Prehistory and early British settlement

Human remains discovered in 1968 and 1974 at Mungo in southwestern New South Wales are the oldest so far uncovered in Australia, dating from about 46,000 to 50,000 years ago. The land was managed by Aboriginal tribes or language groups for tens of thousands of years through a range of traditional practices, including the use of fire to stimulate the growth of valued plants or to clear grasslands for hunting. Fossil records reveal that large prehistoric animals once grazed the land, but they had long been extinct by the time the smaller creatures of the present day—the kangaroos, koalas, wombats, and dingoes—were introduced by the Aborigines in their migration from Asia.

New South Wales was the first Australian colony to be established by the British. Discovered in 1770 by Captain The southeastern coast of the continent was first sighted by Europeans in 1770 on the first voyage of Capt. James Cook, who took possession of what he called New South Wales in the name of King George III, it . The colony 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 encompassed 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 species—the 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 districtDistrict, 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 , which was separated from New South Wales in 1851 , after considerable agitation. Eight years later Queensland was given its own received self-government, which was located at administered from Brisbane, originally the centre of a penal settlement. No further changes were made to New South Wales until 19081911, when a portion of territory some 185 miles (300 km) southwest of Sydney was acquired by the federal government as the site for the national capital, named Canberra in 1913.

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 some 1,000 people clustered around the foreshores of Sydney Harbour, near what is now the city of Sydney. Why The question of 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 additional influences. 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 Possessions were acquired in India, trade had developed with China, and an interest had been was displayed in the Pacific region. Some historians view the settlement of Botany Bay as part of this broader Botany Bay, near present-day Sydney, had been placed in this process of imperial expansion . The outpost, it has been claimed, was as an outpost valued for commercial purposes and as a means of protecting British shipping, particularly from the French, whom the government sought to exclude from this regionFrench competitors. 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 Adm. 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. TheseThose, 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 in an unjust society. Others claim that, depict them 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 provided a labour force that was , used by the government but more commonly by private settlers , who were encouraged to employ convicts under the assignment systemto whom the government assigned convicts. 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 Mary Reibey became a prominent businesswoman, Samuel Terry was known as the “Rothschild of Botany “Botany Bay Rothschild,” and the landowner, trader, and manufacturer Simeon Lord , rose to positions a position of wealth, although the stigma of having been convicts continued to cling to them. Despite these exceptions, a convict past, even convict ancestry, was a “stain” to be hidden, and this remained the case until well into the 20th century.

The growth of a free society

Increasingly, however, the convict element was overshadowed by men and women who had come came to the colony as free people. From the earliest days the 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 . Often they were carefully selected to remedy imbalances perceived in colonial society, such as the young women—“God’s police”—whom the philanthropist Caroline Chisholm worked to settle in pastoral districts. These migrants brought skills rather than capital and added greatly to the work forceworkforce.

The presence of growing numbers of ex-convicts , migrants, and “currency lads and lasses,” as the local-born were known, and migrants 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 exportexports. Thereafter , wool leaped ahead at a remarkable rate. Wool exports increased from nearly 5 million pounds (2.3 million kg) by weight in 1834 to 14 million pounds (6.4 million kg) in 1850, linking the colony more closely to the English industrial system. Originally valued exclusively as an outlet for convicts, New South Wales, replacing Spain and the German states as Britain’s source of wool, was drawn more closely into the British imperial network . It became as 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 afieldafield, “squatting” on land not yet surveyed, policed, or legally available to them. The local government, backed by the authorities in London, sought to impose limits on expansion . But they but 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 . Influential “squatters” demanded 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 an open jail, it had become a thriving metropolis that was a centre of government and the colony’s principal port. Here There were located the public offices, mercantile houses, and a limited range of manufactures. The early Early buildings had been of primitive rudimentary design and rough construction gave way, but during and after the days of Governor Gov. Lachlan Macquarie, to gracious buildings were erected, some designed by the ex-convict architect Francis architecture, including that of 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 . The first governors were instructed to “conciliate the affections” of “the natives,” but mutual curiosity soon gave way to misunderstanding, competition for scarce resources, and the impact of disease as the British settlers first struggled to survive and then began to push out the boundaries of their settlements. Pastoral expansion and Aboriginal resistance, led by warriors such as Pemulwuy (a leader from the Botany Bay area who was killed by an Englishman in 1802), led to violent clashes in which large numbers of Aborigines were killed. While governors maintained that Aborigines should be treated with humanity and as British subjects, the pressure of colonial expansion was accompanied by an increasingly systematic racism. In 1838, following a notorious massacre at Myall Creek, seven white men were hanged at the insistence of the governor, Sir George Gipps. In general, however, the law itself, as well as the difficulties of enforcing it in outlying districts, favoured the whitessettlers, and massacres, incursions, poisonings, and forced dispersals usually went unpunished. During the 1830s , attempts were made to safeguard the Aborigines by placing them under supervision in protectorates, but these attempts failed and were abandoned after the coming of self-government in the 1850s.

Movement toward self-rule

The emergence of a free society was accompanied by the growth of opposition to the existing form of authoritarian government. So long as convicts were sent to New South Wales, it was considered necessary for close control to be exercised by those in authority. The naval governors who successively governors who possessed virtually absolute powers. These they discharged in a responsible manner: the naval officers who ruled between 1788 and 1808, Arthur 1808—Arthur Phillip, John Hunter, Philip Gidley King, and William Bligh, possessed virtually absolute powers. These they discharged in a responsible manner, for all were dedicated, hard-working Bligh—were dedicated, hardworking administrators. From the time of Phillip’s departure in 1792, however, they met opposition from the New South Wales Corps, which a military force that had been recruited to perform garrison duty. Its officers were allowed to own land and, contrary to instructions, they also began trading in a number of goods, including liquor. Efforts to check them failed, and they used their influence to undermine the positions of Hunter and King. Governor Bligh, a courageous, energetic, but abrasive and tactless man, already noted for the mutiny on the Bounty, proved more resistant. He clashed with the corps, with other sections of the community, and, more seriously, with the difficult and overbearing John Macarthur. A crisis developed that culminated with the his overthrow of Bligh in the Rum Rebellion of January 1808.

The corps ruled under successive commandants until 1810, when it was recalled, and Lachlan Macquarie arrived with his own regiment. A Scot of energy and vision, he ruled from 1810 until 1821, restoring order and bringing stability to a colony whose interests he did much to promote. His autocratic ways, however, created problems, and, following led to an inquiry begun in 1819 by Commissioner J.T. Bigge, and a small Legislative Council made up of government officials and nominated colonists was established in 1823. This body and its powers were enlarged in 1828, but responsibility still lay with the governors, who were answerable only to the Colonial Office in far-off London.

Conflict developed during the 1820s and ’30s as pressure for an increased say in government mounted among free colonists. A group called “emancipists” or “Botany Bay Whigs,” led by the local-born, Cambridge-educated lawyer and pastoralist W.C. Wentworth, demanded an elected Legislative Council. This was opposed initially by a small but influential conservative faction, known as “exclusives” or “Botany Bay Tories,” that clustered around John Macarthur. In response to demands from the emancipists, British authorities sanctioned the introduction of trial by jury into the civil and criminal courts, but they refused to reform the legislature while convicts were arriving. Representative government was finally introduced in 1842, two years after convict transportation was abolished. The Yet the new legislature, composed of 36 members, 24 of whom were elected, had limited powers, however.

Once convicts ceased to arrive, the old division between emancipist emancipists and exclusive exclusives faded. The two groups, which were composed mainly of wealthy landowners, came together under Wentworth’s leadership. During the 1840s they sought to tighten their hold over the land and the resumption of convict transportation to ease the a labour shortage. This brought them into conflict with urban elements who saw the resumption of transportation as a threat to their well-being. Wentworth and his associates, however, predominated among the elected members of the legislature, and they continued to press for reforms designed to secure self-government and guarantee their own supremacy. In 1856, as part of a series of changes affecting most of the Australian colonies, the British government established in New South Wales a new legislature composed of a Legislative Council and a wholly elected Legislative Assembly. Power passed from the governor to whichever political leader from the lower house possessed majority support. Representative government had given way to responsible government, and the premier had replaced the governor as the chief executive officer.

The new constitution failed to give the landed gentry the protection it sought. After 1856 this conservative group lost ground to the urban middle class, which came to dominate political life. Political parties had not yet emerged, and between the 1860s and the 1880s New South Wales was governed mainly by loose-knit factions whose presence resulted in frequent changes of ministry. Fortunately, both a well-established public service and the broadly common outlook shared by the leading political figures made for stability. Liberalism was the dominant political creed, and there was general agreement as to the desirability of fashioning a society that offered opportunity to as wide a section of the white community as possible.

Beginning in 1861 with the land acts for which John Robertson was responsible, attempts were made to reduce the power of the squatters and open up the lands to small settlers, or selectors. In 1871 a Trades and Labour Council was formed to bring greater coordination to union demands on working hours and conditions. Reforms were also introduced in the sphere of education that culminated in Sir Henry Parkes’s with the 1880 Public Instruction Act. This sought to end the existing dual system under which church and state schools operated side by side. Thereafter it was intended that primary schools would be provided solely by the state, which sought to ensure that all children attended them. The act was opposed by the Roman Catholic churchChurch, which objected to the idea of education being controlled by secular authorities. The church continued with its own schools, perpetuating the dual system.

Economic developments

In the economic sphere, boom conditions prevailed until the late 1880s. The Australian gold rushes rush of the 1850s brought much less wealth to New South Wales than they did to Victoria, where the goldfields were considerably larger. But after causing some dislocation, the gold rushes rush did add to the well-being of the colony and helped it recover from a depression experienced in the early 1840s. After 1860 capital poured in from England, and the pastoral industry was placed on a new footing. The squatters were largely untroubled by the attempts to dispossess them of their land. They began to build permanent homes in the Outback and effect other improvements on their properties, reducing the need for shepherds and herdsmen by enclosing their land with the new wire fencing. The wool and cattle industries continued to expand, as did wheat farming, which, like pastoralism, was given a boost by the introduction of railway systems after the 1850s. Meat exports became possible in the 1880s after refrigerated transport was invented. All this benefited the large grazier, but the selectors also made their presence felt. The Robertson Land Acts, once wrongly regarded as a failure, did succeed in areas suitable for dairying or intensive cultivation and helped promote these branches of rural industry. Elsewhere, however, selectors often failed or were reduced to poverty. The This economic climate thus created helped provide the conditions in which outlaws known as bushrangers could thrive. Such people Outlawry had been present from the earliest days, but it was in the 1860s and ’70s that they these figures came to the fore. Their resistance to authority and to the unpopular squatters helped make them folk heroes.

Even more marked than the expansion of rural industry was urban growth. Country towns increased in number and size, although those that were bypassed by the railway suffered decline. Sydney, which as always was well placed to tap the wealth of both the interior and the Pacific, expanded to an unprecedented extent. The gold rushes had given Melbourne a great boost, but Sydney remained a centre of great importance. With the coming of the railway and later of the tram, new suburbs were established in the outer districts. Previously workers had been obliged to live close to employment, but increasingly , once they were able to break this nexus. The , the urban sprawl that has had been so much a feature of city development in New South Wales had already begun.The gained pace. It was checked only a little by acts such as the creation of the Royal National Park south of Sydney in 1879.

In the opening years of the last decade of the 19th century were marked by , most of Australia experienced a severe economic depression that affected most of Australia. In New South Wales financial . Financial institutions collapsed, savings were lost, and unemployment was widespread. Industrial disputes, more serious than ever before, broke out, the most noteworthy being the Great Maritime Strike of May to November 1890. The unions involved in the strike were defeated, and this setback contributed to the decision in 1891 to establish a Labor Party. Its presence forced other political groups to organize themselves along party lines and ended the faction system in Parliament, already undermined by the split between free-traders and protectionists. The 1890s In New South Wales the latter years of the decade and the beginning of the 20th century were also marked by a heightened sense of prolonged drought.

The 1890s saw a rise in national feeling, resulting in part from the fact that the population was by now mainly locally born. Art, literature, and literature journalism reflected this impulse, which also played a part in the federation movement. The movement had received a stimulus in 1889 when Sir Henry Parkes, one of the outstanding political leaders in New South Wales, delivered his Tenterfield oration, a speech calling for federation of the Australian colonies. More than a decade of hard bargaining was necessary before federation was achieved. New South Wales favoured the eventual outcome in two agreement on the form the national government was to take was achieved. In two constitutional referenda held in 1898 and 1899, New South Wales favoured the eventual outcome, although opinion was divided in the community.


The establishment of a Commonwealth government in 1901 inaugurated a new era in the history of New South Wales. The once-independent colony was now a state that formed part of a wider unitWith a population of 1,354,846—more than one-third that of Australia overall—it was the most populous state. Important powers were handed over to the federal government, which progressively encroached on the state’s domain. Other changes affected the course of the state’s development. For most of the 19th century, New South Wales had enjoyed almost continuous progress, broken only by occasional setbacks. The first half of the 20th century, in contrast, was marked by the two world wars World Wars and a world worldwide depression in the 1930s. Besides creating widespread unemployment and precipitating the collapse of businesses and financial institutions, the depression produced a political crisis. The Labor premier , John Thomas Jack Lang, who had introduced major reforms since coming to power after gaining office in 1925, threatened to repudiate payment on overseas debts. He clashed with the Commonwealth government and alarmed wealthy propertied groups, which gave support to a semimilitaristic semi-militaristic movement, the New Guard. Tensions mounted, and on March 19, 1932, F.E. De Groot, a member of the New Guard, cut the ribbon opening the Sydney Harbour Bridge before Lang was able to do so. This was a highly symbolic gesture , but two that was caught on newsreels and often replayed. Two months later, after Lang forbade government departments to hand over money to the Commonwealth, he was dismissed by the New South Wales governor, Sir Philip Game.

Despite the disturbances occasioned by war and depression, much was accomplished in New South Wales between 1900 and 1945. Labor held office for the first time, under premier James Sinclair Taylor McGowen in 1910. He was succeeded by William Arthur Holman, who left the party in 1917 , after it split over the question of whether conscription for overseas military services should be introduced. The party held office for most of the 1920s, but in the 1930s power passed to a coalition of the United Australia Party (later the Liberal Party) and the Country Party ; the latter party had been (later the Nationals). The Country Party was established in 1925 in New South Wales (it was previously called succeeding the Progressive Party, which had been formed in 1919) to represent the rural interest. The state continued to control public works, law and order, and health and education. Important reforms were introduced, particularly in the field of education. The state system brought into being under Parkes was reformed after 1904 by Peter Board, the celebrated director general of education. He established Sydney Teachers’ College in 1905–06 and sought to ensure that teaching and courses were adapted to the needs of children. In 1911 he laid the basis for an improved secondary , or high, school system that was designed to cater to older students. Some of those who attended high secondary school proceeded to the University of Sydney (1850), the oldest university in Australia, dating from 1850. It too was expanded after 1900 and became a major centre of learning with an international reputation.

The educational reforms introduced after 1900 reflected a growing tendency on the part of the government to help its citizens. State intervention had been a feature of New South Wales history from the outset, for, in so large a colony, government alone possessed the resources to provide essential services. The emergence of the Labor Party gave an additional stimulus to this tendency and pushed it in new directions. From the 1890s a welfare state gradually took shape. Old-age pensions were introduced in 1900 and later extended. As the 20th century progressed, further innovations, including a scheme for child endowment innovations—including a benefit program for people with dependent children that set the lead for Australia, were Australia—were established. So too was a system for settling industrial disputes by arbitration and conciliation, a workers’ compensation scheme, and the 44-hour work week. Yet, as the depression of the 1930s showedworkweek.

In addition to the attention paid to these areas of government intervention, there was also growing public and professional interest in addressing questions of morality (especially juvenile delinquency, or “larrikinism”), marriage (e.g., concern at a declining birth rate), housing (particularly with regard to the congested and polluted slum areas of Sydney), town planning, and development beyond the cities. Extensive irrigation works commenced on the Murrumbidgee River before World War I (1914–18) with the goal of encouraging settlement in new areas. Further to this end, after each of the two World Wars, returning soldiers were given grants of farming and grazing land. The success of these ventures was often mixed, since the new settlers were often inexperienced and the land tended to be of poor quality or in parcels too small to be viable. As the Great Depression of the 1930s confirmed, many members of the community were unprotected or poorly safeguarded against threats to their well-being. Indeed, research has revealed that even Even in earlier periods of supposed plenty, poverty existed in what was thought to be a land of opportunity. Such problems were to continue after World War II, although additional steps were taken to alleviate them.

The postwar period

World War II In the interwar years, however, there was a marked polarity between the modernity of Sydney’s middle-class suburbs, with icons such as the Harbour Bridge in the backdrop, and entrenched hardship in other areas of the city and beyond, the subject of much reportage, commentary, and art.

These contrasts were particularly strong for the state’s indigenous population, which in 1933 numbered 1,229 “full-blood” Aborigines and 8,485 “half-caste.” An Aborigines Protection (later Welfare) Board had been established in 1883, and under new legislation of 1909 and 1915 it acquired the power to legitimize the practices already followed in removing “mixed race” children from the parents, without consent, in the cause of assimilation. These children were placed in hostels where they were prepared for domestic service (in the case of girls) and farm labour (for boys). It is estimated that a minimum of approximately 6,200 children—the “stolen generations”—were removed from their families until the board was abolished in 1969. The Jan. 26, 1938, sesquicentennial celebration of European settlement was characterized as a “Day of Mourning” by well-organized Aboriginal activists such as William Cooper, William Ferguson, and Jack Patten. Day of Mourning protests have been held annually ever since.

The postwar period

World War II (1939–45) and the decades that followed produced major changes in New South Wales. During the war a Japanese midget submarine entered Sydney Harbour and attacked ships there. This was the only direct attack on New South Wales territory, but the war’s social and economic impacts were considerable. The war stimulated industrialization, and the movement of Allied troops—especially U.S. servicemen—brought cultural change. A Labor government, elected in 1941, promised to expand social services.

After the war the population of the state expanded greatly, from some 2,917,415 in 1945 to some 5,738,500 in 1988. The proportion of residents of British origin fell as increasing numbers of immigrants—initially from Europe, then from South America, the Middle East , and Asia—arrived under schemes implemented by the federal government. Attempts were at first made to assimilate them, but this policy was replaced by one aimed at Policies premised on assimilation gave way in the 1970s to the goal of creating a multicultural society. The presence of immigrants enriched cultural life and produced changes in social customs. This was particularly evident in the cities, the continued growth of which was another , and cultural diversity—or at least areas of ethnic concentration—came increasingly to characterize areas of Sydney, where the majority of immigrants settled.

The continued growth of the state capital was a marked feature of the postwar years. Sydney, which had a population of about 1,756,611 in 1945, grew to 3,596,000 by 1988. In the process it became recognized as a leading world city. However, it was also marked as both more affluent and more economically and socially polarized than other major Australian cities. Construction of the Sydney Opera House, designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, began in 1959. It was funded largely by the sale of lottery tickets and was completed in 1973. The opera house project exemplified both the idealized image and the reality of Sydney, just as the controversies surrounding its construction revealed tensions between the bold design and the politics and penny-pinching of its implementation.

Important too was the expansion of Newcastle and Wollongong, centres of the iron and steel industry. The increased concentration of population in coastal cities created problems such as these created inequalities in development and gave rise to attempts to promote compensatory growth in the interior of the state, where some country towns were in decline. Only limited results, however, were achievedPlaces designated as “growth centres”—e.g., the Bathurst-Orange area, some 120 miles (200 km) west-northwest of Sydney, and Albury-Wodonga, on the Victorian border—were projected in the mid-1970s, but only limited results were achieved in breaking Sydney’s lure.

Despite some setbacks, the postwar years were ones of economic expansion. The Construction of the massive Snowy Mountains HydroElectric Scheme began in 1949; Hydro-electric Scheme, begun in 1949 and completed in 1974, was undertaken in conjunction with the federal and Victorian governments, it . It was an outstanding venture among a number of public works projects that brought improvements to the power supply, roads, railways, and city life. A Housing Commission, established in 1941, sought to address pent-up demand for housing, and new estates on the fringes of Sydney provided cheaper housing for workers. The largest trading state, New South Wales retained a leading position in many spheres of enterprise.

In the political sphere, power alternated between Labor, which ruled until 1965 and from 1976 to 1988, and the coalition formed by the Country Party and the Liberal Party. After 1942 the Commonwealth alone levied income tax; this limited the state’s opportunities to initiate reforms. Increasingly the Commonwealth seized the initiative in spheres such as health and education, and particularly in the university and college sector, which underwent unprecedented expansion after 1957. Nevertheless, the state government did much to diversify and expand the economy and improve facilities and opportunities for a widening segment of the population. Reforms were introduced in the hospital system, while the school system, primary and secondary, was brought into line with new social and educational needs. Legislation, influenced by that introduced overseas and in Canberra, opened new opportunities for women, who since the 1960s had been organizing in protest against prevailing inequalities. New South Wales had been the first Australian state to legislate for equal pay for equal work, in 1958, and campaigns for divorce-law reform gained pace in the following decade.

Attention also was turned toward the Aboriginal people, whose plight aroused national and international concern. Up until World War II it was widely believed that they were vanishing as a vanishing race people and that the object should be to ease the process of their vanishing. Policy was directed first at controlling and protecting the Aborigines and then at assimilating them into white society. The measures adopted, although paternalistic in inspiration, were often unfeelingly administered, and they such as separating children from their families, brought much suffering. After the war, attitudes gradually changed, as the Aboriginal people became more conscious of their own individuality heritage and their rights. Support Inspiration came from overseas, where changes had occurred in the position of black people. Sympathy also developed especially from civil rights campaigns in the United States, building support among segments of the white populace, including university students and teachers. Students joined in the “freedom rides” of 1965, which were inspired in part by the Freedom Rides of the U.S. civil rights movement and were designed to highlight racial discrimination in rural New South Wales. In response to mounting pressure and the example set by the federal government, which after a referendum in 1967 gained power to legislate for the Aboriginal people, reforms were introduced in New South Wales. These culminated in 1983 with an act that established Aboriginal Land Councils and conferred on them the right to hold freehold title to land within their area. Earlier, attempts had been made to improve medical facilities for Aborigines and increase educational opportunities. Much remained to be accomplished, but at least a start had been made toward opening the way for wider sections of the community to share in the future growth of New South Wales.

In the latter half of the 20th century, the cultural changes that came with sustained prosperity—and, not least, during the 1960s, the infusion of large numbers of U.S. servicemen on leave from the war in Vietnam—transformed areas of inner-city Sydney (most notoriously, King’s Cross) into districts where illicit activities such as prostitution, gambling, and trafficking in illegal drugs flourished. Money made through such activities and through speculation on property development was fed into networks of corruption that tainted areas of the police force and shadowed senior politicians. Equally, these new pressures and opportunities generated social movements protesting against the abuse of power, sheer conservatism, and the destruction of valued areas of parkland or housing. A march drawing attention to the persecution of homosexuals in 1978 grew through the 1980s into the Sydney Gay (and Lesbian, after 1988) Mardi Gras, gaining large crowds and international prominence as an event and arts program (held annually in February).

“Alternative lifestyle communities” exploring the countercultures of the 1960s and ’70s, exemplified by the “Aquarius Festival” held at Nimbin, a small town in northern New South Wales, in 1973, provided one constituency for concerted campaigns against the logging of forests on the north and south coasts of the state, but the environmental concern spread well beyond those groups through the 1980s. Whether the problem under study was the clear-cutting and wood chipping of old forests, the sewage that washed back onto Sydney’s beaches, or the location of noxious industrial plants in cities, a “green” agenda demanded action. The Liberal–Country Party coalition that had taken office in 1965 was edged aside in 1976 by Labor, which offered a fresh style of leadership and action on issues such as environmental protection and minority rights.

The economic challenges to the state, however, were considerable, and by the mid-1980s Sydney was repositioning and reshaping itself to become a financial capital for the Asia-Pacific region and a major global tourist destination. The grounds for the Royal Easter Show—an annual festival that celebrates rural industries and features exhibitions of agricultural products from around the state—were converted into movie soundstages, helping to attract international filmmakers to the state. Amid popular outcry, a monorail was constructed along the facades of inner-city buildings to serve Darling Harbour as it converted from shipping docks to entertainment facilities and a casino. Meanwhile, both Liberal and Labor governments wrestled with reducing the size and costs of state government.

From the time of the announcement in 1993 that Sydney would host the 2000 Olympic Games, the city worked to ensure that nothing would be lost in this great chance for reinvention. At the opening ceremony for the Games, clever parodies of the traditional icons of the bush, the beach, and the suburban backyard showed how vigorously this challenge was met. The hints of unfinished business—especially in relation to Aboriginal Australia—in the closing ceremony suggested that the past was not over yet.

Through the early 21st century New South Wales continued to find its way through the fluid and uncertain settings of the times. Sydney was consistently ranked high on most lists of the world’s most livable cities, given its environmental amenity, the ready availability of goods and services, and the quality of its infrastructure. However, strains were clearly evident in those same areas. Examples included rising electricity costs, delays or cuts in funding for public transportation, housing costs that were unaffordable to many and increased more rapidly than the rate of inflation, and the increasing debt of the state government and local councils. Population growth was concentrated in Sydney, but in the coastal regions growth was projected to outpace that in the rest of the state (including Sydney) and to be characterized by an aging demographic profile. Inland, the need to conserve water from the already straining river systems both heightened the uncertainties faced in those regions and put a premium on innovation and adaptability. These trends were to a large extent in accord with the history of the state and played to its identity—its diversity, its resourcefulness, the lure and glamour of the capital, and the stoicism of the bush.