Documenting Democracy

The documents you will find on this pathway are the first British claims to territory in Australia and the original blueprints of the initial institutions for law and government.

Each document is a legal instrument, stating the authority by which Britain claims land, or establishes institutions.

Follow this trail of documents to see how British law and government was originally 'planted' in Australia.

You might start with the documents enabling taking possession of land.

Then go to defining boundaries (you might like to check the boundaries maps too).

Then there is a long trail of documents that established the institutions of law and government in each Colony, in the Northern Territory, and for the Commonwealth.

Taking possession

This painting by George Pitt Morrison entitled 'The Foundation of Perth' commemorates the ceremony on 12 August 1829 when the new town was founded. The Colony of Western Australia had been proclaimed by Lieutenant-Governor James Stirling two months before. From 1929 copies of this well-known painting were distributed to all Western Australian schoolchildren to mark the centenary of the founding of the State.

Defining boundaries

Darwin became Australia's front line in the 1939–45 war when Japanese planes bombed the city and the harbour in the first air raid on 19 February 1942. The Commonwealth blue ensign flying at Government House was the first Australian flag damaged by enemy action at home and was later acquired by the Australian War Memorial.

Law and government

Colonel David Collins arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and, under the Governor, was responsible for the administration of legal matters in New South Wales until he returned to England in 1797. This portrait is from that time, when he was aged 42. In 1804 he chose the site of Hobart as the base for the new settlement he had been sent out to establish, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land until he died in 1810.