Colony of New South Wales

The Colony of New South Wales was the first British colony in Australia, proclaimed at Sydney on 7 February 1788 and lasting until 1 January 1901, when it became a state of the Commonwealth of Australia. Founded as a penal settlement, it grew into a self-governing colony, and at its largest its claims covered most of eastern Australia, from which Tasmania, South Australia, Victoria, Queensland and New Zealand were later separated.

The First Fleet of 11 ships under Captain Arthur Phillip reached Botany Bay in January 1788 with more than a thousand people, among them 778 convicts. Finding the bay unsuitable, Phillip moved to Port Jackson, and on 26 January a camp was begun at Sydney Cove; the colony was formally proclaimed on 7 February. Britain's claim took in all of Australia east of the 135th meridian and nearby Pacific islands. The first years were desperate: crops failed, supplies from Britain were scarce, and food ran critically short in 1790. Phillip founded a farming settlement at Parramatta, and by the time he left in December 1792 the colony had survived.

Aboriginal Australians had lived in the region for at least 50,000 years. The impact of settlement on them was immediate and severe. Epidemics of smallpox and measles ran ahead of the frontier, and dispossession, disease and violence greatly reduced Aboriginal populations within a generation in most areas. Armed conflict included the Hawkesbury and Nepean Wars of 1795–1816, part of the wider Australian frontier wars. After the Myall Creek massacre of Aboriginal people, Attorney General John Plunkett twice charged the colonists responsible with murder, securing a conviction.

The governor at first held near-absolute power. Officers of the New South Wales Corps grew rich on the rum trade, and in the Rum Rebellion of 1808 they deposed Governor William Bligh, the only successful armed seizure of government in Australian history. Lachlan Macquarie, governor from 1810 to 1821, restored order, built public works and treated former convicts as the equals of free settlers. In 1813 explorers crossed the Blue Mountains, opening the inland plains, and wool became the colony's first great export. Settlements in Van Diemen's Land, begun in 1803, became a separate colony in 1825, and South Australia was established on former New South Wales territory in 1836.

A Legislative Council was created in 1825 to advise the governor, and trial by jury was introduced the same year. Transportation of convicts to New South Wales ended in 1840, by which time some 150,000 convicts had been sent to Australia, and the council became partly elected in 1842. New Zealand became a separate colony in 1841. Gold was found near Bathurst in 1851, the same year the Port Phillip District became the separate Colony of Victoria, and the gold rushes drew a flood of migrants. Under the Constitution Act of 1855 the colony gained a two-chamber parliament, and responsible government began in 1856. Adult men gained the vote in 1858, and Queensland was separated in 1859.

New South Wales followed a conservative, free-trade path, while neighbouring Victoria became protectionist; their rivalry long held back plans for union. Henry Parkes, five times premier, built a system of free secular state schools in 1880. Broken Hill grew into a major silver, lead and zinc mining town in the 1880s, and the 1891 census counted about 1.12 million people, a figure that left out many Aboriginal people.

Through Federation, New South Wales and the five other Australian colonies united as the Commonwealth of Australia on 1 January 1901, and the colony became a state. Its last formal links to the British government ended with the Australia Act 1986.

Our 1815 map shows a single territory labelled New South Wales covering much of eastern Australia, an outline that reflects the colony's broad claim rather than land actually settled. On the 1878 map it is divided among separate colonies, including Queensland and Victoria.