NEW SOUTH WALES, FLAG OF

Australian flag consisting of a dark blue field (background) bearing the Union Jack in the canton and, at the fly end, a white disk with a red cross, a yellow lion, and four yellow stars. The flag is sometimes described as a defaced Blue Ensign. A number of unofficial flags existed in the early days of New South Wales. Following the adoption by the British Parliament of the Colonial Naval Defence Act in 1865, each colony was required to display the British Blue Ensign with a unique, easily distinguished colonial badge. From April 20, 1870, until February 1876, the New South Wales badge was simply the letters NSW in white on a blue background. A different design, showing the Southern Cross in gold stars below the royal crown, appeared on the flag of the governor. British authorities strongly recommended that a single badge be used for both purposes. As a result, the design in use today was developed by James Barnet, architect of the local colonial government, and Captain Francis Hixson, president of the Marine Board. The badge was designed as a white disk with a red cross (the Cross of St. George) bearing a yellow lion and, on each arm of the cross, an eight-pointed yellow star. The Cross of St. George and the lion undoubtedly referred to ties with England, the mother country, while the stars represented the Southern Cross, already long recognized as an Australian national symbol. The red cross on white may have been taken from the White Ensign of the Royal Navy. This new flag flew on government ships, but it has been little used since New South Wales became a state on January 1, 1901. Nevertheless, it continues to be the official state flag of New South Wales, and both the state coat of arms and the personal standard of the governor are based on its badge. Whitney Smith History British settlement New South Wales was the first Australian colony to be established by the British. Discovered in 1770 by Captain James Cook, who took possession in the name of King George III, it originally covered the eastern third of Australia from Cape York Peninsula to the tip of Van Diemen's Land (later Tasmania). This vast area covered a variety of landforms and climatic conditions ranging, on the mainland, from the dry interior to the wetter coastal plains. These stretched from the semitropical north to the more temperate south and were separated from the interior by the Great Dividing Range. Inhabited by Aboriginal tribes, the country was still mainly virgin. Centuries earlier, large prehistoric animals had grazed the land, but now there were only small speciesthe kangaroo, koala, wombat, and the dingo, which had been brought by the Aborigines. Gradually after 1788 New South Wales was subdivided. Van Diemen's Land ceased to come under the governor at Sydney in 1825, some 27 years after the explorer George Bass discovered that it was an island. The Port Phillip district, settled in the 1830s by pastoralists from Van Diemen's Land and from farther north on the mainland, formed the nucleus of the colony of Victoria that was separated from New South Wales in 1851, after considerable agitation. Eight years later Queensland was given its own government, which was located at Brisbane, originally the centre of a penal settlement. No further changes were made to New South Wales until 1908, when a portion of territory some 185 miles southwest of Sydney was acquired by the federal government as the site for the national capital, Canberra. Although New South Wales was progressively reduced in physical extent, its history in other ways was one of growth. It began in January 1788 as a small settlement of a thousand or so people clustered around the foreshores of Sydney Harbour, near what is now the city of Sydney. Why the British government should have established a colony in so distant and isolated a site has long occasioned dispute. It was once accepted that the move resulted from the need to find an outlet for convicts, whom the American colonists would no longer accept after their revolt against British rule in 1776. Some historians, while conceding that penal considerations did influence the government, have suggested that more was involved. It is widely recognized that even before the loss of the American colonies Britain had begun to pay attention to the area in which Australia was located. Already possessions had been acquired in India, trade had developed with China, and an interest had been displayed in the Pacific region. Some historians view the settlement of Botany Bay as part of this broader process of imperial expansion. The outpost, it has been claimed, was valued for commercial purposes and as a means of protecting British shipping, particularly from the French, whom the government sought to exclude from this region. It has also been suggested that the presence on Norfolk Island of pine trees suitable for masts and flax needed for canvas provided a further incentive. These and other possible motives have attracted considerable attention, but debate over their significance continues. Whatever the merits of the different explanations for the colonization of New South Wales, it remains true that the First Fleet, which arrived under the command of Governor Arthur Phillip in January 1788, brought only convicts and their jailers. For the next 52 years of its existence the colony continued to receive regular consignments of felons. At first they arrived only in a trickle, but, once the Napoleonic Wars were over, larger numbers were dispatched. Historians agree that among the convicts were political offenders whose only offense was to have protested against injustice and misrule. These, however, formed a small part of a group largely composed of men and women who had been found guilty of theft and other offenses against property. All were lawbreakers, but questions have been raised as to whether they can be regarded as criminals. Some historians view the convicts as the innocent victims of a harsh law and an unjust society. Others claim that, in the main, they were less the victims than the enemies of society, and they depict them as ne'er-do-wells who chose crime in preference to other occupations. Whatever their background before coming to the colony, however, the convicts made an important contribution to its development, providing a servile labour force that was used by the government but more commonly by private settlers, who were encouraged to employ convicts under the assignment system. After completing their sentences most convicts found work as labourers or tradesmen, but the more enterprising acquired land, established businesses, or, when suitably qualified, entered the professions. They included artists such as Thomas Watling; writers such as Henry Savery, whose Quintus Servinton was the first novel printed in Australia; Francis Greenway, the celebrated architect; the solicitor George Crossley; and Laurence Halloran, who established a well-known school. Others, such as Samuel Terry, who became known as the Rothschild of Botany Bay, and the landowner, trader, and manufacturer Simeon Lord, rose to positions of wealth, although the stigma of having been convicts continued to cling to them. The growth of a free society Increasingly, however, the convict element was overshadowed by men and women who had come to the colony as free people. From the earliest days the British government encouraged migrants who, it was hoped, could employ, discipline, and perhaps reform the convicts. Few arrived until after 1815, by which time the activities of John Macarthur and other pastoralists had shown that New South Wales was well suited to the production of meat and especially wool. During the 1820s the pastoral industry attracted men of capital in large numbers. They were joined in the 1830s and '40s by some 120,000 men, women, and children who sought to escape the harsh conditions of industrial England. Their passages were in many cases paid from a fund resulting from the decision of the British government in 1831 to sell crown land in colonies instead of giving it away free. This category of migrant brought skills rather than capital and added greatly to the work force. The presence of growing numbers of ex-convicts, migrants, and currency lads and lasses, as the local-born were known, helped convert New South Wales from a convict outpost to a free colony. Wool was sent to Britain in commercial quantities from 1821, although until 1834 the products of the fisheries, whale oil, and sealskins formed the principal export. Thereafter, wool leaped ahead at a remarkable rate. Wool exports increased from nearly 5 million pounds by weight in 1834 to 14 million in 1850, linking the colony more closely to the English industrial system. Originally valued exclusively as an outlet for convicts, New South Wales was drawn more closely into the British imperial network. It became an outlet for migrants and a market for investment capital and manufactured products, and it replaced Spain and the German states as Britain's source of wool. All this gave a boost to development in New South Wales. The bounds of settlement spread outward as pastoralists took their sheep and cattle farther and farther afield. The local government, backed by the authorities in London, sought to impose limits on expansion. But they had no way of enforcing orders, and increasing numbers of stock owners moved outside the limits of settlement. Such people, known as squatters, struggled to obtain a firm tenure to their land, and in 1847 they won major concessions. By that time most of the eastern mainland was occupied, country towns had sprung up to meet the needs of surrounding districts, and Sydney, the capital city, had been transformed. Originally little more than the headquarters of a jail, it had become a thriving metropolis that was a centre of government and the colony's principal port. Here were located the public offices, mercantile houses, and a limited range of manufactures. The early buildings had been of primitive design and rough construction, but during and after the days of Governor Lachlan Macquarie gracious buildings were erected, some designed by the ex-convict architect Francis Greenway. This expansion was at the expense of the Aboriginal people, of whom, it has been estimated, at least 300,000 were present in New South Wales and Victoria when the first white settlers arrived (some estimates are higher than 1,000,000). The delicate structure of Aboriginal society, which technologically lagged behind that of the whites, could not withstand the incursions of the newcomers. Driven from their lands, ravaged by disease, and killed in large numbers as a result of frontier clashes, the Aborigines declined in number. Those who survived became virtual outcasts in white society or fell back into the interior, beyond the reach of the settlers. Governors were instructed to treat them with humanity and as British subjects. Most attempted to do so and to punish those whites who mistreated the Aborigines. In 1838, following the notorious Myall Creek Massacre, seven whites were hanged at the instance of Governor Sir George Gipps. In general, however, the law itself, as well as the difficulties of enforcing it in outlying districts, favoured the whites. During the 1830s, attempts were made to safeguard the Aborigines by placing them under supervision in protectorates, but these failed and were abandoned after the coming of self-government in the 1850s.