Ex-criminals is a bit harsh, but that is what the country was born from. I believe the proper question here is - when was Australian 'civilization' born? Assuming we're looking at post-European colonization here... let us explore the basis of Australian culture. Before we start, I'd like to make two things out; firstly, that I am assuming a basic knowledge of Australian history, and secondly, that I love writing about my country of birth so please excuse the length forthwith. I know you say brief, but I hope that any other curious mind will read this instead. Forgive me!

Foundations

We all know - as you state in your sweeping claim that we were founded from the bloodline of convicts slash criminals - that Australia was settled, following Cook's 1770 claim at Botany Bay, by the arrival of the first of three main British fleets. These monstrous frigates were filled to the brim with the simple dregs of British society. Simple people who had not commited crimes beyond, as the cliche dictates, stealing a loaf of bread in their hunger driven state. Accompanying them was the basis of a colony - administrators and guards, but mostly a large contigent of redcoats/guards. The colony's population was, once they had arrived at Sydney/Port Jackson in New South Wales, mostly convicts beating out a living in a wild, rugged Australian wilderness, as well as many redcoats and their families consigned to, quite frankly, one of the worst jobs in the Empire.

Sydney, over the decades, slowly involved into the hub of British trade in the Pacific. As explorers trudged their way eastwards over the Blue Mountains, or navigated the currents to find themselves in shark-infested waters around an untamed southern coast, slowly the semblence of a colony was created. This was a New Liverpool, or New Birmingham. It was, as we can imagine, what perhaps Jamestown or New Amsterdam would have looked into the adolescent years of American culture.

Convicts were given land to farm. And so they did, with passion and the knowledge that life was over back in England, that Australia was their last hope. So this vibrant mixture of Irish, Scottish and English culture - a microcosm of Britain itself- thrived in the rich farmlands of New South Wales. Here, we can see the hints of Australian culture emerging. A rough land farmed by rougher peoples from all across the British Isles, this alone illuminates how, like some sort of virus mutating, slowly a culture was created from heavy British influence primarily by distance. Yes - the tens of thousands of kilometres between Port Jackson and London, the nature of its convicts, and the time it takes to get from even the closest British colony (Months even from Bombay, seeing as even Singapore and Hong Kong, or even New Zealand were but possibilities in the Colonial Office's imagination) meant that the colony of New South Wales, aka Australia, was forced to adopt a mutated strain of British culture. But, still, British - not truly Australian by anyone's admission.

Before we continue, I'd like to point out the Rum Rebellion of 1808 as a rather nice case study, should you be interested. Here, it is not the convicts but the ruling class of New South Wales which fought amongst itself. With the incompetence of the Governor widely recognized, the one commander of the only British regiment (The New South Wales Regiment) swiftly takes the reins of the entire colony. Fascinating stuff.

The States are born

But let us not be distracted from the end goal of Australian culture. For, with the population growing to tens of thousands by 1820, and the lands of central New South Wales, beyond the Blue Mountatins, revealing to be lush and fertile, and by 1830 full of freed convicts, New South Wales was turning into quite the venture. The possibilities of the unknown excited even the common man. This was like the Americas two centuries before, where a layman could make a honest living from the 'unclaimed' land.

I've pointed to the 1830s as by which time most of inner New South Wales was being thoroughly examined and discovered. So it was that eyes turned elsewhere. Matthew Flinders of the Royal Navy is probably one of the most famous, having circumnavigated Australia as early as 1803. Knowledge of the vast coastline was solidified by 1830.

This is very important for denying the assertion that early Australia was that of 'ex-criminals' or convicts. For while convicts were, yes, very important for working the land in Van Dieman's Land and New South Wales, it was the curious, the wealthy and the ambitious our carved out the good fortune of the young colony.

It was these privleiged folk who made good use of the land purchased in Batman's Land (i.e. Melbourne as named after the British Prime Minister at the time) in the 1840s and turned it into green pastures. With Melbourne becoming almost a trendy alternative to the shackled existence of Sydney, it grew in the thousands over the decade.

People perhaps exasperated by this middle class boom of Melbourne moved even further west. An outpost colony to ward off the French existed already at Albany (albeit a very small colony soon abandoned) but this was soon supplanted by an onrush of rich, artistocratically linked settlers who found homes in the likes of Perth and Adelaide. The well-planned avenues of Adelaide had a hint of the new American cities or the revamped Paris of the Belle Epoque. Already, this challeneges the idea that Australia was a convict haven. Born, yes, from the needs of an overcrowded prison system. Raised from birth by, again, the hard labour of the convicted. But carried forward from its Anglo - Saxon creation not by those shackled, but instead by the curious adventurism of the well-off or the interest of the inquiring middle-class - it, too, escaping from the overcrowded, industrialized compounds of Victorian Britain.

The Gold Rushes

So, by 1860, all the pieces are in place. British Imperialism has forged a colony from the rugged plains of a new continent. Little London exists some 11 000 kilometres from Old London. The big cities of British colonies sprung up in the 1820 - 1860 period. New South Wales, the mother colony, watched as Hobart, Perth, Melbourne, Adelaide and finally Brisbane were created by a combination of middle class efforts and the last vestiges of convict settlements. (e.g. Brisbane and Hobart).

Australia at this point, though, still has the demographics of the old Isles.

The discovery of gold in country, colonial Victoria in the 1860s meant that millions of hopefuls descended from all over Europe, the Americas and Asia to comb through the barren countryside of Victoria, New South Wales and north Queensland. Areas virgin to serious human settlement evolved in thriving metropolises in a matter of weeks. Melbourne, soon, had outgrown even Sydney in this burst of globalized energy focussed on outback Australia.

With the ringing familiarity of the Rum Rebellion, events such as the Eureka Stockade made it clear that individualist attitude was slowly taking hold in the politics of colonial Australians. The previously solid British heritage was given a knock on the head. While every sane Australian Governor or Premier crowed they were a man of the Empire, and the Melbourne Cricket Ground played the Empire's sport, and the horses raced at Flemington in imitation of the highs of London society - other influences crept in by way of gold seeking immigration. The controversial Chinese influx - so xenophobically disapproved of by the hot-blooded Imperial statespeople - comes to mind, we can't look beyond the likes of both southern and (again, disapproved of) southern European immigrants pouring in following the liberal revolutions of the 1840s in Europe. What a convinient time for these refugees of political conservatism! While the streets of old Europe still burned with the dying fervour of failed, but promising, revolutions - the promise of a untouched land appealed to many.

So we find, now, by 1870, Australia's founding brickworks were Edinburgh and London, Cardiff and Liverpool. But, as fresh water runs into salt, you can see now, at the bottom, but still there, Paris, Berlin and Rome or making their immigrant claim in the busy suburbs of St. Kilda or Darlington.

You may be interested in our FAQ section on Why is Africa "less developed"? It includes discussions of great empires and states that did, in fact, exist in Africa.

Australia was initially a British penal colony, it had a large prisoner base but also quite a few English citizens running Sydney, the initial colony.

The prisoners were used to upkeep the colony such has farming and construction, they even married and had children which were free. Model prisoners were also given freedom so that led to a eventuality of there being more free people than criminals.

While some prisoners did run away it wasn't often, as the probability of surviving either the natives or climate was low, also it's a dam big island so most knew they were tuck there.

Skip forward to 1901 and Australia was given it's own parliament to run itself and divided into states, however still part of the English Commonwealth, we have the governor-general who is considered a representative of the queen. In Parliment there is also a seat reserved for the queen but I don't think it has even been used!