The Australian colonies

The Australian colonies

 

The Australian colonies became self-governing while undergoing great changes caused by the revelation of gold in 1851. Gold was, in fact, a cause for the transmutation in posture of the British regime, which considered that the incrementing wealth as well as the growing population of the colonies justified their postulation of political responsibility. 

The revelation of gold, first in Incipient South Wales and anon afterward in the incipient colony of Victoria, led to an influx of newcomers, including professional and adept people. In the 1850s, Victoria engendered more than one-third of the world’s gold. Between 1852 and 1870, gold’s export value was more preponderant than that of wool. Most Australian gold was exported to Britain, which utilized it to maintain a gold standard for the pound.

The pastoral industry habituated in part to transmuting conditions by greatly incrementing cattle breeding for both beef and dairy products, which required less labor than sheep, and by slaughtering sheep for mutton. Where capital was available chiefly in Victoria station owners commenced to fence their sheep runs as an expedient of reducing their desideratum for shepherds. Wool shippers benefited greatly from amended ocean shipping, which incremented the frequency and decremented the cost and elapsed time of voyages to and from Britain.

The suddenly incremented pressure on the land resources of Incipient South Wales and Victoria beginning in the 1850s resulted in a popular kineticism against squatting and squatters; the slogan was “Unlock the Lands” to sanction the formation of incipient wheat and dairy farms. The colonial regimes were powerless to resolve the conflict until 1856, when their incipiently acquired constitutions gave them control of the disposition of public lands. Land reform laws were conclusively enacted in the 1860s after acrid political struggles. The elaborate provisions of the laws proved in many cases to be of more benefit to squatters than to would-be settlers.