Australia In The 1880s

On 20 January 1880, Bushranger Captain Moonlite (real name Andrew George Scott) was hanged in Sydney.

Albumen silver carte de visite of Australian bushranger Captain Moonlite (Andrew George Scott), a bushranger in the Colony of Victoria, and in the Colony of New South Wales. Created: circa 1879

Public Institution Act (1880, removed all state aid from church schools and established a Department of Public Instruction, allowing free public education. (an attempt to minimise differences and problems due to social class, ethnicity and religion). Primary schools were to be "free and fair".

The Bulletin magazine is first published on 31 January 1880.

In February 1880, the first successful shipment of frozen beef and mutton arrived in London from Australia.

School becomes compulsory for children aged 6 to 14 in New South Wales in May 1880.

On June 28 1880, Ned Kelly is captured at Glenrowan, Victoria.

Native police unit, sent from Queensland to Victoria in 1879 to help capture the Kelly gang

This is one of two photographs of Ned Kelly taken at the Old Melbourne Gaol the day before he was hanged on November 11, 1880

Ned Kelly armour, located at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, www.slv.vic.gov.au

The first telephone exchange in Australia opened in Melbourne in August 1880.

Collins Street, Melbourne, VIC, 1880

On 11 November 1880, the Bushranger Ned Kelly is hanged.

Unidentified woman : a studio view. Approximately 1880. SLSA

Unidentified woman : a studio view. Approximately 1880, SLSA

[General description] Three gentlemen pose for the photographer in a rather droll studio portrait. Mr. James George Russell stands on the left carrying a furled umbrella and smoking a pipe. Mr. W.W. Williams sits wearing a top hat and carrying a cane and Mr. W.F. Loutit, wearing a top hat and smoking a pipe, leans a little on the chair. 1880. SLSA (James George Russell ISO (28 March 1848 – 5 January 1918) was an Australian lawyer and public servant, who was an acting Supreme Court judge in South Australia)

The Premises of Calder & Balfour's City Steam Biscuit Factory, Twin Street, Adelaide, SA, SLSA

The first telephone exchanges were established in Melbourne and Brisbane in 1880, followed by Sydney in 1881.

Opening of the Fitzroy Bridge, Rockhampton, QLD, 1881. SLQLD

The population of Australia was 2,250,194 in the 1881 census.

Panoramic view of Macquarie Street and city from the dome of the Garden Palace, Sydney, NSW, 1881, State Library of New South Wales

The first cricket Test match at the Sydney Cricket Ground begins 17 February 1882.

The Transit of Venus across the disc of the Sun is visible from Australia, 6 December 1882.

The gold town of Mount Morgan, QLD, was established in the 1880s.

Brisbane is the first city in Australia to install electric lighting on 9 December 1882.

First fire engine used in Maryborough,QLD, ca. 1882, SLQLD

Smallpox vaccine was produced in Victoria in 1882 and used to curtail outbreaks.

A census conducted by the Protector of Aborigines NSW found that 200 Aboriginal children were attending school in NSW out of approximately 1500 school-age children (1882).

In June 1883, a rail service between Sydney and Melbourne began when the NSW and Victorian rail systems are joined at Albury.

Robbery Under Arms, a bushranger novel by Thomas Alexander Browne (pen name Rolf Boldrewood) was first published in serialised form by The Sydney Mail between July 1882 and August 1883.

Sydney Boys High School is founded in October 1883 in Sydney, NSW, the first boys public school in Australia.

Grenfell Street, Adelaide, viewed from King William Street. The 'Register' newspaper building is seen in the centre with its tower. In the foreground is a telegraph pole showing the insulators and the web of wires over the street [ Approximately 1883

Silver ore was discovered at Broken Hill in 1883 by a boundary rider named Charles Rasp.

Immigrants arriving at the Bundaberg wharf, QLD, on the Leichhardt (ship) via the Silhet (ship), 1883, SLQLD

Infant deaths in Adelaide during the 1880s peaked at 200 per 1000 babies. This was the highest rate ever recorded anywhere in Australia. From 1887, a fall in mortality came about by direct state and medical interventions. 

Dysentery, typhus and typhoid caused many deaths.

Women and children with shelters at the Bloomfield River Mission, Queensland, 1884, Description: Photograph of grass dome Humpy / Gunya (hut) used by the Wujal Wujal group of Bloomfield River district in South East Queensland. The women are making woven baskets, with their children at the front of their Humpy entranceway. State Library of Queensland

Life expectancy at birth rose from 43 years for males and 46 for females in the 1850s to 47 and 51 in the 1880s. Life expectancy in Australia today, has risen by more than 30 years since the late 1800s.

BHP was founded in 1885.

Perth looking south-west from the Town Hall tower. 233201PD: St George's Terrace to King's Park, 1885, SLWA

Staff inside the Free Public Library (old State Library of New South Wales), c. 1885, State Library of New South Wales

Launceston, Tasmania, 26 March 1885, NLAUST

: A large group of working men and boys photographed in a yard in South Australia; names and purpose not known. Approximately 1885, SLSA

The first assembly of the Federal Council of Australasia is held in Hobart, 1885. to discuss matters of importance and common interest.  

The first female medical student was admitted in Sydney in 1885 (Dagmar Berne).

Royal Palace - Queen of the South's Palace in Goulburn, N.S.W. - 1880s, Aussie~mobs

Essendon Town Hall, VIC, 1886, SLVIC

Chinese cook working in the temporary kitchen of a surveyor's camp, 1886, SLQLD

China Town, Cairns, QLD, 1886. From the Owen Livingstone Amos Photograph Album. State Library of Queensland 

On 21 January 1887, a daily rainfall in Brisbane of 465 millimetres (18.3 inches) was a record for any Australian capital city.

 81 miners are killed during a coal gas explosion at Bulli, NSW, 23 March 1887.

Cobb & Co's mail coach on the Port Douglas - Herberton Road, Queensland, 1887, SLQLD

The Working Men's College, an Australian college of further education in Melbourne, was founded in 1887.

A view looking down Hunter Street Newcastle, NSW, picture taken before 1887. Tyrrell collection Powerhouse museum

The Goulburn Weir, built between 1887 and early 1891 across the Goulburn River, VIC, was one of the first major structures built for irrigation development in Australia. 

Bilin Bilin, leader of the Yugambeh people from about the 1860s. He was well respected by everyone and could read and write. Bilin Bilin was also known as King Albert, King of the Logan and Pimpama. In 1887 he was given a free pass on the new railway to visit his married daughter at Beaudesert. Emily Mayes from Mayes Cottage in Kingston looked after his breast plate occasionally while he used the waterhole near their house. (Mayes Cottage c1887 is open Thu/Fri/Sat - Free entry). Mayes Cottage is a well-preserved timber home built by the Mayes family in 1887. It was the family's home for 100 years. here

There was a succession of gold rushes in the Yilgarn region near Southern Cross, WA, in 1887.

Centennial Park is opened in Sydney, NSW, 27 January 1888.

Traffic along Parramatta Rd, Sydney, NSW, in the 1880s, State Records

The Presbyterian Ladies' College, Sydney, NSW, established, 1888.

The Princes Bridge, Melbourne is opened, October 1888.

The 1880s was the peak of a long economic boom that began with the gold rushes of the 1850s.

Louisa Lawson established The Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women in 1888. There was a growing Female Suffrage Movement.

Queensland v Melbourne.—International Australian Football, 1888. Queensland Team. Queensland Figaro and Punch (Brisbane, Qld. : 1885 - 1889), Saturday 21 July 1888

Peter Lalor, Eureka Stockade leader, died 9 February 1889. (born 1827)

On 24 October 1889 Henry Parkes delivered a speech at the Tenterfield School of Arts on the need for the Australian colonies to federate into one nation.

The 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition, an art exhibition held in Melbourne, VIC, in 1889. It was the first major exhibition of Impressionist paintings in Australia.

Tom Roberts, She-Oak and Sunlight, 1889, National Gallery of Victoria (Tom Roberts' landscape paintings of Australian bush country are among his most recognized works)

"Clancy of the Overflow", a poem by Banjo Paterson, first published in The Bulletin in December 1889. 

In the 1880s, 70 per cent of Australia's imports came from the United Kingdom, which also received up to 80 per cent of  Australia's exports (Vamplew 1987). 

Cable Tram, corner Bourke & Spring Streets, Melbourne Victoria, circa 1880s.

A period of speculative extravagance. Beginnings of financial collapse.

Large scale building of social infrastructure such as schools, hospitals, roads, police stations and courts occurred in the 1880s.

Rapid urbanisation in Australia in the 1880s, with cities surrounded by working-class areas and middle-class suburbs. 

Opening ceremony Darwin-Pine Creek Railway - 1 October 1889. A letter from JY Harvey, dated 1962, of the Australian Railway Historical Society which accompanies this photograph suggests that the event captured in the photograph is actually the christening of the locomotive which took place on 19th July 1887. A banquet was held in the Palmerston Town Hall. Mrs Paper, wife of the respected Judge was requested to perform the ceremony. The Millars Brothers First Locomotive cost the firm at least five hundred pounds and was christened "Port Darwin". By September 14th, 1889 the railway line was complete and handed over to the Government on October 4th, 1889 with lottle ceremony or fuss, SLSA

Edward Street looking west across the intersection with Queen Street, Brisbane, QLD, 1889, SLQLD

No 100th Birthday for Australia as it is not a country until 1901 (Federation). It also seemed highly improbable in 1889 that a federation of the six colonies was only 12 years away.

How Was Australia in the 1860s?

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.

'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

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.)

Shipping at Newcastle in the 1860s. Approximately 1860, SLSA

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.

Port Arthur Penitentiary (the large building in the centre of the image), with the Commissariat Stores on the waterfront on the left. 1860, NLAUST

Chinese gold digger starting for work ca. Queensland, 1860s. John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, 1860s

View of Brisbane, QLD, 1860. Queensland State Archives

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.)

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

Ann and Albert Street, Brisbane, Qld - 1860 (photo from the Brisbane Tramway Museum Society) Aussie~mobs

Hobart - corner of Elizabeth and Bathurst Street, TAS, 1860, LibrariesTAS

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Aftermath of the Great Fire of Brisbane, 1864 - Queen Street, SLQLD

Playing croquet in the Public Gardens, Perth, WA, July 1864, SLWA

Geraldton homestead and outhouses, WA, approximately 1865. SLWA

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

Circular Quay, Sydney, NSW, 1865. From the volume titled 'Miscellaneous Shipping in the Days of Sail'. SLSA

View of Adelaide looking from the corner of Pirie Street and King William Street, (1865). Adelaide. SASA

Shipping at Hobart 1865. 'King of Trumps', 'Lady Emma', 'Aladdin', 'Runnymede', SS 'Monarch' in foreground. 1865, SLSA

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

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

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

Official opening of the first section of the Ipswich to Grandchester railway, Ipswich, QLD, 1865, SLQLD

Students and their teacher photographed outside the South Rhine Presbyterian Church., 1866, SLSA

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.

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.

Central Brunswick: Sydney Road, Melbourne, VIC, (CR. Albert Street) about 1866, taken from Albert Street, looking south. Photograph - 1866, SLNSW

Mount Alexander Battalion, Sunbury Camp, VIC, 1866, MuseumsVIC

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.)

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."

Flinders Street from the corner of Wickham Street, Townsville, QLD, in 1867. The photo is credited to Richard Daintree, SLQLD

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.

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.

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)

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)

Bourke Street [Melbourne, VIC, 1868] NLAUST

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.

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

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. 

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

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