A Brief History of Queensland and Australian Federation

The 19th century played a pivotal role in the national identity of Queensland and Australia. The mid-19th century marked the beginning of the formation of Queensland and the struggle for the formation of our national identity as Australians at the dawn of the 20th century. 

Transportation of convicts had ceased in Brisbane by 1839, and free settlement was permitted in the early 1840s, officially becoming a free settlement in 1842. Queensland separated shortly after from New South Wales as a new colony in 1859.

The separation was enacted when Queen Victoria declared on the 6th of June 1859 that Queensland have its own representative government. The newly appointed Governor Bowen landed on the 10th of December 1859, and in May 1860 the Queensland parliament first sat and proceeded to govern as a separate colony with its own parliament, public service, and judiciary.

Queen Victoria Portrait by Alexander Bassano. 1882.

Newspapers from the 1840s to 1880s provide snippets of the daily life of Australians in the period following the convict colony. Featured were advertisements for shops and stores for furniture, clothes, whimsical inventions, and dubious remedies for illnesses and portraits of the sweeping countryside, celebrations of Queen Victoria’s reign, the development of colonial railways, roads, the construction of momentous buildings such as the Queensland Parliament House they also included passing of colonial policies such as free primary education.

The newspapers of the 1880s and 1890s published news, conversations, and debates regarding federalism, its opposition, and support for women’s suffrage.

The idea of federation was first formalised with the creation of the federal council and the first draft of the constitution in 1891. Newspapers published the women’s suffrage movement in Queensland and Australia as a whole, and women were progressively allowed to vote across Australia from the mid-1890s.

The development of Australian infrastructure fostered interstate relations between the colonies, and the widespread distribution of folk stories, songs, and tales aided in the deepening of the colonial identity - the genesis of the national Australian identity.

In the late 1890s the Australian colonies provided soldiers for the Boer War and newspapers detailed muster calls for new and existing military formations.  English, Scottish, and Australian formations, including troops from Queensland as early as July 1899 with the first military formations having departed between November 1899 and March 1900. Artefacts from the Boer War include the “Graphic History of the South African War 1899 to 1900” by Wentworth Huyshe. This book details accounts from several soldiers and officers of the Boer War including military engagements, commendations, and personal experiences.

As the Australian states fought in the distant war, the end of the 19th century approached, until finally, on the 1st of January 1901, the colonies federated, and the Australian Commonwealth took its first breath as a united nation.

Opening of the First Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia by H.R.H. The Duke of Cornwall and York (later King George V), Roberts, T. 1903.

Article by: Joseph Osia
Editors: Ruth Kerr, Helen Best, Jan Freemantle