Tag Archives: colonial history

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Click below to see the original Our World, Our Numbers post...

Topic 6: England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales – Area & Population

 

Hello A Room With a View,

Your Our World, Our Numbers entry is a brilliant information packed post. When I visited Great Britain (I wasn't able to make it to Northern Ireland), I enjoyed all from the busy, history laden streets of London to driving minor and major roads across England, Scotland and Wales.

Apart from the brilliant scenery and historical locations of my ancestors, I found Great Britain very compact in comparison to Australia. Looking at your post, I found Great Britain has approximately 2.7 times Australia's population yet Australia is approx. 33.4 times larger than all of Great Britain. Our population density is quite low in comparison but it must be remembered much of Australia is arid (desert) or semi-arid so most people are found along our coastline.

This is a photo I took back in 1985 when I arranged a trip for families from my school to travel to Uluru (Ayers Rock) in central Australia. In the distance you can see Katatjuta (The Olgas) and the surrounding desert areas. I drove a 20 seater bus on a round trip from Sydney to Uluru and back, covering about 6000km (3728 miles).

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Location: Looking west towards Katatjuta (The Olgas) from Uluru (Ayers Rock)

To give you an example of distances, my first school as a permanent teacher sat on a flat clay pan area surrounded by sheep and cattle properties. I stayed in a house on a property of around 100,000 acres (that's about 405 square kilometres). I would drive the 20 km (12.5 miles) to school without passing another house and only very rarely seeing another car. The closest town to the school was 100 km (62.5 miles) distant. Here is a photo of the school.

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Location: Marra Creek, N.S.W.

You probably already know the national link Australia has to England. Like New Zealand and a number of other countries, we have the Union Flag at the top left hand corner of our flag but that wasn't the flag first raised when convicts arrived here from England in 1788. Below is the flag that was raised on January 26, 1788...

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This is a photo of Old Sydney Town taken in 1983. It was an historical reconstruction of Sydney set around 1800. You can see the above flag flying on the flagpole.

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Location: Somersby, N.S.W., Australia  (closed 2003)

A check into history and I see this flag was used from 1606 to 1801 (Wikipedia link). Notice it didn't have the flag for Northern Ireland? If you look at the date when this flag was first raised, you can calculate how long ago it was. Australia only became a nation on January 1, 1901. Before that, we were a collection of British colonies. 4KM and 4KJ would have been in the colony of Victoria and I would have lived in the colony of New South Wales. The Union Flag shows our link to our colonial past.

Australia's Flag Today

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Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

I've added an additional photo of my first school as a permanent teacher so Mrs Monaghan & "A Room with a View" can see how small it was. There was one classroom and a small office inside. At that time, it was considered the sixth most isolated school in the state of New South Wales. The top five were all in small isolated towns so this school looked more isolated. There was only one teacher for the children ranging from 5 to 12. I had up to 20 students from surrounding sheep and cattle properties who would arrive in two mini-buses from up to 50 km (about 30 miles) distance. I have many good memories from my time there. 🙂

Schools and students have permission to use this graphic for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Location: Marra Creek, N.S.W.