'The Colossus of the North'
One Man's Account of Queensland During the First World War
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600003548Keywords:
Queensland, First World War, agrarianism, 'yeoman farmers', small-scale agriculturalistsAbstract
Australians — not least of all historians and political scientists — have long wondered whether Queensland was any different from the other colonies/states. Some of the ways in which it differs from most of its southern sisters — such as its geographical size and decentralised population — have always been obvious. No less well known has been its pursuit of agrarian policies. For much of the second half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century, governments of all political persuasions in Queensland preferred to develop primary rather than secondary industries, and consequently favoured rural rather than urban areas. An integral part of agrarianism was its emphasis on closer settlement — that is, breaking the pastoralists' (or squatters') hold over vast areas of land and making smaller and suitable plots of land available to men of limited means, people most often referred to almost romantically as ‘yeoman farmers’. Governments envisaged a colony or state whose economy was based less on huge industries concentrated in a few hands and situated in the cities than on a class of small-scale agriculturalists whose produce would not only feed the population but also be a principal source of wealth.
References
For a small sample of this literature see G. Bolton. ‘The Development of the North’, Contemporary Australia: Studies in History, Politics, and Economics, ed. Preston, R. (Durham: Duke University Press, 1969): 120–50; P. Charlton, State of Mind: Why Queensland is Different (Sydney: Methuen Hayes, 1983); G. Lewis, A History of the Ports of Queensland: A Study in Economic Nationalism (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1973); G. Lewis. ‘Queensland Nationalism and Australian Capitalism’, Essays in the Political Economy of Australian Capitalism (Vol. 2), eds E. L. Wheelwright and K. Buckley (Sydney: Australia and New Zealand Company, 1978): 110–47 (Endnote 1, on p. 143, lists much of the scholarly literature on the theme published to this dale); H. McQueen, ‘Queensland: A Stale of Mind’, Meanjin Quarterly, 38 (2) (July 1979): 41-51; A. A. Morrison. ‘Queensland: A Study in Distance and Isolation’, Melbourne Studies in Education 1960–1961, ed. E. L. French (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1962): 191–203.
I say ‘discovered’ because, while aware that my subject had spent a few months in Queensland some time in the second half of 1917, I had not known that he had written a book about it and was even more surprised to find out later that the copy I had been reading was possibly the only one on public record. In the 1980s, Taylor's few surviving private papers were in the possession of his two grandsons, Darnley and Paul Taylor, who had inherited the family business and managed what was still the leading newspaper of the South Australian Riverland. Yet the book was not among those papers. Nor did any other library in Australia admit to having a copy. I had not seen it cited in anything I had read. To me, it was something of a ‘find’.
See Part I of Gobbett, D. Saunders, M., With Lane in Paraguay: Harry Taylor of ‘The Murray Pioneer’ 1873–1932 (Rockhampton: Central Queensland University Press, 1995).
Queensland: The Colossus of the North — A Series of Descriptive Articles Written Between August 1917and February 1920 (Renmark: Murray Pioneer, 1920). According to Taylor, the expression describing Queensland as ‘the colossus of the north’ was first coined by George Reid, once Prime Minister of Australia and in 1917 Australia's High Commissioner to London (3). However, when I rang Reid's biographer (W. G. McMinn) in September 1997, he was not able to either confirm or deny this claim. Consequently, I have not been able to cite an original source for the expression.
It looks more like a manuscript than a book. It is not hardbound and numbers only 65 pages. But its brevity is deceptive. Each page is not a single column, but three columns and the type is very small. It did not surprise me to find that the work was at least 110 000 words long.
The copy had been lodged in the Special Collections room of the State Library of South Australia (Z919.43.T242B). Since then, however, I have lodged copies of the book in the Central Queensland University Library, Rockhampton and the John Oxley Library, Brisbane.
Wilde, W. H. Moore, T. Inglis (eds), Letters of Mary Gilmore (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1980): 158.
Death of Mr Harry Samuel Taylor’, Murray Pioneer, 19 February 1932.
Murray Pioneer, 2 January 1931: 5.
Murphy, D., T. J. Ryan: A Political Biography (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975): 9.
‘A Son of Australia’, Murray Pioneer, 5 August 1921: 12.
In 1911, more than 46 per cent of the population of South Australia lived in metropolitan Adelaide; in 1921, almost 52 per cent of South Australians lived in Adelaide: J. B. Hirst, Adelaide and the Country 1870–1917: Their Social and Political Relationship (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1973): 227.
H. L. Groom was president of both the Queensland Country Press Association and the Australasian Provincial Press Association. He was also a member of the Queensland Legislative Council and an older brother of Sir Littleton Groom.
Fitzgerald, R., From 1915 to the Early 1980s: A History of Queensland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984): 56.
Taylor released the young koala in a gum tree growing in his half-acre garden. Although he built a substantial fence around the tree, the koala escaped — and was returned — twice. It died about six years later after having lived ‘an apparently contented life': S. B. Ogilvy, Renmark — Stories from the Past (Renmark, 1989): 19.
Walquist, A., ‘Bitter Harvest’, Australian, 20–21 September 1997: 19. The commentator was Neil Inall, a former host of the television program Countrywide.
In the early 1890s, Taylor — still in his late teens — won a major prize for a long essay he wrote on the single tax, was secretary of the Single Tax League of South Australia, and editor of its journal, the Pioneer.
