Colonizing The Kimberley- Best-case scenario for my great-great-uncle?

[SinghSong]

IRL, I've been doing a lot of research to connect with my historical cultural heritage, and my family history. And my father's family were 'Khsatriyah Rajputs' of one of the most successful 'Lobana/Lavana' clans); directly descended from members of the ruling class of the Ahluwalia Misl's, later the Princely State of Kapurthala's, exclaved Phagwara tehsil. My grandfather still holds significant tracts of farmland there, with our extended familial clan having also acquired and cultivated extensive tracts of land in the south-western territories of the former Sikh Empire, especially across the Dera Ghazi Khan division (facilitated partly by way of having dominated the trading and transportation of goods along the course of the river boat trade before it all had to be abandoned, got confiscated and reassigned to other people by the Pakistani government after Partition). My paternal grandmother's side, that of the Minhas family, were also pioneering trailblazers of the Sikh diaspora; having been among the most successful of all early on IOTL, establishing the town of Paldi, the first and only Sikh settlement in Canada (with Manjit Minhas, and her brother Ravinder, being third cousins once-removed of mine).

This thread, however, relates to the story which I probably would've explored an alternate outcome for, and submitted for the Alternate History Australia collection a couple of years ago, if I'd known about it at that time. Namely, a WI scenario involving the real-life historical efforts of an uncle of my grandfather, who was also purportedly one of the earliest Sikh 'pioneers of the inland', travelling from the Dera Ghazi Khan region to The Kimberley of NW Australia in the mid to late 1880's to join the gold rush at Hall's Creek; from whence he directly sourced the gold for a set of solid 24ct gold karas (the most valuable belongings I have since they came into my possession a year and a half ago, one of which I'm wearing instead of a stainless steel one on account of my being allergic to stainless steel, with their collective scrap metal value currently estimated at c.£20k). Apparently, whilst he arrived in Wyndham in late 1886, as the gold rush itself was petering out, he still decided to settle there for several years, and after managing to successfully acquire some land, was supposed to have started the first decent-sized farming venture in the region.

On it, he implemented Rod-Kohi or 'hill torrent' cultivation to properly harness the 'Bugapani' (seasonal monsoon floodwaters) which were available there, in much the same manner as back in Rajanpur. And its location (in the Gulf Basin region of the lower Ord River, along the border with the Northern Territory) appears to have actually been acknowledged and well known enough to have still been recorded for posterity, and marked down on this historical map of Western Australia, about 15-20yrs later. Though its name on this map, of 'N*gger Hill', should serve as a good illustration of the other nearby European settlers' (who would have presumably been the Duracks, with his own homestead having been situated directly between their Argyle Downs and Ivanhoe Stations- and of whom he had nothing good to say, particularly regarding their treatment of the Aborigines, whatever they themselves might have had to say about it), and Western Australian government's, attitudes towards him and his brief legacy.

Though it could also have been a reflection of his venture's legacy; apparently, he'd established extremely good relations with the local Aboriginal community, employing exclusively from them (as all the agricultural employers in the region did at that time), but offering them reasonable pay (rather than forcing them to work as unpaid indentured laborers at gunpoint, and only providing them with food rations for their labor, like the Duracks were documented to have still been doing up until the late 1960's), and allowing them to build their own houses and live on his estate (most likely adopting a Lambardar-type system, akin to that which would've been familiar to him back in the Punjab). He claimed that, down in Australia, he'd been a Raja in all but name; and it was also heavily implied that he'd had intimate relations with Aborigine women during his time there.

However, he had bigger plans to expand his holdings there, and (presumably wanting to stick it to and outcompete the Duracks) wanted to get in on the pastoralist market himself too. And just after the turn of the century, he decided to travel back to the Punjab, to see his family and share some of his wealth with them (/show off how well he'd done for himself on his own), and accepted their wishes for him to get married in a proper ceremony to a properly selected wife, at around the turn of the century. And he stayed for a year or so, to encourage others from the wider community to travel back to Australia with him and his newly-wed wife, as well as to purchase a sizable herd of dairy cattle (cows and buffaloes), goats and sheep from the wider Punjab region, and try to make the arrangement to get them shipped to Wyndham. And he'd already sourced the seeds to plant and cultivate a bunch of crops from the Punjab (having previously had to make do with crops sourced from the Europeans, along with the native millet and sorghum varieties native to the top end, lending far lower- but still half-decent- yields than the Indian cultivars would have),

But before he returned to Australia, during the time he'd been away, the White Australia Policy, and Immigration Restriction Policy of 1901, had been passed. Since he hadn't been in Australia at the time, even though he had been a resident in Australia before 1900, he still ouldn't apply for a Certificate of Exemption from the Dictation Test (since it could only be applied for before leaving Australia, from within Australia itself). And in part due to lacking a CEDT (attempting to return regardless, only to be stopped and demanded to take the Dictation Test, and failing it), as well as being prohibited from bringing his wife or any other families members with him, he was forced to give up on all his hard work and effort in the Kimberley, and settle for the Chenab Canal Colony instead (where other members of our family had been among the foremost yeoman and capitalist grantees in the Chenab Canal Colony, in the vicinity of Faisalabad)- though he purportedly said that there was no comparison, with the soil quality and water availability in Australia (i.e, the Ord River Valley) having been far superior to those of the Punjab (in the Chenab Canal Colony).

And ultimately, IOTL, all his efforts would ultimately be wiped out with barely a trace later on, with the plot of land he'd once owned first being offered (along with the wider tract of land still inhabited by those Aborigines who'd formerly worked with him) by the pastoral firm of Michael Durack in Australia to the Freeland League in the proposal for the Kimberley Plan, before it was ultimately decided to go ahead with the Ord River Irrigation Scheme, with his 'Parhar Station' (or, in the apparent words of the Duracks, 'N*gger Hill') today lying beneath the waves of Lake Argyle. But it could have been so different, and come to so much more. So then, let's say than in another TL, my great-great uncle had made the journey to British India (mostly areas of present-day Pakistan) and returned back to his land holdings along the Ord River a couple of years earlier than he did IOTL, and that as such, he'd actually been able to bring all of the cultivars and livestock along with him that he'd sourced and made the preparations to bring there with him IOTL, before the White Australia policy came into effect. What do you think could've plausibly been the best-case scenario, regarding his fortunes in Australia? And just how much of an impact do you feel that his continued efforts could've had, on the course of Australian history?

 

[SenatorChickpea]

You bastard, you had to post this while I'm in hell week.

I better remember to come back to this in July, because I love this post.

 

[Ricardolindo]

You bastard, you had to post this while I'm in hell week.

I better remember to come back to this in July, because I love this post.

Reminding you as today is 1 July.

 

[Charles EP M.]

Feels like the biggest possible impact is Punjab crops being seen to do well and other farmers trying to get them, leading to Australia being known for this sort of crop and it being part of national identity & food.

And your great-uncle goes from "N--- Hill" to "Uncle SinghSong, famous Australian, symbol of our diverse and great history" & a recurring figure in historical dramas

 

[Gary Oswald]

As often with your posts @SinghSong, I find the premise utterly delightful but lack the knowledge to contribute.

I really hope you do end up converting some of these ideas into something concrete.

 

[SinghSong]

Feels like the biggest possible impact is Punjab crops being seen to do well and other farmers trying to get them, leading to Australia being known for this sort of crop and it being part of national identity & food.

And your great-uncle goes from "N--- Hill" to "Uncle SinghSong, famous Australian, symbol of our diverse and great history" & a recurring figure in historical dramas

Well, there would've been a fair few other possible repercussions which could've caused pretty massive butterflies. For starters, if he's still there to assert his custodianship over that tract of land, then there's probably no Lake Argyle or Ord River Irrigation Scheme. Ord River Barrage/s, perhaps, feeding a canal system. And before that, if he's still there to stake his claim to it, it isn't offered to the Freeland League for the Kimberley Plan in late 1938-early 1939, butterflying that away. IOTL, it was the Kimberley Plan which the Freeland League selected as their preferred option, and chose to proceed with investing all of their subsequent time and efforts into it, rather than either of the other two big opportunities they'd been offered to obtain large piece of territory. But it was ultimately thwarted by way of being officially vetoed on 15 July 1944 by Australian PM Curtin, who informed Steinberg that the Australian government would not "depart from the long-established policy in regard to alien settlement in Australia" and could not "entertain the proposal for a group settlement of the exclusive type contemplated by the Freeland League", after an opinion poll had found that 47% of Australians opposed the scheme. But ITTL, there could be no Kimberley Plan- that tract of land between the Argyle Downs and Ivanhoe Stations isn't the Duracks' to offer. So which of the other two main options (as opposed to the more nebulous offers in Angola and Peru, which were swiftly ruled out IOTL) do the Freeland League pick instead, ITTL?

Their initial preferred option was Ecuador, where an agreement had been reached with the Ecuadorian government extremely early on, to transfer 500,000 acres of land to the committee's jurisdiction for a period of 30 years, to be settled by immigrants regardless of race, religion, or nationality. Several concessions were also promised, such as tax exemption for three years, citizenship after one year, customs exemption, and free transportation by train from the port to the interior of the country. The president signed the agreement several months later, on the condition that a detailed program be presented by May 1937, and that the Committee invest $8,000 and settle at least 100 families. However, the project was abandoned IOTL after several Jewish organizations deemed the land proposed for the plan to be unacceptable, claiming that it was too far from population centers and that the climate was too severe. The fact that the land offered to them, in southern Ecuador along the 1936 status-quo border line with Peru, was disputed between it and Peru- as the lands offered with far fewer concessions by Peru had been, on the other side of the Peruvian-Ecuadorian border- wasn't considered as a factor at the time. But IOTL, by 1938, with any hopes of using the Freeland League's Jewish Colonial Settlements to create a buffer zone against aggression having been ended, minor border skirmishes were breaking out over their ownership again, and these ultimately snowballed into the Ecuadorian-Peruvian War in July 1941. And the other main option considered was Suriname (corresponding roughly to the Para District, centered around the abandoned settlement of Jodensavanne, with some of the land offered ultimately being put to use as an internment campsite instead IOTL). You'd imagine that neither Ecuador nor Suriname would've obstructed or delayed the Freeland League's colonization efforts the way that Australia did; and either alternate option, especially the most likely 'Ecuador Plan', could've had significant geopolitical repercussions.

As for matters in Australia itself, he tried to encourage a bunch of others to come back with him as well; so if he'd made it back in time before the Immigration Restriction Policy of 1901 was passed, he wouldn't have been coming alone, but bringing at least a few, maybe even dozens of others with him, which most likely would've led to the establishment of a Sikh settlement there in the process in the next few years after that, paralleling the establishment of Paldi up in Canada. How would that have been received, both in early 1900's Australia and back in India? And might more of the roughly 4,000-6,000 Sikhs already present in Australia at that time decide to travel there? Sikhs from Punjab comprised a significant minority among the cameleers, commonly known as 'Ghans', who'd been brought to Australia to help explore and settle the Australian outback; they played a key role in setting up camel-breeding stations and rest house outposts, known as caravanserai, throughout inland Australia, and created permanent links between the coastal cities and the remote cattle and sheep grazing stations until about the 1930s, with the foremost of these links being the 'Ghan Route', which ran from Adelaide via Port Augusta and Alice Springs to Darwin (then known as Palmerston).

And if others did congregate there, and/or as word of his success story spreads, there's every chance that some of those Sikh hawkers who sent some of their profits back to their families in the villages of Punjab, and invested the rest by building stores and buying land IOTL- especially in northern New South Wales, where their continued acquisition caused the minister for of lands, Niel Nielson, to speak out against them- might decide to buy land up at the Top End, in the Kimberley region instead ITTL. Does it end with an even more xenophobic, white supremacist and exclusionist Australia seeking to eject the 'undesirables', and forcibly expel them elsewhere (much like the Canadians considered deporting the entire Sikh community off to settle Belize instead, with the aid and support of the British)? Or would there be a chance of 'sticking it out', so to speak?

 

[Jackson Lennock]

What is it with the Kimberley and the British proposing to stick people there? They considered putting Jewish refugees there as well.

 

[Ricardolindo]

What is it with the Kimberley and the British proposing to stick people there? They considered putting Jewish refugees there as well.

@SenatorChickpea once said here that at the end of the 19th century, there was an almost scientific consensus among the Australasian colonies that Northern Australia could not be permanently settled by Europeans out of fear they would racially degenerate from the heat and adversity.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

@SenatorChickpea once said here that at the end of the 19th century, there was an almost scientific consensus among the Australasian colonies that Northern Australia could not be permanently settled by Europeans out of fear they would racially degenerate from the heat and adversity.

As I said before, I’ll return to this thread when I can, but I want to note that just because white Australians didn’t think the continent could be settled by Britons didn’t mean they were willing to try anything else; it was also a ‘scientific’ fact that non-white populations would ‘outbreed’ Europeans and then spread into neighbouring European territory.

 

[Ricardolindo]

As I said before, I’ll return to this thread when I can, but I want to note that just because white Australians didn’t think the continent could be settled by Britons didn’t mean they were willing to try anything else; it was also a ‘scientific’ fact that non-white populations would ‘outbreed’ Europeans and then spread into neighbouring European territory.

I already knew that, too, as you also previously said it here.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

I already knew that, too, as you also previously said it here.

I appreciate that Ricardo, I really do, but if I’m being cited I want to make sure my whole point is clear to anyone reading who isn’t up to date with my pronouncements on the forum.

Some people don’t hang on my every post, or so I’m told.

 

[Ricardolindo]

I appreciate that Ricardo, I really do, but if I’m being cited I want to make sure my whole point is clear to anyone reading who isn’t up to date with my pronouncements on the forum.

Some people don’t hang on my every post, or so I’m told.

I completely understand. BTW, what is your definition of the Australasian colonies? Is it just the colonies that formed Australia and New Zealand or do you also include Fiji?

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Always Australia and New Zealand, sometimes Fiji. When I’m making my broader arguments about Australasia and the Pacific, I talk about an Oceanic frontier that includes Samoa, the New Hebrides, the Cooks, Tonga, New Guinea and various other island groupings depending upon the time, the colonial perspective and the context.

Bearing in mind, of course, that ‘Australasia’ is an imperial formulation, just as for instance names like ‘New Guinea’ or the ‘New Hebrides’ are.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

Right.

So, @SinghSong, I don't see much scope for broad changes to Australian history here, because the institutional power of Australian racism is a fearsome thing. Joseph Chamberlain, no enemy of white supremacy, had nonetheless tried at the 1897 Colonial Conference to get the Australian colonies to allow at least a few small avenues for non-white immigration into the colonies. This was because it was embarrassing for the British government for its Indian subjects to be reminded of their inequality within the wider empire- as British subjects, they should have some access to all British territory.

He was told by one premier that in fact ‘Indians are the coloured aliens who more than any other we would desire to exclude.' (1)

However, there are certainly room for changes on a local or even regional level.

Let us, as you suggest, focus on a POD within your family, rather than having some major change to the Immigration Restriction Acts of the 1890s and 1901. Your greatuncle is married and back in Australia by the time of Federation. Easy enough. Let's also grant, just to make things interesting, that a few family members and friends make the trip as well. Otherwise we're just looking at one non-white large landowner, which is rare but not unheard of. We want an Indian family here, not an Indian landlord.

He's going to face determined hostility from other landowners. There were some Indian and Chinese immigrants who acquired land in the colonies and set up successful businesses, but often their produce was boycotted or they were the subject of spurious legal challenges. See Saunders, Cronin & Evans Race Relations in Colonial Queensland for a good overview. But this was not always succesful.

I can picture Greatuncle SinghSong carving out a niche. He would probably not be as profitable as the Duracks because from your account he wasn't interested in the standard model of cutting down on costs through the mistreatment and abuse of local labourers. But if he parlayed his contacts overseas into a dedicated base of customers, he could avoid many of the local mechanisms for shutting down non-white merchants.

The trick will be surviving the first fifteen years after Federation. If, as you plausibly suggest, he becomes known as a good employer for Sikhs and other marginalised migrants, than efforts to shut him down will accelerate once more and more non-white people begin to form a community in the Kimberley. However, the coming of the Great War might well be his salvation: the governor of Western Australia will likely exert influence to protect a loyal group of Indian subjects at a moment when the British Empire does not want any provocation or mistreatment of a vital community; the wartime commodities boom will mean that the farming community does very well; and Australian efforts to exclude non-white citizens from joining the military will mean that production will be less affected by the recruitment of young men than some other farming towns.

Now, some of the young men will enlist regardless as the ANZACs were never wholly white, but I'm not sure what effect that will have- it's quite possible that they'll be ignored, just as many non-white diggers were historically until quite recently.

There is also a chance that the panic around Afghans after the 'Battle of Broken Hill' will lead to violence in the Kimberley and the scattering of the community, because many locals will not be able to distinguish between Muslims and Sikhs or Hindus, any more than they could between Afghans and Punjabis or Gujaratis or what have you.

Relations with the local peoples... that's not something I feel qualified to comment upon. I can believe that they'll be better than with other landlords, because it's hard for them to be worse, but it's worth looking at the Pacific Islands or South Africa to remember that relations between Indians and indigenous peoples could be as fraught in their own way as traditional white supremacist structures. Well-meaning paternalism can do as much harm as straightforward oppression sometimes, as the Stolen Generations would testify. Sorry, @SinghSong, I just thought that's a possibility that should be acknowledged.

But I think that overall there's an interesting possibility here of a Top End that has a distinct Indian/'Afghan' community. It will be small, because it won't be fed by immigration for at least the first forty or fifty years after Federation, but I think your idea of internal migration is plausible. So long as its leaders are careful, as non-white Australians historically were, to adopt the language of imperial loyalism I can see them surviving and even thriving. They'll forge alliances with local white leaders who are less doctrinaire, and such leaders did exist- I don't see an Indian-Australian MP for the region coming until at least the 1970s.

Today, such a community would probably be subject to the same demographic pressures as other regional centres, even as the fortunes of the market rise and fall. However, Tourism might well be a local earner; as multiculturalism begins to be celebrated (nominally) in the 1980s, you'll see the restaurants and historic town centres of the Kimberley appear in travel programs and lifestyle magazines in Melbourne and Sydney. You might even see the area market itself as a travel destination for tourists from the sub-continent.

All in all, a really interesting POD that could change the texture of Australia.





(Edward Braddon, Premier of Tasmania, minutes of the 1897 Colonial Conference, p.135.)

 

[TR1996]

This has been an absolutely fascinating topic, with the usual excellent contributions from @SinghSong and @SenatorChickpea.

The trick will be surviving the first fifteen years after Federation. If, as you plausibly suggest, he becomes known as a good employer for Sikhs and other marginalised migrants, than efforts to shut him down will accelerate once more and more non-white people begin to form a community in the Kimberley. However, the coming of the Great War might well be his salvation: the governor of Western Australia will likely exert influence to protect a loyal group of Indian subjects at a moment when the British Empire does not want any provocation or mistreatment of a vital community; the wartime commodities boom will mean that the farming community does very well; and Australian efforts to exclude non-white citizens from joining the military will mean that production will be less affected by the recruitment of young men than some other farming towns.

Stretching a bit further into the future here- but how hard hit will this community be by the Depression? Especially if they're already facing sustained hostility from white Australians, could the economic downturn (and all the tensions and violence that accompanied it) be enough for the whole thing to go belly up? Or would thirty years of investment, possible further land acquisitions, and a decent relationship with his workers give him enough of a foundation to tough it out?

 

[Ricardolindo]

As I said before, I’ll return to this thread when I can, but I want to note that just because white Australians didn’t think the continent could be settled by Britons didn’t mean they were willing to try anything else; it was also a ‘scientific’ fact that non-white populations would ‘outbreed’ Europeans and then spread into neighbouring European territory.

Right.

So, @SinghSong, I don't see much scope for broad changes to Australian history here, because the institutional power of Australian racism is a fearsome thing. Joseph Chamberlain, no enemy of white supremacy, had nonetheless tried at the 1897 Colonial Conference to get the Australian colonies to allow at least a few small avenues for non-white immigration into the colonies. This was because it was embarrassing for the British government for its Indian subjects to be reminded of their inequality within the wider empire- as British subjects, they should have some access to all British territory.

He was told by one premier that in fact ‘Indians are the coloured aliens who more than any other we would desire to exclude.' (1)

However, there are certainly room for changes on a local or even regional level.

Let us, as you suggest, focus on a POD within your family, rather than having some major change to the Immigration Restriction Acts of the 1890s and 1901. Your greatuncle is married and back in Australia by the time of Federation. Easy enough. Let's also grant, just to make things interesting, that a few family members and friends make the trip as well. Otherwise we're just looking at one non-white large landowner, which is rare but not unheard of. We want an Indian family here, not an Indian landlord.

He's going to face determined hostility from other landowners. There were some Indian and Chinese immigrants who acquired land in the colonies and set up successful businesses, but often their produce was boycotted or they were the subject of spurious legal challenges. See Saunders, Cronin & Evans Race Relations in Colonial Queensland for a good overview. But this was not always succesful.

I can picture Greatuncle SinghSong carving out a niche. He would probably not be as profitable as the Duracks because from your account he wasn't interested in the standard model of cutting down on costs through the mistreatment and abuse of local labourers. But if he parlayed his contacts overseas into a dedicated base of customers, he could avoid many of the local mechanisms for shutting down non-white merchants.

The trick will be surviving the first fifteen years after Federation. If, as you plausibly suggest, he becomes known as a good employer for Sikhs and other marginalised migrants, than efforts to shut him down will accelerate once more and more non-white people begin to form a community in the Kimberley. However, the coming of the Great War might well be his salvation: the governor of Western Australia will likely exert influence to protect a loyal group of Indian subjects at a moment when the British Empire does not want any provocation or mistreatment of a vital community; the wartime commodities boom will mean that the farming community does very well; and Australian efforts to exclude non-white citizens from joining the military will mean that production will be less affected by the recruitment of young men than some other farming towns.

Now, some of the young men will enlist regardless as the ANZACs were never wholly white, but I'm not sure what effect that will have- it's quite possible that they'll be ignored, just as many non-white diggers were historically until quite recently.

There is also a chance that the panic around Afghans after the 'Battle of Broken Hill' will lead to violence in the Kimberley and the scattering of the community, because many locals will not be able to distinguish between Muslims and Sikhs or Hindus, any more than they could between Afghans and Punjabis or Gujaratis or what have you.

Relations with the local peoples... that's not something I feel qualified to comment upon. I can believe that they'll be better than with other landlords, because it's hard for them to be worse, but it's worth looking at the Pacific Islands or South Africa to remember that relations between Indians and indigenous peoples could be as fraught in their own way as traditional white supremacist structures. Well-meaning paternalism can do as much harm as straightforward oppression sometimes, as the Stolen Generations would testify. Sorry, @SinghSong, I just thought that's a possibility that should be acknowledged.

But I think that overall there's an interesting possibility here of a Top End that has a distinct Indian/'Afghan' community. It will be small, because it won't be fed by immigration for at least the first forty or fifty years after Federation, but I think your idea of internal migration is plausible. So long as its leaders are careful, as non-white Australians historically were, to adopt the language of imperial loyalism I can see them surviving and even thriving. They'll forge alliances with local white leaders who are less doctrinaire, and such leaders did exist- I don't see an Indian-Australian MP for the region coming until at least the 1970s.

Today, such a community would probably be subject to the same demographic pressures as other regional centres, even as the fortunes of the market rise and fall. However, Tourism might well be a local earner; as multiculturalism begins to be celebrated (nominally) in the 1980s, you'll see the restaurants and historic town centres of the Kimberley appear in travel programs and lifestyle magazines in Melbourne and Sydney. You might even see the area market itself as a travel destination for tourists from the sub-continent.

All in all, a really interesting POD that could change the texture of Australia.





(Edward Braddon, Premier of Tasmania, minutes of the 1897 Colonial Conference, p.135.

Was settling Southern Europeans in Northern Australia ever considered? Spaniards and Portuguese had after all settled tropical areas of the Americas.

 

[SenatorChickpea]

This has been an absolutely fascinating topic, with the usual excellent contributions from @SinghSong and @SenatorChickpea.
Stretching a bit further into the future here- but how hard hit will this community be by the Depression? Especially if they're already facing sustained hostility from white Australians, could the economic downturn (and all the tensions and violence that accompanied it) be enough for the whole thing to go belly up? Or would thirty years of investment, possible further land acquisitions, and a decent relationship with his workers give him enough of a foundation to tough it out?

It'll suffer, but the big estates tended to make it through the Depression- and I think in this scenario we're talking about at least one or two Indian-Australian villages that have the communal ties that proved so crucial to making it through the depression in rural areas historically.

Was settling Southern Europeans in Northern Australia ever considered? Spaniards and Portuguese had after all settled tropical areas of the Americas.

It's interesting you raise this, because it speaks to the changing definition of 'white.' In the nineteenth century and at Federation, this was absolutely out of the question- Spanish and Portuguese were 'white,' yes, but not British or German. Even the French were suspect. This was an age where, though to be 'white' was to have absolute legal superiority, within that whiteness you have all manner of social distinctions.

By the late 1940s, as 'whiteness' expanded (or contracted, depending on your perspective I suppose) to just mean 'not African, Asian or Indigenous,' you see Southern Europeans begin to arrive. In far north Queensland, that meant a few thousand Spanish migrants recruited with the help of the Catholic Church, specifically to work the plantations.

 

[SinghSong]

Right.

So, @SinghSong, I don't see much scope for broad changes to Australian history here, because the institutional power of Australian racism is a fearsome thing. Joseph Chamberlain, no enemy of white supremacy, had nonetheless tried at the 1897 Colonial Conference to get the Australian colonies to allow at least a few small avenues for non-white immigration into the colonies. This was because it was embarrassing for the British government for its Indian subjects to be reminded of their inequality within the wider empire- as British subjects, they should have some access to all British territory.

He was told by one premier that in fact ‘Indians are the coloured aliens who more than any other we would desire to exclude.'

However, there are certainly room for changes on a local or even regional level.

Let us, as you suggest, focus on a POD within your family, rather than having some major change to the Immigration Restriction Acts of the 1890s and 1901. Your greatuncle is married and back in Australia by the time of Federation. Easy enough. Let's also grant, just to make things interesting, that a few family members and friends make the trip as well. Otherwise we're just looking at one non-white large landowner, which is rare but not unheard of. We want an Indian family here, not an Indian landlord.

He's going to face determined hostility from other landowners. There were some Indian and Chinese immigrants who acquired land in the colonies and set up successful businesses, but often their produce was boycotted or they were the subject of spurious legal challenges. See Saunders, Cronin & Evans Race Relations in Colonial Queensland for a good overview. But this was not always successful.

I can picture Greatuncle SinghSong carving out a niche. He would probably not be as profitable as the Duracks because from your account he wasn't interested in the standard model of cutting down on costs through the mistreatment and abuse of local labourers. But if he parlayed his contacts overseas into a dedicated base of customers, he could avoid many of the local mechanisms for shutting down non-white merchants.

The trick will be surviving the first fifteen years after Federation. If, as you plausibly suggest, he becomes known as a good employer for Sikhs and other marginalised migrants, than efforts to shut him down will accelerate once more and more non-white people begin to form a community in the Kimberley.

They certainly could, and one certainly would expect more hostility from other landowners and the government, especially in the first couple of decades after Federation. Though the location itself, with the Kimberley being one of the most underpopulated (hosting barely 1.5% of WA's population of c.180,000 people, excluding Aborigines, by 1901) and inhospitable regions of Australia (by European, especially 'Anglo-Celtic' standards), could well play in their favor; especially with the gold-fields in the region, at Halls Creek, having already been largely tapped out by this stage, and little in the way of prospecting or mining for other minerals and resources having been carried out in the region. And this could well conceivably manifest in a different way in Western Australia, more comparable to how it did in South Australia.

There, whilst the primary factor cited for the South Australian Northern Territory Surrender Act of 1907, whereby South Australia requested that the newly formed Commonwealth Government take administrative and defence responsibilities for the NT, was that it was too under-resourced at the time to defend such a large territory, one of the other primary motivating factors was the Northern Territory's majority Aboriginal, Asian and 'half-caste' population, far exceeding its 'pure' European population; which, via the Ghan Route which had been established by cameleers from the Indian sub-continent by that stage, between Darwin and Adelaide, it was feared would inevitably flood into Southern Australia and threaten the dominance of its white working class population, unless the Northern Territory was broken away and a border imposed between them to 'keep the colored people out'.

ITTL though, if my uncle's successful enough, and enough families traveled from India (& Pakistan) to settle there as well before the Immigration Restriction Acts slammed the door shut, you could well see the WA government down in Perth arriving at similar conclusions, following the same arguments, to that of SA down in Adelaide; that 'the horse had already bolted' with regards to the Kimberley frontier region, in the same manner as it had with the Northern Territory, and that as such, it wouldn't be worth the risks of being flooded by its majority non-White population (which wouldn't be hard to bring about, since by 1901, the overwhelming majority of those who'd participated in the Halls Creek gold rush had long since abandoned the region for other more productive and hospitable gold fields in southern and central WA, and it'd only take another 200-300 non-white settlers- c.10-15% of the Sikhs already present IOTL's Australia at that time- to make the Kimberley region majority non-white to the same extent as the contemporary Northern Territory) which'd be incurred by continuing to hold onto it.

IMHO, looking at the general demographics of the population, migration trends, and attitudes in the centers of government towards the hinterland up north, it'd be quite plausible for the WA government ITTL to indeed decide, just as the SA government had in the case of the NT, that it'd be more worthwhile to surrender the region to the newly formed Commonwealth Government than to administer it itself, enabling it to impose an internal customs border between it and the rest of Western Australia in order to 'keep the colored people out' of its population centers far farther south. And if it did, one would presume that it'd simply be merged and administered together with the newly created Northern Territory, rather than being administered as a separate territory of its own; placed under the same NT (Administration) Act, which provided that there would be an Administrator appointed by the Governor-General to administer the Territory on behalf of the Australian Government, subject to any instructions given to him by the appropriate Minister from time to time.

Likewise, one would imagine that the privilege of responsible self-government would be stripped away from TTL's expanded Northern Territory (though with residents still allowed to vote in federal elections) as it was IOTL, citing the same arguments that it allegedly had too small a population (of Anglo-Celtic Australians, being majority Aboriginal, and having more Asian Australians than White Australians) to be capable of responsible self-governance. But one would anticipate that the subsequent administration of the TTL's expanded Northern Territory, and its political history, would wind up diverging increasingly significantly from that point onwards.

However, the coming of the Great War might well be his salvation: the governor of Western Australia will likely exert influence to protect a loyal group of Indian subjects at a moment when the British Empire does not want any provocation or mistreatment of a vital community; the wartime commodities boom will mean that the farming community does very well; and Australian efforts to exclude non-white citizens from joining the military will mean that production will be less affected by the recruitment of young men than some other farming towns.

Now, some of the young men will enlist regardless as the ANZACs were never wholly white, but I'm not sure what effect that will have- it's quite possible that they'll be ignored, just as many non-white diggers were historically until quite recently.

There is also a chance that the panic around Afghans after the 'Battle of Broken Hill' will lead to violence in the Kimberley and the scattering of the community, because many locals will not be able to distinguish between Muslims and Sikhs or Hindus, any more than they could between Afghans and Punjabis or Gujaratis or what have you.

Relations with the local peoples... that's not something I feel qualified to comment upon. I can believe that they'll be better than with other landlords, because it's hard for them to be worse, but it's worth looking at the Pacific Islands or South Africa to remember that relations between Indians and indigenous peoples could be as fraught in their own way as traditional white supremacist structures. Well-meaning paternalism can do as much harm as straightforward oppression sometimes, as the Stolen Generations would testify. Sorry, @SinghSong, I just thought that's a possibility that should be acknowledged.

But I think that overall there's an interesting possibility here of a Top End that has a distinct Indian/'Afghan' community. It will be small, because it won't be fed by immigration for at least the first forty or fifty years after Federation, but I think your idea of internal migration is plausible. So long as its leaders are careful, as non-white Australians historically were, to adopt the language of imperial loyalism I can see them surviving and even thriving. They'll forge alliances with local white leaders who are less doctrinaire, and such leaders did exist- I don't see an Indian-Australian MP for the region coming until at least the 1970s.

Today, such a community would probably be subject to the same demographic pressures as other regional centres, even as the fortunes of the market rise and fall. However, Tourism might well be a local earner; as multiculturalism begins to be celebrated (nominally) in the 1980s, you'll see the restaurants and historic town centres of the Kimberley appear in travel programs and lifestyle magazines in Melbourne and Sydney. You might even see the area market itself as a travel destination for tourists from the sub-continent.

All in all, a really interesting POD that could change the texture of Australia.

You never know, though. Especially in the scenario where it's merged with the Northern Territory, rather than allowing its people to retain responsible government (risking the very real prospect- 'shudder' - of the North-East Electoral Province's population electing an non-White INDIAN to sit on the Legislative Council of Western Australia, which they'd certainly rather have surrendered control of the region itself than have contemplate accepting). IOTL, the first Commonwealth-appointed Administrator of the Northern Territory was John Anderson Gilruth, a Scottish-Australian veterinary scientist and administrator. And he'd arrived in Darwin in April 1912, after Prime Minister Andrew Fisher invited him to join a scientific mission to investigate the potential of the Northern Territory, sparking his enthusiasm for economic development of the Northern Territory by means of "mining, crop-growing and pastoralism"; given a free hand to deal with the situation in Darwin, where he'd arrived in the midst of a long pay dispute with the newly created Darwin Australian Workers' Union (AWU). This had been created in 1912, after the threat of Chinese competition had been reduced by the White Australia Policy's implementation, by those who resented the success of the Asian population and threatened widespread national disruption if Chinese labour continued being used to keep the northern port operational (which never materialized, with its parent AWU in Townsville, Queensland, having been hostile to the whole event).

Gilruth was described as "headstrong and domineering", and his blunt, dynamic style of leadership was seen as being arrogant, insensitive, and "not fitted to rule a democratic people"; most of all, on account of his predisposition "to treat the Chinese with reserve, the Aboriginals with heavy-handed paternalism and the white trade unionists with suspicion" (which in hindsight and context, seems it would've been fairly similar to, and compatible with, my great-great uncle's own dispositions). When it became evident that strike action was lost, AWU representatives met with Gilruth to negotiate their terms of surrender in late May 1912, with the unionists prepared to return to work as long as the strikers were re-instated to their former positions. But Gilruth refused, "wanting to eliminate all traces of unionism in the Northern Territory". And although the strike was called off in the first week of June, it shaped future industrial relations in the Northern Territory, as the "White Australia" policy and anti-Chinese sentiment made Gilruth's administration increasingly unpopular, with Gilruth being accused of having favored the Asians (whom he described as "reliable, hard-working and good citizens") over the resident White population, and these accusations persisting throughout his tenure.

IOTL, Gilruth did his best to promote mining and agriculture, including the development of a meatworks in Darwin by the large British conglomerate, Vesteys Brothers, which work commenced on in 1914. An analysis of the negotiations suggested that neither the government nor Vestey Brothers were fully confident of the success of the venture they were about to undertake, and that Gilruth, as the middleman, was thoroughly influential in its outcome, with it being largely through his efforts that Vestey Brothers finally consented to building a meatworks in Darwin. This was fully approved by the government, and extolled as by far the most promising development in the history of the region. However, due to the labour shortage (with the AWU, under the leadership of Harold Nelson, having excluded non-White workers from all labouring work except that of a domestic nature by late 1914, with this shortage further exacerbated by the war), workers were able to obtain higher wages through regular strikes, and as such, Vestey's could never make the meatworks profitable.

Its temporary closure in 1917 significantly affected the already struggling Territory economy by putting hundreds of workers out of work, and a conspiracy was reportedly uncovered between the Government and Vestey's regarding the illegal takeover of a large pastoral property; with Gilruth alleged to have distributed significant bribes, and H. E. Carey- who was both Government Secretary and the Chief Clerk at the meatworks- accused of collusion. From the time of the meatworks establishment in 1914, until its permanent closure six years later in 1920, Vestey's had lost a great deal of money, with its Darwin venture existing in a vacuum filled only by the emergent Australian Workers' Union (AWU) and by World War I. During that time, Gilruth came to matter less and less as the AWU gathered strength under the leadership of Harold Nelson. With the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Commonwealth government had lost interest in development of the Northern Territory as federal funds were diverted towards the war, and with Gilruth hindered by the Commonwealth government, "which neither gave him the powers he needed to rule effectively nor evolved consistent policies for the region", combined with these scandals, a confrontation between his administration and the townspeople was inevitable.

And this culminated in the Darwin Rebellion of 1918, with Gilruth being ousted from power, and forced to flee to Melbourne. But one does have to wonder, just how much my uncle could've played a role in the politics of the region in an ATL where he's still there, and successful in his agricultural crop-growing ventures? IOTL, one of the primary motivators behind the Darwin Rebellion had been an ordinance passed by the Federal Executive Council in Melbourne, nationalising the supply of liquor in the Northern Territory in 1915. The legislation was ostensibly aimed at Chinese 'sly-groggers' often accused of selling low quality liquor, but in effect was designed to curb consumption of alcohol in northern Australia and provide some revenue to the Federal budget. Known as the 'government-takeover', penalties were steep, and as a result of the takeover, the price of beer and whisky rapidly increased, with it being reported that the price of beer jumped by 30 percent; grain production in the territory was still virtually non-existent at this time, with the supply of liquor to the NT being entirely imported from elsewhere.

In 1918, several station owners and businessmen abandoned the Territory, including the manager of the State Liquor Department, because of Gilruth's policies. And the mistake that helped finish Gilruth's career in the Territory was trivial. As Darwinites prepared to celebrate the end of the war, it was reported that Gilruth refused permission for a ship to unload 700 cases of beer for the town's Christmas supplies. And in a subsequent letter to the Prime Minister, Gilruth stated that "he was perfectly aware that had he promised to reduce the price of beer (at the expense of the Australian taxpayer) the mob would have departed peacefully. However, though this would have been 'diplomatic,' to purchase peace at this price would have been condemned by the Minister and the Treasury". And while wartime censorship prevented news of the storming of Government House in Darwin reaching the national press until the following Thursday afternoon, the news was received with great interest by the national press, which reacted by blaming a Soviet establishment in Darwin, total anarchy, an uncaring federal government and Gilruth himself, describing the rebellion as the nearest thing to a revolution since the Eureka Stockade, and necessitating the appointment of a Royal Commission on Northern Territory Administration.

ITTL though, one does have to wonder how differently things might go. My family's actually been active in politics for quite a while; my grandfather, who's in his 90s now, went to the University of the Punjab in Lahore back in the 1930s, graduating with a first in Political Science, and after he emigrated to the UK and joined the Labour Party, he became the first ever Sikh mayor in the UK, for his home constituency of Slough in 1988 (pipped to the post for the title of the UK's first ever Asian mayor by 3yrs, by Mohammed Ajeeb in Bradford). One could easily see them getting along quite well with Gilruth (whose views and blunt, dynamic style of leadership would've been plus points in his favor), and perhaps even coming to play a key role in his plans to economically develop the region through mining, crop-growing and pastoralism, even if he does constantly clash with trade unionists, employers, workers, and even his own officers on account of working together with them. IOTL, mining never took off during his tenure, and neither did crop-growing; with the economic development of the region forced to rely entirely upon pastoralism and the products of it as a result, and allowing the AWU to gain the power there than it did. ITTL though, you'd have crop-growing too, and dairy farming, to diversify and strengthen the economy, as well as reducing the relative power of the AWU there (as well as White Australians, with Asians already having dominated its retail sector). And if they did manage to establish a good relationship with Gilruth and his

And that's with the assumption that the POD still wouldn't be significant enough to tap into the real 'motherlode' in the region, regarding its most lucrative source of mineral wealth, any more than a decade earlier than IOTL at most. The Argyle Diamond Mine's a far more lucrative source of wealth for the mining industry than the Halls Creek goldfield was, having been the 4th largest diamond producing mine in the world by volume IOTL, as well as the only known significant source of pink and red diamonds in the world, with a large proportion of other naturally coloured diamonds. And whilst small quantities of alluvially deposited diamonds, along the course of the Ord River, have been known in Australia since the late 19th century, having been first found by prospectors searching for gold, with no apparent source volcanic pipe deposit, no efforts to identify and mine the source of these diamonds took place until 1969, when a systematic search of Western Australia for the source of these diamonds was begun by the Kalumburu Joint Venture consortium of mining companies; with these efforts only managing to trace the source of these diamonds to the headwaters of Smoke Creek, and discover the Argyle pipe, just over a decade later. In India though, all of the traditionally sourced 'Golconda Diamonds' were alluvial diamonds, mined along the banks of the Krishna river. If there are more Indians in the region, they may deem those small quantities of alluvially deposited diamonds, along the banks of the river, to be a prize worth settling for. But the relatively low quality and predominantly brown coloration of these diamonds could perhaps also be sufficient to prevent interest in their source from spiking too much too soon relative to OTL.

Also worth mentioning, our family may be Sikhs, but we've also got a fair bit of history in the brewing industry; my great-great-Uncle's primary focus was on grain farming rather than pastoralism, with the main products he wound up growing on the Chenab Canal Colony IOTL having been wheat, barley and millet. And his firstborn son, according to my dad and granddad, was an enthusiastic brewer of 'Desi Daru', proudly producing and bottling his passed-down recipes for distilled grain whisky (which my granddad reviews favorably, but my dad markedly less so- though to be fair, my dad was still in single figures at the time his uncle encouraged him to try it, and it was purportedly pretty potent stuff). If his venture'd been allowed to continue, growing those more drought-resistant and heat-tolerant cultivars of wheat, barley and millet varieties endemic to the Punjab which would've had far greater prospects of surviving and providing good yields in NW Australia (potentially along with sugarcane as well, though Northern Queensland's sugar plantations'd probably still be a far bigger deal), then you'd also have the basis for an endemic alcohol industry there; which, even if the 'government-takeover' of the supply of alcohol still went ahead, should still be capable of producing enough beer (whether legal or illegal) on its own to butterfly away the Darwin Rebellion, and keep Gilruth in power.

Of course, this 'well-meaning paternalism' would lead to human rights violations in and of itself. IOTL, the establishment of the Northern Territory Aboriginals Department, established with the seemingly benevolent purpose 'to provide, where possible, for the custody, maintenance and education of the children of Aboriginals', was abused to appoint a Chief Protector as the 'legal guardian of every Aboriginal and every half-caste child up to the age of 18 years', whether or not the child had parents or other living relatives, with the Chief Protector also given power to confine 'any Aboriginal or half-caste' to a reserve or Aboriginal institution, and further empowered to assume 'the care, custody or control of any Aboriginal or half caste if in his opinion it is necessary or desirable in the interests of the Aboriginal or half caste for him to do so', with these powers retained until 1957. And following his 12 month posting as Chief Protector in 1912, in his report which immediately preceded Gilruth's arrival, Professor Walter Baldwin Spencer reported that "No half-caste children should be allowed to remain in any native camp, but they should all be withdrawn and placed on stations. So far as practicable, this plan is now being adopted. In some cases, when the child is very young, it must of necessity be accompanied by its mother, but in other cases, even though it may seem cruel to separate the mother and child, it is better to do so, when the mother is living, as is usually the case, in a native camp".

In town areas, Spencer argued, compounds should be established to contain all the Aboriginal people. They would be required to undertake agricultural work to make their compound self-sufficient. In rural areas, stations were to be established under the control of a Superintendent, with the proclaimed goal of training the residents in industrial work, such as carpentry, agriculture and stock work for males and domestic work and gardening for females (sending them out to work from the age of 14). And 'half-castes' would be removed from Aboriginal people of full descent, to be schooled, trained and encouraged to marry other `half-castes'. Gilruth himself purportedly refrained from enacting all of the recommendations of the Spencer Report (with the efforts under his tenure limited to the establishment of the Kahlin Compound outside Darwin, as a trial scheme in 1913, and very little if any efforts made to carry out forcible removals of Aboriginal children). But after he was deposed by the angry mob in the Darwin Rebellion, the subsequent administration's Aborigines Ordinance 1918 extended the Chief Protector's control over Indigenous people even further. Under it, all Aboriginal females were placed under the total control of the Chief Protector from the moment they were born until they died, unless married and living with a husband 'who is substantially of European origin'.

To marry a non-Indigenous man, they had to obtain the permission of the Chief Protector; and at any age, they could be taken from their families and placed in an institution. They could be sent out to work at a young age and never receive wages, and they had no right of guardianship over their own children, who could be similarly taken from them. Male Aborigines fared little better, except that they could be released from guardianship at 18. And when the Methodist Missionary Society offered to take the mixed-descent children from the Kahlin Compound, where the conditions encouraged continued proximity to and contact with their families, to its mission on Goulburn Island, this proposal was opposed by Darwin's (white) residents, on the grounds that it threatened the ready availability of cheap (i.e, free) domestic labor (and 'comfort girls') from the Compound. And compound families were thereby separated, with a government house just outside the Compound taken over to accommodate 'employers' (/those looking to acquire 'half-castes' for their households, for whatever purpose) in 1924 for the girls and the younger boys, which became known as the 'Half-Caste Home'.

Makes you wonder whether averting the Darwin Rebellion might be enough to significantly delay this extension of the Chief Protector's control over the Aborigines in the Northern Territory, or perhaps even avert it altogether. And that's even before we get into the brief period of time between 1926 and 1931 IOTL, when the Northern Territory was divided into North Australia (aka 'Kingsland', though the name change was never made official- IOTL) and Central Australia at the 20th parallel south of latitude (which also roughly forms the boundary between the Kimberley and the rest of Western Australia). And one of the primary motivating factors behind this was the intended plan to use 'Central Australia' predominantly to serve as the effective 'Aboriginal Territory' for the entirety of Australia. A few tiny butterflies could well have flown a very long way, and have had a very big impact on the history of Australia.

Was settling Southern Europeans in Northern Australia ever considered? Spaniards and Portuguese had after all settled tropical areas of the Americas.

It was, but those who did migrate to Western Australia overwhelmingly preferred to settle in the Southern and Central regions of it instead (with its Mediterranean climate, as opposed to the hot semi-arid/savanna monsoonal climate of the Top End). And it's also worth mentioning that, while 'Latinos', particularly Italians, were initially encouraged to come to the region as "they had the virtue of comparative docility and temperance and the ability to work in the hottest of weather", and were cited as "clearly the better men for the worse job" (than non-white migrants), by the early 1890s, the Labour Movement had turned against Southern European immigration to all areas, and particularly to the mining industry in Western Australia where most of them were employed.

As O'Connor reported on the first Italian settlements, where Italians began to compete with Britons for work on the Kalgoorlie goldfields, the Parliament was warned that they, along with Greeks and Hungarians, "had become a greater pest in the United States than the coloured races"; with a political and social alliance having been formed between the Australian Labour Party and the Anglo-Celtic Australian working class to react to Italian immigrants, with particular reference to northern and central Italian workers who allegedly lowered the level of wages. And Australian immigration policy was like that- highly reactionary, hypocritical, and self-contradictory.

 

[SinghSong]

It'll suffer, but the big estates tended to make it through the Depression- and I think in this scenario we're talking about at least one or two Indian-Australian villages that have the communal ties that proved so crucial to making it through the depression in rural areas historically.

One of the other factors that might be worth considering as well, regarding making it through the depression; Angus Maddison's historical dataset shows Indian GDP actually rose around 1% from 1929-32, a much better outcome than for most other economies. And this was most pronounced in the 'bread basket of India', the Punjab, the GDP of which wound up being one of the best performing in the world during the Great Depression. The British Raj's intensification of the existing protectionist economic policies during the depression hit India harder than in most of the rest of the world, with the price of commodities manufactured in India rising dramatically compared to imports from the United Kingdom and other countries around the globe. Farmers who were cultivating food crops had earlier moved over to cash crop cultivation in large numbers, to meet the demands of the mills in the United Kingdom, and were crippled economically, as they were unable to sell their products in India due to the high prices of these cash crops; nor could they export the commodities to the United Kingdom, which had recently adopted a protective policy prohibiting imports from India.

Food crops could be, and were, used for private consumption though (and as a dramatic fall in global wheat prices in the late 1920s-early 1930s saw the imports of these dry up, Punjab's grain surpluses were simply redirected to supply domestic consumers across the rest of India, rather than being exported outside of the British Raj as had been the case previously, with Punjab's GDP significantly boosted by the Great Depression as a result). But the cash crops which they'd switched over to cultivating instead, for the export market predominantly to Europe, couldn't be used for private consumption. And as there was little sale of indigenous manufacturing, and limited exports, commodities accumulated, and the flow of cash was restricted. Moreover, imports were severely affected by the Swadeshi movement, and the boycott of foreign goods imposed by Indian Freedom Fighters. But would the Indian Freedom Fighters boycott foreign goods sent back by Indians? And would the surpluses of wheat and other rabi grain crops being produced in this region, which'd be most competitive, making the most of pre-existing connections and incurring the least shipping costs, if they're being exported predominantly to South Asia, be affected in the same way? Wheat prices in India were among the least affected by the Great Depression (falling only c.34%, whilst they fell by over 66% across almost all of North America and Europe, and took far longer to recover)?

The likely primary market for majority of these settlements' agricultural produce, in South Asia, would probably make them considerably less lucrative (and slightly less threatening/covetable in the eyes of others) in the beginning; and any efforts to eke out a significant market share of the wheat export market to the industrialized world are probably going to be stymied by the more established Australian producers and exporters down south. But when the Depression hits, whilst you'd expect them to still take a hit, having to deal with a 30-40% decline in their revenues'd be a cakewalk compared to the farmers in the Wheatbelts of Western, Southern and Eastern Australia, who had to cope with their wheat's value plummeting to less than a third of their pre-Depression value in their established export markets. It was in part due to the Great Depression, and the relative changes to wheat prices in different markets across the world, that Western Australia began tapping into the Indian market in the first place, and established itself as the primary foreign exporter of wheat to India by the outbreak of WW2 IOTL. Because of this, it'd be during the Great Depression, and in the aftermath of it, when you'd expect these Indian-Australian villages in the NW, who'd already have the lion's share of the (hitherto relatively small, but pre-established) wheat export market back to India from Australia themselves, to really flourish and rise to increasing prominence, relative to the rest of Australia's agricultural producers.

(EDIT: sorry about the massive wall of text in the last post, BTW. Hope it isn't too much)