“Auralia”
and the goldfields separation movement
A map printed in 1900, to accompany a petition to Queen Victoria, showing the boundaries of the proposed
“Colony of ‘Auralia’.
Auralia
The move to separate the Western Australian goldfields from the colony of Western Australia, resulted in a petition which contained the signatures of more than 28,000 residents. When unrolled it stretched for more than 2.2 km.
Goldfields Separation petition
The Separation Movement prepared a case to be presented to Queen Victoria which contained a map setting out the boundaries for the proposed new colony of Auralia. It was printed in 1900 as a ‘Petition to Her Majesty the Queen from persons residing on the Eastern Goldfields’, together with a refutation of the statements made in the petition, by Sir John Forrest, but was never presented to the Queen by the Governor of Western Australia.
The people of the Goldfields were known as Separationists!
During the late 19th century, the WA government (like that of New Zealand) was reluctant to commit to the proposed Federation of British colonies in Australasia and was lobbied by Federation committees from WA and the other colonies. This changed little with the granting of self-governing to WA in 1889, and the election of the Colony’s first Premier, John Forrest – which meant virtual independence from Britain, in all matters except defense, foreign affairs and trade.
After the discovery of gold at Coolgardie in 1892 and Kalgoorlie in 1893, these towns were at the centre of the ‘Eastern Goldfields’, and the flow of immigrants from the Eastern Colonies increased. Tensions emerged during the mid-1890s between the Goldfields and the capital city Perth.
There were three main reasons for this:
- The extremely rapid growth of the Goldfields meant that its population soon rivalled that of the Perth Metropolitan area.
- Before the opening of the Perth-Kalgoorlie railway and Fremantle Harbour (both in 1897), Goldfields residents interacted relatively little with the metropolitan area (i.e. people moving from the Eastern Colonies to the Goldfields usually passed through the deep water port of Albany, took trains to Broomhill and then travelled by horse or on foot along Hollands Track to Coolgardie, by passing the metropolitan area altogether.
- Forrest’s government favoured large mining companies over individual prospectors, antagonising many people in the Goldfields. Many Goldfields residents, due to their ties with the Eastern Colonies, strongly supported Federation.
In 1899, after several years of lobbying, the ‘Eastern Goldfields Reform League’ compiled a petition to Her Majesty Queen Victoria from persons residing on the Goldfields, together with a refutation of the statements made in the petition, by Sir John Forrest.
The Executive Council of the Eastern Goldfields Reform League
It argued the case for the Goldfields ‘separation from Western Australia’ and the formation of a new Colony/State in the Goldfields, to be named ‘Auralia’. In early 1900, Walter Griffiths travelled to London on behalf of the Eastern Goldfields Reform League executive, to present the petition to the British government and lobby the Colonial Office to either approve Auralia’s separation or force Western Australia to accept Federation. However, despite many requests by Griffiths, the Colonial Secretary, Joseph Chamberlain, refused to meet with him.
This is the initial wording of the petition:
To the Queen’s Most Excellent: Your Majesty’s most loyal subjects, inhabitants of that portion the colony of Western Australia lying the south of the 24th parallel of latitude, in east of the 119th meridian of longitude, known as the Eastern goldfields: ‘Humbly approach Your Majesty with every assurance of our loyalty and devotion to Your Majesty’s Crown and person, and humbly entreating Your Majesty’s gracious consideration to this our petition.’
Wooden casket made to hold the Goldfields Petition for separation from the rest of Western Australia and Federation with the East. Left side shows windlass, front scroll flowers and formal leaf designs.
Nevertheless, the petition put pressure for the Western Australian government to join Federation. Forrest led a push to include recent immigrants from the east on the electoral roll ensuring that the referendum would pass. From 1 January 1901, when WA formally joined the other Colonies in federating as States of the Commonwealth of Australia, the impetus for creation of Auralia waned.
In 1900, Western Australians voted in a referendum to consider the draft Australian Constitution of the proposed Federation of Australia. The result of the vote was 44,800 in favour and 19,691 against. Most country electorates voted ‘No’, except Albany and the Goldfields, which voted ‘Yes’.
The Constitution, which came into force on 1 January 1901 states in its opening preamble:
WHEREAS the people of New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Queensland, and Tasmania, humbly relying on the blessing of Almighty God, have agreed to unite in one indissoluble Federal Commonwealth under the Crown of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and under the Constitution hereby established. And whereas it is expedient to provide for the admission into the Commonwealth of other Australasian Colonies and possessions of the Queen …
Western Australia was not specifically mentioned in the preamble as its support was given too late for the document to be redrafted.
Auralia was a proposed colony that would have been formed out of the south-eastern portion of the colony of Western Australia in the early twentieth century and would have joined the newly formed Commonwealth of Australia.
The name, meaning ‘golden’ in Latin, denotes the gold industries that were alive at the time and which helped foment the ideas of secession. The proposed colony would have comprised the Goldfields, the western portion of the Nullarbor Plain and the port town of Esperance, It’s capital city would have been Kalgoorlie.
The push to secession was prompted by perceptions that the Western Australian colony under Sir John Forrest was parochial, self-serving, and evasive towards federating the colony with the emerging Commonwealth. Many inhabitants in the goldfields had come to Western Australia from the other colonies in the previous decade when Kalgoorlie experienced a gold rush, and their loyalties were thus not usually directed towards Perth.
Sir John Forrest’s efforts to secure concessions before fully supporting Federation was alienating these new arrivals. Eventually the proposal was dropped when Western Australia joined the federation in 1901.
The name ‘Auralia’ was used by a journalists writing in the Coolgardie Miner after federation, and before the First World War.
References:
Wikipedia
The West Australian Museum: Dwyer MacKay Collection.
TROVE
State Library of Western Australia
Moya Sharp
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