Australia: The First Suburban Nation?

Journal of Urban History

Volumn 22, Issue 1, 1995, Pages 40-74

  Davison, Graeme ^a  

^a MONASH UNIVERSITY   (Australia)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

HISTORICAL STUDIES; NINETEENTH CENTURY; SETTLEMENT EVOLUTION; SUBURBANISATION; URBAN DEVELOPMENT; URBAN HISTORY;

AUSTRALIA;

EID: 0029514946     PISSN: 00961442     EISSN: 15526771     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/009614429502200103     Document Type: Article

References (70)

1. The Lucky Country: Australia in the Sixties (Ringwood, 1964), 20-4. Compare with Home's retrospective view in The Lucky Country Revisited (Knoxfield, Victoria, 1987), 23-7.
2. For reflections on this theme, see Graeme Davison, “The Past and Future of the Australian Suburb,” Australian Planner 31 (1993), 63-69.
3. Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York, 1985), 7,10, 304. In 1992, Jackson visited Australia, a nation he found “in some ways… more relentlessly suburban even than the United States.” David Goodman, “Comparative Urban and Suburban History: An Interview with Kenneth Jackson,” Australasian Journal of American Studies 12 (July 1993), 65.
4. For recent discussions of American exceptionalism, see Ian Tyrrell, “American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History,” American Historical Review, 96 (October 1991), 1031-55, and Michael Kammen, “The Problem of American Exceptionalism: A Reconsideration,” American Quarterly 45 (March 1993), 1-38.
5. Lewis Mumford, The City in History (London, 1966), 563.
6. See especially Robert Fishman, Bourgeois Utopias: The Rise and Fall of Suburbia (New York, 1987), 18-38, and John Archer, “Ideology and Aspiration: Individualism, the Middle Class and the Genesis of the Anglo-American Suburb,” Journal of Urban History 14 (February 1988), 214-53.
7. Stephen Nicholas and Peter R. Shergold, ed., Convict Workers of Australia: Reinterpreting Australia's Past (Melbourne, 1988), 46. This study, based on a statistical analysis of the convict indents, has not persuaded all scholars of the convict period, especially in its re visionary interpretation of the literacy and skills of the convict population, but, to my knowledge, its account of the geographical origins of the convicts has not been questioned.
8. Arthur Phillip to Lord Sydney, July 9,1788, Historical Records of New South Wales, vol. 1, part 2,1783-1792 (Sydney, 1892), 147-8.
9. W. C. Wentworth, A Statistical, Historical, and Political Description of New South Wales (London, 1820), 6-8.
10. William Horton to Wesleyan Missionary Society, December 15, 1821, Bonwick Transcripts, Missionary, 4,105 (Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales) (M.L.).
11. J. C. Loudon, The Suburban Gardener and Villa Companion (London, 1838; reprinted New York, 1982), 8.
12. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London, 1987), esp. chapters 3 and 8.
13. Loudon, 32.
14. Peter Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales (London, 1827), 1, 40-41.
15. Roger Therry, Reminiscences of Thirty Years Residence in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (London, 1863), 54-5, and compare Brian Fletcher, Ralph Darling: A Governor Maligned (Melbourne, 1984), 173-7.
16. James Broadbent, “The Push East: Woolloomooloo Hill, The First Suburb” in Max Kelly, ed., Sydney: City cf Suburbs (Sydney, 1986), 12-29. Also see Joan Kerr and James Broadbent, Gothick Taste in the Colony of New South Wales (Sydney, 1980); Barrie Dyster, Servant and Master: Building and Running the Grand Houses of Sydney 1788-1850 (Kensington, 1989), 30-57.
17. J. and T. Smith Letters, Ms. 1525 (M.L.).
18. Compare Clifford E. Clark, Jr., “Domestic Architecture as an Index to Social History: Romantic Revival and the Cult of Domesticity in America, 1840-1870,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 7 (Summer, 1976), 33-56.
19. Robert Irving, “Georgian Australia,” in Robert Irving, ed., The History and Design of the Australian House (Melbourne, 1985), 56.
20. Architectural Magazine, 1,1834,375-7. The background to Windeyer's efforts to build his villa is outlined in Victor Windeyer, Charles Windeyer 1780-1855 and Some Events of His Time (Sydney, 1977) and Thompson's own house-hunting in John Thompson to John Wyatt Thompson, January 26,1843 (M.L. at 44/8).
21. Freda MacDonnell, The Glebe: Portraits and Places (Sydney 1975), 20-1.
22. Advertisement for land at Five Dock, December 9, 1836 as quoted in Eric Russell, Drummoyne: A Western Suburbs History (Drummoyne, 1971), 60-2.
23. Arthur to Sir George Murray, November 8,1828, GO 33/4/766, Government Order no. 26, April 30,1828, GO 33/4/771, Tasmanian Archives; M.C.I. Levy, Governor George Arthur: A Colonial Benevolent Despot (Melbourne, 1955), 50-1. These regulations were not sufficient to curb speculation, and within five years Arthur was driven to contemplate the entire suspension of land sales in the towns. See Arthur to Col. Sec., September 25,1834, GO 33/17/925.
24. A City and Its Setting: Images of Perth, Western Australia (Fremantle, 1986), 97-8.
25. Tony Denholm, “Adelaide: A Victorian Bastide?” in Pamela Statham, ed., The Origins of Australia's Capital Cities (Melbourne, 1989), 183-7; Ronald Parsons, Hindmarsh Town (Adelaide, 1974), 5-7,13-5.
26. C. J. La Trobe to Col. Sec., October 15, 1839 in Historical Records of Victoria, vol. 3, The Early Development of Melbourne 1836-1839 (Melbourne, 1984), 147-8.
27. Port Phillip Patriot and Melbourne Advertiser, September 19, 1839.
28. Based on an analysis of entries in Low's Sydney Directory (Sydney, 1844). Compare with a similar analysis in Graeme Aplin, “Models of Urban Change: Sydney 1820-1870,” Australian Geographical Studies 20 (October 1982), 150-3. The patterns of early suburban residence among selected Philadelphia occupational groups are documented in Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, 13-17, 313-14.
29. Garnet Watch, Victoria in 1880, (Melbourne, 1881), 166.
30. Evidence of T.W.C. Murdoch to Select Committee on Emigrant Ships, Second Report, British Parliamentary Papers (BPP), vol. 13 (349) 1854, Q. 3740.
31. M. Pescott, “English Immigration 1851-1891,” in James Jupp, ed., The Australian People (Sydney, 1988), 385; Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London (Oxford, 1971), 138-42; Ross Duncan, “Late Nineteenth Century Immigration into New South Wales from the United Kingdom,” Australian Economic History Review 14 (1974), 60-5.
32. Life and Labor of the People in London, First Series: Poverty (London 1902), vol. 1, 48-50.
33. Douglas Pike, Paradise of Dissent, 2d ed., (Melbourne, 1967), 183.
34. Charles P. Lucas to Select Committee on Colonisation, British Parliamentary Papers CBPP), X, 1889, question 1561.
35. J. Colville to Royal Commission on Friendly Societies, BPP, XXVI, 1872, question, 9032.
36. John Field to Select Committee on Artisans’ and Laborers’ Dwellings Improvement, BPP, VII, 1882, question, 2326.
37. Homes and Homesteads in the Land of Plenty (Melbourne, 1871).
38. P. Grimshaw and G. Willett, “Women's History and Family History: An Exploration of Colonial Family Structure,” in N. Grieve and P. Grimshaw, eds., Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives (Melbourne, 1981), 134-55.
39. “A Bundle of Emigrants' Letters,” Household Words, 1,1850,21,23.
40. Land, Labor and Gold (London, 1855, reprinted Sydney 1972), 15.
41. Bernard Barrett, The Inner Suburbs (Melbourne, 1971), 22-33; Tom Perry, “The Shape of the Suburbs,” Victorian Historical Journal 46 (1975), 447-52.
42. William Stanley Jevons, “Sydney in 1858: A Social Survey,” reproduced from the manuscript in the Mitchell Library in Sydney Morning Herald, December 7,1929.
43. Charles Booth, Ufe and Labor of the People in London (London, 1889), 1, as quoted in Albert Fried and Richard Elman, eds., Charles Booth's London (London, 1969), 64-65.
44. Christopher Hodgson to Royal Commission on Friendly Societies, BPP, XXVI, 1871, question, 17234.
45. November 19,1869,58.
46. Adna Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (New York, 1899, reprinted Ithaca, 1965), 150.
47. E. E. Morris, ed., CasselVs Picturesque Australasia (London, 1888-1889) 1, 58.
48. For a graphic presentation of this point, see Lionel Frost, The New Urban Frontier (Melbourne, 1991), 25,27.
49. E. E. Morris, ed., Picturesque Australasia, 1,60.
50. Robin Boyd, Australia's Home (Melbourne, 1952), 22-8, and Robert Irving, ed., The History and Design of the Australian House (Melbourne, 1985), and for an analysis of the Queensland vernacular house, see the papers in Brisbane: Housing, Health, the River and the Arts, Brisbane History Group Papers, 3 (Brisbane, 1985), 11-54.
51. Trollope, Australia (London, 1873, reprinted New York, 1987), 37.
52. N. G. Butlin, “Long-run Trends in Australian Per Capita Consumption,” in Keith Hancock, ed., The National Income and Social Welfare (Melbourne, 1965), 8. Critics of Butlin's figures and conclusions have underlined the seasonality and markedly cyclical character of the colonial employment market and the fluctuating earnings of many skilled as well as unskilled employees. (See, e.g., Charles Fahey and Jenny Lee, “A Boom for Whom?: Some Developments in the Australian Labor Market, 1870-1891,” Labour History 50 [1986], 1-27.) But significant as these conclusions are in a descriptive sense, they do not seem to invalidate Butlin's comparisons with Britain and America where seasonality was possibly even more marked a feature of the labor market. (See, e.g., Gareth Stedman Jones, Outcast London [London, 1971], chapter 2.)
53. Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne (Melbourne, 1978), 144; Commonwealth Statistician, Labor and Industrial Report 4 (Melbourne, 1913), 25.
54. Lloyd Rodwin, Housing and Economic Progress as quoted in M. Edel, Elliott D. Sclar, and Daniel Luria, Shaky Palaces: Homeownership and Social Mobility in Boston's Suburbanization (New York, 1984), 306. A British Board of Trade investigation of housing conditions in United States cities in 1909 found that rents were roughly twice as high as in the United Kingdom for accommodation of the same type. Housing Conditions in Representative American Cities, BPP, LXXXVIII, 1911, vi. These conclusions broadly agree with those of Lionel Frost's fuller analysis of rent-wage ratios in The New Urban Frontier, 113-7.
55. Royal Commission on the Basic Wage, Commonwealth Parliamentary Papers, IV, 80, 1920-1921,21.
56. Mumford, City in History, 56.
57. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chapter 11.
58. American data from R. A. Musgrave and J. M. Culbertson, “The Growth of Public Expenditures in the United States,” National Tax Journal 6 (June 1953), 97-115, as quoted in J. R. and E. J. Hollingsworth, Dimensions in Urban History (Wisconsin, 1979), 127; Australian data from Commonwealth Yearbook, 1902. There were significant variations in the ratios of local to central expenditure between the colonies: from the fully “developed” colonies, such as Tasmania (79 percent central funds), Victoria (86 percent), and South Australia (88 percent) to the less developed, New South Wales (93 percent), Queensland (95 percent), and Western Australia (98 percent) in 1880.
59. Compare Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier, chapter 8; Jon C. Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1850-1970 (Baltimore, 1979), chapter 3; Ann
60. Durkin Keating, Building Chicago: Suburban Developers and the Creation of a Divided Metropolis (Columbus, 1988), chapters 5,6; Terrence J. McDonald, The Parameters of Urban Fiscal Policy: Socioeconomic Change and Political Culture in San Francisco, 1860-1906 (Berkeley, 1986), chapters 5,6,7.
61. Miles Lewis, “The First Suburb,” in Fitzroy History Society, Fitzroy: Melbourne's First Suburb (Melbourne), 16-22; Bernard Barrett, The Civic Frontier: The Origin of Local Communities and Local Government in Victoria (Melbourne, 1979), 116-117.
62. Jon Teaford, City and Suburb: The Political Fragmentation of Metropolitan America, 1870-1970 (Baltimore, 1979), 39-40.
63. Chicago Tribune, November 6, 1887 as quoted in Teaford, City and Suburb, 44, and compare Ann Durkin Keating, Building Chicago, chapter 4.
64. Select Committee on the Administration of Local Funds, Victorian Parliamentary Papers, 2,1853-1854,11.
65. As quoted in David Dunstan, Governing the Metropolis Politics, Technology and Social Change in a Victorian City: Melbourne 1850-1891 (Melbourne, 1984), 60, and compare Margaret Bowman, “Historical Development,” in J. Power, R. Wettenhall, and J. Halligan, eds., Local Government Systems of Australia (Canberra, 1981), 240.
66. Graeme Davison, The Rise and Fall of Marvellous Melbourne, 155-67.
67. Compare Jon Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore, 1984), 292-306, and F. A. Larcombe, The Stabilization of Local Government in New South Wales 1858-1906 (Sydney, 1973), chapter 9.
68. For the sources of American local government revenue, see Ernest S. Griffith, A History of American City Government: The Conspicious Failures 1870-1900 (Washington, 1983), chapter 16, and for sources of Australian government finance, see Timothy Coghlan, The Seven Colonies of Australia.
69. From Victorian Statistical Registers.
70. For an illustration of these processes at work, see Geoffrey Curr, “liberalism, Localism and Suburban Development in Melbourne, 1870-1890,” Historical Studies 19 (April 1980), 41-58.