Responses to Gold

'When gold came to eastern Australia in the 1850s it brought with it tremendous social, economic, political, demographic, cultural and racial upheaval.' - Deborah Gare and David Ritter (p190)

The discovery of gold not only changed Australian society; it also altered the way in which many people imagined Australia's future and their place within it.

For many, the gold fields inspired dreams of wealth and independence; whilst for other the social upheaval and rapid workforce displacement caused by the gold rushes brought anxiety and uncertainty.

The prolific paintings of Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-1880) reflect many to these diverse responses to gold. 

'A Bendigo Mill'

'A Bendigo Mill' - S.T Gill

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab36493/1/b28283

One of the anxieties that the gold rushes appeared to inspire was the fear of the breakdown of order. A fear of what these temporary, spontaneous tent cities might become outside the civilising influence of home and settled, ordered society.

How was order, and a British sense of civility to be maintained in this almost exclusively male society-outside-society?

The above watercolour by S.T Gill depicts an uneasy tension between a sense of British civility (it depicts a boxing match rather than a brawl) and the possibility of descent into violence. 

'The Claim Disputed'

'The Claim Disputed' S.T Gill

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab36416/1/b28260

One common anxiety produced by the rush to the gold fields appears to be the fear of how order and principals of ownership will be maintained in the face of greed, and in a society which has not been founded on the traditional British/Australian notions of property and ownership.

'The Claim Disputed' expressed the tensions and the fear of the gold fields erupting in sudden violence.

The anxious expressions of the onlookers, and their sudden rush to action express the concern of the 'neighbours' in this gold field 'society', but also appear to suggest the potential for escalating violence present in this situation.

'Convivial Diggers in Melbourne'

'Convivial Diggers in Melbourne' - S.T Gill

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab36501/1/b28291

This depiction of 'Convivial Diggers' could have suggested different ideas to different contemporary audiences.

To some, the sense of the painting, coupled with the word 'convivial', would suggest a merry, friendly atmosphere of feasting and drinking. 

The diggers have returned to the centre of Melbourne, having achieved success in their pursuit of gold - The dream has been realised.  

As Geoffrey Blainey wrote - 'To win gold was the only honest chance millions of people had of bettering themselves, of gaining independence, of storing money for old age or sickness, of teaching their children to read or write'. (p190)

Although the painting can be read in this way, it could also be seen as a reflection of the unease felt by many at this sudden wealth, which was in theory available to anyone.

English society at this time was ordered through a strict class structure, and in Australia this social stratification would also have been evident.

Although we may think of the bush as the place where a spirit of mateship and equality flourished, there still existed a distinct separation between master and servant, landowner and worker.

This watercolour depiction is not flattering. The diggers are drunk, apparently frittering their newly gained wealth, and failing to act with the propriety which the wealthy settlers of 'good breeding' would have expected of those of their own social standing.

This parody of the Nouveau riche, may appear to be occasioned by an abstract, snobbish fear; however the fear that the traditional relationships between employers and the working class was breaking down was in part caused by the very real disruptions which the gold rushes caused, as many employers lost their workers to the gold fields. 

'Cradling' 

'Cradling' - S.T Gill

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab36419/1/b28262

In contrast to the social anxieties produced by the gold rush era, this watercolour depiction is closer to the way in which many were re-imagining Australia's future in light of the gold rushes.

The gold rush ear continued the formation of a uniquely Australian identity, which was seperate from English identity.

Life in Australia - as seen through life on the gold fields - was an outdoors life. Man worked surrounded by nature, instead of in an industrial setting.

Life in Australia may not have been entirely egalitarian, but as shown in the above depiction of the two diggers, there were many opportunities for men to work for themselves, or in partnerships, rather than working for a boss. 

The soft light of the picture suggests and ideal, healthy, outdoor lifestyle; and the two men are talking, or joking, as they work in partnership. The work may be hard, but with the possibilities in Australia of working ones own land (or working a claim on the gold fields) came the dream of reward for labour. The egalitarian notion that anyone could find 'wealth for toil'.

'Unlucky Digger that Never Returned'

'Unlucky Digger that Never Returned' - S.T Gill 

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/pictoria/gid/slv-pic-aab36506/1/b28295

Whilst the discovery of gold inspired the dream that anyone could strike it lucky - that anyone could gain wealth, independence, and a better future, there was always the chance that many would be unlucky in their ventures.

The digger in this painting had died alone. Far from family, society and the church, there is no one to mourn, or to bury his body.

Emma Woodward

References:

'Section 7: Gold and the Coming Australian' in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, pp190-193.

Why has the issue of frontier violence provoked such intense debate? What is at stake here?

‘Terra Nullius’ – Land belonging to no one.
When the British arrived in Australia, they declared the land to be ownerless. Devoid of ‘human’ habitation.
Later historical narratives, though certainly acknowledging the presence of an Aboriginal population, still depict the colonisation of Australia by the British as ‘a peaceful act of discovery and settlement, whereby a progressive people and their venerable institutions were successfully transplanted and the land was transformed, thus resulting in the new nation of Australia.’ (p172) – Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster, Frontier Conflict: The Australian experience.
This version of history maintains that the Aboriginal population was small, and that the settlers were not taking land from them, because the Indigenous population supposedly were not using it.  As white settlers saw no sign of British agriculture or land management, they considered the land unused, and ripe for settlement and cultivation.
In the beginning, the British were attempting to understand a vast continent, populated by Aboriginal people with a culture and practices very different from their own. They drew conclusions from first impressions of people and places. The following is from Captain James Cook describes his impression of New Holland, August 1770.
‘I do not look upon them to be a Warlike People, on the contrary I think them a timorous and inoffensive race… neither are they very numerous’. (pp3-4)
This view of settlement - that the Aborigines were not numerous, and that settlement through hard work made use of uninhabited land - continued to pervade our notions of history, and became part of the Anglo-Australian sense of national identity.

Frontier Violence has always had a place in recorded history, as revealed by this painting from 1861, depicting a battle at Bulloo. However the extent of the violence, and the reasons why violence erupted between Aborigines and Europeans, are still sensitive subjects which provoke intense debate.

Bulla, Queensland, 1861 – William Oswald Hodgkinson, 1835-1900.
Source -http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn4189024-s46

 The issue of frontier violence however, posed a real challenge to a long accepted narrative of history.
As Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster argued - It has ‘provoked a crisis of confidence or conscience for many Australians,’ (p172) because the existence of ‘frontier violence’ suggests not that the land was unused and underpopulated, but that in many instances, Aborigines actively sought to defend their land.
Attwood and Foster also note:
'As a result, the following picture of the frontier emerged during the 1970s: Aborigines and Europeans used the land in quite incompatible ways as pastoralists’ cattle and sheep ate, trampled and fouled Aborigines’ sources of food and water; Aborigines were forced to steal the newcomers’ stock and other  property in order to survive and often launched attacks on the colonists; pastoralists and their men wreaked violence on Aborigines, killing large numbers in the course of conflict across the country.' (pp170-171)
‘Consequently, the settlement of this country has been rendered as an act of invasion, a process of conquest that dispossessed the rightful owners of the land and resulted in violence, racial discrimination and neglect which destroyed many Aboriginal communities and degraded most Aboriginal people.’ (p172)


References:

‘Captain James Cook describes his impression of New Holland, August 1770.’ in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, pp3-4.

‘Frontier Conflict: The Australian experience’ Bain Attwood and S.G. Foster, in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, pp169-174.

Depictions of European Settlers and the Landscape

  'We've golden soil and wealth for toil,

Our home is girt by sea;

Our land abounds in nature's gifts

Of beauty rich and rare.' - Advance Australia Fair

Anja Schwarz suggested in her article 'Mapping (Un-)Australian Identities' that geography is 'a topic "practically unavoidable" for Australian literature, due to the nation's colonial history. Initially, a main preoccupation of Australian writers was the process of 'coming to terms' with the new continent, as they had to 'unlearn' their preconceived ideas about the land in order to be able to speak of it in a way appropriate to their new surroundings.' (p16)

Australian literature has an interesting function, in that it can be seen as a reflection not just of Australian society, but as an indication of how we view ourselves as a nation. Literature has also, in part, formed our view of Australians as a nation. 

Schwarz suggests that literature ‘served to mythologise the land… The imaginary regime established in the late-nineteenth century by writers such as Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson – of the land, of the bushman, of rural communities – remains hegemonic for literary conceptions of Australian identity until today.’ (p16)

Literature and artworks assist in indicating to us the varied and changing attitudes of European settlers and Anglo-Australians towards the land they colonised.

For early European settlers, Australia was a completely alien environment. 

Some envisioned the land as an earthly paradise – a land with an agreeable climate where European plants and livestock would surely flourish.

Other viewed the Australian landscape as frightening and harsh. The extremes of temperature, the risks of drought and bushfire, were unknown and unpredictable hazards, for which British agriculture had not prepared them. 

Drought-prone, with large areas of arid and barren land; Australia must have seemed a strange environment to early European settlers.

 ‘DOWN IN THEIR LUCK. A SKETCH ON THE SALT BUSH PLAINS.’ W.S. Calvert

http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/miscpics/gid/slv-pic-aab19683/1/mp006454

 

Later, as Australia moved towards federation, well-known Australian writers depicted a people shaped by their bush environment. The conditions may have been harsh, but ‘Aussie battlers’ would not have had this identity if not for the struggle of (white) man against nature.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s white Australians had come to appreciate a ‘sunburnt country/ A land of sweeping plains,’ – Dorothea Mackellar, My Country.

Whilst still knowing the backbreaking work and heartache of life on the land –

‘Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die’ (Mackellar)

The Australian landscape shaped the identity of the descendants of European settlers, as it had shaped the lifestyles, identity and spiritual lives of the Aboriginal people.

European settlement, however, was to have a devastating impact on the Australian landscape.

Settlers, homesick for England, and unable to imagine existence without the necessities of their British flora and fauna - crops and livestock and domesticated animals - began to introduce them to Australia.  

Some species hitched rides on ships bound for Australia, and so were introduced unwittingly – others were very deliberate introductions:

Rabbits, Foxes, Cats, Cattle, Sheep, Weeds, and crops which later became weeds – all impacted the environment.

Large-scale clearing of land also altered the face of the continent. Not only this, but land clearing produced other, unforseen consequences – such as soil erosion and increased salinity.

These are all issues which most Australians now know about, though it may seem white Australians realised ‘too little, too late’.

A report from 1848 by the explorer Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, however, showed remarkable insight into the devastating effect settlers would have on the land.

Mitchell writes of Aboriginal land management, noting:

‘Fire, grass, kangaroos, and human inhabitants, seem all dependant on each other for existence in Australia.’ (p134)

Mitchell notes that kangaroos will leave areas where cattle graze – robbing the Aboriginal people of a vital food source. He also notes the effects a lack of understanding has already caused:

‘The squatters, it is true, have also been obliged to burn the old grass occasionally on their runs; but so little has this been understood by the Imperial Government that an order against the burning of grass was once sent out… Kangaroos are no longer to be seen there; the grass is choked by underwood; neither are there natives to burn the grass, nor is fire longer desirable there amongst the fences of the settler.’ (p134)

Although Mitchell may have been wrong about the ‘extirpation of the aborigines’; with incredible foresight, Mitchell perceives, not only that the Aborigines have their own, appropriate, land management practices; but that European agriculture cannot be introduced without disrupting the existing balance.

‘The occupation of the territory by the white race seems thus to involve, as an inevitable result, the extirpation of the aborigines; and it may well be pleaded, in extenuation of any adverse feelings these may show towards the white men, that these consequences, although so little considered by the intruders, must be obvious to the natives, with their usual acuteness, as soon as cattle enter on their territory.’ (p134)

References:

Mackellar, Dorothea, ‘My Country’ Official Dorothea Mackellar Website, 2003 Accessed 08.04.2011.

McCormick, Peter Dodds, ‘Advance Australia Fair’ Department of
Foreign Affairs and Trade, February 2001, Accessed 08.04.2011.

‘Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, explorer, writing ‘Of the Aborigines’ and their land management practices, while in search of a route from Sydney to the Gulf of Carpentaria, 1848.’ in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, p134.

Schwarz, Anja, ‘Mapping (Un-)Australian Identities: ‘Territorial Disputes’ in Christos Tsiolkas’s Loaded’ in Global Fragments: (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order. ANSEL Papers 10. Anke Bartels and Dirk Wiemann, eds. Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2007. pp12-28

 

 

Convict Lives

Were convicts members of a ‘criminal class’?

What evidence does Manning Clark draw upon in The Origins of the Convicts Transported to Eastern Australia 1787-1852 in order to present convicts as ‘professional criminals’?

In his article The Origins of the Convicts Transported to Eastern Australia 1787-1852, Manning Clark seems over eager to disprove the theory ‘that convicts were mainly agricultural workers… transported to Botany Bay for minor offences’ (p103). Whilst the picture Clark is attacking may be an unrealistic one, Clark still appears to be attempting to make statistics fit with an argument he has already formulated.

Clark draws on a number of select sources in order to support his case that convicts were from a ‘criminal class’, the ‘offscourings of mankind’ (p107). Clark presents us with the following statistics, that ‘on the average, one quarter to a third [of transported convicts] were second offenders.’ (p105) This supports Clark’s contention that the convicts were career criminals. Clark also refers to ‘informed opinion in Great Britain’ (p105) asserting that  ‘the criminals are one section of the working class for whom crime is an occupation just as plumbing, carpentering, etc., are occupations for other members of the working classes.’ (p105) Clark also quotes Patrick Colquhoun who paints a picture of criminals as ‘tradesmen and others who having ruined their fortunes by gaming and dissipation, [and] sometimes as a desperate remedy go to the road.’ (p106)  

To further fortify his argument, Clark calls on social investigator Henry Mayhew, who in turn draws on the opinions of the Constabulary Commissioners in 1839, and the testimony of the master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union (pp106-107).

‘Mayhew, using the official reports and his own investigations as evidence, classes them as professional criminals.’ (p106)

The testimony of the master of the Wandsworth and Clapham Union, in particular, supports the argument that honest poor men did not steal, and would sell ‘the shirt and waistcoat off their backs, before they applied for admittance to the workhouse.’ (p107) The inference here is that British society of the time did have measures in place to care for the poor and that those who stole did so from choice rather than necessity.

By 1787, British jails were overcrowded and many ships had been converted into prisons. This image depicts a steady flow of convicts, and the fate of hanging from which convicts sentenced to transportation may have narrowly escaped.

‘Convicts embarking for Botany Bay’ – Thomas Rowlandson

http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an5601547

Clark makes a convincing case, and shows that the view of all convicts as innocent workers accused of minor crimes, is most probably misguided. However there appear to be a number of contradictions within Clark’s article which undermine his arguments.

Whilst Clark condemns previous discussions as ‘magnifying the importance of a negligible minority’, Clark’s own claims rest on classifying all convicts as a single, cohesive group. The heading of Clark’s article states that the focus is on convict transportation between 1787 (when the First Fleet sailed) and 1852 (the year in which transportation to Eastern Australia ends) which produces a picture of generations of convicts over  65 years, a time span which saw many changes in prosecution and transportation policy. It is hard to draw an accurate representation of a cohesive group over such a wide span of time which included so many changes in British and Australian society.  

Clark also argues that because one quarter to one third of convicts were second time offenders, they must have been career criminals, rather than the poor who had turned to crime because of their economic hardships. However if we reverse this statistic, we see that two thirds to three quarters of convicts (the majority) were first time offenders. Clark also fails to note that in a system where recourse to crime may appear the only option, a person is unlikely to find their situation improved quickly, and so are not likely to turn to theft (and Clark argues that the majority of crimes were crimes of theft)  only once. The fact that recourse to crime may have been attempted more than once does not automatically make someone a career criminal. Clark also ignores convict women in this stage of his analysis, the majority of whom were convicted of minor theft and were first time offenders. Earlier in his article Clark sites that the ‘majority of the women were domestic servants’; (p104) all of which would contradict his notion of a professional, criminal class. Clark also ignores at this point, something which he had earlier mentioned - that the majority of convicts are listed as having had occupations, a fact which does not correlate with a theory of lazy, career criminals, unwilling to work.

Whilst we cannot discount the ‘informed opinion’ of the period, Clark’s use of it is questionable. Clark does not quote working class people, admitting that there was a criminal class amongst them, he references those of the upper and middle classes whose views of working class criminals are prone to prejudice, and bias regarding their own interests. Clark sites Henry Fielding’s An Enquiry into the Causes of the Late Increase of Robbers (1751), which appears to verge on sensationalism rather than informed, rational opinion, with unsubstantiated statements such as these:

‘What indeed may not the publick apprehend, when they are informed as an unquestionable fact, that there are at this time a great gang of rogues, whose number falls little short of a hundred, who are incorporated in one body, have officers and a treasury, and have reduced theft and robbery into a regular system.’ (p33)

Yet despite the possibility of bias, Clark uses these arguments as ‘unquestionable fact’ to support his argument. Clark has taken arguments from ‘informed sources’ appearing on only one side of the debate. Other primary sources from the era give a different picture – take John Howard’s The State of the Prisons in England and Wales (1777)

‘I have now to complain of what is pernicious to their MORALS; and that is, the confining of all sorts of prisoners together: debtors together: debtors and felons: men and women; the young beginner and the old offender…’ (p34)

It would appear from this source that Howard does not see prisoners as coming from a criminal class, though he appears to fear that they may become one. Here is a real hole in Clark’s argument – if there was no ‘criminal class’ in Britain, conviction and transportation created the possibility of labelling convicts as a criminal class, and thus the boundaries were blurred between where the convicts originated, and the way in which they have been imagined.     

References:

Section 2, ‘Outpost of Empire’ in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, pp33-34.

Section 4, ‘The Convict Stain’ in Deborah Gare and David Ritter (eds), Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past since 1788, Thomson, South Melbourne, 2008, pp95-107.

Competing Arguments About the Foundations of Australia

Histories of Australia so often focus on what happened following the arrival of the First Fleet, that we often overlook the reasons for the sending of that First Fleet in the first place. Because prisoners from England’s overcrowded jails were transported to Australia, it is simple enough to say that this is the reason Australia was colonised. However as Geoffrey Blainey’s The Tyranny of Distance suggests, there must have been far more to the decision than that, as the prospect of cultivating this land as a prison should not have been incentive enough to outweigh the concerns, potential risks, inconveniences and considerable expense involved in establishing a penal colony in New South Wales.

According to Blainey, Britain would have found it easier and less expensive to send its surplus of prisoners to one of its already established colonies in Canada or the West Indies. However the transport of convicts was not merely a case of getting rid of people, but of making use of convict labour – transported convicts became useful to Britain -whilst it was expensive to feed, keep, and guard prisoners in England, with no expectation of a return on the investment.

If England were to establish a colony in New South Wales, then it would have a presence in the south seas, and (as Blainey argues) most importantly, it would have access to strategic raw materials. The most important of these raw materials were flax – for making canvas, sailcloth and ship’s cables, and timber – especially the tall pines growing near the shores of New Zealand  and Norfolk Island – which could be made into ships' masts.

Norfolk Pines growing on the island's coast.

Image from the National Library of Australia - http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn4589991

Blainey makes a convincing argument that Australia’s worth lay in more than its apparently empty spaces for use as a remote prison settlement. If Britain established a colony in New South Wales, then they would have a new sea base from which they could conduct trade in the south-east, which could also be useful as a sheltering port in times of war. At this time, Britain’s relationship with its European neighbours was often uncertain, and as Britain was heavily reliant on its navy in order to exert power and influence, to trade and to maintain and expand its empire, access to materials such as flax and timber from a colony it controlled must have seemed an attractive prospect. Since the American revolution England had lost access to pine for masts from Maine and New Hampshire, and access to flax was also uncertain. Blainey compares the importance of flax and good timber to Britain’s military might, to the importance of oil and steel today.      

The Flax plant native to Norfolk Island.

Illustration by John Hunter.

Image from the National Library of Australia - http://nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an3187030 

As Deborah Gare and David Ritter, point out in their Making Australian History: Perspectives on the Past Since 1788, Blainey’s arguments caused great controversy when The Tyranny of Distance was first published. It seems that a supply of flax and timber for British ships could not be the only reason for founding a colony so far from Britain, however Blainey does not argue that these are the only reasons for establishing the colony, only that they are important reasons which have often been overlooked. Blainey acknowledges that Australia was thought useful as a site for a convict colony; that a settlement in Australia afforded England certain trade opportunities and access to China, the Pacific and the East Indies; and that colonising Australia would continue Britain’s expansion of Empire. 

The fact is that many of these motives are interrelated. Establishing a penal colony in New South Wales would help Britain to ease the strain on its overcrowded prisons, yet the convicts could also be put to use in harvesting and preparing strategic raw materials such as timber and flax. These raw materials, a labour force and safe harbour were in turn essential to British trade and the expansion of Empire.