Year 5 Day 26: A Brief History Of Australia- Part 4
26 February 2012 | Bundaberg Port Marina, AU
Dave/Underwater!!!!
Today the skies opened up and it rained, rained, and then rained some more. A few times the rains were exceedingly heavy and visibility was only a few feet. We could not see the bows of Leu Cat from our salon windows. Furthermore, once a cell passed by, another would appear in the near distance, ready to pounce. We were assaulted throughout the day by wave upon wave of periods of rain. Thus, work on the remaining boat projects was delayed. However, MM still cleaned inside Leu Cat to make her shine while we were gone. We will have to finish putting the battens into the mainsail when we return from our trip exploring Australia since we leave tomorrow.
Fortunately, as evening approached, the skies cleared a bit and we were joined by Cheryl and John of Sea Mist for dinner. I had rented the local junk-mobile this afternoon so that John could drive us into town tomorrow and drop us off at the train station in the morning. Armed with the reins of "The Beast", we drove over the Baraga, a little seaside town just to the south of us. They have one of the few "upscale" restaurants in our area and we wanted to have a nice dinner for our last meal before we leave for our adventure.
A good time was had by all and, even though I brought the camera, I forget to take a picture for this blog. Thus, you will just have to use your imagination to picture the four of us, with piles of food and drink in front of us, all with big smiles on our faces...
I will continue with my brief oversight of the history of Australia, picking up with the second half of the 18th century.
The Colonization of Australia: 1860 to 1900.
As the settlements started dotting the seaward edges of the continent more and more interest was being developed for the exploration of the interior. In August 1860, 18 men led by Robert Burke (1821-1861) and William Wills (1834-1861) set out on an attempt to cross Australia from Melbourne in the south to the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north, a distance of around 2,000 miles. They had 23 horses and 25 camels with them. They reached Menindee on 12 October having taken two months to travel just 470 miles from Melbourne. The regular mail coach did the journey in little more than a week. By now two of the expedition's five officers had resigned, thirteen members of the expedition had been fired and eight new men had been hired.
The year before, a governmental reward had been offered to the first person to cross the continent from the south to the north. The renowned explorer John McDouall Stuart had taken up the challenge and Burke was concerned Stuart might beat him to the north coast. At Menindee he soon grew impatient with their slow progress and he decided to split the expedition. An advance party would go to Cooper's Creek. The rest of the expedition would follow. Burke reached Cooper's Creek on 11 November 1860. However, in his hurry to reach the coast, he decided to continue without waiting for the rest of the expedition to arrive with the rest of the supplies. He took 3 men with him, William Wills, Charles Gray and John King. They had 1 horse and 6 camels. A man named William Brahe was left in charge of the supplies at Cooper's Creek.
On 9 February 1861 Burke, Wills, Gray and King reached a salty creek and realized they were near the sea. However, due to the extensive swampland they were facing, they were unable to reach the ocean although they were just a few kilometers away! Frustrated, they turned back. As they made their long journey back south, they were forced to eat the horse and some of the camels. To extend their food supply, they ate portulaca (- just a note to say that that the common name is Moss Rose and we used to grow it when we lived in Delaware -), Gray also caught an 11 lb Python, which they ate. Both Burke and Gray immediately came down with dysentery. Gray was ill, but Burke thought he was "gammoning" (pretending). On 25 March on the Burke River (just south of what is now the town of Boulia), Gray was caught stealing skilligolee (a type of watery porridge) and Burke beat him. By 8 April Gray could not walk; he died on 17 April of dysentery at a place they called Polygonum Swamp.
Meanwhile William Brahe waited at Coopers Creek until 21 April. At that time, he decided to leave and, as it turns out, he ended up leaving only hours before Burke, Wills and King returned. Depleted of supplies and with no food left, Burke and Wills both shortly died of starvation. Only King survived as he was rescued by Indigenous Australians. An outstanding web site dedicated to this tragic expedition can be found at: http://www.burkeandwills.net.au/index.php
In the late 19th century Northern Australia finally began to grow. Darwin was founded in 1869. In 1872 an overland telegraph was made from Darwin (north coast of Australia) to Adelaide (south coast of Australia). Cattle became very important to the northern economy and because of the hot climate sugar plantations were also established.
There was also a railway boom in Australia in the late 19th century. Although the first railways in Australia were built in the early 1850s there was still only about 1,600 miles of railway in 1875. By 1891 there was over 10,000 miles of railway. Unfortunately, each territory adopted a different gauge for the rails used within its boundaries. The benefits of a uniform gauge were not immediately apparent to the Aussies, as passengers would have to pass through customs and immigration at the border of each territory, meaning that all goods would have to be removed for customs inspection. It was only with federation, and free trade between the states, that the impediment of different gauges became apparent. This remained a problem with transportation and movement of goods between the territories up until just a few years ago when the last differences in gauges between connecting rail lines was completed.
In the second half of the 19th century, communications also improved with the invention of the telephone. The first telephone call in Australia was made in Melbourne in 1878. Telephone exchanges opened in Melbourne and Brisbane (1880), Sydney (1881), Adelaide, Hobart and Launceston (1883) and Perth (1887).
A second major gold rush occurred when gold was found in Western Australia in 1882. Another find in 1892 led to third gold rush. However this time the gold was exploited by large companies rather than by lone prospectors. The population of Western Australia boomed as a result of these gold rushes.
However in the 1890s Australia suffered a recession, which was compounded by drought in the late 1890s. Not surprisingly immigration fell dramatically during the decade.
By the end of the 19th century, many tended to idealize 'the bush' (that is, anywhere away from the civilization) and its people. The great forum for this 'bush nationalism' was the hugely popular Bulletin magazine. Its pages were filled with humor and sentiment about daily life and its most notable writers were bush legends Henry Lawson and 'Banjo' Paterson.
Henry Lawson was an alcoholic and a frequent beggar on the streets of Sydney, notably at the Circular Quay ferry turnstiles. However he was probably Australia's best-known writer/celebrity. At one time he was jailed at Darlinghurst Gaol for drunkenness and nonpayment of alimony, and recorded his experience in the haunting poem "One Hundred and Three" - his prison number- which was published in 1908. He refers to the prison as "Starvinghurst Gaol" because of the meager rations given to the inmates.
'Banjo' Paterson was an Australian bush poet, journalist and author. He wrote many ballads and poems about Australian life, focusing particularly on the rural and outback areas, including the district around Binalong, New South Wales where he spent much of his childhood. Paterson's more notable poems include "Waltzing Matilda", "The Man from Snowy River" and "Clancy of the Overflow".
By the turn of the century, the population of Australia was 3,370,000. The largest city was Melbourne with a population of about 420,000. Second was Sydney with about 360,000. Adelaide had about 115,000 and Brisbane 86,000. Hobart, in Tasmania, was much smaller with just 34,000 people.