Australia in The 1870s

Free primary education is first introduced in Queensland in 1870.

Circular Quay from the Rocks in Sydney, NSW, in the 1870s. Sydney city

The infant mortality rate in Australia, for children under the age of one year, was 111 deaths per thousand births in 1870.

Benevolent asylums were established in all the Australian colonies in the nineteenth century.

Deaf, Dumb & Blind Institute, before extensive renovation and addition, Sydney, NSW, 1870, SLNSW

Brisbane’s first female refuge was opened by Ann Drew, initially in her own home, in 1870.

Between 1861 and 1870, more than 167,000 new arrivals came to Australia. During the 1870s, there was 192,000 arrivals.

On 30 March 1870, John Forrest set out on his second expedition from Perth, with six men and 16 horses, to Adelaide (over 1,500 miles) along the Great Australian Bight. Forrest was accompanied by Aboriginal men Billy Kickett and Tommy Windich, who each received payment of £12 10 shillings for their services on the expedition.

File:John and Alexander Forrest, Members of Exploring Expedition from Geraldton to Adelaide, 1874.jpg - Wikimedia Commons (Tommy Windich (Back row, second from left) 

Archer Household outside Brisbane military barracks, c. 1870. Three of the Archer brothers and their families. The Archer brothers were among the earliest settlers in Queensland. They were explorers and pastoralists. Seven sons of William Archer, a Scottish timber merchant, spent varying amounts of time in the colony of New South Wales, mainly in parts of what later became Queensland. SLQLD

View of ships in dock at a harbour in Melbourne, VIC, in the 1870's.. Approximately 1870. SLSA

Thomas Saunders discovered gold at Gulgong, NSW, on 14 April 1870.

The last British regiment left Australia in 1870.

Dawes Battery, Sydney, NSW, c: 1870s, SLNSW

King William Street, Adelaide, SA, 1870, SLSA

In September 1870, work on the Australian Overland Telegraph Line linking Port Augusta to Darwin begins. The line is completed on 22 August 1872. It has been described as the "greatest engineering feat carried out in nineteenth century Australia".

Australia had a higher GDP per capita and family living standard than any other country in 1871.(2.)

Irish immigration peaked in the 1870s.

The pearling industry in north Queensland commenced commercially in the Torres Strait around 1870. However, Aboriginal divers would not use the diving suits, and Asian workers took over from the 1870s.

The Art Gallery of New South Wales is founded as the New South Wales Academy of Art in 1872.

The brig Maria is wrecked when it strikes a reef near Cardwell off the coast of Queensland, killing 39 people on 26 February 1872.

J. Baptiste, hairdressing/barber's saloon, Hill End gold fields, New South Wales, ca. 1872, American & Australasian Photographic Company, from quarter plate glass negative, State Library of New South Wales

Mayne St, Gulgong c. 1872–73, soon after Anthony Trollope's visit to Gulgong. Attributed to photographer Henry Beaufoy Merlin. SLNSW

In the 1870s, Australian life expectancy was 46.5 years for males and 49.6 years for females. (1.)

Portrait carte-de-visite photograph of four unidentified young ladies. A researcher queries if the girls on the right are Sarah and Ann Jacob. To see a selection of photographs in this collection, search on Archival number PRG 1642/55. Approximately 1870. SLSA

"Beaumont" the Ipswich home of George and Mary Wilson and their 9 children - circa 1870, QLD. George and Mary Wilson had this home built by stone mason William Hancock and carpenter/joiner Samuel Shenton in 1864, where they lived with their large family of 9 children. Beaumont was a fine Colonial residence of wide verandahs, decorative carved cedar staircases and wide rooms with black and white marble fireplaces. Aussie~mobs

Miners strike in September 1873, after workers at the South Clunes Mine (VIC) receive new contracts that include working on Saturday afternoon. On 8 December, Chinese miners were sent to break the strike. Miners and their family took to the streets of Clune, and set up a barricade against the Chinese on 9 December. The coaches of Chinese miners from Creswick were forced to turn back after being pelted with stones.

30 December 1873: Elizabeth Woolcock is hanged at the Adelaide Gaol, the only woman to be executed in South Australia, for the murder of her husband Thomas Woolcock by mercury poisoning.

Thomas John Woolcock, Thomas Woolcock and Elizabeth Woolcock

Group of decorated men with shields and spears at Fraser Island, Queensland, 1870, SLQLD

The 1870s and most of the 1880s were times of great economic development in the Australian colonies.

Stanthorpe's first school, ca. 1872, QLD, SLQLD

Payable alluvial gold deposits, are discovered at the Palmer river, QLD, in 1873 by James Venture Mulligan, sparking a huge gold rush. The main settlement of the gold field was Maytown.

Hamilton Hume, the explorer, dies 19 April 1873.

David Lennox, the bridge builder, died 12 November 1873. His first bridge was built at Lapstone Hill in the Blue Mountains (built from 1832 to 1833). It is the oldest stone arch bridge on the Australian mainland. (located at Glenbrook)

The University of Adelaide is established 1874.

Aerial view of Darling Harbour and Pyrmont Bridge, NSW, 1870s, Sydney Water Photograph Collection

Goods yard, depot and machine shop at 2nd Sydney Railway Station, 1874, NSW

Maloga Aboriginal Mission and school was established in 1874 for Yorta Yorta people and other groups from the Murray River region. (many Aboriginal people were vulnerable and destitute in the 1870s and many Missions upgrade their efforts in response)

Marcus Clarke's novel about the convict era,  For the Term of his Natural Life, is published in book form in 1874.

Photograph - Unidentified Men, 1870, Tasmania, Archives Office of Tasmania

A portrait of a Transported Convict by Thomas J Nevin Port Arthur 1874 | Port arthur, Van diemen's land, Sydney new south wales

Men described as 'unemployed strikers' standing at the base of the flagstaff at the northern end of Commercial Road near North Parade, with Queen's wharf on the right at Port Adelaide, South Australia. 1870. SLSA

Christianity remained the overwhelmingly dominant religion of 1870s Australia.

The New South Wales Rugby Union was founded in 1874 as the Southern Rugby Union, before changing to its present name in 1893.

On 26 January 1875, Sydney's Jewish community gathered for the laying of the foundation stone of the central arches of the Great Synagogue.

Group of drovers on their horses in the Goondiwindi area, QLD, ca. 1875, SLQLD

Group of male workers in front of a timber building in the Queensland outback, ca. 1875, SLQLD

The wooden barque 'Wagoola', 550 tons, docked at Hobart, TAS, with the ps 'Kangaroo' in the background [wooden ship, 550 tons, ON15699, 168.8 x 28.4 x 16.9. Built 1856 Jersey. Owners: Redfern, Alexander and Co., registered London. Well known in the Hobart-London trade]. Approximately 1875, SLSA

The wooden barque 'Heather Bell', 479 tons, docked in Newcastle, NSW,  with the Coutts Sailor's Home in view to the furthest right. Approximately 1875, SLSA

This is a group photograph of Ernest Giles' expedition party for his fourth expedition, which started in May 1875. Standing, from left to right: Peter Nicholls, Alex Ross, Saleh. Seated: Jess Young, Ernest Giles, W. H. Tietkens. Sitting on ground: Tommy Oldham. Mortlock Pictorial Collection of the State Library of South Australia

New Chum Gully, Bendigo, Victoria. ca. 1875, NLAUST

Goolwa and Port Elliot horse tram : Mr Scarfe, Clerk of Court at window of carriage. Eli Hillman with beard and tall hat at left of carriage. 1875, SLSA

William A. Sac's Chinese Boarding House, Gulgong, ca.1875, by AAPC Wet plate negative | State Library of NSW

On Monday, 21 February, 1876, the submarine cable was opened between Australia and New Zealand.

Truganini died in 1876 at the age of 64 at Mrs Dandridge's house in Macquarie Street, Hobart. She was buried on the premises of the old Female Factory in Hobart. Truganini  was one of the last native speakers of the Tasmanian languages and one of the last individuals solely of Aboriginal Tasmanian descent.

Aboriginal Tasmanian woman Truganini. Datebetween 1869 and 1876.NLAUST

J.V. Mulligan found gold deposits in the Hodgkinson River in Queensland in 1876.

Luigi Maria d'Albertis, an Italian naturalist and explorer, travelled and explored New Guinea from 1871 to 1877, collecting ancestral remains, tools and weapons from the houses of locals. There was a lot of criticism about his methods.

The Catalpa rescue was the escape of several Fenian (Irish rebel) prisoners from Fremantle Prison in Western Australia to America in 1876.

Left to right: James Wilson, Martin Hogan, Michael Harrington, Robert Cranston, Thomas Darragh, and Thomas Hassett. (The Catalpa rescue was the escape of several Fenian (Irish rebel) prisoners from Fremantle Prison in Western Australia to America in 1876)

SS Dandenong sank off Jervis Bay, NSW, on September 11, 1876, resulting in the deaths of 40 people.

On 26 September, 1855, the first passenger railway line in NSW opened from Sydney to "Parramatta Junction". The Rail line was extended to Bathurst in 1876.

The Stump Jump Plough was invented by the Smith brothers in 1876 in South Australia.

In 1876, passengers and crew from the steamship the SS Georgette, which was en-route from Fremantle to Adelaide, were rescued by 16 year old Grace Bussell and 25 year old Aboriginal stockman Sam Isaacs. Grace and Sam were hailed as heroes. Grace received a silver medal from the Royal Humane Society and a gold watch. Sam was given a bronze medal and 100 acres of land from the State Government.

Larrakia elder, Darwin, Northern Territory, 1870s-80s. Photo credit: Paul Foelsche.

Title: 1870s Depot camp Darwin. Original Photo Source: NT Government.

Views of South Australia : Port Pirie. J. Dunn & Co. flour mill, train in front with bags of grain in wagons, bags on wharf, sailing ships tied up at wharf. 1876. SLSA

The rail line from Hobart to Evandale Road (later Western Junction) opened in 1876. (TAS)

The Finke River Mission of the Lutheran Church of Australia was established in 1877 at Finke River in the Northern Territory.

The penal settlement at Port Arthur was closed in 1877.

The humanitarian Caroline Chisholm died 25 March 1877.

Title: View of group on Coogee Beach looking south, NSW, 1870-5, State Library of New South Wales

Native Camp, Port Essington, NT, Date Created: 1877, Library NT

View along Drummond Street, Clermont, QLD, ca. 1877, SLQLD

Henry Chamberlain Russell, the NSW government astronomer and meteorologist from February 1877, released a daily weather map to the press.

The first electric light is switched on at a public demonstration in William Street, Brisbane, in 1878.

The "Black Wednesday" mass sacking of senior public servants by Graham Berry occurred in 1878 to penalise the Legislative Council, which had failed to pass a government supply bill.

On 20 May 1878, one thousand unemployed men marched up Collins Street, Melbourne, demanding relief work.

Susanna Hulda Elisabeth Schupelius and Carl Gottlieb Fechner at Moculta, SA. in 1878. SLSA

View of the town of Charters Towers, QLD, around 1878, SLQLD

The Seamans Union organises the maritime strike in 1878, against the use of Chinese labour, who were paid less than half the wages of the European crew, by the Australian United Steam Navigation Company.

With the acceptance of Germ Theory in the 1870s, antiseptic surgical methods were shown to work and became common practice. 

Advance Australia Fair written by Scottish-born composer Peter Dodds McCormick was first performed as a patriotic song in Australia in 1878.

The clipper ship Loch Ard is wrecked at Mutton Bird Island, Victoria, on 1 June 1878, 45 people die and only 2 lives are saved.

1878: A violent confrontation between police and Ned Kelly occurred at the Kelly family's home in 1878, and Kelly was indicted for his attempted murder. He fled into the bush, vowing to avenge his mother, who was imprisoned for her role in the incident. 

1878-9: The Kelly Gangs raids on Euroa and Jerilderie, and the killing of Aaron Sherritt, a sympathiser turned police informer. Ned's manifesto letter denounces the police, the Victorian government and the British Empire. Australian Histories Podcast

Australia's first commercial telephone service in 1879 connected the Flinders Street offices and the South Melbourne foundry of the Robison Brothers.

Crowds gathered outside the Garden Palace, Sydney, NSW, 1879, The Garden Palace was a large, purpose-built exhibition building constructed to house the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 in Sydney, Australia. It was designed by James Barnet and constructed by John Young, at a cost of £191,800 in only eight months. NLAUST

A birthrate decline occurred in Australia between 1870 and 1910 when fertility fell from an average of over six children per woman to under four.

Until the late 1870s on Kangaroo Island, Tasmania, three Aboriginal women – Sal, Suke, and Betty continued to live traditionally, clearing the land with fire and hunting with dogs.

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.