The destruction of Victoria

 

When Captain James Cook discovered Australia in 1770. the very first part he discovered was Point Hicks in Victoria. He did not land there but sailed North and landed at Botany Bay where he planted the British flag and claimed the land for the Crown of England. Settlement of the new colony did not occur until 1777, following the American war of independence in 1776 and the Americans refused to take further British convicts and a new colony was needed to house those whom the British prisons could not contain.

The entire country was known as New South Wales but in 1803 efforts were made to create a settlement in the Southern region, but poor locations were selected, and the early attempts were mostly unsuccessful. Whaler William Dutton built at Portland in 1829 and then in the 1830’s pastoralist John Batman from Tasmania, explored the area around Port Phillip Bay and sailed up the Yarra River. Landing on the North bank of the river near what is now the site of the old Customs house famously proclaimed, “This is the site for a Village.”

A stream of fresh water ran down what is now Elizabeth Street and so Batman contracted with the local indigenous tribe to purchase the land for a quantity of axes, blankets, mirrors, and knives. Today many people claim that the price was unfair but the difference between what the tribe was prepared to accept then, and today’s value is simply inflation. Soon after Batman’s settlement another Tasmanian John Pascoe Fawkner arrived and began grazing flocks to the North of Batman’s land. In 1834 other settlers arrived and the Port Phillip Association was formed.

In 1836 the district of Port Phillip was recognised as an administrative area of the colony of New South Wales. The first colonial elections were held in 1843, the elected members were required to travel to Sydney to sit in the Legislative Assembly and so the British Colonial Office was petitioned to grant independence to Port Phillip which was done in 1850 and signed off by the New South Wales legislature in 1851. The Port Phillip district became the State of Victoria, named for the reigning monarch.

In 1849 a gold rush began in California and many settlers began to leave Australia seeking their fortune. The New South Wales government then admitted that gold had been found many years earlier in that colony but had been kept quiet so that convicts could not escape find gold and return to England as wealthy men. The announcement saw many settlers begin to leave Victoria for the gold in the North, so the Victorian Legislation offered a prize of £1,000 to the first person to find gold in Victoria. They were immediately inundated with so many claims a Royal Commission was needed to ascertain which was the first claim. The prize was eventually divided between two claimants one from Warrandyte now a Melbourne suburb and one from Clunes in Central Victoria.

The gold discoveries in Victoria were unequalled in the history of the world and included the world’s richest shallow alluvial gold deposit and the world’s largest gold nugget. In the history of gold mining less than seven hundred nuggets exceeding 500 ounces have been found and all but nineteen of these have come from Victoria. In the period from 1851 until 1860 one third of all the world’s gold came from Victoria. This enormous quantity of gold attracted immigrants from all over the world and Melbourne’s population increased tremendously until Melbourne was the second largest city in the Empire, behind London and was one of the ten largest cities in the world. In 1880 Melbourne built their Exhibition Building and hosted the World’s Fair. One of the attendees was writer Mark Twain who coined the phrase “Marvellous Melbourne”.

The headiness and investment of the 1880’s led to a downturn in 1893 with a run on banks and many of the proliferation of small banks were forced to close. In 1901 at the time of Federation, Victoria was the only colony with a navy and Melbourne’s Exhibition Building was the only building in the country suitable to hold the new parliament. The national government was therefore based in Melbourne, but the Sydney press soon began a campaign claiming that Melbourne had stolen the federal parliament which they felt was rightly theirs by virtue of having been the site of first settlement. Much has been made of Sydney/Melbourne rivalry since that time, but the rivalry only comes from Sydney, Melbourne residents are confident that there is nothing in Sydney that they could envy.

The wealth generated from Victoria’s gold enabled the establishment of industry and large mining companies that operated throughout the country. Established in 1885 Australia’s richest company BHP had its head office in Melbourne even though it was mining a massive ore body containing the world's richest source of silver, lead, and zinc in NSW. Then gold was discovered in Kalgoorlie in WA and every time a new mine went down in Australia a new building went up in Melbourne.

Victoria was also the main centre of wool and wheat exports; the Port of Echuca on the Murray River was Australia’s busiest port with paddle steamers bring produce from properties along the river system and railways taking the produce to the ports at Melbourne, Geelong or Portland. Eighty percent of Australia’s manufactured goods were made in Victoria, everything from shirts and shoes to machinery, fridges, stoves, cars, tractors, and telephones. Economic mismanagement and union demands have seen most of this manufacturing move offshore.

In addition to gold Victoria also discovered oil and gas offshore in Bass Strait, charges levied on Victoria had then Premier Henry Bolte threatening to secede from the commonwealth so the Victorians could live like “rich Arabs” selling their produce to the rest of the world. Coal deposits enabled the production of cheap electricity much of this was subsequently changed to natural gas but the push to green energy has seen power prices climb steeply adding to the need for companies to move their manufacturing offshore to remain competitive.

Not only has Victoria a wealth of produce, gold, coal, oil and gas in the North West of the state are large deposits of rare Earth minerals, in great demand for modern electronics. Despite all this the state is now struggling. In the 1960’s Victoria had the world’s highest rate of home ownership and the second highest rate of car ownership, behind Los Angeles. The election of the Kane/Kirner government saw the State Bank fail and countless other businesses struggled.  “Elitist” schools were closed, and we were introduced to the first glimpses of “political correctness” and expensive government programs to reshape society. Once that government was defeated at the ballot box Victorians faced a levy to repay the debts created by the leftist programs and the infrastructure that had been allowed to fall into disrepair.

Federal government has subsequently moved many previously Melbourne based authorities such as the Post Office to other cities. The loss of manufacturing, expensive gas and power and the loss of many other jobs has seen Melbourne and Victoria slide into mediocracy, but the incumbent Andrews government has been the final nail in the coffin. It began by joining China’s Belt and Road scheme to carry out grandiose government schemes, paying a billion dollars to cancel a highway already under construction and creating many new overpasses and tunnels.

Once the state became indebted to China and the Chinese virus arrived the government completely mishandled quarantine, hiring “Mall Cops” with no expertise in hygiene or disease control to oversee those under quarantine. Those entrusted with security were reportedly sleeping with those in quarantine or taking them out to go shopping. The disease quickly spread and the government answer was to quarantine the entire population and introduce the same lockdowns and curfews as had been used in China.

The Andrews government has now totally destroyed the economy of Victoria and has created a debt with China which can never be repaid, setting the state up to become the Marxist state that Andrews may well have planned from the first day he signed on with China. The Chinese government will be more than happy to take over the wealth remaining in the state and reduce those residents who remain to a state of serfdom. The government will take over all business and all citizens will be dependent on government payments for their sustenance.

 

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