Week Seven Response

The reactions to the discovery of gold in Australia and what affect it would have on its future varied across society. The main reason for this variation was the different class, position, social status or gender of the person whom was considering the future. Although many had a positive outlook on what gold would do for the nation, there were also some anxieties about what shape the future society would take.  Of particular concern for Australians was the cultural make up of the nation which they believed should reflect true British ideals.

Many of the lower classes saw the discovery of gold as a way to better themselves. Gold moulded Australia into a land of limitless possibility, where any man could improve their position in society. The most obvious avenue that these dreamers saw was to gain an unprecedented level of wealth which could then be converted into better property, and better chances at better jobs, thus creating a higher standing for themselves in society. Others in the lower classes saw the chance to create a more democratic society where the egalitarianism of the gold field could also be reflected in the wider social order. These ideals can be seen in the document “The political demands of the diggers” which outlines the changes they hold most dear including but not restricted to a full and fair representation,  manhood suffrages and the short duration of parliaments. All key elements to the future that they wanted for Australia.

The upper classes of society in particular feared the affect that a society born out of the mining rush would have on the nation’s future.  Their key fear was the imbalance in gender ratios. Aside from the problems associated with having a shortage of women for continued expansion. Many people deplored the behaviour of the diggers and the lasting affects this could have on society. It was widely believed at the time that women moderated the behaviour of menfolk. Therefore there simply weren’t enough women to exert this calming influence. Russel ward writes that converts to a faith are prone to be more fanatical than those who are born to it. In this way each successive wave of immigrants who came to the diggings became filthier and cruder. The upper classes feared that if this trend were to continue then future society of Australia would be one of loose morals. They envisaged widespread gambling drinking and prostitution.

Another darker image of the future Australia that took shape during this time was the reaction against the immigration of around 40 000 Chinese people. The policy and reactions that resulted from this influx of a people so clearly foreign to the white majority of Australia reflect poorly on race relations at the time.  From the anti Chinese rebellions at Lambing flat and Buckland one can see evidence of early racism which was to be carried on into the migration acts in the 1950s designed to discourage non white, but particularly Chinese immigration. This then follows through to the white Australia policy which existed for in various laws in Australia for the majority of the 20^th century. Australia was for the white race as E.J.Brady clearly demonstrates from his writings in the bulletin. “Over great plains their horses had galloped- north, south, east and west they had been staking a continent for the white race.” A reflection that can also be seen in the way the government dealt with Australia’s aboriginal people. 

The Lambing Flat riots of 1861 marked one of the cultural lows of early Australia. In this painting "Might Versus Right" by S.T.Gill we can see white miners cutting off Chinese pigtails known as queues. http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/objectsthroughtime/lambingflatsbanner/ 

Week Six Response

The topic of frontier violence during the settlement of Australia continues to create such intense debate due to the proximity of the issue to the national identity. It also threatens to change the way we view our history and the core values on which the nation of today stands.  The key point surrounding the debate remains in what way will our nations public history deal with the subject of frontier violence.

The crux of the issue in recent times has been whether or not the frontier wars, though there is still debate about whether they can be called a war in the first place, should be included in the Australian War Memorial (AWM). The AWM is the one of the greatest vehicles for Australian public history and remembrance. This is why the inclusion or exclusion of the frontier violence is of such national importance. Strong voices in favour of the incorporation of what they see as a war in the AWM, include many notable Australian historians such as WEH Stanner.

 Presently in the current debate Stanner’s comment remains true, “the unacknowledged relations between two races” in 1968. That they remain unacknowledged in the AWM has been thus far due to refusal of the AWM to acknowledge that the violence constituted a war in which Australians fought. The two main arguments employed by the AWM to support this stance are the nature of the violence and the participants involved. According to the AWM the violence was, without centralised direction, irregular and varied so much from region to region that it doesn’t constitute a state of warfare. On the people involved the AWM makes it clear “only police forces or British military units were involved in the ‘wars’”. According to them this clearly doesn’t fit the AWM’s charter which is to commemorate Australia’s military forces.  

The aboriginal activists on the issue believe that the aboriginals are therefore being deliberately and conveniently left out of the national historical narrative. Their catch cry “best  we forget” best exemplifies their feelings. Inherent in this statement though is a potential politically minefield. Borrowing from the almost holy phrase “lest we forget” is a slap in the face to the generations of soldiers who have fought and died for their nation. Clearly the stakes are high for an issue that cannot remain unresolved but even in resolution will be contentious and liable to spark more debate.

W.E.H Stanner. One of the staunchest advocates from recognition of the frontier violence. http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/images/stanner1968.jpg 

Week Five Response

The following is a response to the Question 4. According to Mitchell, what impact were settlers having upon the environment.

Writing in 1848, Thomas Livingston Mitchell gives the aborigines great credit for surviving and adapting to their environment in order to survive, and argues that the intrusion of the white man will cause the extirpation of the aborigine. Mitchell points out the many success and positive affects aboriginals have had on their environment through having and active role in its care. He states that the white man has no regard or care for how things have been done successfully in the past and that this together with the way in which they now treat the environment will lead to the destruction of the aboriginal race.  The techniques and in particular the raising of European animals such as cattle are cited as major disruptions to their way of life.

Mitchell is extremely complementary of the way the aboriginals can survive conditions that to the European eye seem harsh and challenging. He disagrees with them being the lowliest in scale instead describing them as being “superior in penetration and judgement”. Mitchell highlights their ability to adjust to life with few resources as the key to their survival.  Explaining how the resources of the natives are economised can only be learned by “an extensive acquaintance” with the land. The technique that he particularly notes is that of deliberate burning of land in order to take an active role the shaping of the landscape. This is done he notices in order for the aboriginal to have ready access to a thriving kangaroo population for food. By managing the clearing of forest known as fire stick farming the aboriginals ensure the growth of good young grass on which the kangaroos rely on primarily for food, thus ensuring a healthy population that can then be hunted.

Mitchell is also highly critical of the way that white men have come into this pre existing way of life and completely disregarded it. The white men Mitchell argues have no concept of the way the fire stick farming helps to maintain the clear planes that they have so readily exploited for the use of their own cattle. It is this failure to recognise the importance of this treatment that he attributes to the cause of the regrowth of young saplings. “thick forests of young trees, where, formerly a man might gallop without impediment, and see whole miles before him.” Mitchell also believes that fire is no longer utilised due to its undesirability in the fenced climate of cattle farming. Mitchell dams this lack of vision and prophesises that the lack of understanding on this issue as well as the push for greater profits in cattle farming, will inevitability lead to the devastation of aborigines and there way of life. “ silently, but surely, that extirpation of aborigines is going forward in grazing districts, even where protectors of aborigines have been most active”.  Mitchell concludes with the ominous warning and lament that protection policies are failing and that forces far more sinister are already causing the extinction the aboriginals of Van Diemen’s land.



A drawing by Henry Brinton depicting An Aboriginal hunting kangaroos. kangaroo was a primary source of food for the aboriginal people. The method of fire stick farming was used as a means to encourage the growth of this essential food source. http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictures/gid/slv-pic-aaa08095/1/pi005361 

Week Four Response

Female convicts have a long and varied history of recognition in the Australian narrative. From being almost ignored and bundled in with male convicts by Clarke to an in depth research by Anne Summers the way people view convict women continues to evolve. Deborah Oxley provides the most even handed and objective account of our founding women.

Clarke virtually ignored the female convicts as a group focusing mostly on the criminal class that they formed together with their male convicts. Clarke only refers to females in the ratios in which they came to the colony.  Commenting that prior to 1815 they arrived in a ratio of one third compared to males but after 1815 and the reforms to British law, 1824 to 1834, only at one seventh. The new laws Clarke believes decreed that transportation was too harsh a punishment for women.  That only the more heinous crimes were punishable by transportation also lowered the number of female convicts.

Anne summers makes it clear that convict women were victims of a male dominated system. They were utilised and abused by a system to ensure needs were met. The overriding reason that summers believes convict women were transported was to provide sexual gratification for the male inhabitants of the colony including their fellow male convicts. The primary goal of the British legal system was to find as many suitable criminals as they could. This was achieved by making female sentences harsher than male, particularly on first time offenders. Upon arrival the women would enter a world of whoredom where almost all women were considered to be prostitutes or concubines. In general summers asserts they were received rather as prostitutes than as servants, where the British government acted as imperial whoremaster. This was also the view of the time with judge Thomas McQueen declaring them “the most disgusting objects that ever disgraced the female form”. She also points to attempts at creating jobs for female convicts such as the Parramatta women’s factory as conveniently hiding the disturbing truth from the public eye.

Deborah Oxley deals less with the conditions that greeted the female convicts on arrival instead focusing on the reasons they were sent there. Oxley believed that though female convicts were criminals they were hardly the members of professional gangs of wrongdoers as Clarke contended. Nor where they all prostitutes, as Portia Robinson asserts in Oxley’s article, “prostitution was not a transportable offence”. Oxley agrees that the women were targeted by the government, as evidenced by young women being the first group to be offered fiscal reward for moving to the colonies. Oxley also notes the conspicuous absence of factory women from the convict indents, instead finding various forms of maids in the largest numbers. Oxley sees female convicts as “a diverse group of women united in the fact they were caught, prosecuted, sentenced and transported on the main for crimes against property”.

Female Convicts mooning the Governor of Van Diemens Land and Reverend William Bedford at the cascades women's factory demonstrating the very worst in the convict women. Considering such acts it is understandable that they developed such a poor reputation as expressed by Summers. http://www.convictcreations.com/history/images/moonings.jpg    

Week Two Response

The Australian continent was the last habitable continent to at least partially come under the control of European influence. There were according to Manning Clarke a variety of reasons for this but he places the single most importance on the failure of early religious movements to venture into the unknown. This was chiefly aligned with a lack of technological advancement and enlightened thinking present in the societies that were attempting to explore and claim the great terra incognita.  For Clarke another contributing factor was the apparently harsh and worthless climate that early explorers found there. It was not until these earlier factors were overcome that successful voyagers took place.

For religious groups the unknown lands to the south were a land beyond civilisation. A place where humans were still doomed to wretchedness for their part in the original sin. A view widely held was that the peoples their failed to advance from barbarism as result. According to Clarke they believed that the lands where cold, snow filled and that it was inhabited by grotesque mutations of humans with abnormally large ears. It was this portrait that played a major role in dissuading many would be claimants to Australia. Clarke also asserts that some religious groups such as the Malays didn’t venture into the territories east of Timor because they didn’t feel the need and lacked suitable knowledge. It was this same attitude that was then passed on the early catholic explorers such as Vasco de Gama of Portugal. The primary interest of Catholicism was the domination of the spice trade and the search for gold. Since nether were said to be found further south there was no incentive to go there.  Indeed the Portuguese were far more concerned with elaborate plots to end the dominance of the Grande Turk.

The protestant English and Dutch sought to win souls for heaven, were the restorers of pristine purity. They desired herbs and spices for healing, but also believed that the sands and flies found in Australia were the result of a failure to repent their sins. The “very large tract of land, with a dry sandy soil, which was destitute of water” which Englishman William Dampier described evoked no desire in their respective motherlands to settle this desolate place.  According to Clarke it is these tales that were brought back to Europe that did much to discourage exploration of the southern land mass.

Clarke believes that with the coming of the enlightenment humanity was able to shrug off some of these religious shackles and engage in an even greater degree of commerce.  Commerce was the key to claiming power status in the new Europe, Britain and Holland rose supreme over nations like Sweden and Denmark. It was this quest for an extension of commerce that Clarke contends was the driving force behind a renewed interest in the South Seas. With new technologies such as improvements in ship building, aids in navigation and in the diet of seamen making exploration easier. Clarke argues that the success and favourable outcomes of these voyagers become more likely.

A map from the La Trobe Journal depicting the "Terra Australis nondum cognita", or the great unknown southern land. This was to prove the insurmountable frontier for many years and was only fully breached according to Clarke by the arrival of the men of the Enlightenment. http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-41/fig-latrobe-41P001a.html