Page:EB1911 - Volume 19.djvu/566

 Gippsland, Victoria, near Cape Everard, which he named Point Hicks, and sailed along the east coast of Australia as far north as Botany Bay, where he landed, and claimed possession of the continent on behalf of King George III. He then continued his voyage along the east coast of Australia, and returned to England by way of Torres Strait and the Indian Ocean. The favourable reports made by Captain Cook of the country around Botany Bay induced the British government to found a penal settlement on the south-eastern part of what was then known as New Holland. An expedition, consisting of H.M.S. “Sirius” of 20 guns, the armed trader “Supply,” three store-ships and six transports, left England on 17th May 1787, and after touching at Tenerife, Rio de Janeiro, and the Cape of Good Hope, arrived at Botany Bay on the 20th of January 1788, under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, R.N., with Captain John Hunter, R.N., as second. The persons on board the fleet included 564 male and 192, female convicts, and a detachment of marines, consisting of Major Ross, commandant, 16 officers, 24 non-commissioned officers, an adjutant and quartermaster, 160 privates and 40 women. There were in addition five medical men and a few mechanics. The live stock consisted of one bull and four cows, a stallion and three mares, some sheep, goats, pigs and a large number of fowls. The expedition was well provided with' seeds of all descriptions.

The shores of Botany Bay were found to be unsuitable for residence or cultivation, and Captain Phillip transferred the people under his command to Port Jackson, half a dozen miles away, near the site of the present city of Sydney. For some years the history of the infant settlement was that of a large gaol; the attempts made to till the soil at Farm Cove near Sydney and near Parramatta were only partially successful, and upon several occasions the residents of the encampment suffered much privation. But by degrees the difficulties inseparable from the foundation of a remote colony were surmounted, several additional convict-ships landed their living freight on the shores of Port Jackson, and in 1793 an emigrant-ship arrived with free settlers, who were furnished with provisions and presented with free grants of land. By the end of the 18th century the inhabitants of Sydney and its neighbourhood numbered 5000. Immediately after the arrival of the first fleet, surveys of the adjacent coast were made; the existence of a strait between Australia and Tasmania was discovered by Surgeon Bass; and before the retirement of Governor King in 1806 Australia had been circumnavigated and the principal features of its coast-line accurately surveyed by Captain Flinders, R.N. The explorations landward were, however, not so successful, and for many years the Blue Mountains, which rise a few miles back from Sydney, formed an impenetrable barrier to the progress of colonization. Penal establishments were formed at Newcastle in New South Wales, at Hobart and Launceston in Tasmania, and an unsuccessful attempt was made to colonize Port Phillip. The most noteworthy incident in the first decade of the 19th century was the forcible deportation by the officers of the New South Wales Corps, a regiment raised in England for service in the colony, of the governor, Captain Bligh, R.N., the naval officer identified with the mutiny of the “Bounty.” For some time the government was administered by the senior officer of the New South Wales Corps, but in 1809 he was succeeded by Captain Macquarie, who retained the governorship for eleven years.

During the régime of this able administrator New South Wales was transformed from a penal settlement to a colony. Before the arrival of Macquarie schools and churches had been erected, a newspaper, the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, had been started, and attempts had been made to acclimatize the drama. But he was the first governor to open up the country. He constructed permanent buildings at Sydney and Parramatta, formed roads and built bridges in the districts along the coast, and commenced a track across the Blue Mountains, which had been crossed in 1813 by Wentworth and others, thus opening up the rich interior to the inhabitants of Sydney. It was during Captain Macquarie’s administration that the first banking institution, the Bank of New South Wales, was founded. The final fall of Napoleon in 1815 gave the people of the United Kingdom leisure to think about their possessions at the Antipodes; and in 1817 free settlers commenced to arrive in considerable numbers, attracted by the success of Captain John M‘Arthur, an officer in the New South Wales Regiment, who had demonstrated that the soil, grass and climate were well adapted for the growth of merino wool. But although the free settlers prospered, and were enabled to purchase land on very easy terms, they were dissatisfied with the administration of justice, which was in the hands of a judge-advocate assisted by military officers, and with the absence of a free press and representative institutions. They also demanded permission to occupy the vast plains of the interior, without having to obtain by purchase or by grant the fee-simple of the lands upon which their sheep and cattle grazed. These demands were urged during the governorships of Sir Thomas Brisbane and General Darling; but they were not finally conceded, together with perfect religious equality, until the regime of Sir Richard Bourke, which lasted from 1831 to 1837. At the latter date the population had increased to 76,793, of whom 25,254 males and 2557 females were or had been convicts. Settlement had progressed at a rapid rate. Parramatta, Richmond and Windsor had indeed been founded within the first decade of the colony’s existence; Newcastle, Maitland and Morpeth, near the coast to the north of Sydney, had been begun during the earlier years of the 19th century; but the towns of the interior, Goulburn, Bathurst and others, were not commenced till about 1835, in which year the site of Melbourne was first occupied by Batman and Fawkner. The explorations which followed the passage of the Blue Mountains opened up a large portion of south-eastern Australia. Van Diemen’s Land was declared a separate colony in 1825, West Australia in 1829, South Australia in 1836 and New Zealand in 1839; so that before 1840 the original area of New South Wales, which at first included the mainland of Australia and the islands in the South Pacific, had been greatly reduced. In 1840 the press was free in every part of Australia, trial by jury had been introduced, and every colony possessed a legislature, although in none of them except New South Wales had the principle of representation been introduced, and in that colony only to a very limited extent. The policy of granting land without payment, originally in force in New South Wales, had been abandoned in favour of sales of the public lands by auction at the upset price of twenty shillings per acre; and the system of squatting licences, under which colonists were allowed to occupy the waste lands on payment of a small annual licence, had been conceded. In 1851, when separate autonomy was granted to Victoria, New South Wales had a population of 187,243, the annual imports were £2,078,338, the exports £2,399,580, the revenue was £S75,794, and the colony contained 132,437 horses, 1,738,965 cattle and 13,059,324 sheep.

Gold was discovered at Summerhill Creek, near Bathurst, in February 1851, by Edward Hammond Hargraves; and at the end of June the first shipment, valued at £3500, left Sydney. This discovery made an important change in the position of the colony, and transportation, which had been discontinued during the previous year, was finally abolished. The first mail steamer arrived in August 1852, and in 1853 a branch of the Royal Mint was established at Sydney. The New Constitution Bill, passed during the same year by the local legislature, provided for two deliberative chambers, the assembly to be elected and the council nominated, and for the responsibility of the executive to the legislature. The Sydney University, founded in 1850, was enlarged in 1854, and the first railway in New South Wales, from Sydney to Parramatta, commenced in 1850, was opened in 1855. In the same the Imperial parliament passed the New Constitution Act; and in June 1856 the first responsible government in Australia was formed, during the governorship of Sir William Denison, by Mr Stuart Alexander Donaldson.