The Making of Australia

by David Hill

This is the story of how a struggling convict settlement grew into six dynamic colonies and then the remarkable nation of Australia. Told through the key figures who helped build it into the thriving nation it is today, David Hill once again offers up Australian history at its most entertaining and accessible.

In his latest book, David Hill traces the story of our nation from its European beginnings to Federation. When James Cook landed on the east coast of Australia, the rest of the world had some idea of how empty, vast and wild this continent was, but so little was known of it that in 1788 most people thought it was two lands.

In the subsequent years, its coastline was charted, its interior opened up, and its cities, laws and economy developed. In this riveting, wide-ranging history, David Hill traces how this happened through the key figures who built this country into the thriving nation it is today: from its prescient and fair-minded first governor, Arthur Phillip, to the unpopular William Bligh, the victim of the country's first and only military coup; from the visionary builder and law-maker Lachlan Macquarie to William Wentworth, the son of a convict who secured Australia's first elected parliament; from Henry Parkes, the grand old man of politics who started the fraught process of Federation, to the first prime minister, Edmund Barton. It was Barton who formed the first Australian government just in time for the inaugural celebrations on 1 January 1901, when the nation of Australia was born!

David Hill is one of our most popular writers of Australian history. His previous books, The Forgotten Children, 1788, The Gold Rush and The Great Race have all been bestsellers.

Genres: History, Australia, Nonfiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2014

About the author

During his remarkable career, David Hill has been chairman then managing director of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation; chairman of the Australian Football Association; chief executive and director of the State Rail Authority; chairman of Sydney Water Corporation; a fellow of the Sydney University Senate; and chairman of CREATE (an organisation representing Australian children in institutional care).
He has held a number of other executive appointments and committee chair positions in the areas of sport, transport, international radio broadcasting, international news providers, politics, fiscal management and city parks.
David came from England to Australia in 1959 under the Fairbridge Farm School Child Migrant scheme. He left school at 15, then returned to complete his Master's degree in economics while working as an economics tutor at Sydney University.

Reviews

[Boy Blue · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good primer on Australia's colonial history. People who know their Australian history won't find anything startling or new in here, people who haven't done their civic duty and learned their country's past will find this quite gripping reading (except for the dramas around federation which become quite slow going). Those Tolstoy sympathisers out there who don't believe in the big man in history won't enjoy this account because it's very much a chronicle of the biggest men (and it's almost exclusively men) in early Australian history.

The book serves as a reminder of how far politicians have fallen both in skill and stature over time. In Australia's current slow drift to a republic I can't see any of the competency or national support that was on display in this book around federation. The men who led the country to federation were not only accomplished statesmen and politicians but also the biggest celebrities in the country. People turned up to cheer them on in their efforts to draft a constitution, for any old speech they would make, when they were heading to Old Blighty to negotiate, or even just when they were catching up for a chat with each other. Everyone was more interested in the direction of the nascent nation.

What's happened Australia? We seem to be sleepwalking to a republic. Why not use this history of federation as a model and have some conferences with elected representatives from each states to draft a new constitution (include Aboriginal recognition))? Why not turn this into a positive opportunity to have a robust national debate and do it properly?

It's a chicken and egg situation, did a degradation in the quality of Australian politicians lead to a loss of interest from the public in politics or did the loss of interest from the public lead to a degradation of political quality? Or was there an external factor that degraded them both?

You could say that modern politicians have less chance to shine on a national stage but that's not true as evidenced by this potential move to a republic and the 24/7 news cycle which allows them to reach people far more easily.

Interesting to see how the example of America was based on the population size of the colony. Australia's leaders felt that 3-4 million was the right number of people to move to federation based on America claiming independence at that size.

Statesmen was a word I used earlier and certainly it's a word that hasn't been applicable in Australia for decades. Some would have referred to Turnbull as a statesman but he ended up being a toothless tiger. It's a real shame especially because we're no longer restricted to just statesmen we can now have stateswomen too.

Unsurprisingly, WA came very close to not federating with the other states. Funny how at that time it was for protectionist reasons, whereas now their desired independence is more in the belief that the rest of country is leeching off them.

I was also proud of my country of birth (NZ) and their smug reasons for not joining with Australia in federation, even if they seemingly rode into the negotiations on a ridiculously high horse. The two reasons given for NZ remaining a separate colony was that firstly we had a different origin story, our terrain and our missionary heritage were at odds with Australia's terrain and convict heritage. Secondly, our negotiations with the Maori people were "world leading" and we didn't feel that a predominantly Australian government would be able to continue those ongoing negotiations in a humane manner.

Henry Lawson's comment about what Australia needed to protect itself from was pretty apt.

'The only protection Australia needs is from landlordism, the title-worship, the class distinctions, and privileges, the oppression of the poor, the monarchy, and all the dust covered customs that England has humped out of the middle ages where she properly belongs.'

Other interesting nuggets you may not know.

- So many of the iconic naval officers from early Australian history served under other iconic naval officers. Bligh for example was on Cook's voyage when he was killed in Hawaii. The navy offered a lot more chance for a lowborn man to make something of himself than the army which was still heavily dictated by class.

- The general abandonment of towns during the gold rush showed a lot about the prevailing national character, everyone was out to make a quick buck. Has much changed?

- Most Australian state governments had rewards for finding gold in the early days because they were trying to stop the drain of population to the Californian gold rush.

- Victoria was meant to be the second colony but Collins and his group couldn't make Port Phillip work and so moved to Van Diemen's Land instead.

- There were also several failed attempts to make a colony on Bathurst Island and the area around Darwin to try to create a trading port to circumvent the huge tariffs the dutch were imposing in Indonesia.

- Early Australian currency was a hodge podge of anything the colony could get it's hands on. Macquarie's holey dollars are obviously quite well known (Spanish dollars with the middle "dump" punched out of them). But there were also Dutch Guilders, British guineas, pounds, shillings, pennies, crowns, half crowns, Spanish dollars and their 'bits' and 'pieces', ducats, portugese Johannes, Indian mohurs, pagodas and rupees. Not to mention the bartering of every foodstuff and liquor item the early convicts and settlers could get their hands on.

- I reckon Caroline Carleton's national anthem may be better than the current Advance Australia Fair.

- All the recent furore about the change from "young and free" to "one and free" has precedent in the 80's when it was changed from "Australia's sons let us rejoice" to "Australians all let us rejoice"

- Canberra most definitely means "woman's breasts" in Ngunnawal not "meeting place" as the bullshit brigade has tried to conveniently claim. It's to do with the two mountains next to each other.

[Benjamin Stahl · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of a countless number of books dealing with the subject, I am sure, this one by David Hill is nevertheless a very enjoyable read. Curiously, it isn't always particularly well written, with quite a few typos and an inconsistent use of titles - e.g. Secretary of State for War and the Colonies spelt often without capitals, which just struck me as messy editing. I also wasn't super keen on Hill's approach of focussing heavily on individuals rather than the events and movements that involved them. Every single person who played a part in this long and often fascinating story is given a formulaic, Wikipedia-like biography about where and when they were born, what their parents did, etc. Only a small gripe, but it still contributed to my agreement with some other reviewers that the book wasn't the best-written.

But all the same, I loved reading it. I am a sucker for history that is relevant to places personal to me - I never quite realised the significance of many men whose names are retained in places familiar to me (I study at Macquarie University, named after Lachlan Macquarie) - and anyone who says (as, unfortunately, I once did) that Australian history is boring, is just incredibly ignorant. I learnt a lot of new things I am surprised are not more commonly known, such as how Canberra, our capital city, was thought to be an indigenous word for "place of meeting" when really it meant "a woman's breasts".

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

A largely by-the-numbers history of Australia through to 1901. There isn't a lot that's new here, with a heavy reliance on secondary sources and other histories. In addition, I was disappointed by some blatant factual errors, several confusing typos on dates, needless repetition, and some straight cut-and-paste pieces from dictionary definitions.

The highlight is probably the coverage of the ten years leading up to Federation, where the excitement and the narrative remind the reader that the nation of Australia is something unique and special. But elsewhere there's no real voice or fresh interpretation - this is largely a story we all already know.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you thought you knew how Australia came about and who were the heroes and villains.... Then you would still learn a lot from this easy to read and enjoyable researched tome.

[Ray Grasshoff · Rating 4 out of 5]

This easy-to-read account of the "discovery" and "exploration" of Australia by Europeans, its colonization, and its road to nationhood is a great resource for anyone interested in the topic, as I was after visiting the country.

[Turnip Head · Rating 2 out of 5]

A speckled history of the transition of a far-flung hostile penal colony to the fully-fledged and federated country that is the Commonwealth of Australia. This book provides a very general overview of the political history of Australia from the late 18th century to Federation in 1901, it offers a useful entry point to understand the broad strokes of Australian colonial history, however, it has many shortcomings. There is no argument per se, thus the book offers little in the way of academic substance. Analysis and critique are sparse making it something of an encyclopaedic read - informative but insipidly unoriginal.

In so far as there is one, the events and personalities that paved the way to federation is the theme of Hill's book, he points out certain aspects of Australia's history that led to its independence. This historical join the dot includes an examination of the origins of Australia's egalitarian spirit, which supposedly lie in the early social conflict between "emancipists" (those for the equal rights of freed convicts) and the "exclusives" (the free settlers against convict rehabilitation); the rush to settle remote parts of the island such as the Northern Territory and Western Australia to ward off French ambitions for the territory; the role of gold and land in political enfranchisement and; the reactions caused by waves of migration from Europe and Asia that led to the implementation of the infamous White Australia policy.

The book overemphasises the hero narrative, concentrating on prolific figures in British Australia's history such as Lachlan Macquarie, William C. Wentworth and Henry Parks and, as such, reinforces a patriarchal ideal of early European adventurism and 'discovery'. While it is true that the sexism of the 19th century meant that men dominated the political stage, women and indigenous people are rarely given voice in the book, the choice to focus on male, white protagonists in recounting "The Making of Australia" therefore upholds a triumphantalist account of European colonisation of Australia.

The book overlooks two key aspects of Australian history. The first is the Indigenous peoples. While there is one chapter dedicated to the Aboriginal People, it is entirely based on European/white sources and doesn't seriously engage with the relationship between First Nations People and European colonisers. The second major missing puzzle piece from this book is the relationship between empire and frontier. The mismatch between the perceptions and wishes of the empire's centre in London with the harsh realities on the ground in the distant Australian colonies, especially in frontier regions such as Queensland and Tasmania was a defining feature of Australia's history in the Nineteenth Century. This was only superficially treated by the book and is necessary to understand the bigger picture of Australia's birth in the age of colonial empires.

[Rogerio · Rating 4 out of 5]

Factual history of Australia told in a journalistic style, i.e., you can learn the facts and be entertained at the same time. I like how the book comes together and how easily the connection between events is established. There are also quite a bit of character description of the main protagonists and how it influenced the making of the nation. It is definitely a simplified version. I am unable to criticize as i this is the first time I read about history of Australia. I feel the greatest issue with this book is that it has a very good description of what happened in the colonial time up to around the 1900. I was expecting to find a better connection to the "remarkable nation it is today" but all it does is to wrap up some pending items by telling us when such and such issue was defined. Although you will find all Governors named and who succeeded who in the colonial time, after independence it does not follow that pattern. In a nutshell, good reading for when Australia was formally a British colony and how the union of the provinces came together. Close to zero on recent history.

[Peter Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in very readable style and Hill maintains interest and even at times makes it exciting. It is the story of Australia’s movement from colony to commonwealth to become the nation of Australia. I was a bit frustrated by what was left out, but that was my problem not the author’s. It gave a fair if relatively brief and under-weighted view of the treatment of Aboriginal Australians by the invaders.

[Nicholas · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a bit dry for my taste. I was also looking for more social history; this is largely an institutional and political history of the formation of the Australian nation. But for someone like me who knew nothing about Australian history and picked it up while traveling there, this was a good introduction.

[Jerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

ok for an overview of the history of Australia.. but way too many names to keep track of and way too much use of external sources/notes (mainly newspaper) within the text (in addition to a huge footnotes section).. it ends up being a quick read even though nearly 400 pages..

[Ryan Butta · Rating 3 out of 5]

Easy to read history of the ins and outs of the start of the European colony to just after Federation. Was surprised to find Henry Lawson's birth date out by ten years in the 2015 edition.

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the first half with colonial settlement but it got slow and repetitive towards the end leading up to Federation.