London, 1950. Vol.2, p.280, cited in J.M.
Beattie, ‘The Pattern of Crime in England, 1660–1800’, Past
and Present, No.62, 1974, p.93.

10. Phyllis Deane and W.A. Cole, British Economic Growth

1688–1959, p.111.

11. J.M. Beattie, The Pattern of Crime in England,

1660–1800’ pp.73–74.

12. Patrick Colquhoun, Treatise on the Police of the

Metropolis, 6th edn, 1800, pp.106–7, cited in J.J. Tobias,
Crime and Industrial Society in the Nineteenth Century,
Pelican, London, 1972, p.38.

13. J.M. Beattie, ‘The Pattern of Crime in England,

1660–1800’, pp.80–81.

14. ibid., pp.94–95.

250
15. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History
Volume 1 1788–1850, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1977,
p.17.

16. John Cobley, The Convicts 1788–1792, Wentworth Press,

Sydney, 1965, p.5.

17. L.L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia,

Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965, p.11 and p.75.

18. ibid., p.14. The available statistics are calculated for the
period 1788–1851.

19. ibid., p.17. See also J.J. Tobias, Crime and Industrial
Society in the Nineteenth Century, pp.108–33.

20. Donovan Clarke, ‘Robinson, Michael Massey’, in

Douglas Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol.2. 1788–1850, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne,
1967, pp.387–89.

21. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1 1788–1850, p.137.

22. D.R. Hainsworth, ‘Lord, Simeon’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
p.131.

23. Gwyneth M. Dow, ‘Terry, Samuel’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.508–09.

251
24. Brian H. Fletcher, Landed Enterprise and Penal Society,
Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1976, pp.210–16.

25. ibid., pp.223–24.

26. J.M. Beattie, ‘The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth

Century England’, Journal of Social History, Vol.8, No.4,
1975, pp.80–116.

27. Miriam Dixson, The Real Matilda, Penguin, Sydney,

1976, p.120. See also L.L. Robson, ‘The Origin of the
Women Convicts Sent to Australia’, HS Vol.11, No.41, 1963,
pp.43–53.

28. George F.J. Bergman, ‘Johnstone, Esther’, in Douglas

Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2:
1788–1850, pp.19–20.

29. L.L. Robson, The Convict Settlers of Australia, pp.77–78.

30. W. Foster, ‘Francis Grose and the Officers’, JRAHS,

Vol.51, Pt.3, 1965, pp.191–92.

31. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1 1788–1850, p.118.

32. C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol.1, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1968, p.92.

33. Eris O’Brien, The Foundation of Australia, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1950, p.204.

252
34. A.G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies, Faber and
Faber, London, 1966, p.171.

35. Eris O’Brien, The Foundation of Australia, p.201.

36. A.G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies, p.170.

37. Edward Ford, ‘Redfern, William’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.368–71.

38. John Earnshaw, ‘Palmer, Thomas Fyshe’ Douglas Pike

(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.312.

39. A.G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies, p.170.

40. P.J. O’Farrell, The Catholic Church in Australia. A Short

History, Nelson, Sydney, 1968, p.2.

41. R.W. O’Connell, ‘The Convict Rebellion of 1804’,

Melbourne Historical Journal, Vol.5, 1965, pp.27–37.

42. Vivienne Parsons, ‘Redmond, Edward’ in Douglas Pike

(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
p.371.

43. Alec B. Doyle, ‘Doyle, Cyrus Matthew’, in Douglas Pike

(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.320–21.

44. J.J. Auchmuty, ‘Governor Phillip’, JRAHS, Vol.56, Pt.2,

1970, pp.83–84.

253
45. R.S. Neale, ‘The Colonies and Social Mobility’, in R.S.
Neale (ed), Class and Ideology in the Nineteenth Century,
Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1972, p.119. See also J.J.
Auchmuty, ‘The Background of the Early Australian
Governors’, HS, Vol.6, No.23, 1954, p.302.

46. A.G.L. Shaw, ‘Some Officials in Early Van Diemen’s

Land’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers
and Proceedings, Vol.14, No.4, 1967, pp.129–41.

47. K.A. Green, ‘Ingle, John’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850, p.3.

48. William Foster, ‘Francis Grose and the Officers’, JRAHS,

Vol.51, Pt.3, 1965, p.177.

49. B.H. Fletcher, ‘Grose, Francis’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
p.489.

50. William Foster, ‘Francis Grose and the Officers’, p.185.

51. See M.H. Ellis, John Macarthur, Angus and Robertson,

Sydney, 1947.

52. Richard Glover, Peninsula Preparation, The Reform of

the British Army 1795–1809, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge, 1963, p.175.

53. T.G. Parsons, ‘The Social Composition of the Men of the

New South Wales Corps’, JRAHS, Vol.50, Pt.4, 1964,
pp.301–02. But see also T.G Parsons, ‘Courts Martial, the

254
Savoy Military Prison and the New South Wales Corps’,
JRAHS, Vol.63, Pt.4, 1978, pp.248–62.

54. R.H. Montague, ‘The Men of the New South Wales

Corps: A Comparison’, JRAHS, Vol.62, Pt.4, 1977, p.222.

55. Vivienne Parsons, ‘Faithful, William’, in Douglas Pike

(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
p.367.

56. R.B. Madgwick, Immigration of Eastern Australia

1788–1851, Longmans Green, London, 1937, repr. Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1969, pp.19–20. See also B.H.
Fletcher, Landed Enterprise and Penal Society, Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1976, pp.88–89.

57. M.J.E. Steven, ‘Enterprise’, in G.J. Abbott and N.B. Nairn

(eds), Economic Growth in Australia 1788–1821, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne, 1969, pp.126–27.

58. ibid., pp.124–25. See also M.J.E. Steven, Merchant

Campbell, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1965.

59. C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol.1, pp.236–37.

60. John F. Cleverley, The First Generation, Sydney

University Press, Sydney, 1971. Generally, sons and
daughters of convicts did not follow the criminal habits of
their parents. See K. Macnab and R. Ward, ‘The Nature and
Nurture of the First Generation of Native-born Australians’,
HS, Vol.10, No.39, 1962, pp.298–308.

255
61. David Denholm, The Colonial Australians, Penguin,
Sydney, 1979, p.168.

62. Harold Perkin, The Origins of Modern English Society,

pp.196–208.

63. ibid., pp.196–208 and 273–90.

64. William Foster, ‘Francis Grose and the Officers’, p.190.

65. W.G. McMinn, ‘How Drink-Sodden was Early New

South Wales’, Teaching History, May 1970, pp.40–41.

66. William Foster, ‘Francis Grose and the Officers’, p.196.

The Formation of Colonial Society

1. K.K. Macnab, ‘Aspects of the History of Crime in England

and Wales between 1805–1860’, Ph.D. Thesis, University of
Sussex, 1965, pp.60–61.

2. ibid., pp.323–94.

3. ibid., p.147.

4. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australia History

Volume 1 1788–1850, p.406 and p.408.

5. Anne Conlon, ‘Mine is a Sad Yet True Story: Convict

Narratives 1818–1850’, JRAHS, Vol.55, Pt.l, 1969, p.55.

256
6. Peter Mathias, The First Industrial Nation, Methuen,
London, 1969, p.198.

7. S.M. Ingham, ‘A Footnote to Transportation to New South

Wales: James Ingham, 1824–1848’, HS, Vol.12, No.48, 1967,
pp.522–40.

8. S. Nicholas and p.R. Shergold, ‘British and Irish Convicts’

in James Jupp (ed.), The Encylopaedia of the Australian
People, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1988, pp.23–31.

9. C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol.1, p.99.

10. James Waldersee, Catholic Society in New South Wales

1788–1860, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1969,
pp.66–67.

11. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1 1788–1850, p.145.

12. Peter N. Grabosky, Sydney in Ferment, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1977, p.57.

13. Russel Ward, ‘Donohoe, John’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
pp.312–13.

14. Hazel King, ‘Chapman, Israel’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
p.217.

15. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1 1788–1850, pp.131–32.

257
16. L.F. Fitzhardinge, ‘Moffitt, William’, in Douglas Pike
(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850.

17. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1 1788–1850, p.138.

18. Anne Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police,

p.275.

19. C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Vol.2, p.150.

20. M. Bassett, The Hentys: An Australian Tapestry, Oxford

University Press, London, 1954, pp.34–36. See also Geoffrey
Bolton, ‘The Idea of a Colonial Gentry’, HS, Vol.13, No.51,
1968, pp.307–28.

21. David Denholm, The Colonial Australians, pp.20–21.

22. R.B. Walker, Old New England, Sydney University Press,

Sydney, 1966, p.24.

23. G.L. Buxton, The Riverina 1861–1891, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1967, p.108.

24. E.W. Dunlop, ‘Macqueen, Thomas Potter’, in Douglas

Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2:
1788–1850, pp.195–96.

25. H.p.Wellings, ‘Imlay, Peter, George and Alexander’, in

Douglas Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol.2: 1788–1850, p.3.

258
26. D.S. Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788–1850,
Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967, p.74.

27. ibid., p.187.

28. Margaret Kiddle, Men of Yesterday, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1967, p.43.

29. ibid., p.41.

30. Jean I. Martin, p.L. Brown, ‘Drysdale, Anne, and

Newcomb, Caroline Elizabeth’, in Douglas Pike (ed),
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
pp.330–31.

31. Steel Rudd, Duncan McClune, Sydney, 1909, pp.1–2 cited

in D.B. Waterson, Squatter, Selector and Storekeeper, Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1968, p.135.

32. Mary O’Keefe, ‘Archer, Charles, John, David, William,

Archibald, Thomas and Colin’, in Douglas Pike (ed),
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.1: 1788–1850,
pp.22–23.

33. Peter Scott, ‘O’Brien, Henry and Cornelius’, in Douglas

Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2:
1788–1850, pp.292–93.

34. C.G. Austin, Clem Lack, ‘Lawless, Clement Francis and

Paul’, in Douglas Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of
Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850, p.93.

259
35. Alexandra Hasluck, ‘Peel, Thomas’, in Douglas Pike (ed),
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.320–22.

36. F.K. Crowley, Australia’s Western Third, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1967, p.16.

37. R.M. Hartwell, ‘Dalgety, Frederick Gonnerman’, in

Douglas Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol.4: 1851–1890, pp.4–5.

38. J.M. Antill, ‘Lennox, David’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.106–07.

39. Harley Preston, ‘Verge, John’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.553–55.

40. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1, 1788–1850, p.276.

41. G.p.Walsh, ‘Jones, David’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850,
pp.23–24.

42. Ronald Hyam, Britain’s Imperial Century. A Study of

Empire and Expansion, B.T. Batsford, London, 1976, p.26.

43. R.B. Madgwick, Immigration to Eastern Australia

1788–1851, p.60.

260
44. C.E. Carrington, The British Overseas, Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge, 1968, p.501.

45. ibid., p.502.

46. ibid.

47. A.J. Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors” Female

Immigration to Australia, 1832–36’, HS Vol.16, No.65, 1975,
p.540–55.

48. R.B. Madgwick, Immigration to Eastern Australia

1788–1851, p.105.

49. A.J. Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors” Female

Immigration to Australia 1832–36’, p.545.

50. R.B. Madgwick, Immigration to Eastern Australia

1788–1851, p.110.

51. A.J. Hammerton, ‘“Without Natural Protectors” Female

Immigration to Australia 1832–36’, p.550.

52. Margaret Kiddle, Caroline Chisholm, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1969, p.148.

53. Winifred Mitchell and Geoffrey Sherington, ‘Families and

Children in the Illawarra’ in p.Grimshaw et al. (ed), Colonial
Families, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985, pp.105–6.

54. See Don Watson, Caledonia Australis; Scottish

Highlanders on the frontiers of Australia, Collins, Sydney,
1984.

261
55. Alex G. Scholes, Education for Empire Settlement, for the
Royal Empire Society, Longmans, London, 1932, p.168.

56. James Waldersee, Catholic Society in New South Wales

1788–1860, p.171.

57. Henry Parkes, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1896, pp.21–22.

58. ibid., pp.28–29.

59. ibid., pp.115–16.

60. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1, 1788–1850, p.257.

61. Cited in A. James Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1979,
pp.53–70. See also Richard Charles Mills, The Colonization
of Australia, Sidgwick, London, 1915, repr. Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1974.

62. Christopher Nance, ‘From Labourer to Capitalist: Land

ownership and Social Mobility in South Australia 1836–71’,
in Australia 1888, Bulletin No.2, August 1979, pp.33–47.

63. Douglas Pike, Paradise of Dissent, Melbourne University

Press, Melbourne, 1967, p.130.

64. ibid., p.311.

262
65. D. Van Abbe, ‘Kavel, August Ludwig Christian and
Fritzsche, Gotthland Daniel’, in Douglas Pike (ed), Australian
Dictionary of Biography, Vol.2: 1788–1850, pp.33–34.

66. C.A. Price, ‘German Settlers in South Australia

1838–1900’, HS, Vol.7, No.28, 1957, p.447.

67. D.S. Macmillan, Scotland and Australia 1788–1850,

p.308.

68. David Denholm, The Colonial Australians, pp.47–67.

69. Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia

1835–51, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965,
p.40.

70. ibid., p.38.

71. Margaret Kiddle, Men of Yesterday, p.79.

72. C.E.W. Bean, Here My Son, Angus and Robertson,

Sydney, 1950, p.25.

73. ibid., pp.38–39.

74. Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia,

p.15.

75. ibid., p.36. For the British background to colonial

constitutional change, see John M. Ward, Colonial Self
Government, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976.

76. ibid., p.99.

263
77. ibid., p.90.

78. L.J. Hume, ‘Working Class Movements in Sydney and

Melbourne before the Gold Rushes’, HS, Vol.9, No.35, 1960,
p.271.

79. Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia,

p.93.

80. L.J. Hume, ‘Working Class Movements in Sydney and

Melbourne before the Gold Rushes’, HS, Vol.9, No.35, 1960,
p.274.

81. Douglas Pike, Paradise of Dissent, p.417.

82. ibid., p.183.

83. J.B. Hirst, Adelaide and the Country, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1973, p.52.

84. Samuel Smiles, Self Help, cited in J.F.C. Harrison, The

Early Victorians 1832–1851, Weidenfeld and Nicholson,
London, 1971, p.143.

85. P.H.J.H. Gosden, Self Help, Batsford, London, 1973,

pp.29 and 43.

86. Donald Horne, The Australian People, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1972, p.32.

87. ibid., p.35.

264
88. Cliff Turney, ‘Henry Carmichael’ in Cliff Turney (ed),
Pioneers of Australian Education, Vol.1, Sydney University
Press, Sydney, 1969, p.70.

89. ibid., p.11.

90. J.F.C. Harrison, The Early Victorians, p.70.

91. Michael Roe, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia,

pp.165–68.

92. ibid., p.53.

93. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Volume 1, 1788–1850, p.161.

94. C.E. Carrington, The British Overseas, pp.500–01.

95. Douglas Pike, Paradise of Dissent, p.379.

Victorian Britain Overseas

1. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History,

Vol.11, 1850–1900, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1977,
pp.664–65.

2. ibid., p.666.

3. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, Melbourne University Press,

Melbourne, 1963, p.44.

265
4. ibid., p.38.

5. ibid.

6. ibid., p.44.

7. ibid.

8. ibid.

9. ibid., p.47.

10. Heather Radi et al, Biographical Register of the New

South Wales Parliament 1901–1970, Australian National
University Press, Canberra, 1979, p.10.

11. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.20.

12. C.E. Sayers, David Syme, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1965,

pp.10–11.

13. F. Musgrove, ‘Middle Class Education and Employment

in the Nineteenth Century’, Economic History Review,
Vol.12, No.1, 1959, pp.108–09.

14. Gwyneth M. Dow, ‘Higinbotham, George’, in Douglas

Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.4:
1851–1890, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1972,
pp.391–97.

15. New Horizons, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London,

1963, p.26.

266
16. ibid., p.1.

17. ibid., p.103. See also A. James Hammerton, Emigrant

Gentlewomen, pp.124–47.

18. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, pp.372–73.

19. S. Nicholas and P.R. Shergold, ‘Non-British Convicts’ in

James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1988, pp.31–6.

20. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.371.

21. S. Jefferies, ‘German Settlement in Eastern Australia’ in

James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
pp.483–86.

22. E.F. Kunz, ‘Wekey, Sigismund’, in N.B. Nairn (ed.),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.6: 1851–1900,
Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976, pp.376–77.

23. K.A. Austin, ‘Cobb, Freeman’, in Douglas Pike (ed.),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1851–1900,
Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1976, pp.432–33.
See also E. Danielle Potts and Annette Potts, Young America
and Australian Gold: Americans and the gold rush of the
1850s, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1974.

24. Sing-Wu Wang, ‘Chinese Immigration 1840 to 1890s’ in

James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
p.299.

25. ibid., and G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.320.

267
26. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, pp.331–2.

27. ibid., p.332, Sing-Wu Wang, ‘Chinese Immigration 1840s

to 1890s’ in James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the
Australian People, p.299.

28. Yong Ching Fah, ‘Ah Mouy, Louis,’ in Douglas Pike

(ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1851–1900,
pp.19–20.

29. C. May, ‘Chinese in Queensland’ in J. Jupp (ed.),

Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.311–13.

30. C. Price, The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive

Immigration to North America and Australasia 1836–1888,
Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974.

31. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.334.

32. Edgar F. Penzig, ‘Gilbert, John’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.4: 1851–1900,
p.245.

33. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.369.

34. G.R. Serle, The Rush to be Rich, Melbourne University

Press, Melbourne, 1971, p.2.

35. ibid., p.7.

36. ibid., p.20.

37. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.359.

268
38. ibid.

39. Jill Eastwood, ‘Summers, Charles’, in N.B. Nairn (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.6: 1851–1890,
pp.219–20.

40. Robin S. Stevens, ‘Summers, Joseph’, in N.B. Nairn (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.6: 1851–1890,
pp.220–21.

41. G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.351. See also Geoffrey
Sherington, R.C. Petersen and Ian Brice, Learning to Lead,
George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1987.

42. Marjorie Theobald, ‘Mere Accomplishments?

Melbourne’s Ladies Schools Reconsidered’, History of
Education Review, Vol.13, No.2, 1984, pp.15–28.

43. K.J. Cable, ‘Mrs Barker and her Diary’, JRAHS, Vol.54,
Pt.1, 1986, p.81.

44. G.R. Serle, The Rush to be Rich, pp.132–33.

45. P.J. O’Farrell, The Catholic Church in Australia: A Short

History, p.110.

46. S.G. Firth ‘Social Values in New South Wales Primary

Schools 1880–1914’, Melbourne Studies in Education 1970,
Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1972, pp.123–59.

47. S. Merrifield, ‘Douglass, Benjamin’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.4: 1851–1890, p.93.

269
48. James Jupp, ‘Migration from London and the South East’
and ‘English influences on Australian Culture and Sport’ in
James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
pp.392–6 and 454–60.

49. Donna Hellier, ‘“The Humblies”: Scottish Highland

emigration into nineteenth century Victoria’ in P. Grimshaw
(ed.), Families in Colonial Australia, George Allen & Unwin,
Sydney, 1985, pp.9–10.

50. F.K. Crowley, ‘The British Contribution to the Australian

Population 1860–1919’, University Studies in Politics and
History, Vol.2, No.2, 1954, p.71.

51. Brian Elliot, ‘Clarke, Marcus’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1788–1850,
pp.416–18.

52. R.B. Joyce, ‘Corfield, William Henry’, in Douglas Pike

(ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1788–1850,
pp.463–64.

53. See Oswald Pryor, Australia’s Little Cornwall, Rigby,

Sydney, 1971.

54. See Alexandra Hasluck, Unwilling Emigrants, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1969.

55. Ronald Lawson, Brisbane in the 1890’s, University of

Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1973, p.22.

56. D.B. Waterson, Squatter, Selector and Storekeeper, p.127.

270
57. Peter Corris, ‘White Australia in Action: The Repatriation
of Pacific Islanders from Queensland’, HS, Vol.15, No.58,
1974, p.238.

58. ibid., p.249.

59. Ronald Lawson, ‘Brentnall, Frederick Thomas’, in

Douglas Pike (ed), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol.3: 1788–1850, pp.226–27.

60. H.J. Gibney, ‘Gibson, Angus’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1788–1850,
p.244.

61. Geoffrey Best, Mid-Victorian Britain 1851–75,

Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1971, p.77.

62. A.A. Hayden, New South Wales Immigration Policy

1856–1900, Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, New Series, Vol.61, Pt.5, 1971, pp.18–19.

63. From N.H. Carrier and J.R. Jeffrey, External Migration: A

Study of the Available Statistics, HMSO, London, 1953, cited
in G.R. Serle, The Golden Age, p.386.

64. Ross Duncan, ‘Case Studies in Emigration. Cornwall,

Gloucestershire and New South Wales 1877–1886’,
Economic History Review, Vol.16, No.2, 1963, pp.279–81.

65. G.E. Mingay, Rural Life in Victorian England,

Heinemann, London, 1977, p.89.

271
66. J.R. Kellett, The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities,
London 1969, pp.327–30 cited in R. Duncan, ‘Late
Nineteenth Century Immigration into New South Wales from
the United Kingdom’, Australian Economic History Review,
Vol.XIV, No.1, 1974, p.62. See also H.J. Dyos, ‘The Slums
of Victorian London’, Victorian Studies, Vol.XI, No.1, 1967,
pp.5–40.

67. R. Duncan, ‘Late Nineteenth Century Immigration into

New South Wales’, p.62.

68. ibid., p.63.

69. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History

Vol.11, 1850–1900, p.242.

70. C. Morris, ‘The Diary of Edward Hufton. An Assisted

Immigrant, 1879’, JRAHS, Vol.45, Pt.6, 1960, pp.314–51.

71. Ross Duncan, ‘Case Studies in Emigration. Cornwall,

Gloucestershire and New South Wales 1877–1886’, p.273.

72. Ken Buckley, ‘Emigration and the Engineers, 1851–67’,

Labour History, No.15, 1968, p.36.

73. R.V. Jackson, ‘Owner Occupation of Houses in Sydney,

1871 to 1891’, Australian Economic History Review, Vol.X,
No.2, 1970, pp.141–44.

74. R. Gollan, The Coalminers of New South Wales,

Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1963, p.9.

75. ibid., p.17.

272
76. Robin Gollan, ‘Curley, James’, in Douglas Pike (ed),
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.3: 1788–1850, pp
507–08.

77. Henry Pelling, A Short History of British Trade Unionism,

Pelican, London, 1971, p.100.

78. W.A. Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles, p.205.

79. N. Coughlan, ‘The Coming of the Irish to Victoria’, HS,

Vol.12, No.45, 1965, pp.73–76.

80. ibid., p.68.

81. ibid.

82. David Fitzpatrick, ‘Irish Immigration 1880–1914’ in

James Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
pp.560–65.

83. Mary Durack, ‘Durack, Patrick’, in Douglas Pike (ed),

Australian Dictionary of Biography, Vol.4: 1788–1850,
p.119. See also: Mary Durack, Kings in Grass Castles,
Constable, London, 1959.

84. Ronald Lawson, Brisbane in the 1890s, p.33.

85. Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous

Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1978,
p.82.

86. Michael Cannon, The Land Boomers, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1967, pp.117–25.

273
87. James Lyng, ‘Racial Composition of the Australian
Population’, in P.D. Phillips and G.L. Wood (eds), The
Peopling of Australia, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 1928, repr. Dawson’s of Pall Mall, London, 1968,
p 147. For a fuller view of the composition of the non-British
in early twentieth century Australia, see J. Lyng,
Non-Britishers in Australia, Melbourne University Press in
association with Oxford University Press. London and
Melbourne, 1935.

88. See David Denholm, The Colonial Australians,

pp.185–88.

89. Alexandra Hasluck (ed), Audrey Tennyson’s Vice-Regal

Days, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1978,
pp.41–42.

90. Ian Turner (ed), The Australian Dream, Sun Books,

Melbourne, 1968, pp.73–74.

91. C.M.H. Clark, Select Documents in Australian History,

Vol.11, 1850–1900, p.69.

92. F.K. Crowley, ‘The British Contribution to the Australian

Population’, p.84.

93. From a memorandum prepared by the Australian Agent

General in the United Kingdom in 1906, cited in G.F. Plant,
Oversea Settlement, pp.161–62.

94. C.N. Connolly, ‘Class, birthplace, loyalty: Australian

attitudes to the Boer War’ HS, Vol.18, No.71, 1978, p.226.

274
95. N.B. Nairn, Civilising Capitalism, Australian National
University Press, Canberra, 1973, pp.61–62.

96. Cited in R.N. Ebbels (ed), The Australian Labour

Movement, Cheshire Lansdowne, 1965, p.234.

An Imperial Dominion

1. Bulletin, 22 June 1901, quoted in A.T. Yarwood (ed),

Attitudes to Non-European Immigration Cassell, Melbourne,
1968, p.98.

2. Alex G. Scholes, Education for Empire Settlement, p.67.

3. W.A. Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles, p.242.

4. ibid., p.252.

5. ibid., p.306.

6. F.K. Crowley, ‘The British Contribution to the Australian

Population 1860–1919’, pp.84–85 and 87–88.

7. W.A. Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles,

pp.247–48.

8. ibid., p.244.

9. G.F. Plant, Oversea Settlement, p.60.

275
10. See The Story of Kings ley Fairbridge By Himself, Oxford
University Press, London, 1927, and Ruby Fairbridge,
Pinjarra, Oxford University Press, London, 1937.

11. Alex G. Scholes, Education for Empire Settlement, p.65.

12. G.E. Sherington, ‘Settlement 1881–1914’ in James Jupp

(ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, Angus &
Robertson, Sydney, 1988, p.88.

13. J.B. Hirst, Adelaide and the Country, p.3.

14. Lord Askwith, Industrial Problems and Disputes,

London, 1910, p. 175, cited in Standish Meacham, ‘‘“The
Sense of an Impending Clash”: English Working-Class
Unrest before the First World War’ American Historical
Review, Vol.77, No.5, 1972, p.1350.

15. A.J. Hammerton, Emigrant Gentlewomen, p.168.

16. Geoffrey Crossick, ‘The Emergence of the Lower Middle

Class in Britain’ in Geoffrey Crossick (ed), The Lower Middle
Class in Britain 1870–1914, Croom Helm, London, 1977, p.
19.

17. George Gissing, In the Year of Jubilee, cited ibid, p. 13.

18. Imre Ferenczi (ed), International Migrations, Vol.1

National Bureau of Economics, New York, 1929, p.635.

19. I.E. Young, ‘A.C. Willis, Welsh Nonconformity and the

Labour Party in New South Wales, 1911–33,’ Journal of
Religious History, Vol.2, No.4, 1964, p.303.

276
20. ibid., pp.303–13.

21. See Graeme Osborne, ‘Town and Company’ in John

Iremonger et al, Strikes, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1973,
pp.26–50.

22. Edgar Ross, A History of the Miners’ Federation of

Australia, Australasian Coal and Shale Employees
Federation, Sydney, 1970, pp. 152–90.

23. Frank Larter ‘A Migrant of 1912: Recollections of

England and Australia’
Journal of the Royal Western Australian Historical Society,
Vol.6, Pt.6, 1967, pp.40–41.

24. W.G. Spence, Australia’s Awakening, Sydney, 1909, cited

in Douglas Cole, ‘“The Crimson Thread of Kinship”: Ethnic
Ideas in Australia, 1870–1914’, HS Vol.15, No.56, 1971,
pp.515–16.

25. C.E. Carrington, The British Overseas, p.506.

26. Analysis based upon a survey of 400 attestation forms

(statements of personal particulars filled in upon enlistment)
held at Central Army Records Office, Melbourne.

27. Census of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1911, Vol.1,

p.123.

28. W.H. Connell, ‘Aslatt, Harold Francis’ in Bede Nairn and

Geoffrey Serle, (eds) Australian Dictionary of Biography,
1891–1939, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1979,
pp.116–17.

277
29. L.L. Robson, ‘The Origin and Character of the First A.I.F.
1914–1918: Some Statistical Evidence’ HS Vol.15, No.61,
1973, p.744.

30. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, Penguin, Sydney,

1975, p. 10.

31. R.J.W. Selleck, ‘The trouble with my looking glass: a

study of the attitudes of Australians to Germans during the
First World War’, ANZHES Presidential Address, August
1979, p.33.

32. A.T. Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1964, pp.141–50.

33. B. York, ‘Early Maltese Migration’ in James Jupp (ed.),

Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, p.694.

34. Bill Gammage, The Broken Years, p.209.

35. Critchley Parker, The Slippery Way, Patriotic Pamphlet,

No. 16, cited in Alan D. Gilbert, ‘The Conscription
Referenda, 1916–17: The Impact of the Irish Crisis’, HS,
Vol.14, No.53, 1969, p.54.

36. H.M. McQueen, ‘Who were the Conscriptionists’, Labour

History, No.10, 1969, p.47.

37. P.J. O’Farrell, The Catholic Church in Australia,

pp.237–38

38. Report to the Secretary of State for the Colonies of the

Committee appointed to consider the measures to be taken for

278
settling within the Empire ex-servicemen who may desire to
emigrate after the War (Cd. 8672) p.2 quoted in Gordon
Greenwood and Charles Grimshaw (eds), Documents on
Australian International Affairs 1901–1918, pp.710–11.

39. From G.F. Plant, Oversea Settlement, p.74.

40. See correspondence columns The Australian, 1–2

December 1979, p. 12.

41. Imre Ferenczi (ed), International Migrations, Vol.1,

p.957.

42. G.F. Plant, Oversea Settlement, pp.85–86.

43. Alex G. Scholes, Education for Empire Settlement, p. 189.

44. R.T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1964, p.31.

45. J.B. Brigden, ‘The Economic Control of Immigration’, in

P.D. Phillips and G.L. Wood (eds), The Peopling of Australia,
p.289.

46. From Colin Forster, Industrial Development in Australia

1920–1930, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1964, p. 173.

47. G. Sherington, ‘Immigration Between the Wars’ in James

Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, p.94.

48. Wendy Lowenstein and Morag Loh, The Immigrants,

Hyland House, Melbourne, 1977, p.43.

279
49. G. Sherington, ‘Immigration Between the Wars’ in James
Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, p.94.

50. Based on the unpublished research of the author.

51. I.L. Hunt, ‘Group Settlement in Western Australia. A

Criticism’, University Studies in Politics and History,
Vol.viii, No.2, 1958, p.5.

52. ibid., p.38.

53. Richard Broome, The Victorians: Arriving, Fairfax, Syme

and Weldon Associates, Melbourne, 1984, p. 146.

54. Kathleen Jupp, ‘Factors affecting the Structure of the

Australian Population, with Special Reference to the period
1921 to 1933’, M.A. Thesis, Australian National University
Library, Canberra, p.76, cited in R.T. Appleyard, British
Emigration to Australia, p.31.

55. Wendy Lowenstein and Morag Loh, The Immigrants

pp.50–51. See also R.A. Pepper all, Emigrant to Australia,
Latimer House, London, 1948.

56. Colin Forster, Industrial Development in Australia

1920–1930, pp. 173–74.

57. ibid., p.174.

58. J.B. Priestley, English Journey, William Heinemann in

association with Victor Gollancz, London, 1936, p.162.

280
59. Colin Forster, Industrial Development in Australia
1920–1930, p.86.

60. ibid., p. 170.

61. ibid., p. 172.

62. ibid.

63. ibid., p.177.

64. David Hickie, ‘Charlie Oliver’s Last Stand’, The National

Times, 30 June 1979, p.15.

65. Wendy Lowenstein, Weevils in the Flour, Hyland House,

Melbourne, 1978, p.35.

66. Heather Radi, ‘Bruce, Stanley Melbourne’, in Bede Nairn

and Geoffrey Serle (eds), Australian Dictionary of Biography,
Vol.7: 1890–1939, pp.453–61.

67. John Robertson, J. H. Scullin, University of Western

Australia Press, Nedlands, 1974, pp.212–13.

68. W.D. Forsyth, The Myth of Open Spaces, p.154.

69. G.F. Plant, Oversea Settlement, p. 124.

70. C.A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia, Oxford

University Press, Melbourne, 1963, p.10.

71. J. Lyng, The Scandinavians in Australia, New Zealand

and the Western Pacific, Melbourne University Press in

281
association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1939,
p.27.

72. R. Pascoe, ‘Italian Settlement until 1914’ in James Jupp

(ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.596–8.

73. N.O.P. Pyke, ‘An Outline History of Italian Immigration

into Australia’, Australian Quarterly, Vol.XX, no.3, 1948, p.
101.

74. W.D. Borrie, Italians and Germans in Australia, F.W.

Cheshire, Melbourne, 1954, p.35.

75. ibid., p.37.

76. ibid., p.39.

77. N.O.P. Pyke, ‘An Outline History of Italian Immigration

into Australia’, p. 105.

78. G. Cresciani, ‘Italian Immigrants 1920–1945’ in James

Jupp, (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
pp.608–12.

79. C.A. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia, pp. 108–9.

80. O. Bonutto, A Migrant’s Story, H. Pole and Co., Brisbane,

1963, p.2.

81. D. Menghetti, ‘Italians in North Queensland’ in James

Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.600–3.

282
82. C. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia, pp. 166–7. See
also H. Gilchrist, ‘Greek Settlement until 1940’ and N.
Mistilis, ‘Greek Community Life in Sydney’ in James Jupp
(ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.507–11 and
518–22.

83. Jan Goldie, ‘An Immigrant Adds a Knighthood to his

Treasures’, Sydney Morning Herald, 16 June 1979, p.1.

84. C. Price, Southern Europeans in Australia, pp.117–18.

See also M.P. Tsounis, ‘Greek Communities in Australia’ in
C.A. Price (ed.), Greeks in Australia, Australian National
University Press, Canberra, 1975, pp.22–3.

85. K.H. Bailey, ‘Public Opinion and Population Problems’,

in F. Eggleston (ed.), The Peopling of Australia: Further
Studies, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1933, repr.
Dawson’s of Pall Mall, London, 1968, p.80.

86. ibid.

87. ibid.

88. Harry Gordon, An Eyewitness History of Australia, Rigby,

Sydney, 1976, p.281.

89. W.D. Borrie, Italians and Germans in Australia, p.76.

90. ibid., p.37.

91. ibid., pp.272–73.

283
92. See C.A. Price, Jewish Settlers in Australia, Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 1964.

93. Judah Waten, Alien Son, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1965,

pp.180–82.

94. See E.E. Kisch, Australian Landfall, Macmillan,

Melbourne, 1969.

95. R. Lemberg, ‘The Problem of European Immigration’,

Australian Quarterly, Vol.XI, No.3, 1939, pp.13–23.

A Multi-Cultural Society

1. W.D Forsyth, The Myth of Open Spaces, passim.

2. Andrew Markus, ‘Labor and Immigration Policy Formation

1943–45’, Labour History, No.46, 1984, pp.21–33.

3. R.T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1964, p.34.

4. ibid.

5. ibid., p.35.

6. Roy Lewis, Shall I Emigrate? Phoenix House, London,

1948, p.14.

284
7. Susan Cooper, ‘Snoek Piquante’, in Michael Sissons and
Philip French (eds), Age of Austerity 1945–51, Penguin,
London, 1964, p.37.

8. R.T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia, p.93.

9. ibid., p.95.

10. ibid., pp.36–37.

11. ibid., p.85.

12. ibid., p.144.

13. ibid., p.145.

14. ibid.

15. ibid., pp.87–89.

16. Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs,

1788–1978 Australia and Immigration, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1978, p.14.

17. ‘Bond, Alan’, in J.J. Legge, Who’s Who in Australia

1977, The Herald and Weekly Times Limited, Melbourne,
1977, p.127.

18. Sydney Morning Herald, 4 and 5 September 1979.

19. R.T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia, p.23.

20. ibid., p.105.

285
21. Wendy Lowenstein and Morag Loh, The Immigrants,
p.63.

22. Australia—Parliament, Immigration—Government

Policy: Ministerial Statement, 22 November 1946, p.7, cited
in Egon Kunz, Blood and Gold, p.189.

23. Andrew Markus, ‘Labor and Immigration 1946–49: The

Displaced Persons Programme’ Labour History, No.47, 1984,
pp.78–9.

24. ibid., pp.79–80.

25. Australian Institute of Political Science, Australia and the

Migrant, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1953, p.104.

26. ibid., 105.

27. See Egon Kunz, The Intruders: Refugee Doctors in

Australia, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1975. See also E.F. Kunz, ‘Reconstructing the Educational
Spectrum of Australia’s Displaced Persons Intake’, in C.A.
Price (ed), Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and
Digest No.3, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1975.

28. Cited in James Jupp. Arrivals and Departures, Cheshire

and Lansdowne, Melbourne, 1966, pp.8–9.

29. Ruth Johnston, ‘The Immigrant Worker’, in Allan

Bordow (ed), The Worker in Australia, University of
Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1978, p.68.

286
30. Jean I. Martin, Refugee Settlers, Australian National
University Press, Canberra, 1965, p.50.

31. Jean I. Martin, Community and Identity, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1972, pp.28–29.

32. Jean I. Martin, Refugee Settlers, p.10.

33. ‘Parbo, Arvi’, in J.D. Legge, Who’s Who is Australia

1977, p.1003.

34. ‘Strasser, Paul’, ibid., p.849.

35. Jean I. Martin, Community and Identity, p.54.

36. ibid., pp.70–71.

37. Lyn Richards, Displaced Politics, La Trobe Sociology

Papers, No.45, Bundoora, 1978, cited in Jean Martin, ‘Forms
of Recognition’, in Ann Curthoys and Andrew Markus (eds),
Who are our Enemies? Racism and the Australian Working
Class, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1978, p.191.

38. R.T. Appleyard, British Emigration to Australia, p.49.

39. ibid.

40. I.H. Burnley, ‘International Migration and Metropolitan

Growth in Australia’, in I.H. Burnley (ed), Urbanization in
Australia, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974,
p.115.

41. ibid., p.101.

287
42. O. Bonutto, A Migrant’s Story, p.109.

43. G. Parenti, ‘Italy’, in Brinley Thomas (ed), Economics of

International Migration, Macmillan, London, 1958,
pp.93–95.

44. W.D. Borrie, ‘Australia’s New Population Pattern’, in

Australian Institute of Political Science, Australia and the
Migrant, p.50.

45. Charles A. Price (ed), Australian Immigration: A

Bibliography and Digest, No.2, Department of Demography,
Australian National University, Canberra, 1970, p.A.15.

46. Paul R. Wilson, Immigrants and Politics, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1973 p.19.

47. ibid.

48. C.A. Price, ‘Immigrants’, in A.F. Davies and S. Encel

(eds), Australian Society, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1970, p.183.

49. I.H. Burnley, ‘Social Ecology of Immigrant Settlement in

Australian Cities’ in I.H. Burnley (ed.), Urbanization in
Australia, p.175. See also Ian Burnley, ‘Neighbourhood,
communal structure in ethnic concentrations in Sydney, 1978’
in I. Burnley (ed.), Immigration and Ethnicity in the 1980s,
Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985.

50. M.P. Tsounis, ‘Greek Communities in Australia’, in C.A.

Price (ed), Greeks in Australia, p.24.

288
51. Eva Isaacs, Greek Children in Sydney, Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 1976, p.29.

52. M.P. Tsounis, ‘Greek Communities in Australia’, in C.A.

Price (ed), Greeks in Australia, p.24.

53. ibid., p.26.

54. Eva Isaacs, Greek Children in Sydney, p.28.

55. M.P. Tsounis, ‘Greek Communities in Australia’, in C.A.

Price (ed), Greeks in Australia, p.28.

56. Gil Bottomley, ‘Community and Network in a City’, in

Charles Price (ed), Greeks in Australia, p.138.

57. Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs,

1788–1978 Australia and Immigration Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1978, p.22.

58. John Monks, ‘The Greek Australians’, Weekend

Australian Magazine 29–30 April 1978, p.1.

59. C.A. Price, ‘Immigrants’, in A.F. Davies and S. Encel

(eds), Australian Society, p.185.

60. Commonwealth Department of Immigration, Australia’s

Immigration for the period 1968 to 1973, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1968, pp.2–3.

61. E.W. Hotstee, ‘Netherlands’, in Brinley Thomas (ed),

Economics of International Migration, p.106.

289
62. I.H. Burnley, ‘Social ecology of immigrant settlement in
cities’, p.178.

63. Jerzy Zubrzycki, Settlers of the La Trobe Valley,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1964, p.107.

64. C.A, Price, ‘Immigrants’, in A.F. Davies and S. Encel

(eds), Australian Society, p.186.

65. ibid., p.183 and p.185.

66. Egon Kunz, Blood and Gold, p.195.

67. Australian Population and Immigration Council,

Immigration Policies and Australia’s Population, Australian
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977, p.40.

68. C.A. Price, ‘Immigrants’ in A.F. Davies and S. Encel

(eds), Australian Society, p.181.

69. R.T. Appleyard, ‘Immigration Policy and Progress’ in

How Many Australians, Australian Institute of Political
Science, Proceedings of 37th Summer School, Angus and
Robertson, Sydney, 1971, p.220.

70. Thomas Jenkins, We came to Australia, Constable,

London, 1969, p.31.

71. C.A. Price, ‘Immigrants’, in A.F. Davies and S. Encel

(eds), Australian Society, p.196.

72. Alan Richardson, British Immigrants and Australia,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974, p.117.

290
73. Australian Population and Immigration Council, A
Decade of Migrant Settlement Australian Government
Publishing Service, Canberra, 1976, p.111.

74. Charles A. Price, Australian Immigration: A Review of the

Demographic Effects of Post-War Immigration on the
Australian Population, Australian Government Publishing
Service, Canberra, 1975, p.5.

75. L. Manderson, ‘Turks’ in J. Jupp. (ed.), Encyclopaedia of

the Australian People, pp.819–21.

76. Charles A. Price, ‘Australian Immigration: The Whitlam

Government 1972–1975’, in C.A. Price and Jean I. Martin,
Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and Digest No.3,
1975, Part 1, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1976, pp.Al-A2.

77. Australian Population and Immigration Council, A

Decade of Migrant Settlement, pp.54–55.

78. Rusell D. Lansbury, ‘Manpower Alternatives to

Immigration’, Table 2, in R. Birrell (ed), The Immigration
Issue in Australia, Department of Sociology, La Trobe
University.

79. Australian Population and Immigration Council, A

Decade of Migrant Settlement, pp.54–55.

80. Egon Kunz, Blood and Gold, pp.183–84.

291
81. Information from unpublished research carried out at the
University of Wollongong by Dr E. Kellermann and Ms L.
Fahey.

82. See Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians, Harvard

University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973, pp.111–44. For
the place of immigrants in Canadian society, see John Porter,
The Vertical Mosaic, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
1965, pp.29–103.

83. Australian Population and Immigration Council, A

Decade of Migrant Settlement, p.25.

84. Analysis based upon 1976 Census figure cited in L.

Fahey, ‘The Port Kembla Community of Schools Project: A
Study of Migrant Parent Attitudes to Education,’ unpublished,
University of Wollongong, 1979, p.60.

85. Australian Population and Immigration Council, A

Decade of Migrant Settlement, p.25.

86. Helen Hurwitz, ‘Factory Women’, in Alan Bordow (ed),

The Worker in Australia, p.241.

87. Wendy Lowenstein and Morag Loh, The Immigrants,

p.127.

88. Jean I. Martin, ‘Forms of Recognition’ in Ann Curthoys

and Andrew Markus (eds), Who Are Our Enemies?, p.191.
See also James Jupp. Arrivals and Departures, pp.59–60 and
Constance Lever Tracy and Michael Quinlan, A Divided
Working Class: Ethnic Segmentation and Industrial Conflict

292
in Australia, Routledge Kegan and Paul, Melbourne, 1988,
pp.237–305.

89. Cited in Lois Foster and David Stockley, Multiculturalism

the Changing Paradigm, Clevedon, Multilingual Matters,
1984, pp.52–3.

90. See Foster and Stockley, Multiculturalism, pp.54–67.

91. ibid., pp.77–83.

92. Cited in Jean Martin, The Migrant Presence, George

Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1978, p.201.

93. Pino Bosi, Farewell Australia, Karunda Publications,

Sydney, 1972, pp.68–9.

94. See F. Kringas and F. Lewins, Why Ethnic Schools?

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1981.

95. For a radical critique of multiculturalism see A.

Jakubowicz, ‘State and Ethnicity: Multiculturalism as
Ideology’ in J. Jupp (ed.), Ethnic Politics in Australia, George
Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1984, pp.14–28.

96. W.D. Borrie, ‘New Zealanders’ in J. Jupp (ed.),

Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.716–17.

97. C.M. Young, ‘Lebanese Immigration since 1970’ and M.

Humphrey, ‘Muslim Lebanese’ in J. Jupp (ed.) Encyclopaedia
of the Australian People, pp.672–80.

293
98. P. Kelly, ‘Settlement of Vietnamese Refugees’ in J. Jupp
(ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.833–4.

99. Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada

and Australia Compared, University of New South Wales
Press, Kensington, 1989, p.182.

100. M. Loh, ‘Vietnamese community life in Australia’ in J.

Jupp (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,
pp.836–40 and Nancy Vivani, ‘The Vietnamese in Australia:
new problems in old forms’ in I.H. Burnley et al. (eds),
Immigration and ethnicity in the 1980s, George Allen &
Unwin, Sydney, 1985, pp.244–7. See also Nancy Viviani, The
Long Journey: Vietnamese Migration and Settlement in
Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1984.

101. See Katherine Betts, Ideology and Immigration:

Australia 1976 to 1987, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 1988; for an earlier published critique of post-war
immigration see Robert Birrell and Tanya Birrell, An Issue of
People: Population and Australian Society, Longman
Cheshire, Melbourne, 1981.

102. See Geoffrey Blainey, All for Australia, Methuen

Haynes, Melbourne, 1984; Andrew Markus and M.C.
Ricklefs (eds) Surrender Australia? George Allen & Unwin,
Sydney, 1985.

103. Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration: Canada

and Australia Compared, pp.152–5 and 274–9.

294
104. R. Jayaraman, ‘Indian Society and Culture and
Australia’ and G. Moore, ‘Anglo-Indians’ in J. Jupp (ed.),
Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, pp.543 and 549.

105. J.M.S. Kim, ‘Koreans’ in J. Jupp (ed.), Encyclopaedia of

the Australian People, pp.659–60.

106. K.H. Chin, ‘Chinese in Modern Australia’ in J. Jupp

(ed.), Encyclopaedia of the Australian People, p.318.

107. ibid., pp.319–20.

108. Katherine Betts, Ideology and Immigration: Australia

1976 to 1987, p.184.

109. See James Jupp. ‘Immigration’ in Kim Anderson (ed.),

Australians 1988, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, 1989,
pp.98–103.

110. Glen Withers, ‘The Immigration Contribution to Human

Capital Formation’ in David Pope and Lee Alston (eds),
Australia’s Greatest Asset: Human Resources in the
Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Federation Press,
Sydney, 1989, pp.53–71.

111. C.A. Price, The Ethnic Character of the Australian

Population’ in J. Jupp (ed.) Encyclopaedia of the Australian
People, p.128.

112. Freda Hawkins, Critical Years in Immigration,

pp.243–80.

295
113. A 1983 speech cited in Katherine Betts, Ideology and
Immigration, p.159.

296
FURTHER READING

General

Books

Appleyard, R. T., British Emigration to Australia, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1964.

Blainey, G., The Tyranny of Distance, Sun Books,

Melbourne, 1966.

Bolton, G. C., Britain’s Legacy Overseas, Oxford University

Press, London, 1973.

Borrie, W. D., Italians and Germans in Australia, Cheshire,

Melbourne, 1954.

Broome, R., The Victorians Arriving, Fairfax, Syme and

Weldon, Melbourne, 1984.

Carrington, C.E., The British Overseas, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1968.

Carrothers, W. A., Emigration from the British Isles, P.S.

King, London, 1929.

297
Crowley, F. K., Australia’s Western Third, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne, 1967.

Denholm, David, The Colonial Australians, Penguin, Sydney,

1979.

Eggleston, F. W. (ed), The Peopling of Australia: Further

Studies, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1933, repr.
Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1968.

Forsyth, W. D., The Myth of Open Spaces, Melbourne

University Press in association with Oxford University Press,
Melbourne and London, 1942.

Hartz, Louis, The Founding of New Societies, Harcourt, Brace

World, New York, 1964.

Huck, Arthur, The Chinese in Australia, Longmans, London,

1967.

Hyam, Ronald, Britain’s Imperial Century: A Study of Empire

and Expansion, B.T. Batsford, London, 1976.

Jupp, J. (ed.), The Encyclopaedia of the Australian People,

Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, Sydney, 1988.

Kunz, Egon, Blood and Gold, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne,

1969.

Lowenstein, Wendy and Loh, Morag, The Immigrants,

Hyland House, Melbourne, 1977.

298
Lyng, J., Non-Britishers in Australia, Melbourne University
Press in association with Oxford University Press, London
and Melbourne, 1935.

Lyng, J., The Scandinavians in Australia, New Zealand and

the Western Pacific, Melbourne University Press in
association with Oxford University Press, Melbourne 1939.

O’Farrell, P., The Irish in Australia, Angus & Robertson,

Sydney, 1986.

Phillips, P.D. and Wood, G.D. (eds), The Peopling of

Australia, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1928,
repr. Dawsons of Pall Mall, London, 1968.

Pike, Douglas, Nairn, Bede and Serle, G.R., Australian

Dictionary of Biography, Volumes 1–7, Melbourne
University Press, Melbourne, 1966–1979.

Plant, G.F., Oversea Settlement: Migration from the United

Kingdom to the Dominions, Oxford University Press, London,
1951.

Prentis, M.P., The Scots in Australia: A Study of New South

Wales, Victoria and Queensland 1788–1900, Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1984.

Price, C.A., Southern Europeans in Australia, Oxford

University Press, Melbourne, 1963.

Price, C.A., Jewish Settlers in Australia, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1964.

299
Price, C.A. (ed), Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and
Digest No. 2, 1970, Department of Demography, Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 1970.

Price, C.A. (ed), Greeks in Australia, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1975.

Price, C.A. and Martin, Jean I., Australian Immigration: A

Bibliography and Digest No. 3, 1975 Parts 1 and 2, Australian
National University Press, Canberra, 1976.

Price, C.A., Australian Immigration: A Bibliography and a

Digest No.4, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1979.

Thomas, Brinley, Migration and Economic Growth,

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1954.

Thomas, Brinley, (ed), Economics of International Migration,

Macmillan, London, 1958.

Yarwood, A.T., (ed), Attitudes to Non-European Immigration,

Cassell, Melbourne, 1962.

Yarwood, A.T., Asian Migration to Australia, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1964.

Article

Thislethwaite, Frank, ‘Migration from Europe Overseas in the

Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries’, Comite International
Des Sciences Historiques, (International Committee of
Historical Sciences), XI, Congress, Report V, pp.32–61.

300
Britain’s Overseas Penal Colony

Books

Cobley, J., The Convicts, 1788–1792: A Study of a

One-in-Twenty Sample, Wentworth Press, Sydney, 1964.

Macmillan, D. S., Scotland and Australia 1788–1850,

Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1967.

Madgwick, R. B., Immigration into Eastern Australia

1788–1850, Longmans Green, London, 1937, repr. Sydney
University Press, Sydney, 1969.

Nicholas, S. and Shergold, P.R., Convict Workers, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1988.

O’Brien, Eris, The Foundation of Australia, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1950.

Robson, L. L., The Convict Settlers of Australia, Melbourne

University Press, Melbourne, 1965.

Shaw, A. G. L., Convicts and the Colonies, Faber and Faber,

London, 1966.

Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God’s Police, Penguin,

Sydney, 1975.

Articles

301
Auchmuty, J. J., ‘The Background to the Early Australian
Governors’, Historical Studies, Vol.6, Pt.2, 1960, pp.97–111.

Beattie, J.M., ‘The Pattern of Crime in England 1660–1800’,

Past and Present, No.62, 1974, pp.47–95.

Clark, CM. H., ‘The Origins of the Convicts Transported to

Eastern Australia 1787–1852’, Pt.l, Historical Studies, Vol.7,
No.26, May 1956, pp.121–35. Pt.11, Historical Studies,
Vol.7, No.27, November 1956, pp.314–27.

Foster, W., ‘Francis Grose and the officers’, Journal of Royal

Australian Historical Society, Vol.51, Pt.3, 1965, pp.177–99.

Parsons, T. G., ‘The Social Composition of the Men of the

New South Wales Corps’, Journal of Royal Australian
Historical Society, Vol.50, Pt.4, 1964, pp.297–304.

Robson, L. L., ‘The Origin of the Women Convicts sent to

Australia, 1787–1852’, Historical Studies, Vol.11, No.41,
1963, pp.104–21.

Rudé, G., ‘Early Irish Rebels in Australia’, Historical Studies,

Vol.16, No.62, 1974, pp.17–35.

Shaw, A. G. L., ‘Some Officials of Early Van Diemen’s

Land’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers
and Proceedings, Vol.14, No.4, 1967, pp.129–41.

302
The Formation of Colonial Society

Books

Buxton, G., The Riverina 1861–1891, Melbourne University

Press, Melbourne, 1967.

Cameron, B. L. and McLennan, J. L., Scots Corner, B. L.

Cameron, Armidale, 1971.

Grimshaw, P. et al. (eds), Colonial Families, George Allen &

Unwin, Sydney, 1985.

Kiddle, Margaret, Men of Yesterday, Melbourne University

Press, Melbourne, 1967.

Kiddle, Margaret, Caroline Chisholm, Melbourne University,

Melbourne, 1969.

Mills, Richard Charles, The Colonization of Australia: The

Wakefield Experiment in Empire Building, Sidgwick, London,
1915, repr., Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1974.

Parkes, Henry, An Emigrant’s Home Letters, Augus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1896.

Pike, D.H., Paradise of Dissent: South Australia 1829–1857,

Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1967.

Roe, Michael, Quest for Authority in Eastern Australia

1835–1851, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965.

303
Waldersee, James, Catholic Society in New South Wales
1788–1860, Sydney University Press, Sydney, 1974.

Walker, R. B., Old New England, Sydney University Press,

Sydney, 1966.

Waterson, D.B., Squatter, Selector and Storekeeper, Sydney

University Press, Sydney, 1968.

Articles

Conlon, Anne, ‘“Mine is a sad yet true story”: Convict

Narratives 1818–1850’, Journal of Royal Australian
Historical Society, Vol.55, Pt.l, 1969, pp.43–82.

Hammerton, A. J., ‘“Without Natural Protectors” Female

Emigration to Australia, 1832–36’, Historical Studies,
Vol.16, No.65, 1975, pp.539–66.

Ingham, James, ‘A Footnote to Transportation to New South

Wales: James Ingham, 1826–1848’, Historical Studies,
Vol.12, No.48, 1967, pp.522–40.

Price, C.A., ‘German Settlers in South Australia 1838–1900’,

Historical Studies, Vol.7, No.28, 1957, pp.441–51.

Schultz, R. J., ‘Immigration into Eastern Australia

1788–1851’, Historical Studies, Vol.14, No.54, 1970,
pp.273–82.

304
Victorian Britain Overseas

Hasluck, Alexandra, Unwilling Emigrants, Angus and

Robertson, Sydney, 1969.

Hayden, A. A., New South Wales Immigration Policy

1856–1900, Transactions of the American Philosophical
Society, New Series, Vol.61, Pt.5, 1971.

New Horizons, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London,

1963.

Price, C.A., The Great White Walls are Built: Restrictive

Immigration to North
America and Australasia 1836–1888, Australian National
University Press, Canberra, 1974.

Pryor, Oswald, Australia’s Little Cornwall, Rigby, Sydney,

1971.

Serle, G. R., The Golden Age, Melbourne University Press,

Melbourne, 1963.

Serle, G., The Rush to be Rich, Melbourne University Press,

Melbourne, 1971.

Articles

Buckley, Ken, ‘Emigration and the Engineers, 1851–1967’,

Labour History, No. 15, 1968, pp.31–39.

305
Cole, Douglas, ‘“The Crimson Thread of Kinship”: Ethnic
Ideas in Australia, 1870–1914’, Historical Studies, Vol.15,
No.56, 1971, pp.511–25.

Connolly, C.N., ‘Class, birthplace, loyalty: Australian

attitudes to the Boer War’, Historical Studies, Vol.18, No.71,
1978, pp.210–32.

Crowley, F.K., ‘The British Contribution to the Australian

Population, 1860–1919’, Universities Studies in Politics and
History, Vol.2, No.2, 1954, pp.55–8.

Duncan, R., ‘Late Nineteenth Century Immigration into New

South Wales from the United Kingdom’, Australian
Economic History Review, Vol.XIV, No.l, 1974, pp.58–74.

Duncan, Ross, ‘Case Studies in Emigration, Cornwall,

Gloucestershire and New South Wales 1877–1886’,
Economic History Review, Vol.16, No.2, 1963, pp.272–89.

Kelly, A. C, ‘International Migration and Economic Growth:

Australia 1865–1935’, Journal of Economic History, Vol. 25,
No.3, 1965, pp.333–54.

Morris, C, ‘The Diary of Edward Hufton: An Assisted

Immigrant 1879’ Journal of Royal Australian Historical
Society, Vol.45, Pt.6, 1960, pp.314–51.

An Imperial Dominion

Bonutto, O., A Migrant’s Story, H. Pole and Co., Brisbane,

1963.

306
Ferenczi, Imre (ed), International Migrations, Volume 1,
National Bureau of Economics, New York, 1929.

Fairbridge, Ruby, Pinjarra, Oxford University Press, London,

1937.

Forster, Colin, Industrial Development in Australia

1920–1930, Australian National University Press, Canberra,
1964.

Kisch, E. E., Australian Landfall, Macmillan, Melbourne,

1969.

Lack, John and Templeton, Jacqueline, Sources of Australian

Immigration History, 1901–1945, Melbourne, History
Department, University of Melbourne, 1988.

Lowenstein, Wendy. Weevils in the Flour. Hyland House,

Melbourne. 1978.

Pepperall, R. A., Emigrant to Australia, Latimer House,

London, 1948.

Scholes, Alex G., Education for Empire Settlement,

Longmans for the Royal Empire Society, London, 1932.

The Story of Kingsley Fairbridge by Himself, Oxford

University Press, London, 1927.

Waten, Judah, Alien Son, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1965.

Yong, C. F., The New Gold Mountain: The Chinese in

Australia 1900–1921, Raphael Arts, Richmond, 1977.

307
Articles

Hunt, I. L., ‘Group Settlement in Western Australia: A

Criticism’, University Studies in Politics and History,
Vol.VIII, No.2, 1958, pp.5–42.

Larter, Frank, ‘A Migrant of 1912: Recollections of England

and Australia’, Journal of the Royal Western Australian
Historical Society, Vol.6, Pt.6, 1967, pp.33–44.

Lemberg, R., ‘The Problem of Refugee Immigration’,

Australian Quarterly, Vol.XI, No.3, 1939, pp.13–23.

Pope, D.H., ‘Contours of Australian Immigration 1901–30’,

Australian Economic History Review, Vol.21, No.l, 1981,
pp.29–52.

Robson, L.L., ‘The Origin and Character of the First A.I.F.

1914–1918: Some Statistical Evidence’, Historical Studies,
Vol.15, No.61, 1973, pp.737–49.

Young, I.E., ‘A.C. Willis, Welsh Nonconformity and the

Labour Party in New South Wales, 1911–1933’, Journal of
Religious History, Vol.2, No.4, 1964, pp.303–13.

A Multi-Cultural Society

Books

Australian Institute of Political Science, Australia and the

Migrant, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1953.

308
Australian Population and Immigration Council, Immigration
Policies and Australia’s Population, Australian Government
Publishing Service, Canberra, 1977.

Australian Population and Immigration Council, A Decade of

Migrant Settlement, Australian Government Publishing
Service, Canberra, 1976.

Betts, Katherine, Ideology and Immigration 1976–1987,

Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1988.

Birrell, R. and T, An Issue of People: Population and

Australian Society, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1981.

Blainey, G., All for Australia, Methuen Hayes, Melbourne,

1984.

Bosi, Pino, Farewell Australia, Kurunda Publications,

Sydney, 1972.

Bottomley, G. and Lepervanche, M. (eds), Ethnicity, Class

and Gender in Australia, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney,
1984.

Burnley, I.H. (ed.), Urbanization in Australia, Cambridge

University Press, Cambridge, 1984.

Burnley, I.H. et al., (ed.), Immigration and Ethnicity in the

1980s, Longman Cheshire, Melbourne, 1985.

Department of Immigration, Australia’s Immigration

Programme for the Period 1968 to 1973, Australia
Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1968.

309
Department of Immigration, 1788–1978 Australia and
Immigration, Australian Government Publishing Service,
1978.

Foster, L. E. and Stockley, D., Multiculturalism: The

Changing Australian Paradigm, Multilingual Matters,
Clevedon, 1984.

How Many Australians: Immigration and Growth, Australian

Institute of Political Science, Proceedings of 37th Summer
School, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1971.

Isaacs, Eva, Greek Children in Sydney, Australian National

University Press, 1976.

Jenkins, Thomas, We Came to Australia, Constable, London,

1969.

Jupp, James, (ed.), Ethnic Politics in Australia, George Allen

& Unwin, Sydney, 1984.

Jupp, James, Arrivals and Departures, Cheshire Lansdowne,

Melbourne, 1966.

Kringas, P. and Lewins, F., Why Ethnic Schools?, Australian

National University Press, Canberra, 1981.

Kunz, Egon, The Intruders: Refugee Doctors in Australia,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1975.

Kunz, E.F., Displaced Persons: Calwell’s New Australians,

Pergamon and ANU Press, Canberra, 1988.

310
Lewis, Roy, Shall I Emigrate? Phoenix House, London, 1948.

Markus, A. and Ricklefs, M. C, (eds), Surrender Australia?

Essays in the Study and Abuse of History, George Allen &
Unwin, Sydney, 1985.

Martin, Jean L, Refugee Settlers, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1965.

Martin, Jean I., Community and Identity, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1972.

Martin Jean I., The Migrant Presence, George Allen &

Unwin, Sydney, 1978.

Price, C.A., Australian Immigration: A Review of the

Demographic Effects of Postwar Immigration on the
Australian Population, Australian Government Publishing
Service, Canberra, 1975.

Richardson, Alan, British Immigrants and Australia,

Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1974.

Viviani, N., The Long Journey: Vietnamese Migration and

Settlement in Australia, Melbourne University Press,
Melbourne, 1984.

Wilson, Paul, Immigrants and Politics, Australian National

University Press, Canberra, 1973.

Wilton, J. and Bosworth, R., Old Worlds and New Australia,

Penguin, Melbourne, 1984.

311
Zubrycki, J., Settlers of the La Trobe Valley, Australian
National University Press, 1964.

Articles

Markus, Andrew, ‘Labour and Immigration Policy Formation

1943–5’ Labour History, No.46, 1984, pp.21–37.

Markus, Andrew, ‘Labour and Immigration 1946–49: The

Displaced Persons Programme’, Labour History, No.47,
1984, pp.73–90.

312
INDEX
A.C.T., 109

A.I.F., 102–03

Abercromby family, 20

Aboriginals, 3, 93, 170

Abrahams, Ester, 9

Adelaide, population, 80, 138–39, 142

Africans, 153

Agricultural labourers, 77, 78

Ah Mouy, Louis, 67–68

Amalgamated Society of Engineers, 80

Americans, 66, 149

Angas, George Fife, 44

Anglicans, 12, 56, 71

Annandale, 9

Anti-transportation movement, 54

313
Appin, 29, 34

Archer family, 32

Archbishop Mannix, 104

Architects, 35, 62

Arnold, Thomas, 48

Asians, 66–68, 77, 93, 149, 152–53, 162, 164–70

Aslatt, Harold, 103

Aspendale, 147

Assistance schemes, 39–41, 43, 73, 79, 106–113, 130–33,

134, 140–42

Assisted Immigrants, 38–44, 56, 74, 77, 96–97, 109–112,

133, 136–38, 148

Association of Captive European Nations, 140

Australia Club, 48

Australian Company of Edinburgh and Leigh, 31

Australian population, 17, 59, 69, 75, 93, 116, 129

B.H.P., 100, 136

Backhouse, Benjamin, 62

314
Baltic peoples, 135–36, 139–40

Balmain, 53

Banks, Sir Joseph, 17

Baptists, 19

Barker, Mrs. 71

Barossa Valley, 45

‘Barwell boys’, 110

Bathurst, 26

Beale, Howard, 141

Benyei, Dr. Laszlo, 137–38

Bega, 32

Berry, Graham, 62, 70

‘Big Brother movement’, 110

Bishop Barker, 71

Bishop Broughton, 48, 49, 71

Bishop Moorhouse, 72

Bishop Perry, 69, 71, 72

315
Blainey, Geoffrey, 165

‘Blainey debate’, 165–66

Blaxland, John and Gregory, 17

Blue Mountains, 17, 29, 34

Boer War, 88

Bond, Alan, 133

Bonegilla, 146

Boulder, 117

‘Bounty immigrants’, 41

Bowling, Peter, 100

Brentnall, Frederick, 77

Brisbane, 62, 77; population, 22, 40

Britain, 23, 25; crime, 3, 6, 23; criminal law, 4, 23; economy,

23, 38–40, 59, 78–79, 108, 113, 133, 147, 150; emigration,
36–37, 60, 74–79, 95, 97–100, 106–7, 131, 133; social
structure, 3, 18–19, 31, 47–48; social unrest, 51, 97–98, 131,
150;
weather, 131, 150

Bruce, Stanley Melbourne, 115

316
Builders, 67, 84, 133, 140

‘Building boom’, 84, 133

Building societies, 52, 84

Bundaberg, 77

Bushrangers, 69, 86

Cabramatta, 165

Calwell, Arthur, 130, 134

Cambodia (Kampuchea), 164

Camden, 16

Camden Park, 35

Campbell, Robert, 17

Campbelltown, 26, 147

Canada, 36, 60, 93, 96, 134, 138, 149, 164, 170

Canberra, population, 142

Cardinal Moran, 88

Carmichael, Henry, 53

Catholics, 10–12, 29, 44, 49, 55–56, 71–72, 82, 104–05

317
‘Chain migration’, 33, 53–55, 63–64, 81–82, 118–21, 124,
133, 143–45, 147

Children, 17, 39, 138, 145, 150, 154, 162

Chartism, 49–51, 63

Chinese, 66–67, 164, 167–68

Chippendale, 53

Chisholm, Caroline, 38, 43

Church of England, 19, 23, 48–49, 71–72

Clark, Manning, 29

Clark, Marcus, 74

Clyde Company, 32

Cobb, Freeman, 66

Collingwood, 146

Collins, David, 13

‘Colonial establishment’, 12, 16, 48–50, 51, 85–86

Colonial Office, 37, 51

Colonial officials, 12–13, 16–17

Colquhoun, Patrick, 5

318
Commissioner Bigge, 28

Congregationalists, 19

Conscription, 105

Convicts, 3, 6–7, 13–14, 16, 24–29; age, 6, 8; background, 6,

8–9, 24–25; comforts, 26–27; influx, 23–24; Irish, 10–12, 25;
London, 6,10; Luddites, 25; political rebels, 11, 25;
punishments, 25–26; Scottish, 10; women, 8–9, 16–17

Coorparoo, 77

Corfield, H.C., 74

‘Cultural baggage’, 45–56, 70–73, 81, 85, 138–40, 156

Curley, James, 81

Curtin, John, 129

Czechs, 125, 136,150

Dalgety, Frederick, 35

Darling Downs, 32, 75

Darwin, 121, 164

Darwin, Charles, 72

Democratic Labour Party, 140

Dickens, Charles, 60

319
‘Displaced Persons’, 136–39, 165

Donaldson, Stuart Alexander, 48

Donohoe, ‘Bold Jack’, 26

Doyle, Andrew, 12

Douglass, Benjamin, 73

‘Dreadnought Boys’, 96–97, 109

Drysdale, Anne, 32

Ducker, John, 134

Duke of Wellington, 16

Durack, Darby, 83

Durack, Michael, 83

Durack, Patrick, 83

Dutch, 147–48

East India Company, 17

Eastern Europeans, 148

Economic depressions, 42, 51, 87–88, 115, 122; and

immigrants, 95, 42–43, 115, 122

Elizabeth, 147

320
Elizabeth Bay House, 35

Emancipists, 7–8, 16, 27–28, 35, 48; Irish, 29; women, 28

Empire migration, 95–99, 106–17

England, 12–13, 17, 29–30, 47, 53; population, 4–5, 23–24,

73

English, 85, 86, 95, 113

English language, 73, 82, 165

Eureka Stockade, 66

Evangelicalism, 18–19

Fairbridge, Kingsley, 96

Fairfield, 144

Faithful, William, 10

Family Loan Colonization Society, 38

Female Middle Class Emigration Society, 63–64

Finnish, 160

Fisher, Andrew, 88

Fitzroy, 146

Forde, Francis, 129

321
Fowles, Joseph, 28

France, 103, 150

Frankston, 147

‘Free immigration’, 16–17, 26, 54

Friendly societies, 52–53

Fritzsche, Gotthand, 45

Fujian (Fukien), 66

Gardiner, Frank, 69

Geelong, 62; population, 142

Gentry, 17, 31; inter-marriage, 17; Scottish, 31

Germany, 45, 78, 136, 146

Germans, 44–45, 75, 85, 101–02, 117, 123–24, 125, 147, 149

Gilbert, John, 69

Gold diggers, 61–68

Gold discoveries, 59–60

Good Neighbour Council, 138

CTOiilburn, 83

322
Governor Arthur, 26, 28, 38

Governor Bligh, 20

Governor Bourke, 38, 49

Governor Darling, 26

Governor Franklin, 48

Governor Hunter, 11

Governor King, 12

Governor Macquarie, 13, 20

Governor Phillip, 12, 13, 24

Graziers, 17

Greeks, 120–21, 144–46, 158, 159–60; ‘chain migration’,

144, 145, 159–60; ‘group settlement’, 146

Greenway, Francis, 35

Griffith, 103

‘Group settlement’, 110–12, 122–23 138–39, 146

Gulf of Carpenteria, 12

Hahndorf, 45

Harris, Alexander, 43

323
Hawksley, E. J., 51

Henty, James, 30

Henty, Thomas, 30–31

Higinbotham, George, 62

Hobart, 17; population, 45, 142

Holland, 147, 149

Holroyd, 141

Home-ownership, 53, 80, 146, 148

Hong Kong, 167, 168

Housing, 34–35, 46, 53, 78–79, 133, 139, 146–48

Howard, John, 169

Hudson, J.C., 62

Hughes, W.M., 88

Hungarians, 65, 136, 140, 149, 156

Hunter Valley, 26, 31–32

Hufton, Edward, 79

Illawarra, 26, 34

324
Imlay, Peter, George and Alexander, 32

‘Immigration loss’ 87, 149

Immigration Restriction Act (1901), 93, 125, 167

Immigration restrictions, 67, 74, 94, 123

Indians, 93

Industrial skills, 114, 133, 139

Industrial growth, 114, 136, 152

Ingham, James, 24–25

Ingle, John, 13

Innisfail, 121

Intolerance, 55, 86, 121–22, 143, 162

Ireland, 10–12, 32, 40, 82, 105; family feuds, 25; land
holdings, 10, 82; population, 4, 94; post-famine, 82;
‘protestant ascendancy’, 10; 1978; rebellion, 10–11

Irish, 29, 32, 40, 44, 55–56, 82–83, 86–87, 115, 123; ‘chain
migration’, 55–56, 82–83; convicts, 10–12, 25; farmers, 83;
gold diggers, 62; in Victoria, 82; lawyers, 62

Italians, 117–19, 143, 149, 159–60; ‘chain migration’,

118–20, 143

325
Italy, 118, 143

Japanese, 93

Jews, 123–25, 135

Johnson, Richard, 20

Jones, David, 36

Jones, Richard, 17

Juvenile migration, 96–97, 109–110

Kable, Henry, 7

Kalgoorlie, 121–22

Kavel, August, 45

Kelly, Ned, 86

Kemblawarra, 157

Kimberleys, 83

Kisch, Egon, 125

Labour Party, 88, 99–101, 105, 151; immigrants, 86–89, 99;

Irish, 88, 105, 161

Lakemba, 121

Land and Emigration Commission, 37

326
Land grants, 8,13,16, 30, 32, 33, 43, 46

‘Land monopoly’, 43, 50–51

Land settlement, 18, 29–34, 43–45, 77–79, 95, 109–112

Land speculation, 84

Lang, J. D., 37, 49, 56, 83

Language barriers, 154–55, 159, 163

Lansdowne, 35

Lapstone, 35

Laurantus, Nicholas, 120

Lawless, Clement and Paul, 34

Lawyers, 62

Lebanese, 104, 149, 158, 163

Lebanon,163

Leichhardt, 143

Lennox, David, 35

Levey, Solomon, 35

Liberal Party, 99, 152

327
Lieutenant Johnson, 8

Linton, Richard, 110

‘Little Brothers’, 110

Liquor consumption, 20

Liverpool, 35

London, 5, 26, 41, 52, 73; convicts, 6, 10; crime, 5–6;

housing, 79; population, 5

London Emigration Committee, 37

Lord, Simeon, 7, 17

Luddites, 25

Lutherans, 44, 75, 104

Macarthur, James, 53

Macarthur, John, 16–18, 30

Macarthur family, 35

MacKellar, Malcolm, 164

Macqueen, Thomas Potter, 31

Major Grose, 13

Malaysia, 164, 167, 178

328
Malta, 104, 146

Maltese, 146, 149

Mann, Tom, 100

Maroubra, 147

Martin, Sir James, 77

Mechanics Institutes, 53

Melbourne, 35, 65, 71, 103, 143–45; population, 142, 153;

‘Scotch settlement’, 31

Melbourne Club, 48

Melbourne University, 71

Mellish, 23, 24

Merchants, 17–18

Methodists, 18–19, 56, 61, 71, 81, 99–100

Miners, 61, 74, 77–78, 99–100, 121–22, 140

Moffitt, William, 27

Moonee Ponds, 145

Moreton Bay, 26, 34

Mulliculluial education, 160

329
Multiculturalism, 160–61, 163, 170

Munro, James, 84

Nationalism, 88, 93, 105–06

New England, 31

New Australia Council, 140

New Guinea, 167

New South Wales, 12–13, 17, 23, 26, 30–32, 95, 100,
108–09, 114, 117; population, 17, 39, 75, 85

New South Wales Corps, 13, 16–17, 19–20

New York, 144

New Zealand, 61, 96, 117, 131, 163

New Zealanders, 163

Newcastle, 11, 81; population, 81, 142

Newcomb, Caroline, 32

Nonconformity, 19, 44, 89, 100

Norfolk Island, 11, 26

North Carlton, 43

North Melbourne, 143

330
Northern Europeans, 117, 143, 149, 153

O’Brien, Henry and Cornelius, 32–34

Oliver, Charlie, 114

‘Over crowded professions’, 62, 64, 77

Pacific Islanders, 76–77

Paddington, 146

Palmer, Thomas Fyshe, 11

Parbo, Arvi, 140

Parkes, Clarinda, 41

Parkes, Henry, 41–42, 51, 86–87

Parramatta, 16, 35

Parramatta factory, 9

Pearson, Charles, 69–70

Peel, Thomas, 35

Penrith, 144

Perth, 96, 121, 150; population, 142

Poles, 136, 138, 149

331
Port Arthur, 26

Port Kembla, 136, 157

Port Macquarie, 26

Port Phillip, 32

Port Pirie, 121

Prahran, 146

Presbyterians, 12, 45, 49, 56, 71, 73

Price, Charles, 170

Professionals, 62, 98–99, 136; restrictions on practising,

136–37, 154

Pyrmont, 54

Queensland, 12, 31, 32, 34, 83, 109; Germans, 75, 117;
Italians, 117–19, 141; population, 75, 76, 83, 85; urban
growth, 83

Radicalism, 43, 50–51, 54, 70

Red Hill, 147

Redfern, 146

Redfern, William, 11

Redmond, Edward, 11

332
Refugees, 124–26, 134–40, 150–51

Richmond (NSW), 16

Richmond (Vic), 165

Richmond River, 117

Riley, Alexander, 17

Riverina, 31

Robinson, Michael, 6

Rose, George, 12

‘Rum rebellion’, 19

Russians, 124–25, 150–51

Rye, Maria, 63

Saigon, 164

Seaford, 147

Scandanavians, 85, 117, 149

Schools, 18, 48–49, 70–71, 160, 162

Scotland, 10, 12, 31–32, 41, 56; criminal law, 10, 62, 74;
population, 4, 94

333
Scottish, 10, 31, 35, 45, 69, 82, 85, 101; ‘chain migration’,
33; crofters, 40; gentry, 31, 48, 71; ‘gold diggers’, 62;
‘martyrs’, 10–11

Scullin, J.H., 115

Sectarianism, 56, 70, 86, 105

Select Committee on Transportation, 7, 28

’self employed’, 146

’self help’, 52

Serle, Geoffrey, 70

Shepparton, 157

Sicily, 144

Sikhs, 166

Singapore, 166

Smith, Adam, 4

’social gospel’, 89, 100

Southern Europeans, 117–25, 141, 143–46, 149, 153

South Africa, 94, 96, 134

334
South Australia, 43, 44, 51, 74, 85; Germans, 109; Juvenile
migration, 44–45, 56, 117; Methodists, 96, 110; population,
75, 85

South Australian Company, 44

South Yarra, 62

Soviet Union, 136

Spence, W. G. 100

Strasser, Paul, 140

Strong, Charles, 73

Summers, Charles, 70

Summers, Joseph, 70

Surry Hills, 53, 146

Swan River, 32

Syme, David, 62, 69

Sydney, 12, 17, 27, 29, 34–35, 144, 146, 151; Greeks,
144–46; housing, 35–36, 52, 80, 142; Italians, 142;
population, 143; temperance societies, 53

Sydney School of Arts, 53

Sydney University, 71, 79, 121

335
Taiping Rebellion, 66

Tasmania (Van Diemen’s Land), 13, 17, 23, 26, 28, 30–31,
38, 48, 74, 109; ‘convictism’, 54; population, 17, 75, 85

Temperance societies, 53, 70, 84

Tennyson, Lady Audrey, 85

Terry Samuel, 7–8

Thailand, 164

Tingley, Henry, 26

‘Tolpuddle Martyrs’, 25

Toongabbie, 11–12

Trade unions, 73, 81; and immigrants, 81, 99–100, 121, 134,
159–60

Turkey, 153

Turks, 153

Two-fold Bay, 31

Ukranians, 139–40

Underwood, James, 7

Unemployment, 42, 115, 121

336
Unionism, 73, 81, 99–100

United Nations, 136, 164

United States, 36, 78, 108, 119; immigration, 60, 95; Irish
immigrants, 55, 82, 95

Urban growth, 83, 142

Vass Andrew, 146

Verge, John, 35

Vernon Committee, 153

Victoria, 31, 109, 112; gold rushes, 60–68; immigrants and

politics, 69–70; Irish, 82–83; Italians, 143; Land settlement,
112–12; population, 65, 75, 82; western districts, 32

Victorian Chamber of Manufacturers, 73

Vietnamese, 164–65, 167

Wages, 79, 155

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 42–43

Wales, 35; population, 4

Walker, William, 17

Waten, Judah, 124–25

Watson, J.C., 88

337
Wekey, Sigismund, 65–66

Wesley, John, 18

Wesleyans, 19, 77

Western Australia, 30, 32, 35, 83, 100, 110, 114; convicts, 53,
72; land settlement, 34–35, 95, 110; population, 34, 75, 85

‘White Australia’, 67–68, 88–89, 93, 153

White Russians, 150–51

Willis, Albert, 99–100

Windang, 157

Wollongong, 147, 153; population, 142

Women, 14–15, 98, 111, 138, 142, 144, 157–58; and politics,
160; assisted immigrants, 37–38, 62–64; convicts, 8–9,
16–17; European-born, 117; governesses, 62–64; proportion
of population, 8, 65, 144; workforce, 157–60

Workforce, 111, 140, 152, 154–55

‘Wowserism’, 68

Yarraville, 146

Yass, 26, 32

Young Australia League, 110

338
Yugoslavaians, 149, 153, 154, 158

339