Ricardolindo
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What if gold had been found in the Australian Northern Territory in the 19th century, instead of the 20th century? Would it be more populous and populated than in our timeline? Would it be a state?
Depends on the when, I'd imagine.
If it happens during the South Australian period (1863-1911) we might be less keen to get rid of it after Federation?
... It was? The Pine Creek gold rush in NT started in 1871.What if gold had been found in the Australian Northern Territory in the 19th century, instead of the 20th century?
... It was? The Pine Creek gold rush in NT started in 1871.
Yup, gold rushes everywhere on our continent in the 19th century.... It was? The Pine Creek gold rush in NT started in 1871.
Yup, gold rushes everywhere on our continent in the 19th century.
Big, sustainable, permanent demographic changing gold rushes, not so much.
Now, an NT gold reef find capable of spurring white settlement numbers in the same league as Western Australia between 1891 and 1901 (WA's colonist population increased by roughly 135,000 in a decade thanks to those rushes), that has some major knock-on effects, even if the inflow is only temporary and the digger settlements become ghosttowns within a generation.
Fwiw, I'm looking at the average weather figures for Brownsville, Texas, as a baseline for small enterprise, hot climate Anglo-European colonist settlement in this era, and of the notable towns in the NT, Tennant Creek tracks the closest (though it is hotter for longer, on average, and not quite as 'cool' as Brownsville gets in winter). Water is a major problem though, with the dry season in that part of the actual outback being very dry.
Oh, it also matters that the distances are quite huge up there between historical towns; Tennant Creek to Katherine is easily greater than the distance from the WA goldfields to the seaport of Fremantle on the Indian Ocean, or to Esperance on the south coast of Western Australia. And from Katherine to the seaport of Darwin is still almost as long a trip as Kalgoorlie or Coolgardie to Esperance.
Fwiw, I'm looking at the average weather figures for Brownsville, Texas, as a baseline for small enterprise, hot climate Anglo-European colonist settlement in this era
Thing is, for 19th century northern European groups, Northern Australia is more inhospitable for tropical and arid conditions than almost anywhere else non-empire building (if that's how we can define the difference between settler societies and other colonisers, i.e. the military-backed individual imperialists in the race for Africa) whites went to. The big outback towns that are much further south in Oz, like Broken Hill in NSW and those towns in the WA goldfields I mention above, they don't have as extreme a climate as most of the top end has (though they do have serious problems vis-a-vis access to drinking water.)I don't think the weather is too important. As the Quora answer that I linked to says, Saudi Arabia and Papua New Guinea have higher population densities than Australia.
I should clarify, in particular I'm now thinking of Brownsville from during the American Civil War blockade, as the peacetime economics of moving supplies via stagecoaches, bullock- and camel- trains, into the interior of even the most superprofitable gold rush altTerritory, should be comparable to the literal punitive imposts on settler populations at war in malaria country.
Thing is, for 19th century northern European groups, Northern Australia is more inhospitable for tropical and arid conditions than almost anywhere else non-empire building (if that's how we can define the difference between settler societies and other colonisers, i.e. the military-backed individual imperialists in the race for Africa) whites went to. The big outback towns that are much further south in Oz, like Broken Hill in NSW and those towns in the WA goldfields I mention above, they don't have as extreme a climate as most of the top end has (though they do have serious problems vis-a-vis access to drinking water.)
I think the Yukon is worse, though. But that's a low bar for moving these population groups around in that era.
Yes. Though it really does come down to how large the gold reserves are; I'm trying to find the figures, but my gutfeeling is you need an NT goldrush that is based off diggings-and-profits comparable in size to what WA had in the 1890s. AFAIK OTL's Pine Creek rush was nowhere near as large.I know you wrote "Northern Europeans" but we should remember that the Spaniards and the Portuguese managed to settle tropical and arid areas of the Americas. Yes, I know that Spain and Portugal are warmer than Northern Europe but their climates are still far more similar to those of Northern Europe than to tropical and arid climates. Thus, if there's gold, I don't think the British settlers would have much difficulty settling the area.
You may be wrong.This was a time when it was the scientific near-consensus of the Australasian colonies that Northern Queensland could not be permanently settled by Europeans lest they racially degenerate from the heat and adversity, and that was a much more lenient climate than the Territory.
Even if you overcome the climate, the sheer distance to the goldfields will be a huge problem.
You can't simply trek overland and wait for infrastructure to develop behind you like some grossly simplified version of the 49ers- there's no damn water, which means that you can't create a string of small settlements that act as a route to the coast.
How will you feed these mining towns? How will you get them water? How will you get gold back to Darwin?
Thing is, going back to the settlement of North Queensland- which attracted hundreds of thousands of ‘Kanakas’ and ‘Coolies’ to Australia in the first place- its long term viability was never in doubt. What was in doubt was its long term viability as a WHITE, Australian colonial settlement- with the majority non-white immigrant population of the settlements in Northern Queensland ramping up xenophobic white supremacist rhetoric among the still overwhelmingly white population of SE Australia, and eventually culminating in the White Australia policy being brought into effect in the first place.Excellent post @Magniac. You're of course right to note that settlement of North Queensland was possible even then, but I was making the point that even while that process was on going even many Queenslanders doubted its long term viability- so how much greater would the reluctance be to try for mass settlement in the interior?
Also, yes, I exaggerated the dearth of water. I got carried away there.
The note about capital is a good one. I'm not sure if investors would back such a project before the 1890s, when the colonies were generally booming and you could get far greater return from apparently safer ventures in established markets. And after the early 1890s when the depression really hits, there's no capital to invest anyway. And after that we're out of scope of the OP.
And with the goldfields (and diamond fields, and cotton plantations later on) of the Top End, the Indian North Australian penal colony/ies could easily become just as profitable, or even more so, than the Tasmanian penal colony/ies they'd established, predominantly for the Irish Rebels and Home Rule Advocates, a few decades earlier. Though this could easily backfire on the British, since the Indian penal colonies at the Top End of Australia could easily wind up becoming too wealthy, populous and powerful for their liking, strengthening for calls for independence (both for India, and themselves)...
Thanks! Not sure about the flag though- hadn't gotten nearly that far in plotting this out. But the AH scenario does offer an eclectic cast of real-life main characters for the first part of the timeline, along with potential to heavily integrate the Aboriginal Australians as well from the beginning, and greatly improve their fate. After all, we know the list of the first group of 200 prisoners who were transported to the Ross Island Penal Colony (and who'd be getting transported to Northern Australia instead ITTL), under the control of Dr James Pattison Walker from Calcutta, who soon put the convicts on the arduous task of clearing the dense forest of Ross Island, building their own shelters and other buildings, and laying roads, with no food, clothing or shelter provided. And just over a month after their arrival, on the 23rd April 1858, 91 out of the 288 inmates managed to stage an escape- only to be savagely attacked by the Andaman Aboriginals, forcing them to flee back to the prison camp seeking medical help (with all 81 returnees summarily executed by hanging in a single day). JP Grant, the President in Council in Calcutta complained to the higher authorities, but Walker wasn't reprimanded, and emboldened by this, he fitted the remaining convicts at the Penal Colony with iron shackles, chains and identity-tagged neck collars, to prevent any further escapes.Britain accidentally creating a wealthy majority-Asian colony in north Australia is one hell of an AH idea. (WHAT DOES THE FLAG LOOK LIKE??)