- The last British regiment left Australia in 1870, after which time the colonies were responsible for their own defence.
- Despite the presence of British forces, Australia had its own colonial forces from December 1788, though this was on Norfolk Island only. The first military unit assembled on the mainland began in September 1800, and consisted of 100 free male settler volunteers. Called “Loyal Associations" there were volunteers in units in both Sydney and Parramatta whose purpose was to discourage civil unrest and to practice military drills in preparation for potential uprisings of Irish convicts.
- In 1806, Governor King recruited six ex-convicts as the beginnings of the first full-time military unit in Australia.
- Volunteer units and militia formed in the colonies in 1854 to join the British in the Crimean War. After the war ended in 1856 most of these units disbanded, but then re-formed in 1859 when it looked like Napoleon III may invade England. By 1860, most suburbs and towns had a volunteer unit, usually in the form of a rifle corps.
17 October, 1863. TasmaniaGroup photograph of spectators and competitors in a rifle shooting competition between ten men of the Hobart Town Volunteers Artillery and ten men from the First Rifles.
- For the rest of the century, volunteer and regular units became more organised and in 1899, an Australian contingent was sent to the Boer War.
- After Federation in 1901, responsibility for the colonial military forces passed to the Commonwealth.
- Most military training was aimed at being prepared for external threats to Australia, however local fighting against indigenous Australians by settlers and police continued in various locations across the country until the 1930s.
From the Australian War Memorial:
Military authorities did not usually regard Aborigines as posing sufficient threat to warrant the expense of committing military forces to pursue them, and most of the fighting was conducted by the settler, assisted by police.The conflict between Europeans and Aboriginal Australians followed a broadly similar pattern. At first, the Aborigines tolerated the settlers and sometimes welcomed them. But when it became apparent that the settlers and their livestock had come to stay, competition for access to the land developed and friction between the two ways of life became inevitable. As the settlers' behaviour became unacceptable to the Indigenous population, individuals were killed over specific grievances; these killings were then met with reprisals from the settlers, often on a scale out of proportion to the original incident.Occasionally Aborigines attacked Europeans in open country, resulting in encounters somewhat akin to conventional battles, usually won by the Europeans. Resistance was more successful when Aborigines employed stealth and ambush in rugged country. In addition to guerrilla tactics, Aborigines also engaged in a form of economic warfare, killing livestock, burning property, attacking drays which carried supplies, and, in Western Australia in the 1890s, destroying telegraph lines.
It is estimated that some 2,500 European settlers and police died in this conflict. For the Aboriginal inhabitants the cost was far higher: about 20,000 are believed to have been killed in the wars of the frontier, while many thousands more perished from disease and other unintended consequences of settlement. Aboriginal Australians were unable to restrain – though in places they did delay – the tide of European settlement; although resistance in one form or another never ceased, the conflict ended in their dispossession.
The Townsville Connection
From Townsville City Council:
“Kissing Point Fort is a fine example of the fixed coastal defences constructed in Queensland in the nineteenth century. Through its continuous military use from 1885 to 2006, Kissing Point has been associated with many major phases in Australia's defence.
The fort was completed in 1891 as part of colonial Queensland's defence plan after most British troops were withdrawn from the colonies in 1870.
The defence of Townsville was seen as vital to the protection of the nearby goldfields and rich pastoral lands. These concerns and the fear of invasion by other colonising powers active in the Pacific led to the construction of forts in Brisbane, Townsville and on Thursday Island off the tip of Cape York."
To this end, a small battery and magazine, complete with two 64-pound rifled guns were installed in Townsville at Kissing Point in 1885, however official recognition of the 3rd Queensland Regiment (the Kennedy Regiment) and subsequent construction of the fort did not take place until 1889.
Unidentified (1892). Members of the Townsville Garrison Artillery standing next to a cannon at Kissing Point, Townsville, 1892. Hinchinbrook Shire Council
Soldiers of the 3rd Queensland Regiment, The Kennedy Regiment stand with a cannon on a wooden platform at Kissing Point, Townsville. Soldiers are in uniform wearing the pith helmet of the regiment. Several onlookers, two wearing uniforms, are looking on.
The gun is a 64- pounder converted rifle muzzle loader of 71 hundredweight. This was mounted on wooden standing carriages and then on large wooden ground platforms.
One of the two guns at Kissing Point Fort today.
It was originally installed in 1891, then replaced with another in 1936. It was
found in a crevice in the sea cliff in 1970 and restored in 2003. While the gun
is the original, the rotating base is not.
Unknown (1896). "A" Company from Ravenswood, Kissing Point encampment, Townsville, 1896.
Unknown (1896). Garrison battery tents, Kissing Point encampment, Townsville, 1896.
Want to Know More?
Australian War Memorial
https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/colonial
State Library Victoria
https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/colonialforces/colonialforces
Australian Bureau of Statistics
https://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbytitle/243CEECD96C6B7FACA2569DE0020331E?OpenDocument
Hinchinbrook Shire Library – Special Collections
https://www.library.hinchinbrook.qld.gov.au/special-collections
Jezzine Barracks Military Museum (Army Museum North Queensland)
https://www.amnq.org.au/
Trove
https://trove.nla.gov.au/
Northern Beaches State High School wishes to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we live and work, the Wulgurukaba and Bindal people. We pay our respects to their elders, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures.