What is the difference between a squatter and a selector

Squatters might be subject to blackmail by their own dummies Note , or be forced to pay off or buy out selectors of key parts of the run at outrageous prices Note Squatters seem to have sometimes practiced dummying on a huge scale.

On one selection day we have an example of dummies outnumbering bona fide selectors by three to one Note In that case the operation was foiled Note , but once selection took place it seems that dummying was difficult to prove, and in any event virtually impossible to prevent reoccurrence Note On another occasion the large number of dummies for squatters physically prevented genuine selectors from getting into the Court House to lodge their applications Note Squatters also used dummies to hem in selectors to prevent acquisition of grazing pre-leases Note Selectors used relatives, including children, as dummies to increase their landholding.

So too did squatters. One unmarried squatter later admitted to borrowing about seven of his employees' children for the day, for a small fee, plus tea and cake for the kids, in order to select an extra 2, acres of his run Note No attempt to close loopholes was made in NSW for fourteen years, and then amendments were essentially ineffective Note However, in order to protect their runs by purchasing through dummying and peacocking, many squatters had to go deeply into debt Note Some were victims of ruthless foreclosure and many ruined by the combination of overstocking trying to pay their debts and drought Note As a group create a final list of three questions and conduct some research to find the answers.

Before this squatters illegally occupied much of the land beyond the 19 settled New South Wales districts. The Acts were meant to stop this while allowing the colony to expand. But it came at the expense of Aboriginal people who were increasingly forced off their traditional lands. Britain used the legal principle of terra nullius land belonging to no one to justify occupying the land we now know as Australia. From Governor Phillip gave out free land grants to encourage Europeans to settle in the colony.

A system of selling land was introduced in and free grants of Crown land ended in From then on land was sold only at public auction. Squatter of N. Wales: Monarch of more than all he surveys , by Samuel Thomas Gill, The first Act allowed for the sale of town and suburban land by public auction. The second Act allowed for the leasing of Crown land. Australia was claimed under the legal principal of terra nullius.

Find out more about what this meant in another Defining Moment: Overturning terra nullius — Mabo decision. They promised to break up the big squatting runs and parcel the land into small freehold farms. The grail of wholesome farming seemed to be in reach.

They grazed sheep and cattle on this land and, as a result, they gained power, wealth and a high social standing. In the northwest of the continent, white servants were fewer; and black women took their place, frequently trained and dressed to mimic their white counterparts. White ladies stood aloof from them, relieving loneliness as best they could through occasional contact with their social equals on other stations.

Her diary shows that she spent much time scolding her. Hunt 49, Marriage was again a vehicle for entrenching class power. A study of 19 th Century Queensland has shown complex kinship linkages extending from the family of Commissioner J.

Bigge through the owners of the Queensland National bank to the prominent premiers A. Palmer and Thomas McIlwraith. Thorpe ff. Worship was likewise a means of control on the station itself:. The power to give people employment, or withdraw it, was thus transmuted into a form of control over their personal beliefs.

Where subtle forms of domination failed, sterner measures were at hand. The landowning and squatting families were closely linked to the machinery of state, and used it for social control.

The acute division between squatters and workers was initially conditioned by the convict system. Another important group of workers were the bush mechanics carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, sawyers, splitters and fencers. Quoted Wheelwright and Buckley: On sheep and cattle stations, female labour was mainly used for traditional domestic tasks and milking, though in South Australia women from Saxony did shearing work.

In the early years, squatters generally refused to hire married couples with children to avoid having more mouths to feed, but later they relented in the face of recurrent labour shortages. In agriculture there was more versatility. In some places, women and girls reaped side by side with the men and later winnowed the grain, until mechanisation replaced them. When convictism itself eventually disappeared from the scene, raw class differences remained.

He had the opinion that he was as good as any man -- and better than some. He was firm in his belief that the working man and the rabbits, in that order, were the worst plagues in Australia. In country towns, a sizeable middle class eventually grew up. There were thirty-one smallholding families, of which eight had five hundred acres or more, and many of the family heads doubled as shop keepers and professionals in the town.

By the middle class in Bathurst outnumbered the landed elite, and the pattern repeated itself across the continent. K Fry 81ff. Poet Mary Gilmore chronicled a revolt at the Wagga Wagga racing club. The organisers put a rope across the hall to stop this the next year, but two years later the tradespeople cut the rope and danced amongst their betters. In many cases, real control of stations was exercised from Melbourne or Sydney.

No wonder that the golden age of squattocracy had hardly begun before it was over. Moreover, by the middle of the century, a hostile element was emerging within the pastoral industry itself. The convict and ex-convict labour force had been troublesome, but usually on an individual basis; the biggest problem was absconding, which was the main target of Master and Servant legislation. Free labour, however, had the potential to organise:. This primitive form of trade unionism was acceptable to squatters, who perhaps did not realise that it gave a large number of men valuable experience in negotiating agreements, preparing them for the time when unionism would become a power in the land.

The democratic movements born of the gold rushes raised a more immediate challenge. In October, the Shalimar arrived with the Royal Assent to the Victorian constitution, which had been drafted before Eureka. Political radicals immediately declared war upon it. The pace of change in New South Wales was more sedate, but the issue was not in doubt.

In any case, inflation from the gold boom had rendered existing property restrictions on suffrage less and less effective. The introduction of secret ballots made it harder for the rich to buy votes, or extract them by intimidation.

This innovation arrived in Australia earlier than Britain because it threatened fewer vested interests.