December 1890, the population of Australia was 3,151,355.
In 1891, the first National Australasian Convention in Sydney would produce the
fundamentals of the federal system we have today. In his Tenterfield Oration of 1889 Henry Parkes had said:
" … Surely what the Americans have done by war, Australians can bring about in peace."
The University of Tasmania opened 1 January 1890.
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| Pedestrians, George Street, Sydney, Australia - 1890 | Historical, Street scenes, Photography news |
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| Sydney ferry NARRABEEN, NSW (1886 - 1911) in the 1890s |
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| Fremantle, elevated view west along High Street, WA, SLWA (1890s) |
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| Horse trams, King William Street, Adelaide, SA. ca. 1890, SLSA |
The prolonged 1890
Australian maritime dispute over pay and conditions and the role of unions.
The steamship RMS Quetta sank off Cape York Peninsula, killing 133 in 1890.
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| Maryborough Fire Station, QLD, with appliances ca. 1890 |
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| Members of Peterborough Brass band. SA, Approximately 1890, SLSA |
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| Elizabeth St. from Union Bank, Hobart, TAS / J. W. Beattie, 1890, SLSA |
Sir John Forrest becomes the Premier of Western Australia in 1890, when WA became a self-governing colony.
The booming economy of the 1880s was over, and the Great Crash of 1891 occurred. Widespread unemployment, homelessness and hunger.
In 1891, 16 small banks and building societies collapsed in Melbourne in 1891.
Charitable relief provided by benevolent societies, and the government, was the major means for the poor, aged and destitute.
Institutions established were immigrants’ homes, orphanages, destitute asylums.
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| Interior of the women’s surgical ward, Sydney Hospital, 1890s, Museum Australia |
The 1891, the Australian shearers' strike occurred after the Australian Labour Federation issued its manifesto calling for social and
economic injustices to be addressed. Employers responded by employing non-union labour. The Queensland Government mobilised a military response. The government’s repressive measures led to the election of 16 new Labor parliamentarians in 1893 and the formation of the Australian Labor Party.
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| Strikers' Library at Barcaldine during the 1891 Shearers' Strike, State Library of Queensland |
By the 1890s, most Australians lived in cities.
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| Central Railway Station, Sydney, NSW. Horsedrawn vehicles in operation at old Sydney Railway Station on the corner of Devonshire and George Streets. Dated: 04/10/1890, Museums of History NSW - State Archives Collection |
While in Australia, Lord Sheffield donated £150 to the New South Wales Cricket Association to purchase a plate and establish the cricket competition known as the Sheffield Shield.
Financial crisis in Australia caused a GDP fall of 17 per cent over 1892 and 1893 and a collapse of private and government investment in the pastoral industry, urban development and public infrastructure investment.
February 1893, the Brisbane flood devastates Queensland.
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| Flood waters seen from the corner of Adelaide and Creek Streets, Brisbane, QLD, 1893, SLQLD |
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| Hobart Boys' Home and Industrial School (1893), TAS. Alfred Kennerley (1811-1897), founder of the Hobart Boys' Home and Industrial School for orphans and boys from broken homes in 1869, premier from August 1873 to July 1876, and philanthropist -pellethepoet |
Gold was
discovered at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, by Paddy Hannan and two others on 14 June 1993.
The 1893 banking crisis in the Australian colonies of commercial banks and building societies. Banks at this time had few legal restrictions on their operations, and there was no central bank or government-provided deposit guarantees.
The highest ever daily rainfall was 907mm at Crohamhurst, QLD, in 1893.
In 1893, Frank Ivory was the first Aboriginal Australian to play
representative rugby union (for Queensland).
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| Frank Ivory was the son of Francis Ivory, a wealthy Scottish landholder from Eidsvold (170 miles west of Maryborough). His Aboriginal mother, Caroline Govenji, was a member of the Gurong Gurong and Wakka Wakka tribes in the South Burnett. Frank Ivory (1871 -1957) |
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| Ngarrindjeri mother and bubs in what looks like a kangaroo pelt cloak, Adelaide region, South Australia, 1893. Photo credit: Crump & Co. (studio photo) |
A cyclone hits the north west of Western Australia in January 1894, killing approximately 50 people.
Martha Needle, is hanged in Melbourne Gaol, on 22 October 1894, for the poisoning of her husband and three children in an attempt to obtain money from insurance policies.
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| File:Princess Theatre Melbourne ca. 1894 State Library Victoria.jpg - Wikimedia Commons |
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| Bijou Theatre & Victoria Arcade, Bourke St. E.. VIC, 1894, SLVIC |
Between 1892 and 1894, Melbourne's Council installed 20 dynamos and four boilers at Spencer Street, and in March 1894, streets in the centre of the city were lit by electricity.
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| The Horn Scientific Expedition was the first primarily scientific expedition to study the natural history of Central Australia, sponsored by three Australian universities (University of Sydney, University of Adelaide and University of Melbourne). Ralph Tate, F. W. Belt, J. A. Watt, W. A. Horn, W. Baldwin Spencer, Charles Winnecke, G. A. Keartland, and E. C. Stirling, 1894 |
South Australian women were the first in the world to get both the right to vote and to stand for election in the parliament of South Australia in 1895.
By the 1890s, colonial governments began adopting more interventionist policies in the lives of Aboriginal people, including regulation of residence, employment, custody of children and marriage. A policy to remove children of mixed descent was intended to incorporate them into mainstream European society (now known as the Stolen Generations).
Launceston, Tasmania, becomes the first Australian city to be powered by hydro-electricity in 1895.
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| The University, Sydney 1895 | Australia history, Sydney city, New south Wales |
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| Warden Quarters, Hospital & Police tents, Coolgardie, WA, ca. 1895, SLWA |
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| Chinese humpies (i.e. shelters) near (Darwin) Palmerston in approximately 1895-1900. By the late 1800s Chinese merchants became dominant in Darwin. Approximately 1895. SLSA |
Waltzing Matilda was written in 1895 by Banjo Paterson. He also wrote the bush ballads: The Man From Snowy River and Clancy of the Overflow which are classics of Australian literature.
Tom Roberts painted Bailed Up in 1895.
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| Tom Roberts - Bailed up - Google Art Project, 1895 |
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| Sailing ships at Stockton Wharves, Newcastle, New South Wales, Taken circa 1895, Australian National Maritime Museum on The Commons |
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| Goulburn Gaol in the 1890s. 🌹 | New south wales, Goulburn |
The Ferry boat
Pearl sank in the Brisbane River on 13 Feb. 1896 after colliding with the
Lucinda, killing 28.
In 1896, a film called
Passengers Alighting from Ferry Brighton at Manly was the first film shot and screened in Australia.
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| Paddy's Hole Store, near Arltunga with election posters on display. Arltunga Goldfields were also known as Paddy's Hole, Claraville and MacDonnell Ranges. Stores were established at Arltunga in 1890. Goods were brought in by camel or horse teams from Oodnadatta. At one time the population was 200 but the goldrush had ended by 1903. Arltunga was situated in southern Northern Territory, north east from Alice Springs. The photograph depicts several residents standing outside Paddy's Hole Store under a banner stating 'Vote for Maume the independent candidate in the cause of true liberalism'. Approximately 1896, SLSA |
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| File:Walter Baldwin Spencer seated with the Arrernte elders, Alice Springs, Central Australia, 1896 (cropped).jpg - Wikimedia Commons |
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| Lakes Creek Rugby Union Team, Senior Premiers in the 1896-97 season. Rockhampton Rugby Football Team. SLQLD |
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| Japanese workers on Hambledon Sugar Plantation, Cairns, QLD, ca. 1896, SLQLD |
The birth rate decline became well-
established during the 1890s.
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| Queen Victoria Building, Sydney, NSW, 1896, SLNSW |
During 1881-1890, the average life expectancy of a newborn boy was 47.2 years and that of a newborn girl 50.8 years. (ABS)
On 23 March 1897, a group of women met to form the Queensland Braille Writing Association, with the purpose of providing books in Braille.
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| Charlotte Street, Cooktown, QLD, 1897, Queensland State Archives |
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| Bardoc Hotel, Western Australia - pre 1897. Sign above the door says: "Bardoc Hotel, W.G. Cross. This sign hangs high - It hinders none - To drink, pay and pass on"Bardoc is an abandoned town in the Goldfields-Esperance region of Western Australia. Aussie Mobs |
The first Melbourne homes were
connected to the sewerage system in 1897.
In 1897, Catherine Helen Spence, a first-wave feminist, became the first female political candidate for political office (unsuccessfully).
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| Portrait of Catherine Helen Spence in the 1890s, (31 October 1825 – 3 April 1910) was a Scottish-born Australian author, teacher, journalist, politician, leading suffragist, and Georgist. |
The paddle steamer
Maitland sank near Broken Bay, drowning 24 people in May 1897.
In June 1897, a referendum, is held in New South Wales, South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria to approve the draft Constitution of Australia. The constitution was accepted by the required majority in South Australia, Tasmania and Victoria, but not in New South Wales.
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| Medical and Nursing Staff, Newcastle Hospital, NSW, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser (NSW : 1871 - 1912), Saturday 18 September 1897 |
The shopping arcade Queen Victoria Building was
completed in 1898 in Romanesque style, on the site of the old Sydney markets and named for long-reigning monarch, Queen Victoria.
The Gatton (Murphy Murders) unsolved triple homicides of December 1898 caused shock and outrage across the country.
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| Trams at North Quay, Brisbane, 1898. A Standard Combination tram and Nine Bench tram No. 63 at the old Victoria Bridge. Queensland State Archives |
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| Henry Evans Lake Macquarie Hotel, Teralba NSW, 3 June 1898, Special Collections |
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| Seaham Coal Company's Locomotive Number 1 'Maori', West Wallsend Colliery siding, West Wallsend, NSW, 28 March 1898, Special Collections |
Western Australia granted voting rights to women in 1899.
The Bulletin Australian weekly magazine evolved from its beginnings in the 1880s, becoming a force behind the
development of home-grown Australian literature in the 1890s.
In the 1890s, the majority of Australians, the children of the gold rush immigrants, were Australian-born.
A push for an Australian Federation began in the 1890s, for many reasons For eg: Unions opposed Queensland
importing indentured workers known as Kanakas, to work in the sugar industry. There was also expansionism by European powers, France and Germany, into the region. Australia needed a national army and navy which required a federal government.
The Australian Constitution was contained in the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Bill, which was endorsed by the voters of each Australian colony at referendums in 1898, 1899 and 1900, passed by the British Parliament, and
given Royal Assent on 9 July 1900.
In 1899, the national rugby team of Australia played their first match. (a forerunner of the Australian Wallabies)
March 1899, Cyclone Mahina strikes Bathurst Bay in Queensland and approximately 400
persons are killed.
The barque
Loch Sloy hits rocks off Kangaroo Island, SA, and sinks, killing 31 persons, April 1899.
Jandamarra, or Tjandamurra, an Aboriginal Australian man of the Bunuba people, known to European settlers as Pigeon, formed an armed gang and led a guerrilla war against police and European settlers. In 1889, he was captured by police and charged with killing sheep. Jandamarra agreed to look after the police horses and was freed. He later
retuned to his traditional land, but after violating Bunuba law, moved away to escape punishment.
In 1899, the first Labour Party government in the world took office when Anderson Dawson formed a Labour minority government in Queensland.
Between 1899 and 1902, more than 10,000 Australian soldiers sailed for South Africa to support British troops in the war against the Boer settlers.
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| Soldiers stand by their tents during the Boer War, 1899-1902, State Library of QLD |
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| South Sea Islander labourer, his bride and their wedding party, Mackay District, Queensland, 1890-1900 ,SLQLD |
Dot and the Kangaroo, an Australian children's book written by Ethel C. Pedley, is published in 1899.
On the 8th of December 1899, Sydney city's first electric tramway
opened between Circular Quay, and the railway.
In December 1899, the population of Australia was 3,715,988.
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| The National Guard on duty at Government House, NSW, Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1919), Saturday 22 April 1899 |
