Political History of Australia

Governor Lachlan Macquarie was on a sincere mission to lift up the former convicts known as emancipists. For years that project had gone his way — until the colonial establishment struck back and set out to put these...

In early New South Wales, more than four-fifths of the non-Aboriginal population were convicts, former convicts, or their children. Once free, these people — the emancipists — discovered that money and talent could not...

Episode 38 follows John Macarthur after he slipped out of New South Wales just before Lachlan Macquarie arrived to restore order. Having masterminded the Rum Rebellion, Macarthur exploited a legal loophole in Lord...

In September 1803 Lieutenant John Bowen raised the Union Jack at Risdon Cove on the Derwent, founding the first European settlement in Van Diemen’s Land. The next year, Governor King in Sydney, under orders from...

In 1803, Governor Philip Gidley King in Sydney sent two ships to near modern day Hobart. There had been multiple earlier European visits to Van Diemen’s Land but these ships were going to stay and build a permanent...

Last week 'The Women's Pioneer Society of Australasia' invited me to speak about the Political History of Australia podcast. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please leave a comment...

The people of what we now call Tasmania had lived in complete isolation since rising seas carved out Bass Strait around 10,000 BC, transforming their homeland from a southern peninsula of the Australian continent into...

This episode we pause the story of Governor Lachlan Macquarie to take a panoramic tour of Australia’s near-abroad and Australia’s infant settlements in the early 1820s.    With the Napoleonic Wars finally over...

In 1813 New South Wales was a fast-growing, optimistic society. The colony’s teenage growth spurt could no longer be contained by the rugged sandstone wall of the Blue Mountains just 50 kilometres west of Sydney...

After the upheaval of the Rum Rebellion, London finally responds. In late December 1809, Lieutenant-Colonel Lachlan Macquarie arrives in Sydney Harbour. He moves quickly to be sworn in as governor on New Year’s Day...

The men who led the march on Government House to depose Governor William Bligh in 1808 knew there would be consequences. Yet the Rebel Administration played a weak hand with skill and restraint. Beyond removing Bligh at...

On the evening of 26 January 1808 the New South Wales Corps marched on Government House and did something extraordinary: they deposed Governor William Bligh at gunpoint. It remains the only successful armed overthrow of...

The label Rum Rebellion was a smear dreamed up decades after the seismic events of 26 January 1808. Those dramatic events were not about rum. It was fight over what the future of NSW should be.   For some...

As 1807 unfolded, the little British colony of New South Wales was politically charged. Previous governors had attempted to reassert official authority by writing to letters to London and saying mean words about...

Captain William Bligh assumed office as the Governor of New South Wales in August 1806. Bligh had had a brilliant career at sea but it had been sullied by reports of him being a horrible boss. The governorship...