Australian History For Dummies®

Table of Contents

Introduction
About This Book
Foolish Assumptions
Conventions Used in This Book
How This Book Is Organised
Part I: Let’s Get This Country Started
Part II: 1820s to 1900: Wool, Gold, Bust and then Federation
Part III: The 20th Century: New Nation, New Trajectories
Part IV: 1930 to 1949: Going So Wrong, So Soon?
Part V: 1950 to 2010: Prosperity and Social Turmoil
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Icons Used in This Book
Where to Go from Here
Part I: Let’s Get This Country Started
Chapter 1: Aussie, Aussie, Aussie
When Oldest Meets Newest
Getting ahead in the convict world
Leaping into the big time with wool
Gold, Gold, Gold for Australia
Welcoming in male suffrage
Striving for the ‘workingman’s paradise’
Solving the Problems of the World (By Keeping Out the World)
Now for War, Division, Depression and More War
Joining the Empire in the war
Dreaming of ‘Australia Unlimited’
Getting hit by the Great Depression . . .
. . . And another war
The Postwar Boom Broom
Breaking Down the Fortress Australia Mentality
Opening up the economy
Opening up the borders (mostly)
Entering the New Millennium
Chapter 2: First Australians: Making a Home, Receiving Visitors
Indigenous Australians
Settling in early
Life in Aboriginal Australia
History without books
Trading with the neighbours
Visitors From Overseas
Maccassan fishermen
Portuguese and Spanish navigators
Lost Dutch traders and wandering explorers
Chapter 3: Second Arrivals and First Colonials
‘Discovering’ the Great Southern Land
Finding the right men for the job
Setting (British) eyes on New South Wales
The Brits are Coming!
Quick! New settlement required
Pushing for a settlement in NSW
Picking a winner: NSW it is!
Settling Botany Bay
Getting there with the First Fleet
The human material: Who were these people?
Holding Out at Sydney
Using convicts as guards
Issuing ultimatums (and being ignored)
Soldiering on regardless
New Colony Blues
Second Fleet horrors
Courting disaster with the interlopers
Then the rest of the world goes bung
Chapter 4: Colony Going Places (With Some Teething Troubles)
Rising to the Task: The NSW Corps Steps Up
Setting up trading monopolies
The ascendancy of the ‘Rum Corps’
Upsetting the reverends
Ruling with Goodhearted Incompetence: Governor Hunter
Ending the trading monopoly game
A government store with empty shelves
Handing out land higgledy-piggledy
Hunter’s wheels fall off
King Came, King Saw, King Conquered — Kind Of
Diversifying trade and production
Ending the rum trade (well . . . points for trying)
Pardoning convicts
Fixing up the mess
Choosing Bligh for the job
Bligh gets down to business
Bligh’s end
Chapter 5: A Nation of Second Chances
Macquarie’s Brave New World
Converting Macquarie
Living under the Macquarie regime
Macquarie’s Main Points of Attack
Pushing expansion
Conciliating (and pursuing) Indigenous Australians
Re-ordering a town, re-ordering convict behaviour
Becoming a Governor Ahead of His Time
Stirring up trouble with the free folk
Creating outrage back home
Big World Changes for little NSW
Coping with the deluge following Waterloo
Britain starts paying attention again (unfortunately!)
Bringing back terror
Big Country? Big Ambitions? Bigge the Inspector? Big Problem!
Recognising Macquarie’s Legacy
Part II: 1820s to 1900: Wool, Gold, Bust and then Federation
Chapter 6: Getting Tough, Making Money and Taking Country
Revamping the Convict System
Putting the terror back into the system . . . and the system back into the terror
Bringing in the settlers
Bringing in the enforcers
Getting Tough Love from Darling
Running into staffing issues
Going head-to-head with the press
Coming up against calls for representation
Putting it all down to a personality clash
Enduring Tough Times from Arthur
Concentrating on punishment and reform
Recording punishments in the system
Fighting bushrangers and Tasmanian Aborigines
Hitting the Big Time with Wool and Grabbing Land
Opening up Australia’s fertile land
Adding sheep, making money
Fighting the land grab
Chapter 7: Economic Collapse and the Beginnings of Nationalism
Bubble Times: From Speculative Mania to a Big Collapse
Working the market into a frenzy
Investing in land with easy credit
Ducking for cover as the economy collapses
Picking up the pieces after the implosion
Moving On from Convictism
British calls to end convict ‘slavery’
Ending transportation to NSW
Feeling the effects of ending transportation
Van Diemen’s Land hits saturation point
Feeling the First Stirrings of Nationalism
Britain tries turning the convict tap back on
Britain offers exiles instead
Protecting Indigenous Australians — British Colonial Style
Attempting to protect the Aborigines
New possibility on Merri Creek
Same old tragedy on Myall Creek
Chapter 8: The Discovery of Gold and an Immigration Avalanche
You want gold? We got gold!
Discovering gold (and going a little crazy)
Introducing order and hoping for calm
Adding a gambling mentality to the mix
Working Towards the Workingman’s Paradise
That Eureka Moment
Rumblings of discontent
Tensions boil over
The Arrival of Self-Government
Votes for a few men
Votes for many men
Suffrage goes rogue
Unlocking the Arable Lands
Moving the squatters
Making new laws for new farmers
Dealing with squatter problems
Facing up to non-squatter problems
Chapter 9: Explorers, Selectors, Bushrangers . . . and Trains
Explorer Superstars
Seeking thrills in the great unknown . . .
. . . Then making the unknown known
Sturt and Leichhardt Go Looking
Sturt — have boat, will walk
Leichhardt also walks . . . right off the map
The Great Race — Stuart versus Burke and Wills
Seeing the back of Burke, losing Wills
Super Stuart — just a pity he’s drunk
Selectors and Bushrangers
Moving on from the selectors’ dust heap
Bushranging nation
Ned Kelly: Oppressed Selector’s Son or Larrikin Wild Child?
Kelly’s key events
The man in the iron mask
Growing Towards Nationhood . . . Maybe
A telegraph to the world
It’s raining trains
Chapter 10: Work, Play and Politics During the Long Boom
The ‘Workingman’s Paradise’ Continues
Growth brings jobs
Workingwomen’s paradise too
Workers’ Playtime
Beating the English at cricket
New codes of football
The Big Myth of the Bush: Not So Rural Australia
Rearranging the Political Furniture
Charting new colonial directions
Intervening in the economy
Chapter 11: The Economy’s Collapsed — Anyone for Nationhood?
From Boom to Bust
The bubble before the pop
And now for a big collapse
Three strikes and we’re out — industrial turmoil
Birthing the Australian Labor Party
From little things . . .
Two Australian halves of a Labor story
Labor politicos and Labor unionists — the struggle begins!
New Nation? Maybe. Maybe Not.
Why Federation happened
How Federation happened
Three men who made Federation happen
Part III: The 20th Century: New Nation, New Trajectories
Chapter 12: Nation Just Born Yesterday
Advancing Australia: A Social Laboratory
Defining the Commonwealth
What the judges said
What the politicians did
What everyday people thought
Passing Innovative Legislation
Franchising Australian women
Establishing bold new protection
Deciding on a fair and reasonable wage
Voting in Labor
That Whole White Australia Thing
Passing the Immigration Restriction Act
Dealing with the ‘piebald north’
Deporting the ‘Kanakas’
Pushing ‘purity’
Chapter 13: World War I: International and Local Ruptures
Gearing Up for Global War
Building up Australian forces
Choosing the best party to lead the wartime government
Why get involved?
Australia at War
Proving ourselves to the world, part I: Gallipoli
Proving ourselves to the world, part II: The Western Front
General John Monash engineers some victory
Home Front Hassles
Getting on the war footing
Irish troubles
Conscription controversy
When Billy goes rogue — aftermath of the Labor split
Moving the Pieces around the Global Table: Australia at Versailles
Chapter 14: Australia Unlimited
Expanding Australia
Postwar Australia — from sour to unlimited
Postwar blues? Take the ‘Men, Money and Markets’ cure
Australia Not-So-Unlimited
Borrowing unlimited for little Australia
Land disasters
Schizoid Nation
Sport, the beach and picture shows
Cars, radios and Californian bungalows
Returned soldiers — elite, but angry
The race bogey
The Workers of Australia . . .
Labor turns hard left
Labor in state governments
An attack of the Wobblies
Bruce arbitrates his own destruction
Part IV: 1930 to 1949: Going So Wrong, So Soon?
Chapter 15: A Not So Great Depression
Crash and Depression
Borrowing like there’s no tomorrow
Here comes tomorrow
The man from the Bank (of England)
The Melbourne Agreement
A(nother) Labor Split
Two different solutions for the Great Depression problems
A party shoots itself in both feet
Lang sacked and Labor in tatters
Threats to Democracy from Best Friends and Enemies
Seeing the virtues of communism
Forming secret armies
Mistakes and Resilience Through the Crisis
The politicians fail
The people endure
Chapter 16: World War II Battles
Building Up to War
Defences through the Great Depression
Singapore Strategy
Belatedly prodded into action
Dealing with Early War Problems
Problems with tactics and technology
Problems with officer training and promotions
Problems with weapons
Overseas Again
War in northern Africa
War in the Mediterranean
This Time It’s Personal: War in the Pacific
Britain can’t do everything: The fall of Singapore
Attacks on Australia
Um, America — can we be friends?
Turning the tide in the Coral Sea and on the Kokoda Trail
Jungle victories
Petering into significance
Tackling Issues on the Home Front
Industrialisation and business expansion
Rationing and control
Women in war times
Taxing everyone and building a welfare system
Chapter 17: Making Australia New Again
Restarting the Social Laboratory Under Chifley
Chifley’s Postwar Reconstruction
Focusing on public works and welfare
Developing the public service
Increasing legislative interventions
Coming up against High Court troubles
Calwell and the Postwar Migration Revolution
Looking beyond Britain to meet migration needs
Breaking the mould of mainstream Australia
Shifting Balances with Foreign Policy
Giving a voice to all nations in the UN
Choosing between America and Britain
Treading On an Ants’ Nest — of Angry Banks
Taking a tentative step
Going full-steam down the nationalisation road
Part V: 1950 to 2010: Prosperity and Social Turmoil
Chapter 18: Ambushed — by Prosperity!
Economics of the Postwar Dreamtime
Developing industry and manufacturing
Accepting ‘new’ Australian workers
Suburbia! The Final Frontier
White goods make good friends
New neighbourhoods and isolation
The Rise and Rise of Bob Menzies
Appealing to ‘the forgotten people’
Appealing to women
Tackling the Communist Threat
Menzies tries to ban the Communist Party
A man called Petrov and another Labor split
Chapter 19: Taking Things Apart in the 1960s and 1970s
Moving On from Empire
Still loving Britain
Losing Britain all the same
Looking to Japan and America
Defending Australia . . . with America
Attack of the Baby Boomers!
Ending White Australia
Gaining rights for Indigenous Australians
Fighting for women’s rights
Crashing — or Crashing Through — With Gough
It’s (finally Labor’s) Time!
The Whitlam typhoon
When the wheels fall off . . .
Chapter 20: When Old Australia Dies . . . Is New Australia Ready?
The Coming of Malcolm Fraser
Launching the good ship Multi-Culti
Fraser foiled! By shifting economic sands
Deregulation Nation
Welcoming in ‘Hawke’s World’
Feeling the effects of short-term excess
Deregulating the labour market
Fighting the Culture Wars
Keating fires the starting gun
Bumps on the multi-culti road
Howard versus the ‘brain class’
Pauline Hanson enters the debate (and turns Howard’s head)
Battling Over Native Title
Acting on the Mabo judgement
Panicking after the Wik judgement
Chapter 21: Into the New Millennium
Still Dealing with the Outside World
Protecting the borders
Flashpoint Tampa
Dealing with the Bali bombings
Facing Up to Challenges at Home
Apologising to the Stolen Generations
Creating more wealth for more people
New political directions
Part VI: The Part of Tens
Chapter 22: Ten Things Australia Gave the World
The Boomerang
The Ticket of Leave System
The Secret Ballot
The Eight-Hour Day
Feature Films
The Flying Doctor Service
The Artificial Pacemaker
The Practical Application of Penicillin
Airline Safety Devices
Permaculture
Chapter 23: Ten Game-Changing Moments
Cook Claims the East Coast of Australia
Henry Kable Claims a Suitcase — and Rights for Convicts
Gold Discovered
Women Get the Vote in South Australia and Federally
Building a Fortress out of Australia — the White Australia Policy
Australia splits over Conscription
Australia on the Western Front
The Post–World War II Migration Program
Lake Mungo Woman
Mabo