West B.A., Murphy F.T. A Brief History of Australia
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
120
Not long after the AAPA folded in New South Wales, the last
recorded mass murder of Aboriginal people in Australia took place in
the Northern Territory, near Alice Springs. This event is today known
as the Coniston Massacre. It began as a series of “punitive expeditions”
against the Warlpiri people led by Mounted Constable George Murray
reginaLd waLter saunders
w
hile this period was very difficult for many Aboriginal people
in Australia, a few individuals were able to rise above the insti-
tutional racism. One such person was Reginald Saunders, Australia’s
first Aboriginal commissioned military officer. Saunders joined the
Australian Imperial Force (AIF) in April 1940, soon after Australia
entered World War II, and was quickly identified as a natural leader.
Within six weeks he was promoted to lance corporal; three months
later he was a sergeant.
Saunders was sent first to Libya and then to Greece, withdrawing
to Crete in July 1941. When the allies were forced to evacuate Crete,
leaving behind several hundred troops, Saunders was driven into hid-
ing for almost a year. His dark complexion, however, enabled him to
pass as Mediterranean until he was secretly taken off the island by a
British submarine.
Soon after his return home in 1942, Saunders was sent to fight in
the Owen Stanley Range in New Guinea. It was during this time that
he was nominated for promotion to a commissioned rank, a level
never before offered to an Indigenous Australian. After 16 weeks of
officer training in Victoria, Saunders was redeployed in New Guinea
in November 1944 and spent the remainder of the war in command
of a unit of 30 other Australians. After the war Saunders took a break
from the life of a soldier and worked various jobs, until 1950 and the
start of the Korean War, when he returned to the army. He was
captain of the Third Battalion and fought with distinction at Kapyong
and Maryamsam.
After the war Saunders left the army. He eventually moved to
Sydney, where he took up the position of liaison and public relations
officer for the Australian Government’s Office of Aboriginal Affairs.
In 1971, decades after Saunders’s service to Australia, he was awarded
the honor of Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE). In
1985, five years before his death, he was also appointed to the Council
of the Australian War Memorial.
121
REALIGNMENT
in retaliation for the killing of a white dingo trapper. The official num-
ber of Aboriginal people killed is 32, while the unofficial count is at
least twice that number (Wilson and O’Brien 2003). Such retaliatory
expeditions began early in the colonial period (1790) under the direc-
tion of Governor Arthur Phillip “to infuse an universal terror” (Wilson
and O’Brien 2003) in response to Aboriginal attacks on white people or
property. By 1928 police and vigilante acts of retribution had become
so common and disproportionate that the government was increasingly
required to respond with lengthy public investigations. As a result of
this delayed government action, the 1928 Coniston Massacre stands as
the last recorded massacre in Australian history. Though all Europeans
involved in the Coniston killings were cleared of any wrongdoing, the
Northern Territory no longer officially supported “punitive expedi-
tions,” opting instead that white courts settle disputes with Indigenous
people. Unfortunately, in the vast majority of instances, these courts
proved no more just to Aboriginal people.
The Depression
The global financial and political landscape shifted dramatically after
World War I. Power swung to the United States, while the creation
of new nations in Europe dramatically changed the flow of trade and
exchange of currency. One result of this transformation was a short
but deep recession in Australia, in 1920 (Murray in Masson 1993, xv).
Although the economy quickly rallied on the back of the sheep and
steady wheat production, notice had been served: Australia was too
dependent on external demand for its raw materials and international
loans for maintaining its public works. With the stock market crash
of 1929, the country’s export- and loans-driven economy stood no
chance of shielding itself from the events sweeping most of Europe and
the United States. The economic depression of the 1930s saw massive
unemployment, poverty, and deprivation in all Australian cities and
rural communities.
This major world event had its roots in the war. On both the win-
ning and the losing sides, many countries funded the cost of the war by
abandoning gold as the standard by which they valued their currency
and instead simply printed money. Such measures led to inflation that
continued far beyond the conflict, even when the gold standard was
reinstituted. After the war Germany again tried to solve its financial prob-
lems by printing more money, setting off hyperinflation. In addition, the
defeated Axis powers of Austria-Hungary and Germany were unable to
pay the unrealistically high reparations required of them under the Treaty
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
122
of Versailles. This failure to pay also contributed to budget problems in
the recipient countries, Britain and France. Another problem for Britain
was a return to the gold standard at too high a rate, which rendered
exports too expensive and overseas demand too low to continue produc-
tion. With a widespread slump in manufacturing, unemployment rose
and remained high in the years leading up to the depression. In contrast,
the U.S. dollar was undervalued, encouraging exports and contributing
to an unsound economic boom and a credit bubble that resulted in the
crash of the stock market in 1929 (Pettinger 2009).
Australia was inextricably caught up in these events because of the
sudden slump in prices for its two main exports, wool and wheat, and
the drying up of loans from London. In the 1920s wool accounted for
40 percent and wheat 15 percent of total exports, with other agricul-
tural products making up the remainder (Murray 1993, xvi). Gold was
no longer being found at prewar rates and other mineral industries
were not yet fully developed. With little self-generated revenue, the
newly elected Labor prime minister, James Scullin, faced a difficult task
in 1929–30 in convincing conservative London financiers, who had lost
significant investments on Wall Street, to fund public works projects in
a former colony where strong union sympathies often clashed with the
interests of investors.
In rural areas small towns built around the business of supplying
farms had no buyers for their goods. Thousands in the country and
city went bankrupt and various large companies went into liquidation.
Unlike that today, the system of unemployment insurance was woe-
fully inadequate to support individuals or keep families together, and
retirement benefits were nonexistent except for government or bank
employees. Australia at the time did not yet have a federal social welfare
system; rather, each state administered its own scheme separately. Only
Queensland provided monetary unemployment insurance, but resi-
dency had to have been established for six months to be eligible. The
other states provided vouchers that allowed the unemployed to collect
small amounts of food (Murray in Masson 1993, xii). In addition, in all
states unemployment aid was not given to young people living at home
if the family had any other form of income. As a result, many people
took to the road in search of work with nothing more than the clothes
on their back and a “swag,” or sleeping bag, for sleeping under the stars
(Murray in Mason 1993, xiii).
Despite our knowledge that life was difficult for many in Australia
in this period, it is a complex matter to give exact figures of the num-
ber of poor and unemployed. Defining who constituted the Australian
123
REALIGNMENT
phar Lap
d
uring the height of the depression, Australians turned to vari-
ous forms of entertainment to cushion the difficulties caused
by the worst financial downturn in the modern history of capitalism.
One of the greatest of these diversions was Phar Lap, a racehorse
with an astounding 73 percent win rate, whose name means “light-
ning” in Thai.
Phar Lap’s story begins in New Zealand, where he was born, but
continues in Australia where the trainer Harry Telford took him after
his purchase by an American, David Davis, for the paltry sum of about
US$130. On April 28, 1929, Phar Lap proved his purchase price was
a bargain when he won his first race, the relatively minor Rosehill
Maiden Juvenile Handicap. From there Phar Lap’s reputation grew
along with his prize money. After making his owners just AU£182 in
his first year of racing, Phar Lap went on to earn a total of AU£70,125
over the course of four years, with major wins in the Melbourne Cup,
Victoria Derby, AJC Derby, W. S. Cox Plate (twice) in Australia, and
the Agua Caliente Handicap in Tijuana, Mexico. Along with Phar Lap’s
The jockey Jim Pike riding Phar Lap at Melbourne’s Flemington Racetrack, circa
1930
(Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria)
(continues)
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
124
workforce in the 1930s entailed simply counting the number of trade
union members in each state. Unemployment statistics were collected
by counting the number of union members out of work. This method,
while straightforward, was far too simplistic to capture the true picture
of the economic downturn because it left out various sectors of the
population, including school leavers not yet registered with a union,
part-time workers who would have preferred to be working full time,
most women, and Aboriginal people. Nonetheless, these figures do give
some insight into the startling trends. For example, unemployment
in the 1920s averaged around 7 percent, while by the early 1930s the
figure was around 32 percent. Unemployment was most severe in New
South Wales, where 34 percent of trade union members were out of
work, and South Australia was not far behind, at 32.5 percent. Of all the
states agricultural Queensland was the least affected, with 18.8 percent
unemployment (Murray in Mason 1993, xxvii).
In order to gain the confidence of London investors and get his coun-
try’s economy moving again, Prime Minister Scullin allowed a delegation
from the Bank of England, led by Otto Niemeyer, to enter Australia in
late 1930 to assess the country’s financial situation for themselves. At
numerous victories, the “big, plain looking, cheap-priced underdog”
(Equal Marketing 2006) became a phenomenon during the depression
because both he and his trainer, Telford, were seen by the Australian
public as “battlers.” With their victories over wealthy owners and
horses that had been purchased for 10 times the price, the pair repre-
sented to Australians that hard work and perseverance could prevail
in the end, even during times of depression.
Phar Lap’s reputation only increased when his life was tragically
cut short after his miraculous win at Agua Caliente. Phar Lap died
a painful death in Menlo Park, California, just days after this victory.
At the time Australians suspected that Americans had poisoned their
beloved horse after he defeated their best entrants at Agua Caliente.
Hair analyses in 2006 confirming that Phar Lap had a large amount of
arsenic in his system at the time of death only confirmed what many
Australians had suspected.
Source: Equus Marketing. “The Phar Lap Story” (2006). Available online. URL:
http://www.pharlap.com.au/thestory. Accessed May 21, 2009.
phar Lap (continued)
125
REALIGNMENT
the same time Scullin sailed to the United Kingdom to participate in the
1930 Imperial Conference from which the Statute of Westminster, which
abolished Britain’s power to supersede Australian law, emerged; unfor-
tunately, it proved to be an inopportune time for Scullin to be absent.
Just prior to his five months overseas the government’s deputy leader
and treasurer, Edward Granville (Ted) Theodore, was forced to step
down while under investigation for fraud; simultaneously, Niemeyer’s
presence caused resentment and suspicion from the Left faction within
the Labor Party. As the depression worsened, Australia was without its
leader, deputy leader, and treasurer, while overseas bankers were making
decisions about investments that could make or break the economy.
Scullin returned from the Imperial Conference in January 1931 and
reinstated his deputy, but the factional fighting over this and other
issues had left the party in disarray. Some cabinet members supported
Niemeyer’s assessment that Australia was living beyond its means
and needed to scale spending back significantly. Others demonized
Niemeyer as a representative of callous bankers, intent on sucking the
working classes dry.
The combination of losing a quarter of an Australian generation in
World War I, followed by the Great Depression a mere decade later, left
those who rejected Niemeyer’s assessment significantly disillusioned
with distant powers’ ability to manage world events and, indeed, with
Australia’s involvement in them. One of the key figures representing
those who felt betrayed and resentful of these distant financiers was the
Labor premier of New South Wales, John Thomas (Jack) Lang. Lang
wielded a great deal of influence as the premier of the country’s largest
state by population. He argued for postponement of debt repayments
to overseas bondholders, some of which was war debt to be paid to
Britain. This position was very popular with the general public, espe-
cially traditional Labor voters from the union movement.
On the other side, several cabinet members argued that Australia
had to limit spending. One of those who put forward this case most
vehemently was Joseph Lyons, minister for posts, works, and railways,
who supported Niemeyer’s recommendations wholeheartedly. Lyons
was joined by the majority of state premiers, aside from Lang, whose
“Premiers’ Plan” called for significant cuts in government expenditure
in the areas of greatest financial drain, especially wages and pensions
for government workers.
Scullin was in a bind, torn between supporting the “Langites,” on
one side, and the majority of Australian state premiers in their endorse-
ment of Niemeyer’s recommendations, on the other. In the end, not
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
126
wanting to risk the country’s ability to attract future loans, Scullin sided
with the premiers and began cutting back on infrastructure projects
and payments to government employees. For example, the railways
at this time suffered huge financial losses with the fall in business and
so were forced to make large-scale wage and staff cuts; job losses for
nonpermanent government staff were also very high. Other areas of
government spending, including pensions for the elderly, war widows,
and dependents, were reduced, and government bonds lost much of
their value.
In many ways the “Premiers’ Plan” marked the end for Scullin. His
own party was irreparably split between pro-Lang union demands to
increase government spending and postpone overseas debt repayment,
on the one side, and the financially conservative premiers demanding
exactly the opposite, on the other. Eventually, although Scullin had
taken up Niemeyer’s plan, Joseph Lyons and several other conservatives
abandoned the party and, along with the National Party, formed the
United Australia Party (UAP), the predecessor of today’s Liberal Party.
And then, on November 21, 1931, five Labor Party members who had
supported the Langites over the government crossed the floor of the
federal parliament in a vote of no confidence in their own government
and brought the troubled Scullin administration to an end. In the fed-
eral election that followed in December 1931, Joseph Lyons became the
new prime minister as head of the UAP. In coalition with the conserva-
tive Country Party, the UAP held a comfortable majority in parliament.
Lyons went on to lead Australia through the depression; he died in
office in 1939, on the brink of World War II.
Western Australia’s Challenge to National Unity
Although Western Australia federated with Australia in 1901 on the
heels of a successful referendum, very early on many in the state, espe-
cially farmers, began to suspect that they had made the wrong choice
(Molony 2005, 263). From 1906 when the Western Australian legis-
lature first voted in favor of secession, through the 1930s “the ‘yell of
the secessionist’ was loud” in that state (Molony 2005, 263). The two
issues that contributed most directly to the dissatisfaction felt by many
Western Australians were the distance from the “business and power
interests of its eastern cousins” and tariffs that made “it hard for WA
to sell its primary exports on a world market where it had no protec-
tion” (Constitutional Centre of Western Australia 2008). Organized
protest began anew in 1926 with the formation of the Secession League
and continued with the more successful Dominion League of Western
127
REALIGNMENT
Australia after 1930. The secessionists were opposed by the state’s few
industrialists in the Federal League, formed in 1931, and by those who
lived in the gold districts. Both of these constituents benefited from
their ties to the commercial centers in the country’s east and saw little
benefit in aligning themselves with farmers and graziers.
Finally, when a scapegoat was being sought for the economic diffi-
culties of the depression in 1933, the conservative Western Australian
government, which had supported the secessionists, called for a refer-
endum on the issue. The issue passed with 68 percent of the 237,198
votes cast. With more than 91 percent of eligible voters participating,
only gold miners rejected the notion en masse (Constitutional Centre
of WA 2008). Interestingly, at the same election the conservative and
prosecessionist government of James Mitchell was swept from power
and replaced by the Labor Party under Philip Collier, which had
opposed secession (National Council for the Centenary of Federation
2008).
Despite the overwhelming vote in favor, Western Australians’ bid for
independence did not eventuate. A delegation of prosecessionists was
dispatched from Western Australia in 1934 to present the case for “ ‘res-
toration’ of the State to ‘its former status as a separate and distinct self-
governing colony in the British Empire’ ” (Constitutional Centre of WA
2008). They spent two years in London trying to gain access to a full
parliamentary review of their argument, but a joint committee from the
Houses of Commons and Lords rejected the “petition on the grounds
that the British Parliament could not act without the Australian Federal
Parliament’s approval” (Constitutional Centre of WA 2008). After this
failure the secessionist movement largely disintegrated; however, even
today small numbers of Western Australians continue to chafe at the
financial and legal bounds of remaining in the Commonwealth.
Australian Landscape
In the years between 1920 and 1946 Australians compounded the
effects of European migration on the continent’s fragile environment
with larger and larger infrastructure projects, leading to further degra-
dation of indigenous flora and fauna. Certainly dozens of smaller mar-
supials were already under threat with the introduction of the domestic
cat at an unknown time prior to the First Fleet in 1788, probably from
Dutch ships; the wild rabbit in 1839; and the fox in 1845; sheep and
cattle also successfully competed for food and water in much of the
continent, further damaging indigenous flora and fauna. In this later
A BRIEF HISTORY OF AUSTRALIA
128
period, however, “the destruction of habitat accelerated spectacularly
as the twentieth century’s technological revolution got under way”
(Andrewartha and Birch 1986, 182).
A key symbol of this destruction was the death in 1936 of the last
Tasmanian tiger, or thylacine, the largest carnivorous marsupial to
have survived into the 20th century. Starting in 1830 the various colo-
nial and state governments that administered Tasmania (Van Diemen’s
Land) put bounties on the tiger, mainly because of the threat it posed to
household animals and stock. In 1909 after 2,184 bounties were paid,
the practice was finally ended and the tiger sought primarily by zoos
wanting an example of the animal for their collections; the last one was
captured for this purpose in 1933. The last known survivor died in cap-
tivity at the Hobart zoo in September 1936, chained outside and dying
of the cold (Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service 2008). Occasionally
people in both Tasmania and on the mainland, where they are believed
to have become extinct about 7,000 years ago, claim to have seen a
thylacine, but no sighting has been verified since the 1930s.
A second important ecological development occurred in the mid-
1930s with the introduction of a prolific nonnative species. In 1935 the
Australian Bureau of Sugar Experimental Stations imported 100 cane
toads, Bufo marinus, from Hawaii in an attempt to control several spe-
cies of beetle that were damaging Queensland’s lucrative sugar industry.
Thylacines were also known as Tasmanian marsupial wolves and Tasmanian tigers before
their extinction in the 1930s.
(Pictures Collection, State Library of Victoria)
129
REALIGNMENT
The first release of 100 toads near Cairns, Queensland, was followed a
month later by release of 3,000 more onto sugar plantations throughout
northern Queensland, despite the lack of evidence that they did any-
thing to limit the beetle population. It has since been proven that the
toads have no effect on the beetle problem.
Even at the time several environmentalists, such as the museum cura-
tor Roy Kinghorn and the government entomologist W. W. Froggatt,
protested the introduction, but to no avail (Australian Museum Online
2003). Today their warnings seem prescient. The toad population, in
the millions and spreading around Australia at a rate of about a mile
per year, endangers indigenous wildlife in three ways: competition for
food, eating small animals, and poison glands, which cause everything
that eats the toad itself to die very quickly of heart failure (National
Heritage Trust 2004). So far, efforts to control the toad have met with
almost no success, and it remains one of the most dangerous of the
continent’s invasive pests.
In addition to this kind of experimentation, the first half of the 20th
century saw the completion of many large infrastructural projects that
further symbolized European Australians’ desire to control and tame
their fragile environment. The Hume Dam was begun in November
1919 in an effort to control flooding from the Murray River and to har-
ness water for irrigation and domestic and industrial use. In 1936 the
completed dam was the largest in the Southern Hemisphere and second
largest in the world at the time, at 131 feet (40 meters) high and 5,300
feet (1,615 meters) long; the resulting reservoir held 407 billion gallons
(15,420 Gl) of water. Since that time, however, changes to the dam
and drought have affected the water levels and led to a perception that
the lake is “dry and empty,” despite the nearly four square miles (10
sq. km) of water available for boating, water skiing, fishing, and other
recreational activities (Border Mail 2008).
The dam and resulting lake have also been blamed for significant
environmental damage along the course of the Murray River. The river’s
natural cycle is to run very high and cold in winter and then peter out
to almost nothing in the hot, dry summer months. Indigenous fish and
plant life were adapted to that cycle, and with its disruption such native
species as the Murray cod and mangrove swamps have come under
threat. The multistate management of the entire Murray basin, which
is located in New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, has also
led to considerable disagreement over how best to deal with the envi-
ronment, as well as water disputes, and the threat to the basin and its
ecology continues to this day.