1890s: towards nationhood

By the 1890s, many of Queen Victoria’s dominions were seeking the right of self-determination. The South African Boers regarded the colonial policy of the conservative government as ‘the worst excess of imperialism’ and so the British empire was again fighting an unpopular guerrilla war in a foreign land to maintain its hold over the destiny of its subject people.

The only battles being fought in the Australian colonies were between the vested interests of capital and property, and the worker’s right to organise into unions. Queensland, as the colony with the plantation society ethos uppermost in its thinking, was the flashpoint for the inevitable conflict between the disparate groups.

Wool had become the major export earner and the money available for loans for the expansion of pastoral enterprises seemed limitless. The pastoralists, anxious to get the wool clip gathered, sold and shipped, gave an undertaking to the Shearers Union to employ only union members in the sheds.

The maritime strike of 1890 had established the effectiveness of a general strike. On 5 January 1891, when the manager at the Logan Downs Station in Clermont told shearers he would only employ them under the Pastoralists Association’s ’free labour’ contract the Shearer’s Union called a strike.

Shearers walked off stations and formed armed camps. Mounted troopers fired shots to arrest them. At Barcaldine, 120 mounted troopers surrounded the union office and arrested the strike committee on charges of conspiracy and sedition. Eventually, the strike collapsed and the union leaders stood trial at Rockhampton before Mr Justice Harding. They were each imprisoned for three years, to be served at St Helena Island prison in Moreton Bay, as well as being fined £200.5.

The Griffith-McIlwraith Coalition Government was able to restore law and order quickly in the west where the strike had been most hard fought thanks to increases in police numbers and court services.

Queensland elected the first Labor Member of Parliament in any of the Australian colonies when shearer TJ (Tommy) Ryan became member for Barcoo. He went on to become Premier, Chief Secretary, Attorney-General and Secretary for Mines as well as holding a federal seat for two years. By the close of the decade, Queensland had the first Labor government in the world.

 Queensland expanded in population during the 1890s from 390,000 to 498,000, an increase of more than 25 per cent. Samuel Walker Griffith was installed as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Queensland in March 1893 with a stipend of £3500 a year. At the same time, Members of Parliament had their salaries reduced to £150 a year by Griffith’s amendments to the Payment of Members Act. In 1899, his Criminal Code of Queensland was passed and became law.

By 1896 the department had appointed a total of 136 communities as places to hold a Magistrates Court. This remains the most ever appointed and showed the spread and influence of the services offered by the department to the Queensland community.

Charters Towers had become Queensland’s second city behind Brisbane, fuelling the argument for another colony in the north. The reasons cited were distance from the centre of power; frustration at the inertia of the Brisbane-based government; land use; and ‘coloured’ labour issues.

The Charters Towers courthouse was expanded at this time allowing more government services to be centralised in the one building. In 1899, the northern Supreme Court was moved from Bowen to Townsville. The building was designed and constructed as the first Supreme Court to operate outside Brisbane and has been used as a Supreme Court, District Court or Magistrates Court continuously ever since.

Ayr’s existing courthouse was deemed inadequate by 1896 and rebuilt by 1897. Even where small communities gathered, the departmental presence soon followed. Proserpine had it own courthouse, albeit under canvas, from 1896 and a new courthouse was built in Cardwell, built on the same site as the original, which was damaged in a cyclone. It was divided into two rooms—the Court of Petty Sessions office, and the courtroom occupying the rest of the building. Built about 1898, it used to be referred to as ‘Cowley’s match box’, as it was much smaller than the earlier building.

Brisbane, as the colony’s capital, also grew. The Treasury Building was completed and became the department’s head office for the next 70 years. It formed the centrepiece of the government block in George Street and set a standard for subsequent public architecture in Brisbane.

By the time the century turned, everything was in place for the colony of Queensland, just 40 years old, to become a state in the new Commonwealth of Australia.