William Charles Wentworth was an Australian statesman, pastoralist, explorer, newspaper editor, lawyer, politician and author, who became one of the wealthiest and most powerful figures in colonial New South Wales. He was among the first colonists to articulate a nascent Australian identity.
D'Arcy Wentworth was an Irish-Australian surgeon and the first paying passenger to arrive in the new colony of New South Wales. He served under the first seven governors of the Colony, and from 1810 to 1821, he was "great assistant" to Governor Lachlan Macquarie. Wentworth led a campaign for the rights and recognition of emancipists and for trial by jury.
William Redfern was the Surgeon’s First Mate aboard HMS Standard during the May 1797 Nore mutiny, and at a court martial in August 1797 he was sentenced to death for his involvement. His sentence was later commuted and in 1801 he was transported to New South Wales and assigned as an assistant to the Norfolk Island hospital. In this post he demonstrated the medical skills that enabled him to become one of the colony’s most revered physicians and a pioneer in public health. Redfern advocated major reforms to sanitary conditions aboard convict ships and this significantly reduced the morbidity rates of convicts arriving in NSW. Later in life he became a highly successful farmer, bank director and an emancipist rights activist.
William Henry Lytton Earle Bulwer, 1st Baron Dalling and Bulwer, was a British Liberal politician, diplomat and writer.
The Federation of Australia was the process by which the six separate British self-governing colonies of Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia agreed to unite and form the Commonwealth of Australia, establishing a system of federalism in Australia. The colonies of Fiji and New Zealand were originally part of this process, but they decided not to join the federation. Following federation, the six colonies that united to form the Commonwealth of Australia as states kept the systems of government that they had developed as separate colonies, but they also agreed to have a federal government that was responsible for matters concerning the whole nation. When the Constitution of Australia came into force, on 1 January 1901, the colonies collectively became states of the Commonwealth of Australia.
Sir George Gipps was the Governor of the British Colony of New South Wales for eight years, between 1838 and 1846. His governorship oversaw a tumultuous period where the rights to land were bitterly contested in a three way struggle between the colonial government, Aboriginal people and wealthy graziers known as squatters. The management of other major issues such as the end of convict transportation, large immigration programs and the introduction of majority elected representation also featured strongly during his tenure. Gipps is regarded as having brought a high moral and intellectual standard to the position of governor, but was ultimately defeated in his aims by the increasing power and avarice of the squatters.
William Hutchinson was a British convict who was transported to the Australian colonies, ultimately to become a successful public servant and businessman.
The history of Australia from 1788 to 1850 covers the early British colonial period of Australia's history. This started with the arrival in 1788 of the First Fleet of British ships at Port Jackson on the lands of the Eora, and the establishment of the penal colony of New South Wales as part of the British Empire. It further covers the European scientific exploration of the continent and the establishment of the other Australian colonies that make up the modern states of Australia.
Samuel Lyons was a pardoned convict from London who rose to prominence in the Australian colony of New South Wales as a landowner and businessman. A tailor by trade, Lyons was sentenced to transportation for life in 1814 for theft. He reached Sydney in January 1815. He made an attempt to escape in April, but was brought back to Sydney in February 1816. In August 1816 he was taken to Hobart and in April 1817 he again unsuccessfully tried to escape. On 24 July 1819, for robbing government stores at Hobart, he was sentenced to receive 200 lashes and 4 years at Newcastle.
The Australian Constitutions Act 1850, or the Australian Colonies Government Act 1850, was an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which was enacted to formally establish the Colony of Victoria by separating the District of Port Phillip from the Colony of New South Wales. The act provided an initial constitution for Victoria, which included a bicameral parliament and a Lieutenant-Governor as its vice-regal representative. It also altered the constitution of the Colony of New South Wales, and provided for similar constitutions to be set up in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) and South Australia.
British colonisation of South Australia describes the planning and establishment of the colony of South Australia by the British government, covering the period from 1829, when the idea was raised by the then-imprisoned Edward Gibbon Wakefield, to 1842, when the South Australia Act 1842 changed the form of government to a Crown colony.
The history of New South Wales refers to the history of the Australian state of New South Wales and the area's preceding Indigenous and British colonial societies. The Mungo Lake remains indicate occupation of parts of the New South Wales area by Indigenous Australians for at least 40,000 years. The British navigator James Cook became the first European to map the coast in 1770 and a First Fleet of British convicts followed to establish a penal colony at Sydney in 1788.
The Port Phillip District was an administrative division of the Colony of New South Wales from 9 September 1836 until 1 July 1851, when it was separated from New South Wales and became the Colony of Victoria.
William Bland was a prominent public figure in the colony of New South Wales. A surgeon by profession, he arrived in Australia as a convict but played an important role in the early years of Australian healthcare, education and science.
George Robert Nichols, also known as Bob Nichols, was an Australian politician, a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council between 1848 and 1856. He was also a member of the inaugural New South Wales Legislative Assembly for one term from 1856 until his death.
James Macarthur was an Australian pastoralist and politician. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council on three occasions between 1839 and 1843, 1848 and 1856 and finally from 1866 until his death. He was also a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly between 1856 and 1859.
Women's suffrage in Australia was one of the early achievements of Australian democracy. Following the progressive establishment of male suffrage in the Australian colonies from the 1840s to the 1890s, an organised push for women's enfranchisement gathered momentum from the 1880s, and began to be legislated from the 1890s. South Australian women achieved the right to vote and to stand for office in 1895, following the world first Constitutional Amendment Act 1894 which gained royal assent the following year. This preceded even universal male suffrage in Tasmania. Western Australia granted women the right to vote from 1899, although with racial restrictions. In 1902, the newly established Australian Parliament passed the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902, which gave women equal voting rights to men and the right to stand for federal parliament. By 1908, the remaining Australian states had legislated for women's suffrage for state elections. Grace Benny was elected as the first female local government councillor in 1919, Edith Cowan the first state Parliamentarian in 1921, Dorothy Tangney the first Senator and Enid Lyons the first Member of the House of Representatives in 1943.
Suffrage in Australia is the voting rights in the Commonwealth of Australia, its six component states and territories, and local governments. The colonies of Australia began to grant universal male suffrage from 1856, with women's suffrage on equal terms following between the 1890s and 1900s. Some jurisdictions introduced racial restrictions on voting from 1885, and by 1902 most Australian residents who were not of European descent were explicitly or effectively excluded from voting and standing for office, including at the Federal level. Such restrictions had been removed by 1966. Today, the right to vote at all levels of government is held by citizens of Australia over the age of 18 years, excluding some prisoners and people "of unsound mind".
The Australian was an English-language newspaper published in Sydney, Australia.
An electoral banner was used by William Wentworth and William Bland as joint candidates in the first New South Wales Legislative Council election in 1843. The banner is notable for its role in early Australian electoral democracy and its links to subsequent Australian flags.
