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Australia
By Barry Penney, Gina Teague Bravo Ltd
Copyright © 2016 Kuperard
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-85733-829-4
CHAPTER 1
LAND & PEOPLE
Australia is the world's largest island and its smallest continent. This is a country the size of the United States of America, spanning three time zones, yet with barely twenty-three million inhabitants. It is an ancient land, geologically one of the oldest on earth, and was first populated by the Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders.
These original inhabitants are thought to have come south from Asia some fifty to seventy thousand years ago, when Australia was linked to Indonesia by a land bridge. In 1788 a handful of Europeans arrived. Before 1788 Australia had been of interest to the Netherlands, Spain, and France, but after the voyages of Captain James Cook it was the British who were the colonizers. Convicts and subsequently free settlers from Britain and Ireland arrived to establish a thriving Anglo-Celtic society.
The early Europeans brought with them epidemics of smallpox, measles, and venereal diseases, and they also, occasionally, murdered Aborigines. At the time of white settlement the estimated black population was 700,000. By 1900, this figure had shrunk to 100,000. Much has been done in recent times, and much still needs to be done, to repair the damage.
Throughout the 1800s freed convicts, explorers, and settlers spread across the continent. Wheat growing, sheep and cattle ranching, the discovery of gold, and expanding immigration all contributed to spectacular economic growth.
From 1945, after the end of the Second World War, the immigration of many of Europe's dispossessed began what was to be one of the world's greatest exercises in multiculturalism. This has been added to in recent years by an influx of immigrants from India, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines — plus a continued stream from the UK, New Zealand, and South Africa. Today, one quarter of Australia's population was born overseas.
In 1988 the nation of Australia celebrated its Bicentennial — the two hundredth anniversary of the arrival of the first convict ships. As with the United States and Canada, also first colonized by the British, the Europeans displaced a native population that had been there for thousands of years. And, like the United States and Canada, Australia has become a powerful, industrialized nation with a high standard of living.
Settled and populated by Europeans for the first one hundred and fifty years, Australia was traditionally tied to Europe — and in particular to the mother country, Great Britain. In the last forty years or so, nearby Asian nations have become increasingly important.
Australia has undergone a significant shift in foreign policy and trade focus from Europe to Asia, including general tariff reductions and the promotion of an Asia-Pacific free trade area by the year 2020.
This, then, is the young country we shall examine — in its transition from wild frontier land to modern industrialized nation, and in the transformation this has wrought on its people.
TERRAIN
Australia is the only nation to occupy an entire continent — albeit the smallest of the seven continents. Surrounded by the Indian Ocean and the South Pacific, it is also an island — of 2,966,136 square miles (7,682,300 sq. km).
The island/continent lies southeast of the Asian landmass, bordered on the north by the Timor Sea, beyond which lie the islands of Papua New Guinea and Indonesia — the closest neighbors. To the east, the Coral Sea separates Australia from the island chain called the Solomon Islands, and the Tasman Sea separates it from New Zealand. On the west lies the Indian Ocean.
The sixth largest country on Earth, Australia extends approximately 2,500 miles (approximately 4,000 km) from east to west, and 1,875 miles (3,000 km) from north to south. The highest point is Mount Kosciusko, at 7,310 feet (2,228 m); the lowest point is Lake Eyre, at 39 feet (12 m) below sea level.
From east to west, Australia has four main geographical regions. The eastern lowland plain stretches from Cape York Peninsula in the north to the city of Melbourne in the south. Much of this area is forested. A few miles off the northern shore is the Great Barrier Reef, the largest coral reef in the world, which runs 1,200 miles (1,900 km) along the coast. On the southern part of the plain are the cities of Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, and Melbourne — and Hobart in Tasmania.
The Eastern Highlands is a ridge of hills and mountains that separate the lowlands from the interior. It includes the tropical mountain hinterland of Queensland, the hills of New England, the Blue Mountains, the Australian Alps in New South Wales and Victoria, and the mountains that dominate most of Tasmania.
West of the highlands lie the central plains. This is a region of dry depressions, or basins, the largest of which, the Great Artesian Basin, extends from the Gulf of Carpentaria in the north to the mouth of the Murray River in the south — the largest inland drainage system in the world.
The Western Plateau covers the western part of the continent with rocky ridges and plains, and large, forbidding deserts (the Great Sandy, the Gibson, the Great Victoria, and the Tanami). In the north, jungle and swamps cover Arnhem Land on the shore of the Gulf of Carpentaria. In the south, the Nullarbor (meaning "no trees") Plain borders the Great Australian Bight.
CLIMATE
Remember that Australia lies in the Southern Hemisphere, with seasons that are opposite those in the north — July is the middle of winter and January the peak of summer. Most of Australia is warm and dry, the southern part being the most comfortable, with temperatures in Melbourne averaging 48°F (9°C) in its July winter to 77°F (25°C) in January. Adelaide is similar, Perth a warmer. Temperatures in Darwin average 77°F (25°C) in July and 86°F (30°C) in January. The interior of Australia often reaches 100°F (38°C) and can go as high as 115°F (46°C).
The largest city, Sydney, has a subtropical climate, warm to hot and wet in summer, up to 95°F (35°C) and mild, dry winters, up to 77°F (25°C). Canberra's temperatures average 68°F (20°C) in January and 42°F (6°C) in July.
Northern Australia (beyond the Tropic of Capricorn) is subject to an extreme tropical wet/dry weather pattern. What this means is that from November to April there are torrential downpours, monsoonal storms, and high humidity in the city of Darwin and the northern cities and towns of Queensland.
Rainfall is lowest in the center (about 40 percent of the continent is desert), with less than 10 inches (25 cm) per year. Sheep and cattle stations (ranches) are found on the edges of these deserts. Crops mostly grow where the rainfall exceeds 10 inches (25 cm). Rainfall is greatest in the northeast tropical rainforest areas, with upwards of 59 inches (150 cm). In the south, Tasmania and Victoria receive more than 30 inches (76 cm), Adelaide and Perth less.
There is little that is ordinary about Australia. The extremes in climate from torrential rain to disastrous drought, and the ever-present threat of bushfires, along with the isolation of the continent for fifty million years, have combined to promote the country's rich and diverse native fauna and flora. Kangaroos of various sizes and colors, wallabies, and other oddities, such as the kookaburra, koala, platypus, echidna, galah, and many of the brightly colored parrots, are be found naturally nowhere else in the world. The ubiquitous Australian gum tree, or eucalyptus, which is dependent on bushfires for its survival and propagation, has been exported for use over much of the world, generally because of its thirst: its deep tap roots help to drain swamps and marshland.
AUSTRALIA'S ABORIGINES
It should be noted that Australia's Aboriginal peoples were not a single group of people. They were made up of at least six hundred widely scattered language groups. Some groups shared some beliefs, customs, and technological and cultural practices — the result of trade, intermarriage, and complex family connections — but there were also great differences between the groups. Even today, the Aboriginal population refers to itself as made up of many "peoples," or "nations," and it is common to talk about the Aboriginal Peoples of Australia when referring to them historically.
The Dreamtime
The Australian Aboriginal creation myths tell of "The Dreamtime," a time before history, when legendary, totemic Ancestral Beings sang the world into existence, and in doing so created the world and everything in it — plants, animals, landscape features, humans, and the customs and laws of those humans. Stories of the Dreamtime vary greatly from tribe to tribe, and from region to region, but the notion of the totemic ancestor is remarkably persistent. Images of these are to be found on the walls of rock shelters and caves in many parts of the country — the Aborigines are responsible for what is probably the world's greatest collection of rock art — and many different groups still use stories of the Dreamtime to explain the shape of a landform, the characteristic of a particular animal, or the existence of a particular law.
The Impact of the Settlers
At first the Aborigines showed little interest in assimilating into European society. Instead they expected the Europeans to continue their "Walkabout" and move on, or adopt the superior Aboriginal ways. But the tide rolled on, as it had done in the United States, in Canada, and wherever Europeans displaced indigenous people.
Aborigines and Europeans related to the land in completely opposing ways. The Aborigines were generally hunters and gatherers, although some groups were engaged in agricultural practices; the Europeans were farmers, who regarded the land as theirs for the taking because it was not being cultivated. The Aborigines were simply ignored by the Europeans, who declared Australia an empty and ownerless land, "terra nullius." They were, as John Pilger put it in A Secret Country, considered not as human but rather as "part of the fauna." It was only in 1992 that the Australian High Court ruled that the Aborigines' title to the land had not been extinguished. Today, Australian Aborigines drive cars, or ride in trains, over the land they once trod so carefully.
The Aborigines realized, as the settlers kept coming, that the newcomers wanted to own the land, not to share it, and that they were here to stay — along with their fences, their missionaries to convert them, their politicians to interfere with them, their Community Service bureaucrats to take their children into care, their governments to palm them off with rather useless tracts of land, and their alcohol. Many Aborigines exchanged work for food and lodgings, particularly on farms and in rural areas. Later came unemployment payouts and other cash benefits, meaning that many Aborigines had no real need to work, and there was ready access to alcohol. Successive governments, through a lack of understanding of how to cope with the problems of Aboriginals, contributed disaster along with benefit.
They had no immunity to the diseases the settlers introduced, and their numbers suffered accordingly. There were also murders. The most famous, perhaps, was the Myall Creek Massacre in 1838, when Aborigines — men, women, and children — were rounded up after some perceived wrongdoing (perhaps, as was often the case, they had taken a sheep to feed themselves), herded into a creek bed, and shot. We don't know how many there were, but there may have been hundreds. For this wanton killing of defenseless Aborigines, seven of the eleven whites accused were subsequently hanged. But such justice was not common.
From around the early 1900s a sort of cruel benevolence grew out of missionary interference and government ignorance, resulting in the white authorities' removal of Aboriginal children, particularly those of mixed blood (usually the result of white men's abuse of black women), from their families. This was an attempt to integrate them "for their own good" into white society. Descendants from this "Stolen Generation," as it is called, were issued a national, public apology by the Prime Minister in 2008. While this was an important gesture of reconciliation, the fact remains that they are still searching for their roots, trying to discover who they really are.
There is now a great deal of concern for Aboriginal welfare. For most Australians, and for the visitor, this is a topic of great sensitivity and uncertainty. There is regret for what has been done, and for official ineptitude in the face of infant mortality rates, alcoholism, and family violence. While it is quite possible to live in Australia without getting to know any Aborigines — and, for those who live in the major cities, without actually seeing any — the problems of the Aborigines are always there. Most Australians abhor, and are embarrassed by, the fact of a disadvantaged underclass, marginalized and living on the fringes of society despite the spending of huge sums of money by recent governments. But there is also, among the ignorant and ill informed — mostly, but not entirely, outside the cities, and particularly in the north and northwest — a small, residual, hard core of racism that the Australians themselves call "redneck" ignorance.
The Aborigines Today
Many Aboriginal communities are dynamic and self-determining. This is particularly the case where they have made successful claims to their traditional land, and now live on that land. Some communities support internationally recognized art centers where artists produce works that sell around the world, often for thousands of dollars. Other communities manage farmland, parkland, and mining leases.
Aborigines have been very successful activists, particularly over the last forty years. In 1967 they won the right to vote in what was the most unequivocal referendum held in Australia; in 1971 Aboriginal Neville Bonner was elected to the Senate; in 1972 Tent Embassy was set up outside Parliament to advance the cause of land rights (the returning of traditional lands); in 1992 a High Court decision, known as Mabo, rejected the notion of terra nullius and affirmed that Aboriginal people were in possession of the land prior to 1788; in the late 1990s the notion of Reconciliation (coming to terms with wrongs of the past as related to the treatment of Aborigines) was embraced by many Australians.
There are many highly successful Aboriginal people in Australian public life. They include:
• Noel Pearson (politician and activist); Lowitja O'Donohue (activist and senior public administrator, and former Australian of the Year).
• Cathy Freeman (an Olympic medallist), Adam Goode (football player and indigenous youth advocate); Evonne Goolagong-Cawley, winner of seven tennis grand slams and first indigenous person to win Wimbledon.
• Deborah Mailman (actor); David Gulpilil (actor); Ernie Dingo (actor and television personality).
• Singers Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu and Jessica Mauboy; and Albert Namatjira — Australia's foremost aboriginal artist.
Nevertheless, you would be well advised to approach the subject of the Aboriginal Peoples with great caution. Read about it, and try to understand. Ask questions, by all means, and listen.
THE AUSTRALIANS
The arrival of the First Fleet of eleven ships from Britain in 1788, carrying over thirteen hundred people, began the influx of different cultures to Australia. First came English seamen and soldiers, along with English and Irish convicts. These were followed by free settlers, mostly from England — ethnically and culturally Celtic and Anglo-Saxon — and a significant number of Chinese, who arrived to try their luck on the goldfields during the great gold rush of the 1850s. Between 1851 and 1860 the rate of immigration was fifty thousand per annum. The immigrants and the Aborigines mostly went their separate ways.
Postwar immigration brought a wide variety of Europeans from war-torn Europe — six million since 1945. Australia implemented a policy of free passage for United Kingdom residents, and assisted passage for ex-servicemen from the British Isles, the USA, the Netherlands, Norway, France, Belgium, and Denmark. From 1950 to 1960 economic and humanitarian events also opened the gates to Germany, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Chile (after Allende), and Indochina (after the Vietnam war).
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Excerpted from Australia by Barry Penney, Gina Teague. Copyright © 2016 Kuperard. Excerpted by permission of Bravo Ltd.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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