澳大利亚历史人物

Prominent people

of Australian History

A selection of people, and iconic legends, of Australian history.

Many thousands could be listed here, however, here are a selected few:

The Barcaldine strike leaders

The 1891 Shearers' Strike, centred around

Barcaldine in Queensland, during the

depression of the 1890s, was in response to the

pastoralists' reaction to falling wool prices

of intending to reduce the shearers' wages.

During the unrest, the colonial administration

ordered the arrest of the shearers' leaders on

charges of sedition and conspiracy. The

eventual failure of the strike broke worker militancy 战斗性 and led to the formation of a

labour political movement to represent the

interests of working people.

Arthur Calwell

Born 28 August 1896, West Melbourne, Victoria Died 8 July 1973

Arthur Calwell was Australia's first Minister for Immigration (1945 to 1949), and later became the leader of the Australian Labor Party (1960 to 1967). He was the chief architect of Australia's post-war immigration scheme, and popularised the slogan

"populate or perish". Also well-known for his much-misquoted comment "Two Wongs don't make a White". His immigration program co-incided with a period when Australian industry was growing rapidly and suffering from shortages of skilled and semi-skilled labour. Although he was an advocate for the White Australia Policy, it is interesting to note that Calwell spoke Chinese and had a great respect for Asian cultures.

See: Arthur Calwell

http://www.encyclopedia4u.com/a/arthur-calwell.html

See: Arthur Calwell

http://www.fact-index.com/a/ar/arthur_calwell.html

Caroline Chisholm

Born 1808, England

Died 1877

Caroline Chisholm arrived in Australia in 1838 and set up a home for other women who had come to live here. She worked to improve life on the ships bringing people to Australia to start a new life and started a loans plan to bring poor children and families to Australia. She

arranged free trips so that the families of convicts who were transported to Australia could come to join them.

Captain Cook

Born 27 October 1728, Marton, Yorkshire,

England

Died 14 February 1779, clubbed and stabbed to

death by the not-so-friendly natives in

Hawaii

James Cook was appointed in 1768 to command HM

Bark Endeavour , to carry scientists to the

South Seas on observe the transit of Venus

across the sun (due to occur in 1769), and to

explore the South Pacific for the Great South

Land that was believed to exist (referred to

as New Holland, as Dutch explorers had claimed

to have sighted the west and north coasts).

After the scientists' Venus observations were

completed, Cook charted the New Zealand

coastline, and then sailed westward to find the

east coast of New Holland (Australia). Land was

sighted on 20 April 1770 at what was named Point

Hicks, then he sailed north, landing at Botany

Bay, set sail again, and then landed on

Possession Island on 22 August 1770 where he

formally claimed the whole east coast for

Britain, naming it New South Wales.

John Curtin

Born 1885, Creswick, Victoria

Died 5 July 1945, Canberra, ACT

Australia's wartime Prime Minister. Was elected

secretary of the Timber-Worker's Union in

Victoria in 1911. In 1916, when Billy Hughes was

trying to introduce conscription, Curtin became

secretary of the Victorian Anti-Conscription

Campaign Committee and was sentenced to three

months' jail for his speeches in opposition to

conscription; although, after an appeal, he was

released having served only three days of his

sentence. Curtin entered Federal Parliament as

the Member for Fremantle in 1928; and formed a

Labor Government in 1941 that governed

Australia through the rest of the Second World

War. Curtin argued with Churchill for the

sending of Australia's forces back to New Guinea

to fight off successfully the Japanese thrust

(until the United States could mobilise for the

drive back to Japan), and he battled

(unsuccessfully) with both Churchill and

Roosevelt to have the Pacific war against the

Japanese given the same priority as the European

war against the Germans. While his Government

reorganised the war effort and provided

Australia with its own aircraft, guns, tanks,

munitions and soldiers, they also arranged

widows' pensions, unemployment benefits, as

well as planning an Australian Government

airline and a system of free hospitals. Curtin

did not live to see the end of the war or to see

his post-war reconstruction policies come to

fulfilment, as he died in July 1945. Curtin is

regarded as one of the greatest Australian Prime

Ministers.

Daniel Deniehy

Born 16th August 1828, Sydney, NSW Died 22nd October 1865, Bathurst, NSW Daniel Henry Deniehy was elected to the NSW Legislative Assembly in 1857 and 1860, with his main aim to open up public lands to the working class. He helped form the New South Wales Electoral Reform League, in order to push for greater democracy. He also founded his own newspaper in 1859, the Southern Cross, to review public affairs, foster national sentiment, and work towards the federation of the

colonies.

See: Daniel Deniehy: Republican Patriot

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~natinfo/1denie

hy.htm

C.J. Dennis

Born 7 September 1876, Auburn, South Australia

Died 22 June 1938, Melbourne

C.J. Dennis, poet and journalist, was popular in Australia for his down-to-earth works, written in the vernacular of the times. In 1913 Dennis

published a volume titled Backblock ballads and other verses , but it was not a financial success. Immediate success was achieved with The Songs of a sentimental bloke, a love story written in

slang, which was published in October 1915; three

were required in 1915, nine in 1916, and editions

by 1976 fifty-seven editions had been published in Australia, England, Canada, and the USA.

See: Perry Middlemiss' site re. C.J. Dennis http://www.middlemiss.org/lit/authors/denniscj

Mary Gilmore

Born 1864 (Mary Cameron), Cotta Walla (near

Goulburn), New South Wales

Died 1962

Mary Gilmore was a teacher and writer. She was

the editor of the women’s pages of the

Australian Worker newspaper for 23 years. She

joined William Lane's "New Australia" utopian

experiment settlement in Paraguay, and married

William Gilmore there in 1897 (they both

returned to Australia in 1902). A well-known

Australian poet, her most popular piece is "No

Foe Shall Gather Our Harvest".

Ned Kelly

Birth date unknown, commonly believed to be between November 1854 and January 1855, at Beveridge (25 miles north of Melbourne),

Victoria

Died on the 11th November 1880, hung at Melbourne Gaol, Victoria

Ned Kelly is Australia's most famous bushranger. Said to have been forced into bushranging by the police, who were looking to shoot him, he and his gang robbed banks rather than robbing common folk. The Kelly gang had many active supporters and a wide following, and he made plans for the establishing a Republic of North Eastern. Ned was captured at Glenrowan, and was tried at

Melbourne, where he was sentenced to death by hanging.

See: Ned Kelly: Australian Iron Outlaw http://www.ironoutlaw.com

incl. a history of the Kelly Gang

http://www.ironoutlaw.com/html/history_01.html

The men of Kokoda - the

saviours of Australia

1942

The New Guinea campaign, which included

Milne Bay and was typified by the Kododa

Track, is seen as a defining moment in

Australia's history. This was where the

preceived invincibility of the Japanese Army was first seen to be broken. The courage and heroism of our troops on the Kokoda Track is one of the proudest and and most memorable episodes in Australia's wartime history. See: The Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway http://www.kokodawalkway.com.au

incl. an impressive map [& sectional

diagram] of Kokoda Track

http://www.kokodawalkway.com.au/stations/

map.html

See: Battle For Australia

http://www.battleforaustralia.org.au/koko

da1.html

The Lambing Flat Rebellion

1861 The Lambing Flat Rebellion was a series of violent anti-Chinese demonstrations that took place around the Lambing Flat (now Young) area of New South Wales. The Miners' Protective League demanded parliamentary representation, protection of industry, and the expulsion of the

Chinese. It has been said that it was this

rebellion that was the starting point for the

eventual White Australia Policy at Federation.

Jack Lang

Born 21 December 1876, Sydney, NSW

Died 27 September 1975, Auburn, NSW

John Thomas Lang (familiarly known as "Jack",

and nicknamed "The Big Fella") was Treasurer in

the NSW Labor government of 1920-21, and Premier

and Treasurer of the State twice (1925-27 and

1930-32). His first term brought many

significant innovations, including child

endowment, widows' pensions, increased

workers' compensation rates, reversion to the

44-hour week, abolition of secondary school

fees, and votes for all in local government

elections. Lang's second term, which coincided

with the worst years of the Great Depression,

ended with the dismissal of his government by

the State Governor (Sir Philip Game). Lang's

dismissal arose from his refusal to pay interest

on government loans borrowed from financiers in

the United Kingdom at the height of the Great

Depression.

John Dunmore Lang

Born 1799 Died 1878 The Rev. John Dunmore Lang was, besides being a minister of religion, a republican orator, writer and political organizer, who campaigned for a republic in the 1840s and 1850s, putting forward his plan for a "United States of Australia, the great republic of the Southern Seas". Lang lobbied for the end of transportation, which he saw as an endless conduit of iniquity pouring into the Colony. See: John Dunmore Lang - Patriot, Republican, Statesman, Evangelical, & Engima

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/TEXT/essays/Lang.html

See: John Dunmore Lang Bicentenary 1999

http://www.emmanuel.uq.edu.au/Lang/welcome.html

Henry Lawson

Born 17 June 1867, on the Grenfell goldfields

(372 km west of Sydney), NSW

Died 2 September 1922, Abbotsford, Sydney, NSW

Henry Lawson was one of Australia's greatest

writers. His interest in the republican movement

was sparked by his exposure to the radicalism of

friends of his mother, Louisa. In 1887 he became

titular publisher of the Republican (in which

his first writings appeared), and his first published verse, "Song of the Republic",

appeared in The Bulletin. Lawson became one of

Australia's most influential writers and showed

his interest in the ordinary men and women of

Australia, such as in his story "The Drover's

Wife" about a woman living and subsisting off the

land on an Australian selection. His writing was

often taken from memories of his childhood,

especially at Pipeclay/Eurunderee. Towards the

end of 1892, he was unemployed, and J.F.

Archibald (editor of The Bulletin) staked him

for his famous Bourke journey; while there he

found employment painting houses, and then,

during a brutal drought, humped his bluey, there

and back, to Hungerford. This revelation of the

harshness of the outback was pivotal in Lawson's

understanding of the country, leaving a deep mark

on Lawson's psyche and validating his belief in

the "horrors of bush life", and supplied the

impetus for "The Union Buries Its Dead" and

"Hungerford". Lawson was well known for his bush

ballads "The Teams", "The Roaring Days", and

"Andy's Gone with the Cattle", as well as his

social and political works, such as "Watch on the

Kerb", "Faces in the Street", "Freedom on the

Wallaby", and "The Army of the Rear". In 1986,

Lawson married Bertha Bredt (stepdaughter of the

radical Sydney bookseller W.H. McNamara, and

sister-in-law of Jack Lang). He tried his hand

in New Zealand (1897), then in England (1900),

and returned to Sydney in 1902. His alcoholism,

dating from 1898, then became a major problem

leading to separation from his wife in 1903. From

1907 to 1918 Lawson was often destitute, although

he was later awarded a weekly pension from the

Commonwealth Literary Fund in 1920. When he died

in 1922, Lawson was given a state funeral at St.

Andrew's Church.

See: Old Poetry

http://oldpoetry.com/authors/Henry_Lawson

See: The Poetry of Henry Lawson

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~natinfo/lawson

Ted Mack

Ted Mack is the only Australian to ever have been elected and re-elected as an independent to local, state, and federal government. He was elected to the North Sydney City Council as an Alderman in 1974, where he served until 1988 (he was Mayor of North Sydney 1980-1988); while serving as mayor, he was elected to the New South Wales state parliament as the Member of the Legislative Assembly for North Shore 1981-1988; and was elected as the federal Member of Parliament for North Sydney from 1990 to 1996. He instituted democratic reforms in his local area and is well-respected as a man of democracy. Mack has been a staunch defender of electors' rights and a passionate supporter of peoples' right to a greater say in government. He was also elected as an independent Republican delegate to the 1998 Constitutional Convention, where he opposed the model favoured by the Australian Republican

Movement, and argued that Australian voters should have a direct say in the process to decide their Head of State.

See: Ted Mack - The Independent

http://www.johnston-independent.com/ted_mack_a.html#tmp

See: The truly honorable Mr Mack

www.theissue.com.au/www_root/pdf/ti010402.pdf

Captain Moonlight

Born 1842, North Ireland

Died 20 January 1880, hung in Darlinghurst Gaol, Sydney, NSW

Andrew Scott, better known as Captain Moonlight, was a bushranger. He robbed the Mt. Egerton branch (Victoria) of the London Chartered Bank, on 20 December 1870, he was brought before the Sydney Quarter Sessions for passing bad cheques and and he was sentenced to twelve months in Maitland Gaol. On his release in March 1872 he was promptly

arrested and extradited to Victoria to face a re-opening of the Mt. Egerton bank robbery case, Judge Redmond Barry (the same judge that tried Ned Kelly) sentenced him to ten years imprisonment for the robbery and gave him an

additional twelve months for escaping from Ballarat Gaol for a few days whilst awaiting trial. He was released 18 March 1879, and was soon after strongly suspected of robbing the Lancefield bank, went to NSW, held up the Wantabadgery Station homestead (ending up with over 30 hostages); however, when the police were alerted, Scott and his partners-in-crime escaped, although they were later

recaptured when they holed up in another homestead. He was tried in Sydney on 8 December 1879, and sentenced to death.

See: Andrew George Scott (alias "Captain Moonlight") http://www.nedkellysworld.com.au/bushrangers/scott_a.htm

Breaker Morant

Born Christmas 1865, Bideford, Devon, England

(according to him)

Died 27 February 1902, Pretoria, South Africa,

shot by a firing squad

Harry "Breaker" Morant was a horse breaker of

much repute, as well as being a writer for The

Bulletin . His origins are shrouded in mystery,

and seems to have appeared in Australia from

nowhere (or, at least, no official trace of him

arriving, or of his origins, has yet been

found). He signed up for the Boer War, was

alleged to have shot some Boer prisoners under

orders from his superior officer, Captain

Hunt, and was executed by the British Army. The

film Breaker Morant is worthwhile watching.

Henry Parkes

Born in 1815, England

Died in1896

Sir Henry Parkes was a famous journalist and politician. He was an ex-chartist and he migrated to Sydney in 1839 and worked as a toymaker, a labourer and a journalist. He established the Empire Newspaper in 1850, which failed financially. He led public protests against re-introduction of convict labour. Elected to Legislative Council in 1854, he was a strong democrat and disagreed with William Wentworth's amended Constitution - he

considered it a "squatter's constitution". He organised local government bodies, and

initiated hospital reforms. He also introduced compulsory free education, withdrawing all state aid to church schools in 1880. He was appointed Colonial secretary (1866) and Premier of New South Wales in 1872; and remained a political giant until the final collapse of his government in 1891 which marked the end of his political career. He was a great advocate of Federation. In 1880 he called an Intercolonial Conference to discuss Chinese immigration, following which all states (except Western Australia) agreed to impose restrictions. He made a famous afterdinner speech at Tenterfield in 1889 which was a powerful emotional appeal on behalf of Federation. Later similar speeches throughout N.S.W. resulted in an unsuccessful Federal Conference in Melbourne (1890). Parkes was the president of 1891 National Convention but disapproved of the draft constitutions. The Australian Natives Association at Corowa (1893) adopted his suggestion that a convention be elected to draw up a constitution.

Banjo Paterson

Born 17 February 1864, near Orange, New South Wales

Died 5 February 1941, Sydney, NSW

Andrew Barton Paterson is possibly Australia's most popular poet, with his compositions including Waltzing Matilda, The Man from Snowy River, Clancy of the Overflow, and The Geebung Polo Club. He used the pseudonym of "The Banjo" for his magazine writings (an alias derived from the name of a racehorse the family owned), and had a deep affection for horses, being a natural horseman, and, not surprisingly, many of his works have a "horse theme". Paterson was caught up in colonial Australia's commitment to the unfortunate Boer War, becoming a war correspondent. Before his death in 1941, he had provided a timeless literary legacy of Australia's unique cultural heritage and identity.

See: Old Poetry

http://oldpoetry.com/authors/A_B_Banjo_Paterson

W.G. Spence

Born 1846, in a village in the Orkney Islands, Scotland

Died 13 December 1926

William Guthrie Spence is well-known as a trade union leader. He came to Australia with his father hoping to find gold on the Ballarat goldfields in 1853. As a miner, Spence held several minor posts in the Amalgamated Miners' Association of Victoria until eventually being elected Secretary in 1882. In 1886, Spence became foundation president of the Amalgamated Shearers' Union of Australasia and guided the union through the turbulent industrial disputes in many of Australia's shearing sheds,

particularly those in Queensland that became so prevalent in the early 1890s. By 1892, Spence had broken his ties with the Amalgamated Miners' Association in Victoria and went on to help combine several small bush unions with the Amalgamated Shearers' Union to form, in 1894,

the Australian Workers' Union. Spence assumed the office of Secretary and four years later, President. In 1898, Spence was elected Federal Member for Darling but retained his office with the Australian Workers' Union. It wasn't until 1916, when he became embroiled in the conscription debate of that year, that he tendered his resignation. Spence died in 1926 and is buried in Coburg Cemetery.

"Inky" Stephensen

Born 1901, Biggenden, Queensland

Died May 1965, Sydney, NSW

P.R. (Percy Reginald) Stephensen was a giant of Australian letters. Stephensen's great

intellectual achievement was to link together the vision of Australian political and economic independence (then from the old Empire) with the 'idea' of Australian cultural independence. He wrote The Foundations Of Culture In

Australia about Australia's Identity and the struggle for national independence - an important

in the historical development of Australia's book

cultural independence.

See: The Percy Stephensen Collection

http://www.alphalink.com.au/~radnat/stephensen

Swagmen

The swagmen are an icon of Australian bush life. Roaming from town to town, homestead to homestead, in search of

work, the swaggies were born in the

Great Depression of the 1890s when

there was little work to be had in the major cities around Australia.