History of New South Wales

Prehistory and early British settlement

Human remains discovered in 1968 and 1974 at Mungo in southwestern New South Wales are the oldest so far uncovered in Australia, dating from about 46,000 to 50,000 years ago. The land was managed by Aboriginal peoples or language groups for tens of thousands of years through a range of traditional practices, including the use of fire to stimulate the growth of valued plants or to clear grasslands for hunting. Fossil records reveal that large prehistoric animals once grazed the land, but they had long been extinct by the time the smaller creatures of the present day—the kangaroos, koalas, wombats, and dingoes—were introduced by Aboriginal peoples in their migration from Asia.

New South Wales was the first Australian colony to be established by the British. The southeastern coast of the continent was first sighted by Europeans in 1770 on the first voyage of Capt. James Cook, who took possession of what he called New South Wales in the name of King George III. The colony originally covered the eastern third of Australia from Cape York Peninsula to the tip of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania). This vast area encompassed a variety of landforms and climatic conditions, ranging on the mainland from the dry interior to the wetter coastal plains. These stretched from the semitropical north to the more temperate south and were separated from the interior by the Great Dividing Range.

Gradually after 1788 New South Wales was subdivided. Van Diemen’s Land ceased to come under the governor at Sydney in 1825, some 27 years after the explorer George Bass discovered that it was an island. The Port Phillip District, settled in the 1830s by pastoralists from Van Diemen’s Land and from farther north on the mainland, formed the nucleus of the colony of Victoria, which was separated from New South Wales in 1851 after considerable agitation. Eight years later Queensland received self-government, which was administered from Brisbane, originally the centre of a penal settlement. No further changes were made to New South Wales until 1911, when a portion of territory 185 miles (300 km) southwest of Sydney was acquired by the federal government as the site for the national capital, named Canberra in 1913.

Although New South Wales was progressively reduced in physical extent, its history was one of growth. It began in January 1788 as a small settlement of some 1,000 people clustered around the foreshores of Sydney Harbour, near what is now the city of Sydney. The question of why the British government should have established a colony in so distant and isolated a site has long occasioned dispute. It was once accepted that the move resulted from the need to find an outlet for convicts, whom the American colonists would no longer accept after their revolt against British rule in 1776. Some historians have suggested additional influences. Even before the loss of the American colonies, Britain had begun to pay attention to the area in which Australia was located. Possessions were acquired in India, trade developed with China, and interest was displayed in the Pacific region. Botany Bay, near present-day Sydney, had been placed in this process of imperial expansion as an outpost valued for commercial purposes and as a means of protecting British shipping, particularly from French competitors. It has also been suggested that the presence on Norfolk Island of pine trees suitable for masts and flax needed for canvas provided a further incentive.

Whatever the merits of the different explanations for the colonization of New South Wales, the First Fleet, which arrived under the command of Adm. Arthur Phillip in January 1788, brought only convicts and their jailers. For the next 52 years of its existence, the colony continued to receive regular consignments of felons. At first they arrived only in a trickle, but, once the Napoleonic Wars were over, larger numbers were dispatched. Historians agree that among the convicts were political offenders whose only offense was to have protested against injustice and misrule. Those, however, formed a small part of a group largely composed of men and women who had been found guilty of theft and other offenses against property. All were lawbreakers, but questions have been raised as to whether they can be regarded as criminals. Some historians view the convicts as the victims of harsh law in an unjust society. Others depict them in the main as ne’er-do-wells who chose crime in preference to other occupations.

Whatever their background, the convicts provided a labour force, used by the government but more commonly by private settlers to whom the government assigned convicts. After completing their sentences, most found work as labourers or tradesmen, but the more-enterprising acquired land, established businesses, or, when suitably qualified, entered the professions. They included artists such as Thomas Watling; writers such as Henry Savery, whose Quintus Servinton was the first novel printed in Australia; Francis Greenway, the celebrated architect; the solicitor George Crossley; and Laurence Halloran, who established a well-known school. Mary Reibey became a prominent businesswoman, Samuel Terry was known as the “Botany Bay Rothschild,” and the landowner, trader, and manufacturer Simeon Lord rose to a position of wealth. Despite these exceptions, a convict past, even convict ancestry, was a “stain” to be hidden, and this remained the case until well into the 20th century.