Population of Australia Dec-1860: 1,145,585 (Between 1851 and 1861, the Australian population more than doubled)
The Victorian era and its culture were in existence from 1860 until 1901.
In the 1860s, the
increased efficiency of the compound steam engine enabled Auxiliary steamers to travel to Australia entirely under steam power, replacing clipper ships.
Complex knowledge, skills and navigational tools were needed to sail to Australia.
From England to Australia, around the Cape of Good Hope, could take up to four months. And in the Southern Ocean, the risk of hitting icebergs if a ship strayed too far south.
The path between King Island and southern Victoria was treacherous and many shipwrecks occurred.
John McDouall Stuart reached the centre of the continent on April 23, 1860.
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| 'Lady Daly' paddlesteamer at the Port Adelaide wharf. Passengers and crew line the decks and flags fly from the vessel's masts. City buildings can be seen in the background. A sternwheeler, she was built by Jackson and Murray circa 1861 and served successfully until 1878 when she was converted into a log barge. [On back of photograph] "Lady Daly' / name on top of wheelhouse / 1860-1865 ; Building on left is Wharf Hotel, licensee W.J. Gates 1860, 1861-1865'. Approximately 1860. SLSA |
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| Macquarie Street Sydney, NSW, 1860 - 1863, Powerhouse Museum |
On August 20, 1860, Robert O'Hara Burke and William John Wills set out from Melbourne to chart a course to the Gulf of Carpentaria. The expedition ended in tragedy when the explorers ran out of food. (At that time most of the inland of
Australia was largely unknown to the European settlers)
Several anti-Chinese riots occurred at the Lambing Flat camps (today the town of Young), over a period of 10 months, between 1860 and 1861.
1860s - Perinatal mortality was about 1:10 (
1.)
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Shipping at Newcastle in the 1860s. Approximately 1860, SLSA
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By January 1860 there were 11 benevolent asylums in the colony of New South Wales, housing 1,282 inmates and with a total annual expenditure of £25,822.
The Hobart Town Ragged School Association founded in 1854 provided free schooling for over 4000 children by the end of the 1860s. (TAS) A Ragged School system was established in The Rocks, Sydney, in 1862.
Australia reproduced many of the systems of charitable provision that existed in Britain. The NSW Government assumed responsibility for providing for the infirm and destitute in 1862.
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| Port Arthur Penitentiary (the large building in the centre of the image), with the Commissariat Stores on the waterfront on the left. 1860, NLAUST |
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| Chinese gold digger starting for work ca. Queensland, 1860s. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, 1860s |
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| View of Brisbane, QLD, 1860. Queensland State Archives |
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| Unidentified children (one male one younger female). South Australian identities, Approximately 1860 SLSA |
The Dunwich
Benevolent Asylum for the aged, infirm and destitute operated by the Queensland Government in Australia, was located at Dunwich on North Stradbroke Island in Moreton Bay and operated from 1865 to 1946.
1860 - The average mortality rates for Australia peak at 2,059 deaths per 100,000 population per year. (
1.) (Between the 1860s and 1960s, eight medical schools were established in Australia)
In 1860 it took 50 hours of labour to harvest one acre or 0.4 hectares of grain. In 1960 it took only 3 hours to do the same job. (
3.)
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| Description: 'Hodgson' - a young Aborigine who worked at Eton Vale station, the sheep run taken up on the Darling Downs in 1840 by pioneer squatter and squire, Arthur Hodgson 1818-1902 (Description supplied with photograph) State Library of Queensland, Hodgson from Eton Vale Station, Darling Downs, ca. 1860 |
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| Ann and Albert Street, Brisbane, Qld - 1860 (photo from the Brisbane Tramway Museum Society) Aussie~mobs |
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Hobart - corner of Elizabeth and Bathurst Street, TAS, 1860, LibrariesTAS
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The Victorian College for the Deaf on St Kilda Road in Melbourne opened in 1860.
Census findings show that Australian literacy levels had risen from 58% in 1861 to 80% in 1901. (
2.)
In late 1861 the Clermont goldfield was discovered in Central Queensland near Peak Downs.
In 1861 the telegraph line between Sydney and Brisbane was opened, and Adelaide and Sydney were directly linked in 1867. Australia was transforming, greatly reducing its geographic isolation from the rest of the world.
1861–1862: John McDouall Stuart led the first successful
expedition to cross the continent from south to north, through the centre of the continent.
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| John McDouall Stuart in 1860, SLSA. John McDouall Stuart (7 September 1815 – 5 June 1866), was a Scottish explorer and one of the most accomplished of all Australia's inland explorers. |
7 November 1861 the first Melbourne Cup horse race was run.
The 1860s was an
intense period of bushranger activity. For example, in 1862, a gang including Ben Hall, Frank Gardiner and John Gilbert held up the gold escort at Eugowra, near Forbes stealing £14 000 of gold and banknotes.
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| 1860s Professor Kernot, University of Melbourne Archives, William Charles Kernot (16 June 1845 – 14 March 1909), was an Australian engineer, first professor of engineering at the University of Melbourne and president of the Royal Society of Victoria |
South Australia took control of the Northern Territory which was previously part of the colony of New South Wales in 1863.
The English and Australian Cookery Book is considered to be the first Australian cookbook. It was published in London in 1864.
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| Native Police, Rockhampton, QLD, 1864, Queensland Police Museum (The Native Police killed 24,000 Indigenous people across the state, according to one historian's estimate. Another estimate puts the death toll at just over 41,000.). Professor Bryce Barker says they were "deliberately recruited from areas that were far away from where they were going to be working, so they had no kin relationship with the people that they were going to be killing". |
May 1864, Bushranger Ben Hall and his gang escape from a shootout with police after attempting to rob the Bang Bang Hotel in Koorawatha, New South Wales.
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| Portrait of two men wearing top hats, Sydney, NSW, ca. 1860s, NLAUST |
On 1 December 1864 a huge fire destroyed all of the buildings in the block bordering Albert, Queen, George and Elizabeth Streets, Brisbane, Queensland.
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| Aftermath of the Great Fire of Brisbane, 1864 - Queen Street, SLQLD |
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| Playing croquet in the Public Gardens, Perth, WA, July 1864, SLWA |
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| Geraldton homestead and outhouses, WA, approximately 1865. SLWA |
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| A dray loaded with a barrel and pulled by a single horse stands outside a slab hut. A man is stood behind the dray with another barrel alongside him. 1860s, State Library of Queensland |
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| Circular Quay, Sydney, NSW, 1865. From the volume titled 'Miscellaneous Shipping in the Days of Sail'. SLSA |
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| View of Adelaide looking from the corner of Pirie Street and King William Street, (1865). Adelaide. SASA |
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| Shipping at Hobart 1865. 'King of Trumps', 'Lady Emma', 'Aladdin', 'Runnymede', SS 'Monarch' in foreground. 1865, SLSA |
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| Men standing on and beside the P-class 0-6-0 type steam locomotive No.7. The men were probably railways staff, including a loco crew. Victoria, 1865, MuseumsVIC |
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| Royal Coach Mail pulled up outside the Hagen Arms Hotel on Angas Road, Echunga, SA. The name of the proprietor is stated as J Warland who held the position from 1865-1876. Approximately 1865, SLSA |
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| Mary Langworthy Wilson (nee Hoyles) circa 1865. Born in St. Johns, Newfoundland, Canada in 1821, daughter of Newman Wright Hoyles who was the Colonial Treasurer of Newfoundland. She married George Harrison Wilson, an Englishman from a well-to-do family, who had set up a business in St. Johns. In 1853 George and Mary Wilson and their family emigrated to Australia and settled in Ipswich, Queensland. The original of this portrait, taken by Bradley & Allen in Sydney, is at the State Library of Queensland, Aussie~mobs |
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| Official opening of the first section of the Ipswich to Grandchester railway, Ipswich, QLD, 1865, SLQLD |
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| Students and their teacher photographed outside the South Rhine Presbyterian Church., 1866, SLSA |
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| Portrait of Truganini [Tasmania, ca. 1866] [picture] / [C. A Woolley] Truganini (also known as Lallah Rookh; c. 1812 – 8 May 1876) was an Aboriginal Tasmanian woman. She was one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian languages and one of the last individuals solely of Aboriginal Tasmanian descent. |
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| Photograph of convict John Boyle O'Reilly (1844-1890) taken in 1866. John Boyle O'Reilly (28 June 1844 – 10 August 1890) was an Irish poet, journalist, author and activist. As a youth in Ireland, he was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, or Fenians, for which he was transported to Western Australia. |
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| Central Brunswick: Sydney Road, Melbourne, VIC, (CR. Albert Street) about 1866, taken from Albert Street, looking south. Photograph - 1866, SLNSW |
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| Mount Alexander Battalion, Sunbury Camp, VIC, 1866, MuseumsVIC |
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| The Orphan Asylum, Adelaide, SA, [picture] / [assembled] by Benjamin Greene, SLSA |
Mary Helena Fortune (c. 1833 – 1911), an Australian writer, under the pseudonyms "Waif Wander" and
"W.W, was one of the earliest female detective writers in the world. Her major work was the police procedural series "The Detective's Album", which
appeared in the Australian Journal under her pseudonym of "W. W." from 1868.
In 1867, James Nash discovered gold at Gympie.
The first person to estimate the lifespan of Australians was Morris Birkbeck Pell, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Sydney. In 1867, he showed that the life expectancy for a newborn in the colony was 45.6 years. (
4.)
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| Thomas and John Clarke, bushrangers, from a photograph taken in Braidwood gaol (Thomas was shot in the arm), 1867. SLNSW (Brothers Thomas and John Clarke were Australian bushrangers from the Braidwood district of New South Wales. A journalist said: "Their crimes were so shocking that they never made their way into bushranger folklore — people just wanted to forget about them." |
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| Flinders Street from the corner of Wickham Street, Townsville, QLD, in 1867. The photo is credited to Richard Daintree, SLQLD |
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| H.R.H. THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH AND SUITE : In Mining Costume after descending THE BAND OF HOPE GOLD MINE, BALLARAT, AUSTRALIA, 1867, SLVIC |
The last convict ship to Australia, the
Hougoumont, arrived in the Swan River Colony (Western Australia) on 10 January 1868 with 229 convicts. (convicts from Britain served as a cheap workforce until 1868)
In 1868, the Granny Smith Apple was
propagated by Maria Ann Smith in Eastwood, New South Wales.
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| South Sea Islander cane workers on a plantation in North Queensland, ca. 1868, SLQLD |
Railways in Australia date from 10 December 1831, and continued to expand during the 1860s.
In 1868 the colony of Tasmania became the first in Australia to make school attendance for children between the ages of seven and 12 compulsory.
In 1868, Henry O'Farrell tried to shoot the visiting Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, second son of Queen Victoria, at Clontarf, Sydney.
In 1868, 13 Aboriginal cricketers from Victoria's western districts sailed from Sydney to become the first Australian team to tour England.
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Original photograph of the first Australian cricket team to compete in England in 1868. All Aboriginal players. denisbin (The concept of an Aboriginal cricket team can be traced to cattle stations in the Western District of Victoria, where, in the mid-1860s, European pastoralists introduced Aboriginal station hands to the sport. An Aboriginal XI was created with the assistance of Tom Wills—captain of the Victoria cricket team and founder of Australian rules football—who acted as the side's captain-coach in the lead-up to and during an 1866–67 tour of Victoria and New South Wales)
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| Portrait of Lady Diamantina Roma Bowen. (Wife of George Bowen, first Governor of Queensland), 1868. Queensland State Archives (The Contessa Diamantina di Roma was born in 1832 or 1833, in the United States of the Ionian Islands, then a British protectorate, today in Greece) |
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| Bourke Street [Melbourne, VIC, 1868] NLAUST |
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| Workers Outside Bendigo Tin Shop, Bendigo, Victoria, circa 1868, MuseumsVIC |
The Suez Canal opened in 1869 providing ships from Europe an alternative route to Australia.
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| Government surveying party, Palmerston campsite. The area was known as Fort Hill and was the location of George Goyder's survey camp. South Australian Government was keen to establish a permanent settlement in the Northern Territory. Goyder divided his men into various working parties including Road Party, Trig. Piling, Landing Party, Timber Party, Ship Party. The five men shown in this photograph are sitting outside a tent next to their trigonometry measuring tools, Approximately 1869, SLSA |
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| Arrival of Hon. T. Elder's camels at Wilcannia township bringing stores from Burra Burra, South Australia, May 12th 1869. Camel train at Wilcannia outside Alex Ross & Co. Wine and Spirit Merchant.. NLAUST |
Victoria was the first colony to enact comprehensive regulations on the lives of Aboriginal Australians.
The Aboriginal Protection Act 1869.
here
In the 1860s glass-plate negatives were
invented, which meant that photographs were reproducible and more widely available.
The boom fuelled by the gold rush and wool industry lasted through the 1860s and the 1870s.
Australia was famous around the world for its democracy during the 1860s. In the United States, the secret ballot was known as the Australian ballot.
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| Early view of Ravenswood, Queensland, ca. 1869, SLQLD, Ravenswood is a rural town in the Charters Towers Region, Queensland, Australia. Gold was discovered here in 1868 |
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| The Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts, Pitt Street. From an album of photographs with the inscription "Colonel Trevor, 14th Regiment, November 10th, 1869" in the Collection of the State Library of New South Wales |
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