Corowa NSW. The home of Australian Federation. The Oddfellows Hall built in 1886 and site of the motion to adopt a federal constitution which was adopted in 1893. : 無料・フリー素材/写真
Corowa NSW. The home of Australian Federation. The Oddfellows Hall built in 1886 and site of the motion to adopt a federal constitution which was adopted in 1893. / denisbin
| ライセンス | クリエイティブ・コモンズ 表示-改変禁止 2.1 |
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| 説明 | Corowa and Australian Federation. The origins of Corowa go back to 1838 when white pastoralists took up leasehold runs. In the early years flocks of cattle and sheep were overlanded from Albury along the Murray River to Adelaide. In fact Hawdon who overlanded cattle to Adelaide in 1838 with Bonney left from his brother’s property named Howlong near Corowa. John Foord across the river on his Wahgunyah run brought his wife to the district in 1842 and the first white girl in the district was born to them in 1844. Foord developed a small town at Wahgunyah in Victoria in the mid-1850s which prospered from the gold finds and the river boat trade. Corowa then developed also because it was a river crossing point taking NSW diggers to the Beechworth goldfields. Amazingly Corowa district had direct links with South Australia in the mid-1850s. In fact one paddle steamer trip from Goolwa to Corowa in 1856 had some 1,800 bags of SA flour was unloaded at Wahgunyah and carted by drays to the goldfields of Beechworth. The very first river boat to reach Wahgunyah was the Lady Augusta from Goolwa in 1854. Then in September 1856 Lady MacDonnell and the South Australian governor Sir Richard MacDonnell travelled to Wahgunyah/Corowa in the paddle steamer named Melbourne. From here they took a gig to Beechworth and upon arrival our Governor made possibly the first public speech about Australian federation. He said: “The River Murray knows no frontiers and recognises no particular colony. It flows for us all and unites us all closely together.” The Governor’s party returned to Albury from Beechworth and returned to Goolwa on the PS Melbourne. South Australia’s leading businessman Sir Thomas Elder also voyaged up the Murray to Albury in 1856 examining trade and pastoral possibilities. The Corowa district was surveyed in 1856 into small farming blocks and the town created in 1859 with around 40 town blocks selling in the first two days. John Foord of Wahgunyah bought freehold land beside the town which was later sold as town blocks in the 1870s. After gold was discovered at Rutherglen in 1860 the town of Corowa blossomed and many disappointed diggers settled there whilst taking up a trade or business. The Post Office opened in 1861 as did the Courthouse and the first wooden bridge across the Murray. By the end of that year Corowa had two hotels, several stores and residences. The first Police Station was built in 1865 and the town had a river boat company boking office and loading docks. In the following decades the town consolidated with more public and commercial buildings – the Anglican Church ( 1885), the new Post Office ( 1880), the first bank of NSW (1874), a new Star Hotel (1870), the Royal Hotel (1870), the Corowa hospital (1893), the Customs House ( 1880) and the town school (1878). The first iron bridge to cross the Murray River in the area was built in 1892. The railway from Culcairn to Corowa opened in 1892 also and assisted the local flourmill market its products. Passenger services ceased in 1975 and the line finally closed in 1989.By the 1890s Corowa was known through Australia as it became the “home” of Australian federation. It was also known as the place where Australian artist Tom Roberts painted his iconic painting “Shearing the rams”. It was at Corowa that he learnt about shearing and then he created the painting in 1890 in his Melbourne studio from his drawings done at Corowa. He had another link with Corowa too as it was Tom Roberts who painted the “First Parliament” painting – it is 8 metres long, set in the Melbourne Exhibition building and includes recognisable portraits of 254 dignitaries. It hangs in the Canberra Museum with a copy in the Corowa Federation Museum. But why was Corowa so important in the fight for Australian Federation? It was because the Riverina/Murray districts were most effected by trade tariffs between Victoria and NSW. The Riverina was settled as the main NSW grain producing region in the late 19th century but it was much closer to Melbourne than Sydney. Grain was carted across the border at the Murray River. NSW was a free trade colony but Victoria was a protectionist colony. Thus towns developed each side of the river at crossing points – Wodonga and Albury; Wahgunyah and Corowa; Yarrawonga and Mulwala; Cobram and Tocumwal; Echuca and Moama. In the Victorian towns Customs Houses were built to gather taxes from the NSW grain farmers sending their produce to Melbourne and Port Melbourne. Then the railways were pushed up much sooner from Melbourne than from Sydney and grain was transported by rail from the Riverina by the mid-1870s. Many lines only reached Riverina towns in the 1890s and even later (e.g. Corowa had a NSW rail line in 1892 but Wahgunyah had a line to Melbourne from 1879.) So the Corowa district was directly interested in the benefits of federation especially abolition of tariffs and customs but the other great issue was the control of the Murray River and its waters. In NSW Sir Henry Parkes pushed for federation and the other colonies waited to see if NSW would push ahead with the idea as their approval was always going to be crucial. Parkes began the push for federation in speeches in 1881 and again more seriously in 1889. The first national constitution convention was held in 1891 in Sydney. In the next couple of years the localised Australian Natives Association formed many more branches and became a national movement and along the Murray the Border Federation League was formed in Corowa and soon spread to Albury and 15 other regional towns. It was at a meeting of the Border Federation League in 1893 that Dr John Quick of Bendigo, moved a motion in the Corowa Oddfellows Hall, to provide a process to achieve federation. This was something the arguing statesmen and politicians could not achieve or had not achieved to that point. He moved that colonial parliaments should pass enabling legislation to send delegates to a national convention to adopt a constitution. From this point on the federation movement gained great impetus and it was in Corowa that the people, rather than the politicians pushed the idea. The press talked about Corowa as the logical place for the new national capital but that idea was soon squashed by NSW as Albury pushed its case to be the capital. In the end legislation made that impossible for either Murray River towns. The main federation conferences and events held after 1893 were: the Premiers Conference in Hobart in 1895; the Peoples’ Convention in Bathurst in 1896; the Constitution Convention in Adelaide in 1897; the next Constitutional Convention in Melbourne in 1898; the state referendums to approve federation in 1899; the Australian Federation bill enactment in Westminster London in 1900 and Queen Victoria’s assent to the legislation; and finally the inauguration of the Commonwealth of Australia on January 1st 1901. This was really the culmination of a process that began with Sir Henry Parks in 1881. Corowa played a pivotal role in this process and its Oddfellows Hall was an important location of meetings as well as the town hotels for accommodation of delegates and the Courthouse for smaller meetings. The other important building still standing in the region from the federation movement is the Wahgunyah Customs House where the tariffs were collected. It is the only Murray River customs house still standing in rural Victoria. |
| 撮影日 | 2017-04-20 12:09:56 |
| 撮影者 | denisbin |
| タグ | |
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| カメラ | DSC-HX90V , SONY |
| 露出 | 0.001 sec (1/800) |
| 開放F値 | f/4.0 |
| 焦点距離 | 6 mm |