STAGE 3 HISTORY: THE AUSTRALIAN COLONIES
Focus: Colonial Immigration
/4 weeks - 90 minutes per week
Key inquiry question/s:
What do we know about the lives of people in Australia’s colonial past and how do we know?
- How did an Australian colony develop over time and why?
Overview
Stage 3: what would you pack in your suitcase? (ACHHKO96)Find ONE primary source that concisely overviews patterns of migration to Australia in the 1800s (teacher may provide this – see Migration Heritage Centre NSW website.
Collect primary source materials from selected migrants. May include: diary extracts, family history records, transcribed oral history accounts, site study materials – Quarantine Station/Maritime museum, photos of objects, photos of migrant groups, local history museums
Outcomes
A student:HT3-1 describes and explains the significance of people, groups, places and events to the development of Australia
HT3-5 applies a variety of skills of historical inquiry and communication
Content
The reasons people migrated to Australia from Europe and Asia, and the experiences and contributions of a particular migrant group within a colony(ACHHK096)
Students:
- identify the European and Asian countries from which people migrated to Australia during the nineteenth century and reasons for their migration
- investigate the experiences of a particular migrant group and the contributions they made to society
Assessment
All activities require students to demonstrate their learning and are all assessment for learning activities.
Teaching and learning activities
1. QuestionWho were the people who came to Australia from 1800 to 1890 and why did they come?
Engagement – Collectively view Coming South by Tom Roberts,1886
Image source: Public domain
Explain that Tom Roberts was a significant colonial painter who immigrated from England to Australia in 1869. Travelling widely in Australia he painted a range of artworks including iconic Australian rural scenes such as Shearing the Rams(1890)and A Break Away!(1891).Coming Southis his first painting of the migrant experience.
- What do you notice first when viewing the painting?
(The Google Art Project is an online gallery of high resolution images of artworks. Zoom tools enable close examination of details and a comparison tool enables appraisal of two artworks side by side.)
Students discuss the painting using questions to guide their observations and inferences:
Observe
What people are shown? What are the ages of the people? What are they doing?
What objects are shown? How are they being used?
What is the physical setting? What is the name of the ship? What powers it?
What details can you see? Is there something unexpected?
Infer
Who are the people in the painting and why are they there?
What are their stories?
Why was the painting made?
Is the painting a true representation? Why or why not?
What can you learn from examining this painting?
Wonder
What else would you like to know?
Formulate questions
Guide the students in forming a class set of inquiry questions on colonial immigrants.
- Who were the people who came to Australia from 1800 to 1890?
- Why did these people come?
- If you were a member of one of the groups that immigrated to Australia during the 1800s, what would you pack in your suitcase?
2. Research
Who were the colonial immigrants? Why did theycome?
“The 19th century population explosion in the United Kingdom saw millions living in poverty or, when faced with disaster such as the Irish potato famine, even starving to death. Emigration was seen as an opportunity to seek better conditions or a new life.
Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, the Australian continent was only sparsely populated by convicts, soldiers, and pioneer settlers. In 1831, the British government established the Emigration Commission which offered assisted migration schemes to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land for those who could not otherwise have afforded it. Over one million immigrants (either assisted or unassisted) arrived in Australia from the United Kingdom during the 1800s.” Emigrating. Shipboard, Discover Collections, accessed 8 December 2015
With teacher guidance, or independently, students view Sources 1 to 5. Guided by the inquiry questions, students discuss and record the key points from each source into a source analysis table. Example below.
Source 1: Australian Migration (1788-1900) – The Colonial Years: The Chinese Experience – video
Source 2:Emigration to the Several Australian Colonies, from 1838 to 1861
Source 3: List of Officers, Crew and Passengers on board the ‘Sabraon’ on her voyage from London to Melbourne, 1875 (Item 5)
Source 4: Female Emigration to New South Wales for Single Women (Item 8 - Proclamations, Emigration, 1833-1835, 1837 and 1838)
Source 5: Cassell’s Emigrants’ Handy Guide to Australia. London, 1863.
p. 25
p.26
Additional sources
Source 6:Drawing of migrants disembarking from a ship, Queensland, ca.1885
Public domain. State Library of Queensland
Source 7:Passengers' contract tickets (2) issued to Jonathan Jones and family on the Samuel Plimsoll, No. 9, 1 April 1882 and the S.S. Hohenstaufen, 27 March 1894. “Jonathan Jones migrated to Australia from Wales, 1882 and returned because of adverse economic conditions, 1894”
2a. Student-led inquiry – In role as a colonial immigrant
Working in small groups, students take on the role of a person or group who migrated to Australia between 1800 and 1899.
Following the modelled historical inquiry process, students create their character with reference toComing South, Sources 1 to 7 and additional sources. In role, students will present the reason they came, their hopes for their new life and what they have brought from home in their suitcase. The presentation may be a recreated scene from the deck of migrant ship.
Additional primary sources may include diary extracts, family history records, transcribed oral history accounts, site study materials, photos of objects, photos of migrant groups, local history museums.
3. Analyse
Source analysis table
Title and date / Maker and purpose / Key information / Perspective and bias / Reliability / Questions raised
Source 1
Source 2
Source 3
Source 4
Source 5
Which sources are useful in learning about the lives of migrants?
Do the sources adequately answer our inquiry questions? Are there any gaps in the information?
Detailed source analysis
Immigration statistics 1838 to 1861 (Source 2)
Using the decade totals per state, students generate a column graph of immigration numbers per state per decade from the table in Source 2.
- Which states have the highest immigration? Why?
- Which years have the highest immigration? Why?
- Why are the immigration numbers to Victoria been 1850-1859 so inflated?
- Use the historical concept of cause and effect to write a statement that explains the immigration patterns represented in the graph.
Read the passenger list for the Sabraon’s journey from London to Melbourne in Source 3.
Use tally marks to show the different types of passengers, per class of travel.
Single and married men travelling on own / Single women / Married women travelling on own / Married couples / Families
First class
Second class
Third class
- What type of passenger has the highest representation for each class of passage?
- What type of passenger has the highest representation overall?
Colonial industry (Source 5)
Cassell’s Emigrants’ Handy Guide to Australia, 1863. pp. 25 , p.26
- List the 1861 Australian occupations and numbers employed in each.
- Write a persuasive statement encouraging immigration to Australia indicating the types of occupations or industries people may find employment in. Refer to Source 4 for style of language.
4. Evaluate
Guide the students in evaluating the reliability of the sources:
- Is there any potential bias in the sources?
- Are there inconsistencies or contradictions between the sources?
- Are there any reasons for contestability of the sources?
5. Communicate
What would you pack in your suitcase?
In role as a colonial immigrant to Australia, students present the reason they came, their hopes for their new life and what they have brought from home in their suitcase. The presentation may be a recreated scene from the deck of migrant ship or the unpacking of a suitcase. The suitcase contents may be real or a presentation of images. Each item in the suitcase may symbolically represent the immigrant’s hopes, dreams, regrets, fears, memories, family, heritage, culture, skills, etc.
Historical inquiry skills / Historical concepts
Comprehension: chronology, terms and concepts
- respond, read and write to show understanding of historical matters
- sequence historical people and events (ACHHS098, ACHHS117)
- use historical terms and concepts (ACHHS099, ACHHS118)
- locate information relevant to inquiry questions in a range of sources (ACHHS102, ACHHS121)
- compare information from a range of sources (ACHHS103, ACHHS122)
- identify different points of view in the past and present (ACHHS104, ACHHS123)
- explain why the behaviour and attitudes of people from the past may differ from today
- identify and pose questions to inform an historical inquiry (ACHHS100, ACHHS119)
- identify and locate a range of relevant sources to support an historical inquiry (ACHHS101, ACHHS120)
- develop historical texts, particularly narratives and descriptions, which incorporate source material (ACHHS105, ACHHS124)
- use a range of communication forms (oral, written, graphic) and digital technologies. (ACHHS106, ACHHS125)
Cause and effect: events, decisions or developments in the past that produce later actions, results or effects, eg events and other reasons that led to migration to Australia; reasons for the struggle for rights and freedoms for various groups in Australia.
Perspectives: people from the past will have different views and experiences, eg differing attitudes of various groups to Federation or to granting rights and freedoms to women and Aboriginal peoples.
Empathetic understanding: an understanding of another's point of view, way of life and decisions made in a different time, eg differing attitudes and experiences of living in an Australian colony; understanding the experiences of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, women and migrants throughout the twentieth century.
Significance: the importance of an event, development or individual/group, eg determining the importance (significance) of various peoples' contributions to the development of a colony.
Contestability: historical events or issues may be interpreted differently by historians, eg British 'invasion' or 'settlement' of Australia.
Resources
Texts
The Big Book of Australian History by Peter Macinnis
Bridget: A New Australian by James Maloney (set in 1848)
Kerenza: A New Australian by Rosanne Hawke (set in 1911 in South Australia mallee country)
Websites
Shipboard: the 19th Century Emigrant Experience
Migration Heritage Centre NSW (archived website)
Online collections
Trove
State Library of NSW
State Records of NSW
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