Australia as an Island Nation
Australia as an Island Nation
Australia is the only continent that is a single nation.
This fact is linked to Australian national identity and egalitarianism.
Egalitarianism: lack of hierarchy; everyone is equal.
Settlers had convict origins.
Australia's national identity revolves around being an island continent and the egalitarianism of the country.
The beach is crucial due to the coastline around the entire country.
Beach as a Border
Professor Aileen Morton Robinson: Beach marks the border between land and sea, between one nation and another.
It is a common ground for collective national ownership, memory, and identity.
It is a place of pleasure, leisure, and pride.
The coastline defines the country in many ways.
Beach Culture Origins
Rainy Ellis, an Australian beach photographer, said that the beach is our birthright & a part of our collective consciousness, and a site for the nurturing of our national identity.
White settlers encountered indigenous groups who lived by the coast and relied on the environment for food.
Early settlers initially made their homes on the coast in tents and huts.
They gained land knowledge from Indigenous groups who had been living there for tens of thousands of years.
Beach culture has been part of indigenous culture for tens of thousands of years.
Changing Use of Beaches
In the late 19th century, beaches were favored over rivers or public baths due to cleanliness.
From the 1850s onwards, there were bans on daytime bathing, sunbathing, and mixed-gender bathing due to morality ideas and Victorian respectability.
Rules were stricter for women's behavior on the beach.
There were rules regarding beach access before sunrise and after sunset.
In the 1920s, surfboards became available, leading to a more sporting use of beaches.
Post-World War Two period: increased consumerism and car availability.
People could travel to more distant beaches for surfing or family outings.
By the 1960s and 1970s, the beach was a cultural icon.
Australian On Beach
Many beaches banned boards due to safety concerns.
Aileen Morton Robinson: Surf lifesaver embodies the attributes of white national identity. These attributes were later ascribed to the body of the digger at Anzac.
The suntanned and hyper-masculinized white body of the digger became tied to the birth of Australian nationalism.
The Bushman was previously the ideal Australian masculine ideal.
The surf lifesaver and surfer became key figures.
This occurred during the birth of Australian nationalism and the White Australia policy.
Beaches as Public Spaces
Beaches in Australia are public and cannot be owned.
Example: A beach accessible via a path on a golf course.
The beach is a great equalizer, bringing people to locations they normally wouldn't be able to access.
Beach suburbs have higher income residents, but anyone can access the beaches.
The beach is seen as a great equalizer on class, gender and ethnic levels.
Beaches were seen as places to project the right type of national identity.
Eugenics & Scientific Racism
In the 1920s, ideas about eugenics and scientific racism emerged.
These were involved with the health and fitness movement.
There was an idea of breeding the black or indigenous out of indigenous people.
The aim was to ensure Australia was as strong and white as possible.
Due to many white bodies from non-tropical European countries settling in Queensland, an institute for tropical medicine was set up to research how to help them survive and thrive.
Too many people couldn't handle the weather, and the institute had to move south.
Historian Warwick Anderson discusses this in "The Cultivation of Whiteness."
In 1923, The Argus published that the beach was a great place to build up a sturdy, athletic, healthy race of young men and women.
Post Second World War
Migrants in the post-Second World War period experienced racism.
Example: Jimmy Saks was told to get off the beach.
The Cronulla riots illustrate the issue.
On 11-15 December 2005, the Cronulla riots involved 5,000 people engaging in xenophobic attacks on people of Middle Eastern appearance on the beach.
The mob believed the beach was not for non-Anglo Saxons.
Beach Or People
Geographically, Australia is part of the Asia Pacific region.
It has a small population but a large land mass.
of people live in a coastal city or town.
There is a fear of invasion from the North, particularly by Asian people.
In 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, there was a belief that Asian races could not be as powerful as white races. The Russian defeat created shock waves.
Darwin and surrounding areas were bombed during the Second World War aided to this fear of invasion.
Fear of invasion existed due to Australia being a remote colony with a long coastline.
Daniel Oakman: “The decaying gun emplacements dotted around Australia's coast stand as an epitaph to an idea once central to Australian civilization, that freedom and security were best preserved by building physical barriers and deterrence against a hostile world.”
Anxiety increased after the Japanese victory in the Russo-Japanese War.
In 1911, the Royal Australian Navy formed.
Australia started compulsory military training for young boys in high school.
During the Second World War, tank traps were constructed on Stockton Beach.
The coastline was a frontline for Australian defense.
Australia prioritized aircraft from the 1930s.
Control Of Coastline
In 1907, the Australian federal government made trading relationships between Indonesian fishermen traders and Aboriginal people in the North illegal. This trade had been going on for thousands of years prior.
In 1908, a new coastal quarantine line was established three nautical miles (5.5 kilometres) outside the coastline.
In 1979, Australia established the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), extending 200 nautical miles from the coast.
The country has sole exploitation rights over all natural resources e.g. fish, natural gas and oil.
Immigration Restriction Act
The Sydney Morning Herald in 1907 advocated for populating the country with sturdy men of our own race and our own color.
This was so they could hold Australia for themselves and for the Commonwealth.
Dehumanization tactics were used against groups that newspapers were fighting with.
In the post-Second World War world, declining birth rates, war dead, and an aging population occurred.
Migration increased, and the White Australia policy ended.
Today, the fertility rate is births per couple.
Almost half of the population in Australia is first or second generation Australian from 90 countries.
Migration is still a source of tension.
A 2015-2016 survey showed that of people believed that people from racial, ethnic, cultural, and religious minority groups should behave more like mainstream Australians. Assimilation happened.
Gough Whitlam ended assimilation and embraced multiculturalism.
In 1975, the Vietnam War ended.
In 1977-78, many natural disasters occurred in Vietnam.
In May 1975, Operation Babylift occurred, with Australia accepting children who had Australian fathers.
The first boat people came to Australia from Vietnam in 1976 with people fleeing communism.
By the mid-1980s, around 90,000 refugees from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia came to Australia.
Vietnamese bakeries are a result of French colonization, mixing bread making with Vietnamese culture.
Migration Reform Act
In 1992, the Migration Reform Act was introduced, as well as there being an awareness of people coming from overseas.
In 1994, detention became mandatory.
In 2001, John Howard stated that Australia would decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.
It is not illegal to claim asylum, but Australia was potentially moving away from its obligations.
The Tampa affair became a turning point where people traveling without visas were treated differently.
Australians voted against migration.
The Pacific Solution involved leasing islands in the Pacific and establishing detention centers.
A family in Bilboela, Queensland, was put into a detention center who were the only ones in there as a ‘test case’ until government changed.
Conclusion
In the early twentieth century, there existed massive protests with activists helping people escape conditions in asylum detention centers.
Asylum seeker policy today is still quite intense.
Hardline immigration policy was encouraged under the Liberal government.
Operation Sovereign Borders occurred.
These policies are illegal under international laws and have been condemned by the United Nations.
In 2017, Australia agreed to pay $70 million in compensation to nearly 2,000 asylum seekers on Manus Island.
Voting patterns in Australia have indicated support for these policies.
Historical anxieties around geographical isolation and fear of the Other are still playing out. Time for the question of when they will end to be asked.