New South Wales is a State of Australia and covers an area of 801,640 sq km and has a population of about 6,463,800. The landscape ranges from the subtropical north to the Snowy Mountains in the south, which contain Australia’s highest point, Mount Kosciuszko.

In 1788 New South Wales covered much of Australia’s central and eastern coasts. Between 1825 and 1911, its area gradually reduced as the other States and Territories were proclaimed.

The 1788 proclamation of New South Wales included ‘neighbouring islands’. As such, New Zealand was also considered to be part of New South Wales from 1788 until Britain formally claimed it as a separate colony in 1840.

History

Lieutenant James Cook in 1770 claimed New South Wales for Britain ignoring its indigenous inhabitants by wrongly stating that it was terra nullius (uninhabited land). Surprisingly the proclamation only claimed the eastern part of the continent rather than its whole.

Captain Phillip landed with the First Fleet of 11 ships, 750 convicts and 400 military personnel in 1788. Clinging to the coast, the colony struggled to grow enough crops to sustain itself. The Great Dividing Range was a rugged obstacle to the inland and it wasn't until 1813 that explorers beat a path through the seemingly un-navigable bush. This allowed inland towns such as Bathurst to haul crops to the capital, and further exploration into inland areas. By the 1830s, explorers had mapped out most of inland NSW, and the discovery of gold in the central west in the 1850s attracted an influx of free settlers.

The Great Depression hit the state hard and then Premier Jack Lang controversially decided to default on the state's loans from Britain. The state eventually recovered with wool prices and manufacturing making a comeback in the 1930s, and the building of the internationally recognisable Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932.

After World War ll construction in Sydney boomed. In the state's south, work began on the mammoth Snowy Mountain Hydro-electric Scheme, which took almost 30 years to complete using a huge immigrant workforce that broadened Australia's monoculture.

The 1980s saw another boom, with much development in Sydney, but a recession in the 1990s slowed the whole state and threatened to wipe out agricultural industry. By 1996 the state was improving economically and socially. Hosting the 2000 Olympic Games saw Sydney riding high once again, with tourism a major focus in the new millennium.

Interesting Facts

·        The site of first settlement by Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788 (The Rocks) is now at the very centre of Australia’s largest city (Sydney).

·        The acronym ‘NSW’ is sometimes used sarcastically to mean ‘Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong’ by those living in the less populated (and possibly neglected) parts of the state.

·        Broken Hill is in many ways part of South Australia: it’s closer to Adelaide than Sydney, operates under Central Standard Time, and prefers SA media.

·        The Murray River forms most of the border between New South Wales and Victoria. To be precise, the border is formed by the southern bank of the river meaning that its length is entirely located in New South Wales until South Australia is reached.

Figure 19 - New South Wales

Figure 20 – Broken Hill showing Central Standard Time Zone

The Black-Allan Line

In 1845 the early explorer-surveyor Thomas Scott Townsend found the most easterly source of the Murray River. The location, now called Indi Springs, is where the waters of the Murray escape from the slopes of Forest Hill to begin their 2,575 km journey to the sea.

Upon establishment of the colony of Victoria in 1851, it was determined that its border with New South Wales would primarily be formed by the length of the River Murray, with a connecting straight line from its source to Cape Howe.

The Black-Allan Line is the line surveyed by Alexander Black and Alexander Allan between 1870 and 1872. This task proved to be very challenging through the uncharted and rugged terrain of the 180 km route.

For reasons now unclear, the Black-Allan Line was never formally proclaimed as a border although it was accepted by both states under common law. This situation, however, was put to rights in 2006 when both states’ parliaments finally made the proclamations which had originally been drafted in 1873. 

Figure 21 – The Black-Allan Line                                     (Source: Institute of Surveyors)

Figure 22 – River Murray near its source at Indi Springs                 (Source: Steve Jones)

South Australia covers an area of 983,482 sq km and has a population of about 1,500,000. The State's capital Adelaide is on Gulf St Vincent and has a population of 1,085,000 people. When the early colonists began building Adelaide they built with stone, constructing a solid, dignified city that is civilised and calm in a way that no other Australian state capital can match.

History

The site for Adelaide was chosen in December 1836 by the colony's far-sighted Surveyor-General, Colonel William Light, who created its remarkable design. The site was well-drained, had fertile soil and straddled the Torrens River, which guaranteed a ready water supply. The site was named after Queen Adelaide, wife of the King William IV.

The Chairman of the Colonisation Commission for South Australia, Robert Torrens, said that living in South Australia was: 'far preferable to rambling over the back settlements of America or mixing with Catholics in the bleak unhealthy wilds of Canada or to enduring the depraved society of New South Wales…..South Australia will soon become the great rice and wool growing country of the world and that its climate will make it possible to produce opium for the China trade'.

Torrens also predicted that New South Wales would lose its supremacy and probably become a provincial appendage to South Australia.

South Australia was settled by free people and has no convict history. It was also unusual in that the British Government gave the colony no financial backing, so when things finally took off in Adelaide, most of the money stayed in the state. The colony promised settlers civil and religious liberty and by 1839, Lutherans fleeing religious persecution were arriving from Prussia. In 1840, 6557 Europeans lived in Adelaide; by 1851 the European population was 14,577. By the early 1840s the town had about 30 satellite villages, including the German settlements of Hahndorf, Klemzig and Lobethal, where the state's wine industry was founded.

A wheat boom in the 1870s and 80s set off a building boom, and a lot of the beautiful buildings which still line the city's streets were built during these decades. Rapid expansion also took place during World War I and the 1920s. The busy post-World War II years saw new migrants arrive from Europe. During the late 60s and 70s, South Australia made several ground-breaking political reforms, prohibiting sexual discrimination, racial discrimination and capital punishment, and recognising Aboriginal land rights.

Figure 30 - South Australia

Figure 31 – Lake Eyre

Interesting Facts

·        Lake Eyre is the lowest point in Australia (16 m below sea level). It is 23^rd largest outright lake, and fifth largest terminal lake in the world (6,216 sq km).

·        The first European visitor to South Australia was Dutchmen Peter Nuyts in 1627.

·        Europeans started living on Kangaroo Island well before the official proclamation of the colony in 1836. South Australia’s first and oldest European tree, a mulberry, was planted at this time and still grows at Reeves Point.  

Table 9 - Lowest Points on each Continent

Table 10 – 25 Largest Lakes in the World

The SA-Victorian Border Dispute

South Australia's boundaries were first established in 1834 by the South Australian Colonisation Act of the British Parliament. They were defined in terms of latitude and longitude when scarcely anything was known of the land except the coastline and the course of the River Murray. The eastern boundary was established at 141° east longitude but, when the position of this line to the south of the River Murray was marked by the surveyors Wade and White between 1847 and 1849, the border was erroneously set some two minutes of longitude (approximately 3 km) west of this meridian. The correct position was determined in 1868, during preparation of marking the border with New South Wales. A lengthy dispute arose with Victoria over South Australia's 'lost' border strip, and this continued until the Privy Council ruled in favour of maintaining the status quo in 1914.

Figure 32 - Border Misalignment on at River Murray/SA Border

Figure 33 – Mulberry Tree dating from 1836 at Reeves Point, Kangaroo Island

Victoria is a State of Australia that covers an area of 227,600 sq km and has a population of about 4,765,900 people. Its capital city is Melbourne (pop. 3,417,200). Victoria is Australia’s most diverse state and its major agricultural and industrial producer. Its landscape consists of mountains, rainforests, deserts, snowfields, beaches, vineyards, wheatlands and market gardens.

History

European settlement began in 1803 and the Aboriginal people were quickly dispossessed of their lands. Estimates suggest that by the 1880s there were just over 800 Aborigines left in the state.

Melbourne was established in 1835 by a group of Tasmanian entrepreneurs, and is the youngest city of its size in the world. Although the settlement was not named until 1837, its characteristic grid layout was imposed by military surveyor Robert Hoddle the same year, and by 1840 over 10,000 people had been attracted to the area.

The colony of Victoria was formed in 1851, with Melbourne as its capital, coinciding with the discovery of gold which swiftly transformed them both. Gold brought a huge influx of immigrants from around the world, and the wealth it generated created a city of extravagant proportions. This progress was, however, temporarily halted in 1890 by the first of many devastating financial crashes which have afflicted the economically vulnerable city.

The ethnic mix of Melbourne's population has always been an important influence on the city's character: the Chinese and Irish diggers attracted by gold in the 19th century and the postwar arrival of refugees and migrants from all over Europe (particularly Greece, Italy and Yugoslavia) and more recently from Vietnam and Cambodia, have all contributed elements of their cultures to what could otherwise have been a conservative English society.

After World War II, Victoria went into a long period of stable conservative government, until the 1980s, when the Labor party took office and the state hit boom times. Land prices just kept going up, and so did buildings, until 1990 when the economy fell in a heap. In 1992 radical conservative autocrat Jeff Kennett took the reins, provoking ire and admiration in seemingly equal doses.

Interesting Facts

·        Mangroves are often considered to be tropical tree species, but the World’s most southerly occur within Wilson’s Promontory National Park at Miller’s Landing. The protected and shallow waters of Corner Inlet allow them to grow prolifically.

·        The Murray River makes up much of the border of the between Victoria and New South Wales. To be specific, the border is actually the southern high water mark of the river so that none of the Murray is actually in Victoria. This boundary definition can be ambiguous, however, as the river has changed its course slightly since being defined in 1851.

·        West of the 141° East line of longitude, the river continues as the Victoria - South Australia border for 3.6 km. Here, the border runs down the middle of the river and this represents the only part of the Murray that is actually Victorian. These different alignments are due to a miscalculation in the 1840s when the border was originally surveyed (see Figure 32).

Figure 34 – Victoria

Figure 35 – Mangroves near Miller’s Landing, Corner Inlet

Figure 36 – Map showing Wilson’s Promontory National Park