essay south australia

Second Prize: Anita Stelmach , ‘Mrs Gleiber's Boarding House: a “rendezvous for the lowest characters” in early twentieth-century Adelaide’. (Flinders University)

Winner: Doug Munro , 'The house that Hugh built: the Adelaide history department during the Stretton era, 1954-1966'. (University of Queensland)

Wakefield Companion to SA History Essay Prize for the most outstanding student essay in 2017 awarded to Sandra Kearney for 'Soldier repatriation and regeneration, World War One'. (Flinders University)

Winner: Dr David Faber , ‘FG Fantin: An historical legacy retrieved’. (University of Adelaide)

Winner: Rachel Harris , ‘South Australia's wartime economy and women's welfare in conflict: the experiences of female munition workers and members of the Australian Women's Land Army in SA, 1940-1945’. (University of Adelaide)

Joint Winners:

Yianni Cartledge , 'Ikarians in South Australia: the origins of the Pan-Ikarian Brotherhood of SA "Ikaros Inc", and its connections with the community'. (Flinders University)

Carmel Pascale , 'Chinese Immigration Restriction and the Pursuit of Nationalist Ideals in Colonial South Australia’. (University of Adelaide)

Winner: Walter Marsh ,  ‘Rupert Murdoch’s Political Transformation: From left-learning student to anti-union capitalist at the Adelaide News , 1953-1960’. (University of Adelaide)

Winner: Christine Lockwood , 'Immanuel College and Seminary: the Lutheran Church and World War II Misunderstandings'

Winner: Kirsty Seidel , 'Quaker opposition to compulsory military training in South Australia, 1910-1914'

What's next?

Annual Regional Lecture

HCSA Fellowship

HCSA Historian Awards

South Australia

Department for education, the eden school prize essay competition for school students.

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The Eden School Prize is an essay competition open to year 8, 9 and 10 students in South Australian government schools who want the opportunity to share their ideas about the world they live in.

It’s funded by the 1956 John Joseph Eden bequest and embraces the notion of making the world a better and happier place.

2024 competition

Students to submit an essay of between 600 and 800 words that answers the question:

How can music make the world a better and happier place?

2024 Eden School Prize poster (PDF 1 MB)

There will be 3 prizes awarded to the value of:

• 1st prize: $1250
• 2nd prize: $750
• 3rd prize: $500.

The judging panel will use the following criteria to judge the entries:

• breadth of thought on the topic
• originality of thought
• evidence of research to support views expressed
• relevance of the response to the question
• reference to current issues
• communication skills.

Submit an entry

Teachers to complete the Eden School Prize student information and declaration form for each student entry.

Entries must be submitted by 5.00pm on Friday 5 July 2024 to  EdenSchoolPrize@ sa.gov.au .

For teachers without computer access and unable to complete the online student information and declaration form, email  [email protected] to discuss alternative arrangements.

The Eden School Prize and the Australian Curriculum

Schools are encouraged to have their year 8, 9 and 10 students participate in the Eden School Prize because of its connection with essential elements of the Australian Curriculum, including:

• Humanities and social sciences: history, geography, civics and citizenship, economics and business.
• English (literacy strand): creating texts including texts that combine specific digital or media content for imaginative, informative, or persuasive purposes that reflect upon challenging and complex issues.
• Sustainability: the sustainability of ecological, social and economic systems is achieved through informed individual and community action that values local and global equity and fairness across generations into the future.
• Civics and citizenship (contribute to civil society): plan, implement and evaluate ways of contributing to civil society at local, national, regional and global levels.

2023 awardees

The 2023 essay question was inspired by discussions on how artificial intelligence contributes to developing informed, positive and active citizens in our society.

Students were asked to respond to the question:

‘How can artificial intelligence make the world a better and happier place?’

• First prize $1250: Julie Li, Paralowie School R-12
• Second prize $750: Zali Kerley, Port Broughton Area School
• Third prize $500: Ava Knowling, Loxton High School.

Email :  EdenSchoolPrize [at] sa.gov.au

Related information

Other pages in this section.

• Premier’s Reading Challenge
• Premier's 'be active' challenge
• Premier's Anzac Spirit School Prize
• The Eden School Prize
• Sports competitions

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Page last updated: 7 Mar 2024

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• Acknowledgement of Country

Friday essay: a slave state - how blackbirding in colonial Australia created a legacy of racism

Lecturer, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Disclosure statement

Jeff Sparrow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Melbourne provides funding as a founding partner of The Conversation AU.

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In July 2021, Jack Dempsey, the mayor of Bundaberg, delivered an official apology for Northern Queensland’s past reliance on the indentured labour of Pacific Islanders, many of whom were kidnapped (or “blackbirded”) and forced to work on the state’s cane plantations. “To say sorry,” explained Dempsey, “is a start in the healing and the hope for a better relationship going forward.”

The emotional response – equal parts sorrow and relief – from the local Islander community confirmed the gesture’s importance. “I’m thinking about my mother and my brother and my aunties who have all passed on,” said Aunty Coral Walker , the president of the Bundaberg South Sea Islanders Heritage Association. “It would have meant a lot to them because they were a part of that era where they knew about blackbirding.”

But if the Bundaberg apology began a healing, it by no means completed it. On the contrary, the statement highlighted the inadequacy of Australia’s reckoning with its past.

That’s because the practice Dempsey described – sometimes known as “sugar slavery” – was not a minor or incidental phenomenon. In fact, it was so important to plantation owners that, to defend it, they briefly contemplated separation from the rest of the colony, with Townsville mooted as the capital of what many observers dubbed a “slave state”. This “scheme for the extension and perpetuation of the slavery system” showed, one journalist claimed at the time , that Queensland had become “what the United States were before the Wars of the Secession”.

Similar references to civil war occurred again and again during the debates prior to the federation of the Australian colonies. Slavery and its consequences – both in Queensland and in the American South – obsessed Australia’s founders, and fundamentally moulded the country they created. Australia’s first prime minister, Edmund Barton, explained, quite accurately, that the “limited slavery” of the cane fields had agitated “the whole of Australia” and so was “a question which belongs to the Federation we have succeeded in establishing”. He also outlined the shocking philosophy upon which he considered Australia based:

I do not think either that the doctrine of the equality of man was really ever intended to include racial equality. There is no racial equality. There is basic inequality. These races are, in comparison with white races – I think no one wants convincing of this fact – unequal and inferior. The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman. There is deep-set difference, and we see no prospect and no promise of its ever being effaced. Nothing in this world can put these two races upon an equality. Nothing we can do by cultivation, by refinement, or by anything else will make some races equal to others.

It’s impossible to understand that speech – and Barton’s conviction that, in dismissing racial equality, he spoke for the nation – without thinking about the sugar fields of Queensland and what was done there.

The French historian Ernest Renan described forgetting as “an essential factor in the creation of a nation”, since patriots do not want to remember the “deeds of violence” at the origin of all political formations. In the Australian context, a strange contradiction contributes to the ongoing amnesia about slavery and its consequences.

From the very beginning, enslavement shaped white settlement in Australia – and so, too, did abolitionism. That paradox, a peculiar entwinement of two ostensibly antagonistic impulses, makes for a complicated narrative, one that cannot be grasped simply as a local version of the better-known American story.

But if regret is to bring change, we must comprehend what we’re apologising for and why. The great abolitionist Frederick Douglass, a man who had escaped enslavement in 1838, described the past as a mirror that could, if used correctly, convey “the dim outlines of the future” and, perhaps, “make them more symmetrical”.

With that in mind, let’s talk about Australian slavery.

‘No slavery in a free land’

In 1788, England remained the most important slaving nation in the world , a country that, from the 17th century until 1807, conveyed a dizzying 3.25 million people out of Africa and into bondage.

The planners of the new convict colony in New South Wales drew directly on logistical skills acquired through Britain’s long involvement in the slave trade. They contracted the Second and Third Fleets to one of London’s biggest slaving firms, the merchants Calvert, Camden and King, who duly showed the same care for British convicts as they did for African slaves . Some 25 per cent of prisoners died on the voyage; 40 per cent succumbed within six months of arrival.

In New South Wales, the men and women labouring on the settlement were officially described as “in servitude” until they became “emancipated”, a vocabulary taken directly from the Atlantic trade .

Yet if slavery pressed on the colony, so too did anti-slavery.

Britain required New South Wales because, after the American War of Independence broke out in 1775, the English could no longer dump its criminals in the American territories. The same colonial uprising that disrupted transportation to the New World also turned public sentiment against slavery, an institution tainted by association with the ungrateful Americans.

That was why, in the month that the First Fleet sailed from Portsmouth, evangelical Christians in London launched the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade – an organisation that would eventually succeed in rendering slavery illegal in Britain.

A few years later, the Haitian revolution – perhaps history’s greatest uprising of the enslaved – would intensify respectable concern about the dangerous instability of slave societies. The visceral fear of black revolt induced merchants enriched by trading Africans to consider the new opportunities of the factory system, shifting Britain’s economy away from plantation agriculture to manufacturing and other, more modern, industries.

All of that affected the Australian colony. The more far-sighted members of the British elite had no desire to replicate the American disaster – and they most definitely did not want to found a new Haiti in the Pacific. So, before the First Fleet even departed, its commander, the 50-year-old naval veteran Captain Arthur Phillip, explicitly eschewed any intent to allow enslavement in the settlement.

“There can be no slavery in a free land,” he declared, “and consequently no slaves.”

In 2020, with Black Lives Matter protests spreading globally, Prime Minister Scott Morrison took a question from a radio host about the removal of colonial statues. In response, the Prime Minister defended the European settlers as relatively enlightened men, committed to ideals of freedom in New South Wales.

“It was a pretty brutal place,” he concluded , “but there was no slavery in Australia.” The comments brought widespread condemnation, and the Prime Minister quickly acknowledged that “hideous practices” had indeed occurred.

Yet Morrison’s initial point was not entirely wrong.

Phillip had, indeed, promised a free colony. So how did his pledge affect the “hideous practices” the PM described?

In 1788, mainstream abolitionism was not especially radical. The evangelicals, with their concern for human souls, considered chattel slavery – the legal ownership of one man by another – a denial of the personal agency so central to Protestantism. But, as moral campaigners, they also approved of punishing sin – and in the late 18th century there was plenty of it to punish.

In Britain, the enclosure of the English commons had driven impoverished rural populations into cities like London. Swelling unemployment meant crime and rebellion. To control the desperate and the jobless, the authorities passed harsh new laws, a legislative program designed to quell disorder and ensure a pliant workforce for the factories. The Riot Act banned public disorder; the Combination Act made trade unions illegal; the Workhouse Act forced the poor to work; the Vagrancy Act turned joblessness into a crime. Eventually, over 220 offences could attract capital punishment – or, indeed, transportation.

As we have seen, convict transportation – a system in which prisoners toiled without pay under military discipline – replicated many of the worst cruelties of slavery. Yet, rather than fostering opposition to the forced labour of transportees, mainstream abolitionism helped justify it.

Middle-class anti-slavery activists expressed little sympathy for Britain’s ragged and desperate, holding the urban lumpenproletariat responsible for its own misery. The men and women of London’s slums weren’t slaves. They were free individuals – and if they chose criminality, the abolitionists reasoned, they brought their punishment on themselves.

That was how Phillip could decry chattel slavery while simultaneously relying on unfree labour from convicts. The experience of John Moseley, one of the eleven people of colour on the First Fleet, illustrates how, in the Australian settlement, a rhetoric of liberty accompanied a new kind of bondage.

As Cassandra Pybus documents , later in life, Moseley claimed to have been employed as a “tobacco planter in America”. By that he almost certainly meant that he had been enslaved on a plantation in the Tidewater region of Virginia and Maryland. How had he washed up in Sydney?

Like several of the black First Fleeters, Moseley fought for Britain during the American Revolution. That was because Lord Dunmore, the last British governor of Virginia, had offered liberty to “all indented Servants, Negroes, or others […] that are able and willing to bear arms” against the insurrectionists.

Moseley, and others like him, chose freedom – and then faced recapture when Britain surrendered. One slave later said that the success of the revolt “diffused universal joy among all parties; except us who had escaped from slavery and taken refuge in the English army”. Desperate to evade their old masters, the formerly enslaved begged the retreating British for passage to London. Those who were successful remained free – but also, for the most part, unemployed, struggling in a strange and harsh city without friends or family.

Loyalists could, in theory, claim compensation for fighting in the revolutionary war. In practice, the authorities generally rebuffed pleas from ex-slaves, on the cynical basis that emancipation constituted sufficient reward.

“Instead of suffering by the war, he gained by it,” wrote an official about one claimant, “for he is in a much better country where he may with industry get his bread, where he can never more be a slave.”

Moseley, like so many others, struggled in the harsh city to get his bread. When he eventually turned from industry to criminal fraud, the contrast between British liberty and American slavery provided the ideological justification for the treatment he received. He was a free man; the court held him responsible for his own dishonesty and sentenced him to death. The eventual commutation of a capital sentence to transportation meant that armed guards marched a black ex-slave, chained once more by the neck and ankles, to the Scarborough, on which he sailed to New South Wales.

Phillip’s prohibition on chattel slavery was, on its own terms, genuine. But we need to understand what those terms were. For John Moseley, the “free land” of New South Wales brought only a replication of that captivity he’d endured in Virginia. His experience was not unique. As the poet and playwright Bertolt Brecht might say, throughout the settlement, the old strode in, disguised as the new. In years to come, colonial opposition to slavery would co-exist with, and even facilitate, various kinds of bonded labour – and nowhere more so than in Queensland.

‘A second Louisiana’

From the very start, the Australian sugar industry demonstrated how formal and real freedoms might collide.

In Tascott, New South Wales, you can still find a plaque celebrating the man who gave the town its name: a certain Thomas Scott, who, we are told, “arrived in the colony in 1816 [and] pioneered the sugar industry in Australia”.

The Tascott memorial neglects to mention Scott’s background in the slave trade . Yet that was how he developed his familiarity with sugar. As a young man, he assisted an uncle buying and selling Africans, before he began managing slave labour on his family’s plantation in Antigua.

Scott came to Port Macquarie in 1823, where Major Frederick Goulburn engaged him for an annual salary of £250 to g row sugar in the strange climate . Historians now agree that he failed miserably.

“How many times did you try to make sugar at the settlement before you made anything like it?” a contemporary mocked him. “What you made yourself was not fit for dogs to eat before the poor black man shewed you the way.”

That “poor black man” was another Antiguan, James Williams.

Where Scott was an ex-slaver, Williams was an ex-slave. He had somehow escaped to England, where, like Moseley, he resorted to crime. Sentenced to seven years transportation, Williams arrived in Sydney in 1820. Another theft saw him banished to Port Macquarie. In that town, a full year before Scott’s arrival, he established a viable crop from eight joints of cane, using the “knowledge of the growth of that Plant” he had acquired as a slave.

Despite the successful production of “very good Sugar and Rum”, Williams never adjusted to life in the colony, spending the rest of his days in and out of various forms of custody. By contrast, Thomas Scott, confident the rival claims of a “poor black man” would not be heeded, basked in an entirely undeserved reputation as the father of Australian sugar, even receiving an annual pension for his supposed achievements. In that foundational moment – an ex-slaver exploiting an ex-slave – the racial dynamic of the industry was already visible.

When the American Civil War broke out in 1861, many Europeans in Australia sympathised with the Confederates, particularly after the Unionists briefly seized the Trent, a British Royal Mail steamer. The Melbourne Argus anticipated war between Australia and the northern American states, arguing that that “as a matter of sound precaution, citizens of the United States now resident in Victoria should be placed under surveillance”. Some of the gun emplacements still visible in Sydney Harbour date back to that fear of invasion by the Yankees.

In the context of that widespread enthusiasm for the South (the welcome extended to the Confederate ship Shenandoah in Melbourne in 1865 led one of its officers to conclude “the heart of colonial Britain was in our cause”), Queenslanders dreamed of building a “second Louisiana”. They could, they thought, capitalise on the disruption of the international cotton and sugar trades, if only they could establish a viable local crop.

But how might they emulate agriculture from a slave state?

Attempts to attract English workers to Queensland did not succeed. The men that came found the conditions unbearable, something the colonists attributed not to the innate unpleasantness of cutting cane in the sticky heat, but to the racial unsuitability of white labour to the tropics. So, in 1863, the shipping tycoon Robert Towns (the man who gave Townsville its name) tried another approach .

Towns knew that, back in 1847, an entrepreneur called Benjamin Boyd – another man with a background in Caribbean slavery – had scandalised the colony by transporting men from the Pacific Islands of Tanna and Lifou to supply his cattle station with labour. The “signatures” on the documents that indentured them were thumb prints from illiterate men who had never before seen cattle; their “contracts” bound them to work for a pittance however Boyd commanded. Some of the labourers revealed their genuine feeling by fleeing as soon as they could; the others demanded to be sent home. Boyd’s business collapsed and he decamped to California.

In Boyd’s inauspicious venture, Towns glimpsed a solution, a means by which he might recreate Louisiana in Queensland. The insatiable demands of the textile industry meant, he thought, that cotton plantations would be far more profitable than Boyd’s cattle stations. Accordingly, Towns chartered a ship called the Don Juan and sailed it to the New Hebrides from where it returned crammed with Islanders destined for Towns’ huge property near the Logan River.

The Civil War ended before Boyd could prove his experiment a success. But though peace dashed prospects for a Queensland cotton boom, a planter called Louis Hope realised that cotton fields could also be used for sugar, a commodity always in demand. He duly sent out ships to obtain indentured labour of his own.

That was how it began. Between 1863 and 1904, 62,000 South Sea Islanders were transported to Australia, landing in Brisbane, Maryborough, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Bowen, Townsville, Innisfail and Cairns. Most indentured labourers arrived from the New Hebrides, with a substantial proportion taken from the Solomons, as well as smaller islands. By the 1890s, Pacific Islanders constituted 85 per cent of the workforce for Australian sugar.

Some came willingly, accepting – as desperate people do – unknown hardship to escape grinding poverty. Some, equally clearly, did not. Faith Bandler, the much-loved civil rights activist and hero of the 1967 Indigenous rights referendum, was the daughter of one such sugar slave. As a child, she’d listened to her father, Peter Mussing, describing his youth. He told Faith about

when he was kidnapped and taken into the boat by the slavers, and what it was like in the boat coming over from his island Ambrym in the New Hebrides, and how rough it was and how they were all held in the hull and how sick they were and those who died would be thrown overboard and how it was when the boat would arrive in Australia and how strange everything seemed to him.

Paradoxically, such experiences – so reminiscent of the Middle Passage endured by slaves brought across the Atlantic Ocean – coincided with a hardening of official hostility to slavery throughout the British Empire. In 1833, the parliament in Westminster had officially legislated abolition, with enslavement thereafter disdained as contrary to English principles of liberty. The politicians allocated an extraordinary sum of £20 million (about 40 per cent of Britain’s total income) to restitution: an amount granted not to the slaves but to their owners, compensation to them for the loss of their “property”.

The records of those disbursements include a remarkable number of colonial Australians . Judges, statesmen, bankers, even the poet Adam Lindsay Gordon: the upper echelons of Australia society contained many men who had either personally kept slaves or belonged to families that did.

In the bigger population centres, the beneficiaries of enslavement generally distanced themselves from their less than reputable past. The tropical north, however, was different. There, those with a background in Caribbean slavery could recreate something of their old ways.

Louis Hope, for instance, set himself up (according to one biographer) “as a landed aristocrat”, with a grand mansion at Ormiston, an estate akin to those his slave- owning relatives occupied in the Caribbean. He was not alone in his affectations. A visitor to Queensland in the late 1870s and early 1880s described the planters living along the river at Mackay :

Their houses as a rule, are extremely comfortable, and very well furnished, and the gardens of many of them are paradises of beauty. In good times, they make tremendous profits, and their occupation chiefly consists in watching other people work, in the intervals of which they recline in a shady verandah with a pipe and a novel, and drink rum-swizzles. Most of them keep a manager, so that they can always get away for a run down south, or a kangaroo hunt up the country.

The men did not merely adopt a lifestyle associated with New World slavery. They also relied on its techniques and its personnel.

Hope, for instance, acquired his sugar plants from the old slaver Thomas Scott. He hired supervisors from Jamaica and Barbados, looking for those with experience driving plantation slaves. To obtain the men for his fields, he turned – just as Boyd had before him – to a certain Captain Lewin, a notoriously shady character .

The Royal Navy’s Commander George Palmer described Lewin’s vessels as “fitted up precisely like an African slaver, minus the irons” and noted that , “I heard of him [Lewin] at every island I was at as a man stealer and kidnapper”. Lewin escaped conviction for a rape committed on one of those ships when a Brisbane court held that his 13-year-old victim could not give evidence since “she was not a Christian, and there were no courts of law in her country”, ignoring the testimony of the Islander witnesses who described the girl’s screams.

Between 1863 and 1868, this was the man responsible for “recruiting” nearly half the Islanders who arrived in Australia.

An illegitimate offspring

The uncontrolled growth of blackbirding eventually spurred the Polynesian Labourers Act, an attempt by the Queensland government to enforce some sort of regulation. The law required recruiters to get a licence; it mandated certain minimum standards on voyages where previously passengers had often simply been imprisoned in the holds.

Yet conditions did not necessarily improve. In general, the treatment of Islanders in Queensland depended less on legislation than on how desperately the planters needed labour at any given moment.

Some young men found indenture quite bearable, so much so that when one contract ended, they signed on for another, before eventually returning to their homes with cash in their pockets. Yet when the sugar boom of the 1880s fostered a scramble for cutters, the cruelties intensified . On occasion, recruiters – desperate to fill their quotas – travelled to islands where blackbirders had never previously visited and simply grabbed whomever they could find.

In 1884, at the height of that demand, a vessel called the Hopeful opened fire on Islanders who resisted being stolen, killing at least 38 people and possibly more. Its crew faced trial for kidnapping and murder; a subsequent Royal Commission found that only nine of the 480 people “recruited” by the ship had understood the supposed agreements they’d signed. The commission described the Hopeful’s expedition as “one long record of deceit, cruel treachery, deliberate kidnapping and cold-blooded murder”.

The sailors were subsequently released , after “public indignation [about their convictions] in Brisbane and the coast towns waxed to fever heat” and some 28,000 people signed a petition calling for clemency.

The massive support for the Hopeful’s crew needs to be understood in the context in which indentured labour was advocated. Hope, and the others like him, did not see themselves as recreating slavery. On the contrary, they declared their opposition to the practice. The Islanders were not, they said, chattels. Rather than being bought or sold, the men were employees, hired like any other workers. They received money in return for the contract; when their term expired, they could leave.

This was not altogether untrue. Legally, the Islanders were never enslaved. Unlike the slaves in America, they were not officially classified as property. Some managed to improve the terms of their engagement, winning better wages and less brutal conditions. By the 1890s, many were engaged in something more like wage labour.

Nevertheless, the reason the sugar barons wanted Islanders did not vary: they understood that white men could impose upon indentured non-white labourers a discipline that Europeans would not accept. They could pay them less (and sometimes not at all). They could beat them and belittle them and abuse them, confident no law would intervene, and they could work them relentlessly under regimes that regularly proved fatal.

Queensland was not the Americas. What was done in Australia was different and needs to be understood on its own terms. The historian Emma Christopher suggests that, rather than being imagined as analogous to Atlantic slavery, the trade in the Pacific might be thought of as one of its illegitimate offspring : a forced labour both reminiscent of and distinct from the practices of the New World. Nevertheless, a legal case in Rockhampton in 1868 illustrates the aptness of the term “sugar slavery”.

In January that year , a man called John Tancred faced charges under the Master and Servants Act after a conflict with one Arthur Gossett over an Islander boy identified only as “Towhey”. Though bound to Gossett, the child had fled his employment to join men from his own island who were labouring for Tancred. Their teary reunion provoked a legal dispute between two white men about the “lawful ownership” of Towhey (known by a quite different name among his own people) – a matter settled when Gossett proved his claim by identifying a brand on the boy’s leg.

“The advantage,” explained the Rockhampton Bulletin,

of the branding these intelligent islanders who cannot speak English and who make crosses to their agreements, has been made very manifest by this case, and, perhaps, it may not yet be too late for the Assembly to insert a “branding” clause in the Polynesian Laborers Bill.

The Assembly did not adopt that suggestion. It did, however, accept an amendment proposed by Hope himself (who became a member of the Queensland Legislative Council in 1862), which decreed that if an indentured labourer “absent[ed] himself from the place of employment for a greater distance than one mile […] without a pass from his employer”, he would be “liable to apprehension and punishment” – a clause justified by the need for “the employer to retain control over his laborers”.

The Australian press described the Islanders as “kanakas”. In its original, Hawaiian context, kanaka meant “free man”. In Australia, it signalled the opposite, as no less an authority than the Governor General confirmed.

Like many of the planters, Sir Anthony Musgrave had come to Australia from the West Indies . Like them, his family had owned slave-run plantations – and so he knew enslavement when he saw it. In Australia, he privately described the recruitment of Islanders as “a system & arrangements wh. are as much like slavery & the slave trade as anything can well be wh. is not avowed as such”.

By 1884, the annual mortality rate for Islanders in Queensland had climbed to 147 deaths per 1000 people. Everyone knew why: as the Brisbane Courier reported , the causes of mortality were “indisputably plain; the islanders were being killed mainly by overwork, insufficient or improper food, bad water, absence of medical attention when sick, and general neglect”.

The harshness was not accidental. “[Islanders] must be treated with firmness,” explained the planter J.W. Anderson ,

they do not expect much leniency and would take advantage of it. Above all, they must not be treated too well, according to our notions […] for their minds are so constituted that they do not appreciate such treatment.

Anderson’s belief that Islanders were innately predisposed to appreciate brutality illustrates how Queensland sugar depended on the most pernicious ideological legacy of the Atlantic slave trade: modern racism.

Built upon a groan

The philosophical underpinnings of slaving might seem obvious. The perceived inferiority of Africans enabled, we assume, merchants to buy and sell them as commodities. But that’s quite wrong. Africans weren’t enslaved because they were black. They were black because they were enslaved, with the vast profits in Atlantic slavery giving rise to entirely novel forms of classifying humanity.

Slavery existed in the past, of course. But in the ancient and medieval worlds, enslavement related typically to conquest or religion rather than “race” – a concept that didn’t really exist as we know it today. Anyone could become a slave after a battle; slaves could sometimes free themselves by converting to their masters’ faith.

Slavery was not, in other words, a condition attached permanently to a certain type of person so much as an unfortunate fate that might befall anyone.

The system imposed in the Caribbean and the Americas was different. The immensely profitable cultivation of cotton and sugar required vast quantities of labour, not least because the plantations often proved fatal to the men and women toiling in them. Begrudging any cessation of production, planters in the New World did not release converts; they deemed the sons and daughters of slaves to inherit their parents’ status.

Accordingly, slave owners developed a different rationale for their system, one under which the skin pigmentation of the enslaved – previously an entirely incidental feature – defined them, as an indelible quality that marked men and women as suitable for servitude. The French philosopher and mathematician Nicolas de Condorcet pointed out that the new theories made “nature herself an accomplice in the crime of political inequality”. Indeed, the identification of “blackness” with inferiority corresponded with an equally novel claim about the superiority of “whiteness”, one that provided a legitimation for the spread of British power.

From the very start, such ideas had underpinned the establishment of the Australian colonies.

The “natives”, Phillip complained soon after landing , were “far more numerous than they were supposed to be”. Their abundance mattered because it undercut the legal foundations of the entire colony. Phillip, like everyone else on the mission, knew perfectly well that international law forbade a nation claiming sovereignty over territory inhabited by others.

The settlers resolved the jurisprudential problem by ignoring it. The colony might have been illegal, but race theory allowed the colonists to believe themselves committed to universal law, even as they more or less entirely excluded Indigenous people from its remit.

That provided the pattern for everything that followed. In theory, Indigenous people enjoyed all the protections of British subjects. In practice, they were often treated as animals – or, indeed, slaves.

As late as 1899, a Select Committee of the South Australian Parliament received grotesque testimony about the sexual slavery to which Aboriginal women were subjected. One policeman explained that the rape of “lubras” (a racist term for Indigenous women) was commonplace.

“If half the young lubras,” he said,

now being detained (I won’t call it kept, for I know most of them would clear away if they could) were approached on the subject, they would say that they were run down by station blackguards on horseback, and taken to the stations for licentious purposes, and there kept more like slaves than anything else. I have heard it said that these same lubras have been locked up for weeks at a time – anyway whilst their heartless persecutors have been mustering cattle on their respective runs. Some, I have heard take these lubras with them, but take the precaution to tie them up.

A few years later, persistent accounts of abuses in Western Australia led to a Royal Commission in that part of the country. Under its auspices, Walter Roth, the former Chief Protector of the Aborigines in Queensland, produced a lengthy document chronicling the proliferation of forced labour.

“Here at our own doors,” said the Melbourne Advocate ,

we have had revealed a system of slavery so revolting in its brutality, and so inhuman in all its details, as to equal all the horrors that have been alleged against the slave owners in America and the military expeditions in Central Africa.

The activist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois once described America as “built upon a groan”. Something similar might be said about the colony of Australia, at least as far as Indigenous people were concerned.

White Australians tend to imagine frontier violence largely in images derived from first contact: a matter of sharp, almost accidental, clashes as European and Indigenous worlds collided. In fact, the worst depredations were considerably more deliberate, and they escalated as the settlers established themselves. The increasing independence of the colonies during the second half of the 19th century reduced the humanitarian influence exerted by London and allowed the settlers to bring to the frontier techniques of dispossession refined through bloody experience.

The European occupation of Queensland took place later than in other states. As late as 1850, the state contained only about 8000 white settlers. Thereafter, a rapid influx of Europeans unleashed horrific violence against an Indigenous population of about 200 000 people, in a process the colonists considered both necessary and inevitable.

“We should be sorry to see the natives treated with cruelty and oppression,” explained a Queensland cabinet minister to parliament in 1861, “but that the settlers will increase and the colony expand, is a result which the rules of nature render positively certain.” The whites could not and should not be prevented from taking the land and “if the inferior race suffers in the process, that is only what has happened in all such cases, and will happen again until the end of time”.

In reality, his government was less a passive observer of “cruelty and oppression” than a key facilitator. The authorities established the Queensland Native Mounted Police in 1855, equipped its members with high-powered rifles, and paid them to “disperse” any Indigenous people they located. As another parliamentarian acknowledged , the euphemism “dispersal” meant “nothing but firing into them”.

The Mounted Police were, in contemporary terms, death squads – and some historians estimate they eventually killed as many as 40,000 Aboriginal men, women and children.

As late as 1880, the liberal Queenslander described the slaughter on the frontier , noting that the Indigenous inhabitants of territory into which Europeans moved were

treated exactly in the same way as the wild beasts or birds the settlers may find there […] Their goods are taken, their children forcibly stolen, their women are carried away, entirely at the caprice of the white men. The least show of resistance is answered by a rifle bullet; in fact, the first introduction between blacks and whites is often marked by the unprovoked murder of some of the former—in order to make a commencement of the work of “civilising” them.

That article provoked a year-long discussion, in which the Queenslander’s contributors demonstrated how the genocidal campaign against Indigenous people had normalised measures unthinkable in any other context.

A writer styling himself “Never Never” called, for instance, for a speedier genocide , urging the “exterminating force” of the Native Police to work more “thoroughly and effectually”.

“Is there room for both of us here?” he asked. “No. Then the sooner the weaker is wiped out the better, as we may save some valuable lives in the process.”

Others, like a certain “Outis”, argued for what he saw as a more liberal solution. He suggested that , rather than being murdered, Aboriginal people should be treated like “rogues and vagabonds”, and forced to work so that they will have no time to hatch mischief".

Outis noted how planters were bringing “large numbers of South Sea Islanders to Queensland” under laws that forced them to work as directed by their employer. He argued the same policy could be applied to Indigenous people forcibly removed from their land:

Only get the blacks out of their own district and it would rest with the employer to make them work; some harshness would no doubt be necessary (as I am told is also the case with Kanakas), but I firmly believe that firmness combined with kindness, and the low rate of wages that the blacks would be paid, would make the employment of aboriginal labor a payable speculation.

For Outis, officers from India or Ceylon could enforce the necessary discipline – so long as they were “untethered by red tape”. A policy of enslavement rather than murder would, he said, remove ‘the present blood guiltiness that weighs upon us each individually as colonists’, and so would be worth whatever it cost.

“Is there no member of Parliament who will take this question up?” Outis wondered:

Are all so overburdened by the cares of the squatters, or diggers, who comprise their constituencies that they cannot spare the time to consider and devise a remedy for “the poor old nigger”?

As it happened, at least one MP did share his enthusiasm.

On 21 October 1880, the Queensland Parliament debated the role of the Native Police. In the discussion , John Douglas (who would later become premier) argued that the distinction between Islanders and Aboriginal people was not so great to extinguish “the hope that some use might be made of the latter”.

He pointed to Western Australia where “the natives had been […] in some cases captured, and as prisoners of war had been compelled to submit to a period of pupilage, afterwards becoming useful settlers”. Queensland, Douglas said, might follow suit by taking “the natives prisoner, instead of shooting down and killing them”.

He did acknowledge the legal difficulties in a policy “by which these people, taken in open warfare, might be kept in a state of captivity” but stressed it would “be a more benevolent process than shooting them down and taking their lives”.

The chamber did not embrace Douglas’s “benevolent process” (which would, of course, have been entirely illegal), though some years later a correspondent to the Adelaide Evening Journal reported that the Native Police were, in fact, selling into slavery the children of Indigenous people they had massacred.

The willingness of Queensland parliament to ponder the relative merits of enslavement over murder provides a particularly repellent example of the moral desensitisation arising from colonial dispossession. Amid the cruelty inflicted on Indigenous people, the indentured labour of Islanders could seem entirely unremarkable.

Sugar versus slavery

The relationship between sugar slavery and the foundational racism of a colonial settler state makes an intuitive sense. We understand that the planters who built fortunes from forced labour were infused with a sense of their own biological superiority.

We might not grasp that those who denounced slavery were often even more avowedly racist.

In the Queensland parliament, the Liberal politicians attacked the planters’ reliance on Islander labour almost as soon as indenture began. They did so by objecting to the sugar barons polluting the colony with, as the Liberal MP Charles Lilley said in 1869, “men of an inferior race”.

“The British people are the possessors of this soil,” Lilley declared . “We hold the land in trust for our countrymen alone not for Polynesians or Chinamen.”

The parliamentary argument about the sugar industry was not a debate between racists and their opponents but a contest between different visions of whiteness. The Conservative Premier Sir Thomas McIlwraith, a man with personal interests in the sugar industry, expressed the perspective of the planters. He wanted, he said, a Queensland both successful and white. Economic prosperity depended on cane, a crop he thought Europeans racially incapable of harvesting. Hence the necessity for a subservient caste of Islanders, who could ensure Queensland remained “a white man’s colony, influenced by white men and owned by white men”.

His Liberal rival Samuel Griffith, on the other hand, argued that the importation of Islanders would foster the “degeneration which we have seen whenever the black and white races have endeavoured to mix”. If whites depended on slavery, they’d lose their racial consciousness and accept widespread immigration. Accordingly, Griffith advocated a purely European colony based on the rigid exclusion of all non-whites – in essence, attacking the proponents of sugar slavery for being insufficiently racist.

When Griffith won the 1883 election, his victory threw the sugar industrialists into panic. Politics in Queensland, the Sydney Evening News explained , was “fast narrowing itself down to the very simple issue – sugar versus slavery”, since “sugar plantations cannot be worked in Queensland without slave labour in some form or other”.

Fearing the collapse of their estates, the sugar barons contemplated secession. Seeking to marshal all those benefiting from the industry, they presented a vision of independence. They would, they declared, form their own colony, where they could employ on their plantations as much Islander labour as they saw fit.

In April 1885, a Northern Separation convention in Townsville attracted delegates from eleven towns in the region. A petition for secession gathered some 10,000 signatures , a not insignificant number in a population area of perhaps 19,000 European men. In parliament, Maurice Hume Black – a representative of the sugar interests – openly warned that North Queensland wanted to go its own way, while the planters John Ewen Davidson and Sir John Lawes argued their case to the Colonial Office in London.

For a while, it seemed entirely possible that Northern Separation – a movement led by some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the region – might prevail. In his book A Land Half Won, historian Geoffrey Blainey suggests that, had that occurred, northern Queensland “would probably have remained outside the new Commonwealth of Australia”, becoming “a version of Rhodesia or the old American confederacy of cotton states”.

Many people at the time, with the American Civil War fresh in their minds, thought the same. “If tropical Australia is politically severed from the South,” warned the Brisbane Courier ,“[…] we may leave to our children such a legacy of evil as that from which America only rid herself by the most terrible fratricidal war which the modern world has seen.”

That didn’t happen because, with their dream of Northern Separation and sugar slavery, the planters faced two powerful opponents.

Overseas, Britain reacted to the petitioning Queenslanders with unabashed horror. If anything, London’s concern about the social instability of chattel slavery had only increased since in 1788. In the wake of the civil war in America, British diplomats regarded the prospect of a new antipodean Confederacy as disastrous. As the Times noted , England bluntly informed the planters and their supporters that it would “not permit the establishment of a slave state in Northern Queensland”.

At home, the separatists confronted a different problem. After the gold rush, Chinese immigration had become the focus of racist agitation all over the colony. As early as 1855, Victoria had passed “an Act to Make Provision for Certain Immigrants”, which imposed a discriminatory tax on the Chinese. Other states followed. In 1857, Europeans physically attacked Chinese miners in the Buckland River gold fields; similar riots took place at Lambing Flats in 1860 and 1861. Many leaders of the newly-formed trade unions blamed the Chinese for driving down wages and so called for racial exclusion, a policy famously expressed in the slogan used by the pro-labour Bulletin: “Australia for the White Man”.

Politicians agonised over whether a colony reliant on a non-white workforce would remain sufficiently British. Many saw the Queensland plantations as a dangerous wedge, a crack in the white wall through which other races might insinuate themselves.

In the days of Arthur Phillip, anti-slavery had legitimised transportation. It now served an even more perverse cause, providing a moral justification for those demanding complete racial exclusion.

The Rockhampton-based Daily Northern Argus, for instance, attacked sugar-growers for their “extraordinary persistence” in agitating for a cause that had already been defeated in the southern states of America. Yet the editorialist’s loathing for what the paper described as a “slave colony” culminated in a lurid vision of the sugar industry facilitating a Chinese takeover.

“The Mongolianisation of North Queensland,” the Argus declared, “is only an advance operation of the Mongolianisation of all of Australia.”

The advocates of Northern Separation denied, again and again, any intent to create what the press referred to as a “black state”. Again and again, they were attacked on precisely that basis, with secession decried as a pretext for slavery, and slavery as a threat to whiteness.

In 1885, Griffith announced that he would prohibit the importation of Islanders within five years. His declaration promised to end the whole controversy, committing Queensland to the Liberal vision of a racially pure nation, rather than the Conservative plan for apartheid. But before the plan could come into operation, the Great Depression of the 1890s struck, threatening the state with economic ruination. Baulking at the prospect of closing the sugar industry in such desperate times, Griffith united with his former rival McIlwraith to delay the ban.

The prevarication by “the Griffilwraith” (as the press dubbed the unlikely alliance) transformed the sugar debate in Queensland from a local dispute into a national issue, one of the major controversies preoccupying colonial politicians as they planned an Australian federation.

‘The necessary complement of a single policy’

The present location of Canberra, halfway between Melbourne and Sydney, echoes arguments made by Queensland secessionists.

In 1886, John Murtagh Macrossan, a prominent Northern Separationist, had proposed establishing the capital of the new Queensland state away from existing population centres so as to minimise regional jealousies. The logic later prevailed with the creation of Canberra.

Even though the Queenslander Samuel Griffith played a major role in drafting a national constitution, the unresolved tension over indentured labour limited the participation of his state in the federation debates. The representatives of the other colonies might have been divided over the merits of free trade versus protectionism, but they shared the goal of an entirely white Australia . That was, indeed, a major motivation for unity: as Alfred Deakin later explained, only federal legislation could prevent the discrepancies between different laws that constituted “a half-open door for all Asiatics and African peoples”.

With the national project at odds with the planters’ continued hopes for some form of indenture, a divided Queensland did not attend the 1897/98 constitutional convention. It was only in the following year, when the sugar industry had been placated by the offer of federal compensation, that a pro-federation referendum narrowly succeeded in the state – a victory that signalled majority support for racial homogeneity.

In the Westminister Review, T.M. Donovan explained the triumphant Liberal perspective :

Federation will bring us statesmen, an honest democratic franchise, and will, no doubt, in a short time rid us of the Asiatic and coloured labour curse. Under the federal flag a piebald race will be an impossibility. […] total exclusion alone can save Queensland from the coloured problem of the United States.

His reference to America expressed a common perception that the legacy of slavery had polluted that country, in ways that young Australia, with its commitment to racial purity, needed to avoid. When Prime Minister Barton introduced the Immigration Restriction Bill by declaring non-whites to be fundamentally inferior and their exclusion something to be greatly desired, he did not consider the statements at all controversial.

The intensity of the discussion that followed (the Hansard account runs to nearly half a million words) was not the result of any programmatic disagreement among the speakers. On the contrary, the Leader of the Opposition George Reid declared unanimity on the aim that “the current of Australian blood […] not assume the darker hues”; the Protectionist Samuel Mauger cited “expert” opinion that bringing “the white man into contact with the black [would] suspend the very process of natural selection on which the evolution of the higher type depends”; and Labor’s James Ronald explained that Australians objected to “inferior races” because “they are repugnant to us from our moral and social standpoints”.

The debate centred not on the desirability of a White Australia (for on that the MPs were as one) but on how it might be obtained, after four decades of indentured labour had brought so many Islanders into the country. That was why slavery in the United States featured so heavily in parliament’s deliberations: it was invoked again and again as a cautionary tale of racial pollution .

America was, explained the Liberal MP H.B. Higgins, undergoing “the greatest racial trouble ever known in the history of the world” and so Australians should “take warning and guard ourselves against similar complications”. Foolishly, white Americans had failed to expel their former slaves. America would, he continued,

have been ten times better off if the negroes had not been left there. There are no conditions under which degeneracy of race is so great as those which exist when a superior race and an inferior race are brought into close contact.

A supportive press concurred. “The Australian Commonwealth,” explained Queensland’s General Advertiser ,

at the outset of its career has the golden opportunity of preserving to its citizens the purity of race. The great American commonwealth had not quite such an advantageous opportunity, insofar as long before it was founded the negro race had partly become rooted in American soil.

Local parliamentarians pledged not to make the same mistake, congratulating themselves on the superiority of their constitution over the one ratified by the United States, on the basis that its Section 51 (the so-called “race powers”) allowed them, as Prime Minister Barton had explained , “to regulate the affairs of the people of coloured or inferior races who are in the Commonwealth”.

Attorney General Alfred Deakin went so far as to boast that “our Constitution marks a distinct advance upon and difference from that of the United States”. Its passages explicitly permitting racial discrimination enabled parliament to pass the Immigration Restriction Act (to keep non-whites out) and the Pacific Islands Labourers Act (to deport those Islanders already in Australia).

“The two things go hand in hand,” Deakin explained. Stopping the “lesser races” from arriving (with Islander recruitment ceasing in 1903) and expelling those who were currently resident: these were “the necessary complement of a single policy – the policy of securing a White Australia”.

The new nation thus signalled its birth by doing what the United States did not dare: ethnically cleansing its former slaves.

‘These people want to hunt us out of the country’

The deportations began in 1904.

By then, the Islanders resident in Australia numbered perhaps 10,000. Many had built lives for themselves after their terms of indenture ended: finding jobs, building houses, raising families. Some barely remembered the places from which, decades earlier, they’d been taken. They were incredulous they were expected to return.

“Is it really true that white people want to send all boys back to islands?” asked an Islander in Mackay . “[W]e been work well in this land for white people, then why they want to turn us out?”

From the start, they resisted. In 1902, more than 300 Islanders signed a petition that they presented to Queensland’s governor and, via him, to the king. It pleaded for an end to a policy “contrary to the spirit of English common law and of freedom, justice and mercy”, a scheme that would “induce for hundreds, if not thousands of us, misery, starvation or death”.

In Mackay in 1904, a man called Henry Tongoa organised a Pacific Islanders Association. The association held meetings across North Queensland, where speakers explained that white men had refused to work in the cane fields and had been “glad to get us to do so”. The planters had become rich on Islander labour, they said , “with good homes, buggies, horses, pianos, sewing machines and all sorts of other good things which they could not buy or have before we came to the country and worked hard for them”. Yet, despite that, “these people want to hunt us out of the country”.

The protests – and persistent fears by Queensland planters about labour shortages – forced a 1906 Royal Commission into the program. The Commission recommended exemptions, including for the elderly, for long-term residents, those who could prove themselves in danger, and people who had married others from outside their own islands. But the expulsions were not halted.

In desperation, Tongoa sailed to Melbourne with another petition, this time for Alfred Deakin. The signatories begged for citizenship for those who wanted to stay. They even offered to remove themselves to a reserve somewhere in the north, a place where, they said, they would pose no competition to white men and could put their “long experience of tropical cultivation to use”.

Deakin remained unmoved. After the 1902 petition caused a stir in London, he’d responded by emphasising parliament’s unanimity about racial purity (as well as slandering the signatories as “ignorant savages unable to read and write”).

He’d also resorted to the old trick of legitimating repression by fulminating against enslavement. In reply to British humanitarians in London, he expounded on the brutality of the blackbirders, the recruiters’ trickery, and the cruelty of the planters.

Slavery was an abomination, Deakin said – and the government was shutting it down. A supportive press chided the Islanders for the petition, with the Telegraph dubbing them “ill advised” for resisting measures so obviously necessary. The paper invoked the experience of America, where, it explained, “the negro was emancipated […] but he was left in the country”. That, the Telegraph explained , was a disaster not to be replicated:

Now he lives and multiplies. The presence of about 10,000,000 negroes in America, without civil rights, is a great danger. It might be a greater danger if he had civil rights.

The purported opposition to slavery slid, once again, into a justification for tyranny, legitimating a rhetoric that became, at times, almost fascistic. When, for instance, Deakin’s government accepted the Royal Commission’s recommendations – including the exemption for married men – the Bulletin published a call to make miscegenation a crime punishable by hard labour so as to avoid a race war similar to one being fanned by ex-slaves in America. Its correspondent concluded by proposing the boiling in oil of “nigger-loving legislators […] who recently voted in favor of non-deportation of those Kanakas married to white men” – a suggestion to which the magazine’s editor added his endorsement.

The novelist Christopher Isherwood once described broadcasts of Hitler as conveying a sense of a man dancing up and down on the tips of his toes while he spoke. The shrill, mad voices in the Bulletin and elsewhere give the modern reader a similar impression.

In that ideological environment, the deportations continued. By 1908, only 2500 Islanders remained: a few of them because they successfully hid and the others because they’d been exempted. Most, however, were herded on to boats, in a ghastly process that separated lovers, friends and relatives from each other and from the country for which they’d toiled for so long.

In an extra act of bastardry, the government defrayed the expense of a process that was meant to be funded by employers, instead using money from the Pacific Islanders Fund – a trust established to remit wages owed to deceased labourers.

The Queensland Evening Telegraph recorded the understandable bitterness of the deportees, voiced once they were beyond the reach of the police on the wharfs and the jetties.

“Goodbye you white —,” they yelled, and your — white Australia!“

A legacy of racism

What might an apology for sugar slavery address?

What was done in in the cane fields was not merely the responsibility of the planters who benefited directly from it. Its centrality to politics in Queensland and, later, to Federation, implicated the men most responsible for Australia’s foundation.

To be clear, the big names in colonial politics – Deakin, Griffith, Barton, Watson and others – did not defend slavery in the manner of, say, those Confederate leaders whose statues still mar towns across the American south. On the contrary, most of them railed against the practice, competing with each other and with state politicians in Queensland to make their disdain known. ”[T]his government thinks,“ explained Barton bluntly, "that the traffic in itself is bad and must be ended.”

Yet, almost without exception, politicians used their hostility to slavery to legitimate a generalised racism, which they then presented as the foundation of a new state. Barton, for instance, introduced the Pacific Islanders Bill as embodying “the policy, not merely of the government, but of all Australia, for the preservation of the purity of the race.”

“Let us keep before us,” urged the Labor MP James Ronald during the debate ,

the noble idea of a white Australia – snow-white Australia if you will. Let it be pure and spotless.

Instead of facilitating justice, opposition to sugar slavery enabled institutionalised discrimination, a policy its advocates grotesquely draped in the garb of abolition.

The differences between indentured labour in Queensland and chattel slavery in the American south did not prevent Australian parliamentarians from comparing the two. In their discussions of the federation they were building, American slavery provided a constant referent. A past reliance on African labour had left, they said, the United States a piebald nation, subject to the mongrelisation that a white Australia would avoid. Racialised anti-slavery justified the expulsion of Islanders, an ethnic cleansing necessary for Ronald’s “pure and spotless” society.

As Deakin explained, White Australia meant “the prohibition of all alien coloured immigration, and more, it [meant] at the earliest time, by reasonable and just means, the deportation or reduction of the number of aliens now in our midst”.

With the passage of the Pacific Islands Labourers Act, the founders explicitly sought to control not just sugar slavery but also its historical legacy. That was the point. The law meant, they said, that white Australians – unlike their American cousins – could avoid the descendants of those they’d enslaved. The exclusion of the Islanders would excise an awkward history, with the slaves expelled from Australia’s border and its memory.

For a time, it seemed like they’d succeeded. The deportations marginalised the Australian Islander communities, with those who remained often forced on to the margins of white society, usually alongside an equally oppressed Indigenous population. Like African Americans under Jim Crow, Islanders faced segregation in schools, shops, theatres, swimming pools, workplaces and just about everywhere else. A raft of laws forbade them from working in the cane fields, with an industry that had relied overwhelmingly on Islanders in 1902 using nearly 90 per cent European labour by 1908. The resulting impoverishment was exacerbated by their exclusion from the welfare system – they could not, for instance, claim the old age pension until after 1942 .

Yet, despite the best efforts of white Australia, the Pacific Islanders survived – and they did not cease fighting to reclaim their past.

The ceremony in Bundaberg came as the result of prolonged lobbying from Islander organisations, part of a campaign that is forcing official recognition of blackbirding and sugar slavery. “The full truth needs to be told,” explained Emelda Davis from the South Sea Islanders Association to the Guardian back in 2017 .

It’s inaccurate not to talk about the trade in people that built this part of Australia and there’s a lack of knowledge about what happened. Our people are left out of the narrative.

That remains central to justice: an acknowledgment of the victims and what was done to them. But the reckoning cannot end there.

In 2019, on the 400th anniversary of enslaved Africans arriving in Virginia, the New York Times launched its “1619 Project”, a series of essays, events and podcasts intended to place the consequences of slavery at the centre of American history. “America,” explained Jamelle Bouie, one of its contributors, “holds onto an undemocratic assumption from its founding: that some people deserve more power than others.”

What might we say, then, about the assumptions fostered through the founding of Australia on 1 January 1901? Unlike in the United States, slavery was always illegal in Australia. From the colony’s first days, enslavement was understood as both a crime and a sin. No-one called himself a slaver, not even the overseers. That hostility to a practice still widely accepted elsewhere helped define the settlement and the nation it became, as the composer Peter Dodds McCormick recognised. “Australian sons, let us rejoice,” his lyric for a future national anthem urged, “for we are young and free.”

The line hinted at the ideological work that freedom performed, then as it does now. McCormick’s invocation of “youth” defined the nation in opposition to its Indigenous people and their ancient culture, identifying the country with its European invaders. His song implicitly excluded the Aboriginal population from the rights of citizenship, calling on Australian sons to celebrate a liberty they denied to others. By 1878, when McCormick wrote Advance Australia Fair, sugar slaves had been toiling in Queensland for more than a decade.

Australian politicians today praise a “national character” defined by tolerance and laconic egalitarianism. They recall a past exemplifying those traits, a chronicle of good-hearted larrikinism quite distinct from the depravities associated with other countries. Yet the record shows something different.

“We have decided,” declared Prime Minister Barton , “to make a legislative declaration of our racial identity.”

Australia’s first leader explicitly understood the ethnic cleansing that followed slavery (along with racialised restrictions on immigration) as definitive, a policy central to the nation’s self-perception.

In the process of federation, Queensland’s peculiar institution served as the grit around which Australia cohered, a persistent irritant that gave the new nation its shape. That’s a point on which Australians should ponder. The history of sugar slavery highlights a national obsession with racial purity, a corollary of the dispossession that white settlement entailed. The treatment of Pacific Islanders built upon the treatment of Indigenous people, the great weeping sore of antipodean history.

In thinking about that, we might also consider the contemporary use of self-congratulatory humanitarianism and the ways a very Australian rhetoric of fairness continues to legitimate official cruelties. When our politicians explain the indefinite detention of those fleeing persecution as a policy to prevent refugees drowning, their words echo previous invocations of morality in service of bondage, a tradition stretching back to 1788.

The American scholar Richard White once described history as the enemy of memory. “The two stalk each other,” he said, “across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain.”

That encounter matters, not simply because of the abstract virtue of truth prevailing over delusion but because an acceptance of history might enable a different future to be built.

The story of Queensland sugar highlights a particularly degraded notion of freedom, one in which liberty for some justifies oppression for others. But that’s not the only way to understand the concept. The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, for instance, once described freedom as “what we do with what is done to us”, a definition that aptly describes the long struggle by Pacific Islanders, and many others, to build something better in Australia.

The past cannot be altered. But it can, perhaps, inspire a different future.

An extract from Provocations: New and Selected Writing – Jeff Sparrow (Newsouth)

• Australian history
• blackbirding

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Photo Essay Of South Australia

40+ spectacular shots.

Photo Essay of South Australia

I’ve always loved where I’ve  lived.  Most of that time it’s been living on the road out of an old green army bag. At least that’s how it started over thirty years ago when I first hit the road and went West.

Home for me, has always been Australia. After travelling, living and working in almost every Australian state over that time I was extremely grateful that as Covid-19 closed our country down, fate had me literally a days drive from home. My home town and close community is in the Limestone Coast of South Australia. 

Had Covid-19 occurred 12 months earlier we would have been 3,100kms away. I feel for the other nomads who found themselves that distance or further away from their home towns or families. For the others who live permanently on the road that chose to make the mad dash and drive for up to ten days straight to cross Australia to reach their destinations. Then the travelers who literally have no base to return to, may they all have found safe havens to hunker down in. 

After almost two months in isolation, living in our motorhome in my parents driveway, South Australian Covid-19 rules have been relaxed to include  being able to travel again in our own state. 

I realise looking at the world currently that we have been extremely lucky in South Australia so far.

The disease has been devastating causing great suffering but I’m heartened to hear people stating the positives it has given them as life has slowed down. 

Spending more time with family members, getting to know the neighbours and being more present to the people around us. Local food and produce is better, local businesses providing great service and that our local natural environment could match many beautiful destinations in the world. 

When the borders open again we will be on the road to visit family in other states and bring you more of Australia.

But for now, stay safe and enjoy these photos we have taken in our home state, South Australia.

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Skilled Migrants

The Highly Skilled and Talented stream also allows the South Australian Government to nominate applicants who can contribute to the state’s critical priority sectors . Successful applicants will demonstrate how they bring new ideas, skills, and innovation to South Australia.

How to register your interest

• If you meet the eligibility guidelines below for the Highly Skilled and Talented stream, you are encouraged to submit a Registration of Interest via the  Skilled & Business Migration portal
• After your Registration of Interest (ROI) is reviewed, you may receive an invitation to submit a General Skilled Migration (GSM) application for state nomination

Please note: State nomination is a competitive process. There is no guarantee of receiving an invitation to apply for state nomination after lodging a Registration of Interest, even if you meet the eligibility guidelines. South Australia cannot indicate the likelihood of invitation or answer enquiries on this matter.

Eligibility guidelines – general

To be eligible under the Highly Skilled and Talented stream, you must:

• Currently live and work in South Australia, interstate, or overseas
• Be under 45 years of age at time of state nomination is approved
• Have a valid and positive skills assessment for your nominated occupation
• Have at least Competent English (Note: Passport holders or citizens of the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada or New Zealand do not need to provide an English language test result)
• Score at least 65 points in the Department of Home Affairs’ points test (including state nomination points)
• Have been an existing business for at least 12 months. Your employer must have had a premise located and operating in South Australia for the past 12 months.
• start-up companies may be exempt from the annual turnover requirement.
• businesses that operate in outer regional South Australia may be exempt from the annual turnover requirement.
• businesses that support the Defence sector may be exempt from the annual turnover requirement.
• Be a business of good standing and there must be no adverse information about the business

Applicants with Hi-Tech or Digital industry experience  

In addition to meeting the general eligibility requirements above,

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) Specialist
• Cybersecurity Analyst
• Data Scientist
• Robotics Engineer
• Cloud Architect
• Internet of Things (IoT) Specialist
• Blockchain Developer
• Renewable Energy Engineer
• Augmented Reality (AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) Developer
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• Be currently working full-time (at least 30 hours per week) in South Australia.

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• Demonstrate that you have experience working in a high skilled role in the Defence or Space industry.
• Intend to relocate to South Australia to work in the Defence or Space industry.

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A South Australia Travel Guide Featuring Epic Itineraries

Favoured by many for its reputation as the food and wine state of Australia and adored by those who can’t get enough of its mix of dramatic landscapes, incredible coastline, vibrant cities and rugged mountain ranges, South Australia comes close to the ‘state with it all’.

Food and wine culture is very much ingrained in the life of every South Australian and is adopted quickly by those that visit. The lush valleys deliver the perfect conditions for growing an abundance of flavours. The state’s famous wine regions – namely Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, Coonawarra and the Adelaide Hills – are where you’ll find plentiful cellar doors inviting you over the threshold. You’ll succumb to the temptation at one of the state’s food and wine festivals, of which much of South Australia travel revolves around. 

For those looking to get in touch with nature, the rugged Outback, wild landscapes of the Eyre Peninsula and hiking opportunities in and around the Flinders Ranges can be combined for an active South Australia tour. To mix it up, the vibrant capital of Adelaide followed by a few days on Kangaroo Island, where you’ll be surrounded by an abundance of free-roaming native Australian wildlife, presents the perfect combination.

While it’s not the first draw, the verdant coastline and sparkling blues of the ocean just add to what makes this part of Australia a joy to travel around. 

Fine landscapes, fine wine, fine food and fines festivals; need we say more? Read on to find out everything there is to know about South Australia travel.

Post Contents

Best Time to Visit South Australia

Kangaroo island, wine tours from adelaide, flinders ranges, barossa valley & clare valley, mclaren vale wine tours, eyre peninsula, fleurieu peninsula, discover the pink lakes of south australia, visit adelaide, port lincoln great white shark tour, self-drive around south australia, flying around south australia, trains, buses & ferries in south australia, private tours of south australia, staying in adelaide, staying in the barossa & clare valleys, staying in the flinders ranges and the outback, staying on kangaroo island, staying in the adelaide hills, staying in the murray river, lakes and coorong region, staying on the fleurieu peninsula , barossa valley, the cost of a south australia tour, adelaide festival – march, adelaide fringe festival – march, crush festival – january, laneway festival – february, tasting australia – april, 9-day wine, wilderness & wildlife self-drive, 6-day wonders of fleurieu: art & wine, 3-day thorngrove manor luxury in adelaide, 8-day wonders of the outback, adelaide to uluru self-drive, ready to book your south australia trip.

The driest of all the states in the country, South Australia gets very hot! Over 75% of the population of this state are based in the capital city of Adelaide – escaping the heat, anyone?

The southern part of the state, including Adelaide, has a much more Mediterranean climate with sea breezes helping to keep everyone cool. Whereas in the north, it’s much drier. Regardless, it can get very hot in both north and south during the summer. Adelaide temperatures can reach 46 degrees in the summer (from November to February). The winters (March to September) in South Australia tend to be cold and rainy. However, when we say ‘cold’, we mean ‘cold for Australians’ as it’s still around 20-30 degrees. 

Skin cancer is rife in Australia with some of the highest rates in the world, so make sure to wear sun protection. You can buy huge bottles of sun cream all over the country – applying suncream is a practise heavily encouraged by locals!

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Best Places to Visit in South Australia

One of the most diverse and intriguing states, you can have it all in South Australia  – from the southern Mediterranean climate to the arid Outback and the lush wine region. However, despite this, South Australia is left behind when it comes to favoured Aussie states to travel. The upside to this is the lack of crowded tourist spots!

If you’re looking to experience all of Australia’s best selling points in one place – nature, wine, produce and wildlife – then Kangaroo Island is the spot. Boasting 509 kilometres of coastline, Kangaroo Island is nature’s playground where you can lounge on pristine beaches, interact with local wildlife and go wine tasting. 

This 4-day Kangaroo Island tour will see you immersed in the diverse landscapes that this island is known for. 

Taking a spot on the top places to see in Adelaide list, the Adelaide Hills are just a 20-minute journey from Adelaide’s central business district but feel like you’ve entered another world. With several charming historical towns, cellar doors and marketings, the Adelaide Hills are a worthwhile day trip from the city. 

If you like the idea of staying in the Adelaide Hills, then this romantic 6-day Thorngrove Manor Getaway in Adelaide is perfect for you. 

One of the most wonderful outback destinations in Australia, ‘Flinders’, as it’s affectionately known by Aussies, is an ancient mountain range with plentiful local wildlife. From emus to kangaroos that wander across the road and yellow-footed rock wallabies, you can spot them all here. 

If you’re planning to visit South Australia, then a trip to the Flinders Ranges should be on your list if you want to experience the ‘Outback’. 

Venture away from the city and into the country to find yourself in the charming valleys of Barossa and Clare; both beautiful but different in their appeal. Barossa Valley is known as the perfect region to experience the most-renowned Australian wines and is continually hailed as one of the most romantic destinations in Australia. 

On the flip side, Clare Valley is an off-the-beaten-path experience for those seeking a little adventure accompanied by rolling countryside, verdant greenery and abundant vineyards. Explore both of these wine regions on this Adelaide tour to the Barossa and Clare Valleys .

Another worthy wine region in South Australia, the McLaren Vale is Barossa Valley’s cooler cousin. Giving off a Tuscan vibe, the vineyards and luxurious and perfect complemented by a beautifully calm coastline that makes you feel as though you have been transported to Italy. 

Experience what McLaren Vale wine tours have to offer on this 6-day Fleurieu Peninsula tour .

Face the wilderness in this great expanse of land known as the Eyre Peninsula, one part of South Australia’s stunning coastline. Home to jaw-dropping aquatic experiences such as diving with great white sharks, pristine coastline and a notable food and wine scene, the Eyre Peninsula is perfect for those that favour a watery adventure.

You can experience the Eyre Peninsula on a South Australia tour designed by one of our Local Designers . 

Encompassing the McLaren Vale and Port Eliot, the Fleurieu Peninsula is so special that it deserves a mention as a whole. On a Fleurieu Peninsula tour , you’ll spend your days tasting award-winning wines, discovering remarkable landscapes and dining at restaurants you’ll want to write home about. 

Did you know that South Australia was home to several incredible fuschia lakes?

Well, now, you do! Due to the high salinity levels, the presence of salt-loving algae and pink bacteria, South Australia is punctuated by bright pink lakes. Often fringed by verdant green fields or red ochre plains, these dreamy milkshake lakes have been stunning travellers for years. From the Outback to the Eyre Peninsula, you’ll find these lakes in many locations across the state.

A city often left out of many South Australia itineraries and Australia tour packages, Adelaide actually offers everything the rest of Australia offers but within 20 minutes of the city centre – wine regions, lush forests, pristine beaches, abundant wildlife and fine dining!

Built on a special structure so that traffic never had to be a problem, Adelaide is a dynamic city which comes alive during South Australia’s revered festival season. There are lots of cool things to see in Adelaide and with an abundance of great day trips from Adelaide available, who wouldn’t want to visit?

Just off the coast of Port Lincoln, you’ll find the Neptune Islands – one of the best places in the world to spot great white sharks. A short journey by boat and you’ll find yourself in the waters where great whites and dolphins hang out. 

To ensure the protection of the sharks and their environment, audio vibrations are used by eco-tour operations to attract the sharks. If you’re brave enough, you can be submerged in a cage before the water’s surface to have an up-close-and-personal encounter with these magical creatures.

How to Get Around South Australia

The capital, Adelaide, was built and designed with convenience in mind. Broad roads surround its central business district and great transport links whisk people around the city and out to its suburbs and beyond. The rest of South Australia seems to flow just as well as this city does. 

There are a number of ways to get around South Australia;

Driving is one of the most popular ways to get around South Australia as it allows you the freedom and the ability to stop wherever you like. For the most part, the roads in this state are well maintained, and speed limits keep drivers safe.   

If you plan to drive around South Australia, then it is best to fly into Adelaide airport and then hire a car at the airport to set off on your journey. Lots of the best places to visit in South Australia are reachable by day trips from Adelaide. 

Most major airports – Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane – are less than a two-hour flight from Adelaide. Adelaide airport also services a number of international flights and is just an easy 15-minute journey from the city centre. 

If you’re looking to visit multiple states within a trip then flying interstate is the best way. 

Adelaide is well connected to a number of major centres in Australia by bus and train. Within the state, the rail network connects Adelaide with a number of top destinations.

Bus SA is a network of bus companies which service routes to several parts of rural South Australia.

A close second, if not on par, to driving yourself, a private South Australia tour is another great way to see the state whilst also having plenty of freedom to adjust your itinerary.

This one-week South Australia trip takes you from Adelaide into the Outback, Flinders Ranges, the wine regions and to Kangaroo Island accompanied by your private driver and a local guide for the entirety of the trip. 

Where to Stay in South Australia

From Outback lodges, leafy hideaways in the mountains and beachside camping to five-star internationally renowned hotels, South Australia has a range of accommodation suitable for all travellers. 

When it comes to deciding where to stay, each region and destination brings a variety of different options.

Adelaide is a vibrant coastal city with a big draw. If you’re looking for a luxury retreat in the centre of the action, moments from world-famous restaurants and boutique bars, then Adelaide is the place to go. For more affordable accommodation, you can head out of the city to one of the nearby beaches. 

If you want to roll out of bed and be steps away from multiple cellar doors and wineries, then the Barossa Valley and Clare Valley are the perfect places to stay. From romantic escapes to family budget stays, there are all types of accommodation in these wine regions. Many of the boutique lodges boast stunning views, their own vineyards and exceptional wine and food. 

Camping, glamping, luxury resorts, cosy homesteads and more, whether you like to rough it or crave those luxuries while in nature, you’ll find something to suit you in this part of South Australia. Eco-lodges are also rising up as a great option for South Australia tours in the Outback. 

Accommodation on Kangaroo Island varies from a choice of simply lodges to cute cottages and stunning retreats and hotels. This 6-day South Australia tour features a gorgeous little Kangaroo Island lodge for the perfect mix of nature, indulgence and luxury. 

A romantic escape just 20 minutes from the city of Adelaide, the Adelaide Hills seem like a world away with its winding lanes, pretty little towns and boutique hotels. The Thorngrove Manor Hotel in the Adelaide Hills is a perfect representation of the stunning properties that you can stay in here. 

Whoever you’re travelling with, or even if you’re travelling alone, this region will present an option to you so perfect that you won’t want to leave. From charming bed and breakfasts to river houseboats and more, being close to the great outdoors is best in the Murray River, Lakes and Coorong region.

Relax, surf, wine, dine and more; the Fleurieu Peninsula is the perfect place to cosy up in your own holiday cottage or grab your camping gear and sleep in the great outdoors. On this 6-day Fleurieu Peninsula tour , you’ll spend a day in a winery so that you’re never too far from a delicious red and a cheeseboard.  

Places to Eat and Drink on Your Trip to South Australia

South Australia is a legend among the six states for its food and wine. From the bountiful Barossa Valley to the lush Adelaide Hills and everything in between, South Australia is a playground for wines and diners. Discover South Australia’s top foodie spots here;

If you were to ask a local for a restaurant recommendation in Adelaide, you’d have to prepare yourself for a tidal wave. Adelaide’s restaurants, cellar doors and local produce are world-class. Right on the coast and a short drive from Australia’s famous wine region, Barossa, Adelaide is perfect for those that want to indulge in exceptional food and wine experiences. 

It is often said, if you want the best of Australia, Kangaroo Island is your place – superb beaches, fine wine and fresh seafood. Kangaroo Island is where you’ll find ocean-to-plate experiences, beautifully crafted wines and dining experiences, including one where you dine within the branches of a 100-year-old fig tree!

If your idea of foodie heaven is to stand in the sea and slurp oysters fresh as the day with an expert guide on an oyster farm tour, then the Eyre Peninsula is your place. Join a seafood tour to sample the freshest of the fresh or upgrade your seafood experience by dining at one of the award-winning restaurants scattered across this peninsula.

One of the world’s finest wine-growing regions, the Barossa Valley is a lush, fertile, undulating stretch of land just an hour from Adelaide. For wine lovers and foodies, Barossa is the ideal place to sample vintages, dine at cellar doors and taste some of Australia’s most revered wines and dishes. 

Factoring in all the different variables, designing a tour that is within budget can feel like a bit of a headache. Luckily, our Local Designers have been doing this for years and years. They take your travel style, budget and interests and design an Australia tour that is perfect for you. 

Taking care of everything from airport transfers to rental car pick-up, hotel and restaurant reservations, guided activities and tours, our Local Designers make planning a trip to Australia, or anywhere else in the world, simple!

As an example of a trip to South Australia, this 9-day South Australia tour costs AU$2,506 per person and includes:

• Eight nights of three-star accommodation
• Seven activities
• Eight breakfasts, one lunch and one dinner
• Rental car hire
• Entrance fees
• Licensed English speaking guides at designated activities

Simple changes such as the type of accommodation and how many places you visit can adjust the cost of your trip. 

At Designer Journeys, we understand that everyone travels differently and has different interests, priorities and preferences when it comes to planning an Australia tour. You can browse our range of fully-customisable Australia trips and tailor any one of these tours to your preference or simply use the ‘ design your own trip ’ function to connect with a Local Designer who will create the perfect trip for you.

Special Events and Festivals in South Australia

Known as the ‘festival state’, South Australia does not disappoint when you look at its event calendar. Almost every month of the year features an eclectic event celebrating the state’s food, wine, arts, music or wildlife. 

One of the biggest arts festivals in the country, the Adelaide Festival occurs annually in March. Now running for more than 55 years, the festival continues to delight all those that attend with internationally acclaimed artists, theatre productions and world-class musicians.

The Adelaide Festival happens at the same time as the Adelaide Fringe Festival, the second-biggest festival in the world after the Edinburgh Fringe that happens each year in August. The Adelaide Festival brings an eclectic mix of acts to venues across South Australia.

Similar in style to that of the Edinburgh Fringe, Adelaide Fringe Festival differs from the Adelaide Festival in that the venues hosting musical, theatre and spoken word acts are spread across 500 venues in and around Adelaide for 31 days. You are sure to find something to suit at the Southern Hemisphere’s largest open-access festival.

The sound of corks popping and wine glasses filling is the soundtrack to the Crush Festival which occurs every January in the luscious Adelaide Hills. The area, renowned for producing fine wines, comes alive as the best wineries showcase their product through long lazy lunches, tasting sessions and degustation dinners. 

Showcasing contemporary Australian and international music, Laneway Festival attracts thousands each year. Not only do you find this unique festival in Adelaide, but Laneway Festival also has a regular slot in the calendars of several cities across Australia including Melbourne and Sydney. Vibrant cafes, galleries, restaurants and markets all become stages to showcase new music. 

Adelaide’s town square comes alive for ten days dedicated to celebrating South Australia’s best produce. Award-winning chefs, restaurateurs and winemakers serve up an array of goodies for a gourmet feast like no other. As one of Australia’s oldest food festivals, Tasting Australia has earned a reputation as the ultimate foodie festival. 

Tours in South Australia

Here’s our pick of the must-do tours in South Australia;

Experience what the mid-north has to offer and travel through the Flinders Ranges, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley and more on this South Australia road trip !

Experience what the McLaren Vale, one of Australia’s most iconic wine regions, and Kangaroo Island have to offer on this Fleurieu Peninsula tour !

Experience ultimate seclusion and luxury on this trip on this stay at Thorngrove Manor, one of the best places to visit in Adelaide .

Embark on a journey from Adelaide through the Outback on a fascinating adventure through desolate landscapes on this unique Australia tour . 

With Designer Journeys, you can take the hassle out of planning a trip and leave it in the capable hands of one of our 200-plus Local Designers in countries across the world. Our Local Designers in Australia know this country like the back of their hand and will take your budget, interests and travel style to design the perfect trip! Browse our gallery of fully-customisable Australia tours here or design your own Australia tour to connect with a Local Designer now!

Grace Homer

At my desk, you'll find me tapping out inspiring adventures, finessing incredible trips designed by Local Designers and focussing on all things content. Having lived in Southeast Asia between Vietnam and Bali for three years, I'm now keeping toasty with a cuppa in a little English town planning future adventures for which I have constant inspiration. Offline, there's nothing I enjoy more than long cycle rides, fueling the foodie in me and seeking out new spots - preferably all at the same time. Find me on LinkedIn or Instagram and keep an eye out for travel inspiration here!

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Australian literary journals

Listed below are Australian literary journals and publishers, as well as a selection of international publications, that are open for submissions. This list os not exhaustive and guidelines do change regularly, so check their websites for the latest information.

If you are seeking publication for a manuscript, you can also consider securing a literary agent; please see the Australian Literary Agents Association for more information. Please note that inclusion on this page is not an endorsement, you should always carefully check terms and conditions for information on rights and eligibility. Writers should never have to pay for publication through a legitimate publisher, for more information on vanity publishing see here .

Subscribe to our weekly e-news for the latest opportunities straight to your inbox, and view 2024 competitions, awards and opportunities here . Keep an eye on our program of workshops to get you ready to submit your writing.

If you’d like a pre-submission assessment of your documents before you start querying editors or agents, contact [email protected] .

Do you have a publication to share? Submit it for review here .

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• Australian journals + publications
• Australian publishers
• International journals

AUSTRALIAN JOURNALS + PUBLICATIONS

Antithesis Journal Antithesis is Australia’s long-running graduate journal of contemporary theory, criticism and culture.

Antler Velvet An indie online arts magazine welcoming poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and art.

Archer Magazine An award-winning print publication about sexuality, gender and identity. It is published twice-yearly in Melbourne, Australia, with a focus on lesser-heard voices and the uniqueness of our experiences.

Aniko Magazine Welcomes flash fiction, short stories, creative non-fiction, and poetry. Contributors are paid $125 .

Arena Online Provides weekly online commentary on emerging social and political issues. It accepts unsolicited submissions of 800-1200 words.

Aurealis Science fiction, fantasy and horror short stories that are of a “speculative” nature are considered.

Australian Book Review ABR is one of Australia’s major cultural magazines, presenting high-quality journalism and new writing.

Australian Poetry Journal The Journal, published six-monthly, is guest-edited each issue by different voices, to ensure excellence and inclusivity. It also publishes insightful, curious articles.

Axon: Creative Explorations An international peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the characteristics of creativity and the creative process. It is published twice a year (usually in March and September) and encourages research into and discussion of the broad domain of creativity.

Baby Teeth Journal A literature and multi-media arts journal, supporting emerging artists.

Backslash Lit They invite pieces that use digital and electronic mediums as a vessel for creativity, including but not limited to source code poetry, hypertext poetry, interactive fiction, ASCII art, and generative art.

BAD Western Sydney a new crime anthology BAD Western Sydney is a new crime anthology set in the urban/suburban sprawl of Western Sydney. We are looking for short stories and microfiction to include in the anthology that evoke that strong sense of place. 12 September.

The Big Issue An independent magazine that publishes informative and entertaining articles on a variety of subjects including arts and entertainment, street culture, lifestyle and personal profiles, as well as fiction.

The Borough An online (and annual print anthology) poetry journal seeking local and international poetry. Please see their website for specific callouts.

Bramble Bramble is a new journal based in the Illawarra that is edited – and solely publishes creative works – by disabled writers and artists.

Curioser Magazine Accepts poetry and short fiction in the magical realism genre.

Cordite Cordite Poetry Review accepts poetry on an ongoing basis, as well as peer-reviewed research on Australian and international poetry and poetics.

Creatrix Creatrix is the online journal of poetry and haiku published quarterly by West Australian Poets Inc., the peak poetry body in Western Australia.

DEBRIS *On hiatus*. DEBRIS is a story-driven literary magazine.

DJed Press An online publication that exclusively works with and publishes Bla(c)k creatives and other creatives of colour (POC).

The Font A literary journal about teaching and learning languages at home and abroad. It looks at the topic from a more creative, literary, and humanistic perspective than the more traditional academic publications.

Frankie A bi-monthly magazine that celebrates and inspires a community of creatively inclined, curious and kind-hearted people, featuring interviews, rants, and research pieces.

Griffith Review Accepts essays, reportage, creative non-fiction, fiction, memoir, visual essays and poetry.

Going Down Swinging Publishes fiction, creative non-fiction, spoken word, commentary, essays, comics, poetry and experimental work online.

HEAT HEAT is a distinguished Australian literary journal renowned for its dedication to literary quality, and its commitment to publishing innovative and imaginative poetry, fiction, essays, criticism and the hybrid forms.

The Human Writers Looking for unpublished writing by older adults 60+ who may or may not have writing experience. Accepting memoir, musings, fiction, poetry of 1000 words or under.

Hyades magazine A new online magazine that seeks to publish the best poetry and short fiction.

InScribe inScribe is a bi-annual print journal and perennial website that aims to share and inspire meaningful encounters with the world through the diverse art of creative writing.

InReview poetry Readers’ original and unpublished poems of up to 40 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected] . Submissions should be in the body of the email, not as attachments. A poetry book will be awarded to each accepted contributor.

Island Magazine Island welcomes submissions from Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and Australians living abroad, of fiction, nonfiction and poetry.

Kill Your Darlings KYD is an eclectic online magazine of commentary, essays, interviews, fiction and reviews.

Liminal Liminal magazine is an online space for the exploration, interrogation and celebration of the Asian-Australian experience.

Mascara Review Submissions by e-mail, considering previously unpublished work. Submissions are currently open for Mascara Literary Review’s very first print anthology, to be published with Ultimo Press. They seek writing that addresses and explores the theme of RESILIENCE through fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

Meanjin One of Australia’s oldest homes for new writing. Publishes Australian fiction, essays, long-form journalism, poetry, memoir, interviews, and more.

Meniscus An online, free access literary journal that publishes high quality, innovative poetry, short fiction, and creative essays in English, or in other languages with a good parallel translation.

Overland Overland is a quarterly print journal (publishing essays, stories and poetry) and an online magazine, publishing non-fiction articles each week day.

Peril Magazine An online magazine focused on issues of Asian Australian arts and culture, showcasing new literature and stories through diverse forms, including poetry, drama, translations, creative writing, memoir, essays, biographical profiles, interviews as well as critical and reflective writing about the visual arts, music, performance, theatre, film and other cultural arts practices.

Portside Review Poetry, prose (essay, review, interview, short story). There is no limit to how many times you can submit. Submissions are free and open all year.

Puentes Review Puentes Review is published twice a year and welcomes submissions from Latinx artists and writers in Australia. They are looking for previously unpublished fiction, non-fiction, poetry, translations and artwork. All successful contributions are paid.

Pure Slush Established in 2010, Pure Slush currently publishes print anthologies of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry .

Plumwood Mountain An Australian and international journal of ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Quadrant Quadrant is published ten times a year, monthly, except for combined issues in January-February and July-August. Each year we publish more than 200 articles, 200 poems, 70 book reviews, 20 short stories and 75 letters to the editor.

Right Now Magazine Accepts pitches on human rights issues in Australia. Unpaid.

Rabbit Poetry A pioneer in the field, Rabbit intends to celebrate the potential for poetry to explore and interrogate the boundaries of nonfiction writing.

The Saltbush Review For the inaugural issue of Adelaide’s new literary journal, to be launched in August, they are seeking submissions of short fiction, creative nonfiction, and memoir of up to 2,500 words on the theme of ‘Water.’ Shorter works such as flash fiction are also welcome, as are works that challenge genre boundaries.

Social Alternatives Accepts refereed academic papers, commentaries, book reviews and essays, short stories and poetry related to the aims of the journal. The journal also accepts proposals for themed issues from guest editors. Proposals may emerge from workshops, networks and conferences.

Sojournal Sojournal publishes travel stories. They are looking for one black and white image (taken by contributor and/or free from any form of copyright) and an accompanying non-fiction travel story/poem of no more than 800 words. Unpaid.

Southerly One of Australia’s oldest continuous literary journals. Southerly continues to publish the best in new fiction and poetry, reviews and criticism, from and about Australian and New Zealand authors.

Stereo Stories Publishing evocative, concise stories and short memoir based around a song.

StylusLit An Australian, bi-annual online literary journal, publishing poetry, short fiction, novel excerpts, creative non-fiction, interviews and reviews. The Suburban Review Celebrates work which might otherwise fall through the cracks of mainstream publishing, providing a platform for under-represented and structurally excluded voices.

TEXT TEXT is an international peer reviewed journal published by the Australasian Association of Writing Programs. TEXT publishes two general issues per year and between two and four special issues per year.

trash to treasure lit Accepts the writings that you self-rejected, deemed ‘not good enough’, trashed, binned, or have forgotten about.

Voiceworks Voiceworks is a national literary journal that features exciting new writing and art by young Australians.

Westerly Publishes short stories, micro-fiction, poetry, memoir and creative non-fiction, artwork, essays and literary criticism.

Witcraft Member and author Doug Jacquier has launched a new magazine project, Witcraf, dedicated to skillfully written stories that are brief, humorous and engaging.

AUSTRALIAN PUBLISHERS

Affirm Press An independent Melbourne-based publisher dedicated to publishing great Australian stories, big ideas, and engaging local and international authors. Publishes Australian literary and genre fiction, non-fiction and children’s books; does not accept unsolicited short stories, poetry or novellas. Accept email submissions on the first Monday of each month only.

Aboriginal Studies Press (AIATSIS) Scholarly and general works, children’s books, biographies, research papers and monographs about Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia. Accept website submissions.

Allen & Unwin Allen & Unwin is Australia’s leading independent publisher and is the 2020 Publisher of the Year. The Friday Pitch allows for writers of all genres to have their work considered by one of their in-house Submission Editors.

Australian Scholarly Publishing Publishes scholarly and general books under its Australian Scholarly & International Scholarly (academic), Arcadia & Arden (general & art books), Tantanoola (fiction) and Chancery Bold (law) imprints. Submissions open.

Black Inc. Books Accepts general and commercial non-fiction – including history, current affairs, sports, and biography – and literary, YA, and commercial fiction.

Brio Books A boutique, independent Australian publisher, publishing fiction and non-fiction books by Australian and New Zealand authors under four imprints.

Buon-Cattivi Press A small Adelaide-based press house that publishes unique Australian literature and promotes new and emerging authors, publishing “original stories that challenge established genre boundaries and disrupt traditional writing styles”.

Currency Press Accepts plays for consideration that have had a professional production. In the case of established writers, they also consider plays for publication that have a professional production contracted for the near future.

Debut Books A platform to amplify great storytelling, welcoming submissions from first-time Australian authors, across all genres of fiction (especially Australian-based genre fiction).

Echo Publishing Publishes fiction and nonfiction, with a focus on resilience and survival, history, strong women, and the transgression of boundaries and breaking down of barriers.

Escape Publishing (Harlequin) A small, specialist publisher of romance fiction, including contemporary, historical, paranormal, fantasy, thriller, sci-fi, erotic romance and LGBTQIA+.

Federation Press Publishes non-fiction law and related subjects.

Giramondo Publishing Company An independent, Australian, university-based literary publisher of award-winning poetry, fiction and non-fiction, renowned for the quality of its writing, editing and book design, accepting unsolicited submissions.

Glimmer Press A new, Adelaide-based small publisher.

Hachette Australia One of Australia’s largest publishers, welcoming submissions from fiction, non-fiction and children’s book writers who are residents of Australia or New Zealand.

Hardie Grant A creative global publisher of quality, stylish, cutting-edge books. Not currently open to unsolicited submissions, but check back.

Hardie Grant Children’s Publishing Accepts fresh, exciting and well-written stories that kids and teenagers will love to read.

HarperCollins While HarperCollins only considers material submitted by literary agents, they do accept entries to the Banjo Prize, find out more here . HarperCollins publishes fiction (commercial, literary, science fiction and fantasy) and general nonfiction, including biography/autobiography, memoir, history, health/wellness, sport, politics, culture, lifestyle, cookery and humour.

HQ (Harlequin) HQ is a boutique publishing division under the auspices of the multinational publishing house HarperCollins. They publish a wide range of fiction from psychological thrillers, gripping family sagas and gritty crime to layered historical novels, romance and contemporary book-club fiction.

Joan Press A publishing imprint for Allen & Unwin, curated by Nakkiah Lui, publishing books across all genres with the hope of finding a home for “the voices that get pushed to the fringes”.

Larrikin House Publish quirky, original, and humorous kid-focussed books. Open to picture books and junior fiction.

La Trobe University Press Publishes leading scholars and experts, producing books of high intellectual quality, substance and originality.

Magabala Books Australia’s leading Indigenous publishing house, accepts a limited number of unsolicited manuscripts directly from authors and literary agents.

MidnightSun An Adelaide-based small press publishing new and unknown writers and ‘unusual’ topics.

Melbourne University Publishing MUP accepts political, history and current affairs submission; illustrated art and lifestyle books and the best in Australian academic research and writing.

Murdoch Books (a division of Allen and Unwin) Publishes a wide range of food, gardening and lifestyle titles.

National Library of Australia Publishing NLA Publishing creates books that tell stories by and about Australians, publishing non-fiction and children’s titles in the fields of history, art, photography, the environment and literature.

Pan Macmillan Australia Publish a wide range of bestselling, award-winning and high-quality titles. Submit fiction, nonfiction, children’s books and YA.

Pink Shorts Press A new press that publishes readable, socially conscious and slightly offbeat books. They are looking for interesting ideas and voices, particularly creative non-fiction, but also surprising fiction and poetry, sustainable lifestyle and translations. Prefer stories that have South Australian connection.

Penguin Random House Australia From future classics to cherished favourites, PRH champion emerging voices and bring readers the highest-quality books from established, award-winning and bestselling authors. PRH Australia comprises an adult publishing division and a children’s publishing division, see guidelines for each.

Pantera Press Home to the next generation of talented Australian writers, Pantera Press is proudly all about great storytelling.

Puncher and Wattmann Poetry, fiction, life writing, poetry anthologies and critical non-fiction. Puncher and Wattmann books have won or been shortlisted for a number of literary awards including the Miles Franklin, Prime Minister’s awards and various state and Premiers’ literary awards. Their titles treasure eclecticism, wit and iconoclasm. Usually receive submissions from 15 November to 30 January.

Seizure An imprint of Brio books, publishes fiction novellas via annual Viva la Novella competition, open between September and December.

Scribe Scribe accepts unsolicited and un-agented submissions in a three week window, in 2021: 1 April through to 21 April 1 September through to 21 September.

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster are currently not accepting unsolicited material including manuscripts, but will consider agented work; they publish and distribute a variety of books in Australia and New Zealand across a range of genres including fiction, non-fiction and children’s books under local and international imprints.

Spineless Wonders A Sydney-based multi-platform publishing house devoted to working collaboratively to produce books, ebooks and audiobooks as well as immersive and engaging literary-based experiences. Since 2011, Spineless Wonders has specialised in short fiction.

Text Publishing An independent, Melbourne-based publisher of literary and commercial fiction and non-fiction.

Thames & Hudson Australia Publish Australian illustrated, children’s books and narrative nonfiction in the following areas: arts (fine or decorative), history (Australian, natural or cultural), architecture, science, design, fashion, gardens, photography and popular culture.

Ultimo Ultimo Press is an independent publisher established in 2020 with the simple ambition to become home to Australia’s best storytellers; they accept submissions of general literary fiction and nonfiction.

UNSW Press Accept submissions for general, scholarly and literary non-fiction.

UQP UQP publishes books across non-fiction (history, politics, current affairs, biography and memoir, environmental issues); literary fiction, including short stories; children’s and young adult (YA) books (fiction and non-fiction); and poetry.

UWAP UWAP shares stories, research and education with the world to encourage thought, inspire action and create and connect with engaged communities, publishing award-winning fiction, non-fiction and scholarly works.

Ventura Press Sydney-based independent book publisher.

Wakefield Press A leading independent publishing company based in Adelaide, publishing literary and popular fiction, young adult fiction, history, biography, art, poetry, food, wine, the environment, education and true life.

Wombat Books Publishes books for children including picture books, early readers and middle fiction.

Photo via Express Media

INTERNATIONAL JOURNALS

**For a thorough database of international publications, visit Chill Subs.

The American Reader Bimonthly magazine publishing fiction, poetry and criticism.

Apex Magazine An online zine of fantastical fiction, accepting short stories.

Asimov’s Science Fiction An established market for science fiction stories, pays 8-10 cents per word for short stories up to 7,500 words.

Barrelhouse Barrelhouse is an independent non-profit literary organisation that aims to bridge the gap between serious art and pop culture.

Clarkesworld Magazine An award-winning science fiction and fantasy magazine that publishes short stories, interviews, articles, and audio fiction

Creative Nonfiction Accepts nonfiction from emerging and unpublished writers, rom immersion reportage to personal essay to memoir.

Epoch Press Epoch Press is an independent press dedicated to publishing exceptional creative nonfiction. We currently publish a literary journal three times a year and aspire to include publications of manuscripts in the future.

Fantasy and Science Fiction One of the major magazines of the genre. They pay 8-12 cents a word.

The Fiction Desk A short story publisher specialising in anthologies of new short fiction from debut and established authors, based in the UK.

Granta Granta is committed to championing new voices and is open to unsolicited submissions of fiction, non-fiction and poetry, for both print and online publication.

Harvard Review Online Harvard Review publishes short fiction, poetry, essays, drama, and book reviews.

International OCD Foundation Welcomes submissions from those living with OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) or a related disorder, including BDD (Body Dysmorphic Disorder), their family/friends, researchers, and medical professionals.

Lightspeed Magazine A digital science fiction and fantasy magazine, publishing short stories and novellas.

The Moderate Review Established in 2020, The Moderate is a lynx eye dedicated to discovering and promoting new voices in fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and art in all its forms.

Narrative magazine Accepts previously unpublished manuscripts of all lengths, ranging from short short stories to complete book-length works for serialization.

N+1 A print and digital magazine of literature, culture, and politics published three times yearly.

The New Yorker One of the most prestigious publications in the world, accepting fiction and poetry submissions.

One Story Publishes one literary fiction story at a time. Submission periods: January 15th – May 31st and September 7th – November 14th.

Reed Magazine California’s oldest literary journal. Publishes fiction, poetry, non-fiction, art and emerging voices.

Structo magazine A UK-based literary magazine.

Story Unlikely Story Unlikely is a monthly E-zine that publishes fiction and memoir short stories in an array of genres and styles. Payment is 5 cents a word for previously unpublished stories, and 1 cent a word for reprints.

Uncanny An online speculative/ SF magazine, accepting short story, nonfiction, poetry, and novella submissions.

Virginia Review Accepts poetry, non-fiction and short fiction.

The Zodiac Review An online, semi-annual literary magazine presenting short fiction by both emerging and established authors.

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Exploring South Australia: The Ultimate Guide

If you have ever thought of visiting South Australia but know little about what exactly it has to offer as a travel destination (other than being great for wine), then you’ve come to the right place. South Australia, in my eyes, is one of the most underrated places to visit in Australia .

Regardless of whether you’re time-strapped and just looking for a weekend away with the family or the girls, a romantic SA getaway , or maybe have a little bit more time to explore, South Australia offers endless leisure, gastronomical and cultural experiences.

This article provides a general guide to South Australia, so you can plan the perfect South Australia itinerary. 

Note: This post contains affiliate links. If you click through and make a booking, I earn a small commission at no cost to you.

Key facts you should know about South Australia

Location and terrain.

South Australia is in the southern central part of Australia. The state’s terrain is made up of arid landscapes, low level mountain ranges spanning 800km, and 4,204km of ocean coastline including its islands.

South Australia is the fourth largest state in Australia with a landmass of 983,482 km².

As of 2020, the local population of South Australia was approximately 1,771,000 people.

South Australia uses Australian Central Standard time (ACST) or GMT+10:30 

The state experiences climatic extremes from north to south. The southern parts of the state, along the coastline and around the capital of Adelaide, has a Mediterranean-like climate, while the northern parts experience extreme highs and lows due to its desert landscape. During the winter months, it can get quite cold and rainy.

History and culture of South Australia

South Australia is home to many Aboriginal groups, whose culture, language, and history goes back tens of thousands of years, and connection to country is just as important today. Discovering this rich culture and connection should form an important part of your travels to South Australia.

Western exploration of the coast of South Australia was first conducted by the Dutch in 1672, before actual colonisation by the British in 1834. The state was designated as a colony for migrants, making it the only state in Australia not established as a Penal colony.

It was also the only state that did not use terra nullius (nobody’s land) laws against indigenous groups; however, there are still historical reports of land grabbing through violence. Despite this, South Australia to this day still prides itself as being the country’s only “free state”. The culture of its local people is like the other states with an appreciation of the outdoors and sport. However, due to its rich historical roots in wine-making, wine lives at the heart of South Australian culture.

When is the best time to visit South Australia?

The best time to explore many parts of the state is between March to May as these are the driest months with pleasant temperatures to enjoy the city and surrounding wine regions. The summer months between December and February are perfect for those looking to explore the coastal towns.

How to get to South Australia

The easiest and quickest way to visit South Australia is by flying from any other major city in Australia into the capital, Adelaide.  Adelaide is serviced by all major domestic airlines (Qantas, Virgin Australia, and Jetstar).

For international visitors, it is also possible to get direct flights from several major airports such as Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong, Doha or Auckland.

Getting around South Australia

Many incredible places to visit are within a three-hour drive from Adelaide, including the Fleurieu and Yorke Peninsulas, and several wine regions. For those wanting to visit the west coast or the far north, then there are extensive rail and road routes to take you where you need to go.

To get the most out of South Australia, I really recommend hiring a car. This gives you flexibility to head wherever you want, when you want. We usually use Europcar as they have great deals and you can earn Qantas frequent flyer points.

Things to see and do in…

If you have ever heard the phrase “the city of churches,” then Adelaide, the state’s capital, must have been mentioned as a topic of conversation. However, despite its rep as a big country town with a bunch of churches, Adelaide has so much more going for it. You’ll find year-round festivals (such as the Adelaide Fringe , among others), an incredible restaurant and bar scene, and it’s a stone’s throw away from some of the world’s best wine regions.

Adelaide is a fantastic city to explore on foot, due to its relatively compact size. Leigh Street and Peel Street are the best streets to grab a bite or taste the local wines without having to leave the city centre.

If you want more of what makes Adelaide such a charming destination, then you can include a visit to the Adelaide Central Markets, the Botanical Gardens, the South Australian Museum, the Adelaide Gaol or even organise a boat tour from the harbor to see the city from the water.  

Frequent trams will take you down to Glenelg, Adelaide’s most bustling beach, and you can take the tram for free within the CBD limits to get from one side to another. A free city loop bus service also runs around the city.

Read our guide on the best things to do in Adelaide for more info, then find accommodation using our Adelaide accommodation guide .

Adelaide Hills

The Adelaide Hills are part of the Mount Lofty Ranges and dotted with eye-catching, leafy villages. The hills have the closest options of wineries, famous for making wine at some of the coolest temperatures in Australia. It is also home to top-rated restaurants serving up some of the best produce that South Australia has to offer.

For those who like to explore natural settings by food, the Hills offer some stunning walks – but can get a bit chilly so don’t forget a jacket!

One of my favourite places to eat is Sidewood Estate in Hahndorf – perfect for a long lunch or romantic dinner.

An amazing place to stay is Longview Vineyards in Macclesfield; click through to read my review.

Barossa Valley

Calling all wine lovers out there, the Barossa Valley, only an hour outside of Adelaide, is a must-visit for those who want to indulge themselves with tasting some of the most acclaimed wines on the planet.

The best and only way to experience the Barossa valley is to stay there exclusively for a few days. The region boasts quaint little towns and a wide array of amazing accommodation options perfect for families, couples or groups of friends looking to go on the most epic wine tour of their life.

Click through to read our Barossa Valley travel guide .

McLaren Vale

McLaren Vale, another internationally renowned wine region sits just 40 minutes south of Adelaide. Here you’ll find equally renowned gastronomic experiences next to stunning, rugged coastlines.

For more information, check out our romantic weekend in McLaren Vale guide, and our list of the best places to eat in McLaren Vale .

Clare Valley

A trip to the Clare Valley should include the towns of Clare, Sevenhill, Auburn, Mintaro, Watervale, and Polish Hill River. While many amazing wines are made here, the region is most famous for Reisling, and you can cycle the Reisling Trail as a fun way to get around.

Aside from wine, the Clare Valley offers several fun options for families, including the Mintaro Maze.

Murray River, Lakes, and Coorong

The Murray River flows from the Snowy Mountains in New South Wales, through Victoria, and into South Australia, cutting across the South-East of the state before ending at Goolwa on the Fleurieu Peninsula (known as the Murray Mouth). Along South Australia’s South Eastern coastline is the Coorong, where the river forms lakes and estuaries that teem with wildlife.

Many beautiful towns dot the banks of the river, from quaint Mannum an hour’s drive from Adelaide, to the more lively Renmark.

Wineries and distilleries such as Banrock Station and 23rd Street Distillery are great options, but many people explore this region for outdoor pursuits. Think a chic houseboat holiday, jet-skiing or wakeboarding, and camping along the river banks or in the Coorong National Park. The Coorong is particularly great for kayaking and 4WD adventures.

Yorke Peninsula

The Yorke Peninsula has some of South Australia’s most accessible seaside escapes, boasting over 700 km of coastline to explore, starting only an hour’s drive from Adelaide. The Yorke Peninsula is perfect for those who love all types of outdoor activities and for exploring the stunning Dhilba Guuranda-Innes National Park.

Camping is an option in both the National Park and at many different campgrounds all across the Yorke Peninsula. Facilities range from luxe cabins at Point Turton, to free camping on the beach at Barkers Rocks. There really is an option to suit everyone’s tastes!

For those that enjoy taking it a tad easier, then there are endless beaches to relax on, that can be followed by a visit to one of the many local breweries or wineries that scatter the peninsula.

You’ll find darling towns all across the Yorke Peninsula. In particular, we’ve spent a lot of time in Moonta and Port Hughes recently, so be sure to check out the guide.

Eyre Peninsula

For adventurers looking for their next thrill, Port Lincoln on the Eyre Peninsula can provide an excellent base, especially in the form of world-famous aquatic activities. The rest of the Eyre Peninsula is also an incredible destination for outdoorsy types.

Just off the coast of Port Lincoln, you can submerge yourself just off the Great Australian Bight by booking shark cave diving. You can hire a boat to play with sea lions or even watch whales and their calves directly from the coastline. The Eyre Peninsula is also well known for having some of the best seafood in Australia, that can be paired with an abundant array of locally sourced wines.

If this adventure sounds like you, then you can choose to take an eight-hour road trip from Adelaide, or a short regional flight with Qantas or REX to Port Lincoln.

Interested? Read our Eyre Peninsula guide !

Fleurieu Peninsula

A short drive from Adelaide, the Fleurieu Peninsula is arguably South Australia’s most popular seaside destination.

Victor Harbor, Port Elliot, Middleton and Goolwa are are excellent vacation towns with plenty to do, and surfers can catch epic breaks at Waitpinga.

Nature lovers can try their luck at spotting some marine life such as whales, dolphins, and seals, while history buffs will find 1800s shipwrecks and the region’s whaling past fascinating.

Coonawarra and Limestone Coast

Situated between Adelaide and Melbourne is the Limestone Coast. Here you’ll find equally stunning coastlines, wine regions and eateries as the other regions of South Australia.

A truly unique feature is the Naracoorte Caves National Park, South Australia’s only UNESCO World Heritage site.

It is also home to Mt Gambier, where you can see breathtaking volcanic crater lakes and Coonawarra, a small-town famous for making bold red wines with 36 wineries located within 20km. 

Make sure you read our guide to the Limestone Coast .

Flinders Ranges

The Flinders Ranges make up the largest mountain range in South Australia and features some of the most dramatic landscapes you can find in Australia.

The Southern Flinders Ranges is a 3.5 hour drive on sealed roads. However, for the more adventurous, exploring further north, deeper into the Flinders Ranges, by 4WD is a brilliant option.

Whatever you choose, exploring the Flinders Ranges allows you to bear witness to stunning gorges, sheltered creeks and some of the best outback scenery in Australia.

Kangaroo Island

A quick ferry ride from Adelaide will land you on one of Australia’s most stunning island destinations – Kangaroo Island. Home to unique wildlife, clear blue waters to play in, great food and its own wineries, you could be mistaken for thinking you’re in some of Australia’s more popular island destinations.

Even so, this island destination is best explored in the summer months where you can really embrace all it has to offer.

Click through to read my three-day Kangaroo Island itinerary .

Far North and West

If you want to see the far North of the state, the easiest way to do this is by car. Some amazing outback destinations in the north to explore include Lake Eyre, Marree, The Oodnadatta Track, and the Simpson Desert. The most famous however is Coober Pedy, an apocalyptic-like destination where most of its residents live underground.

Travelling to the far West is also best by car but has some parts accessible by train. Travelling past the Eyre Peninsula, the most notable area you can visit is the famous Nullarbor Plains, a 1,200km flat and unfertile land with no trees. It’s a once in a lifetime trip. 

If you aren’t too interested in stopping at too many places but want a unique and onward journey through the far West or North that leads out of South Australia, then you can hop on the Indian Pacific or The Ghan train in Adelaide. The Indian Pacific is the long-haul train that goes from Sydney to Perth, while The Ghan cuts straight up the centre of Australia up to Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Cover image courtesy of Kane Overall and South Australian Tourism Commission

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Amelia is a health researcher and mother of two who loves inspiring other families to add more adventure to their lives. She spent ten years in the travel industry before changing careers, and A Winter Escape is her way of still helping people plan the best possible holidays around the world.

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The Basics of Essay Writing

What does a good essay need.

An academic essay aims to persuade readers of an idea based on evidence .

• An academic essay should answer a question or task .
• It should have a thesis statement (answer to the question) and an argument .
• It should try to present or discuss something: develop a thesis via a set of closely related points by reasoning and evidence.
• An academic essay should include relevant examples , supporting evidence and information from academic texts or credible sources.

Basic steps in writing an essay

Although there are some basic steps to writing an assignment, essay writing is not a linear process. You might work through the different stages a number of times in the course of writing an essay. For example, you may go back to the reading and notetaking stage if you find another useful text, or perhaps to reread to locate specific information.

Possible steps (In no strict order)

  See next: Getting Started

Essay and assignment writing guide.

• Getting started
• Research the topic
• Organise your ideas
• Write your essay
• Reference your essay
• Edit your essay
• Hand in your essay
• Essay and assignment planning
• Answering assignment questions
• Editing checklist
• Writing a critical review
• Annotated bibliography
• Reflective writing
• ^ More support

Top Assignment Writing Services in South Australia

Where OZ students find best writers, trusted services, highest quality, cheap prices, professional customers support

As a student in South Australia(SA) or further afield in Malaysia or India, you’ll know that you’re under a lot of pressure to get your assignments in on time. That’s why more students are now trying to find the best essay writing services in South Australia to help them out when they need that help the most. Here’s everything you need to know about finding top writing sites, and how Australian Reviewer can help.

Top 3 SA Writing Services:

• BigAssignments.com - Writers Score: 4.7; Customers Score: 4.8; No. of Reviews: 617 VISIT SITE
• LiaHelp.com - Writers Score: 4.7; Customers Score: 4.6; No. of Reviews: 546 VISIT SITE
• EssayRoo.com - Writers Score: 4.6; Customers Score: 4.6; No. of Reviews: 497 VISIT SITE

Why Students Need Help With Their Assignments

Students worldwide are feeling the pinch when it comes to their studies these days. If you’re a student, it’s likely that’s not all you are. You’re a parent, a worker, a carer, or more. You could be trying to fulfil all of these roles while you’re trying to get your degree. In fact, right now a staggering 90% of students are working as well as studying.

There are also students in Adelaide, Mount Gambier and Gawler that have come from abroad in order to study. Studying in Australia is known to be a fantastic opportunity for international students, especially those located in China, Vietnam and Singapore. In fact, in 2018 over 510,000 students from over 190 countries have been welcomed into Australia this year. These students often need extra help with their studies, leading to them looking for tutors and experts to help them out.

How AustralianReviewer Can Help

Ok, so you’re a student at University of South Australia or University of Adelaide, and you need help with your studies. You need an assignment writer to help you get that assignment or essay written. How can you find the right company to get that essay writing task done?

That’s where AustralianReviewer.com come in. We look at several different aspects of Australian writing sites to help you pick the right one. Our reviews cover:

Quality: Are they able to put out top writing, every time? Will you get good grades with their writing?

Price: What are the essay writers charging? Are they cheap, and can Flinders University students afford what they’re asking for their assessment services?

Support: Any student, whether they’re from Australia or further afield such as Latin America, will need help from time to time. Can an assignment help Adelaide service offer top customer service?

Trust: We look at feedbacks from previous clients, to see whether a company is trustworthy. Should TAFE South Australia students trust a company with their private data?

Writers: A good company should have writers experienced in law, nursing, accounting, and more. Are their writers well versed in their subjects, and can they help you get the grades you need?

How To Pick The Best Assignment Writing Services in Adelaide

So, if you need assignment help, you’ll need to start looking around for assignment help services. Here’s how you can ensure you’re picking the right service for you as a Torrens University Australia student.

• Check they’re offering original content. Ensure you’re reading the reviews from past customers and that you’re reading the samples, to ensure that you’re paying for a brand new piece of work.
• Look for the discounts. Many writing services offer discounts to first-time customers, so make sure you’re taking advantage of them. There are also discounts for multiple orders on some sites, so if you have a few different IT or management essays to do, check those out.
• Look at their privacy policy. You shouldn’t hand over any details until you know how they use your data. If they don’t have a privacy policy, stay away.
• Read the guarantees carefully. Most good writing services will have guarantees that tell you what happens when you place an order, and what you should expect. For example, most companies will have a revision policy if you’re not happy with the essay you’re given.
• Check out the writers. You should be able to choose a writer who can handle your essay for you. If you’re a programming student, for example, you should be able to find a writer with experience in your field.

Find A Writer With AustralianReviewer.com

We’re dedicated to helping you find a writing service that’s right for you. Before you put any money down with a service, make sure you’re reading our reviews and find out if that company is legit. We’ll help you get the help you need.

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Essay on Australia

Students are often asked to write an essay on Australia in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Australia

Australia’s location.

Australia is a country in the Southern Hemisphere, located between the Pacific and Indian Oceans. It’s the world’s smallest continent but the sixth-largest country by total area.

Natural Beauty

Culture and people.

Australia is a multicultural country with people from many backgrounds. English is the main language. Australians are known for their friendly and laid-back nature.

Australia has a strong economy, with sectors like mining, agriculture, and tourism playing key roles.

250 Words Essay on Australia

Introduction.

Australia, often referred to as “Down Under”, is a unique country that is also a continent. It is renowned for its rich culture, diverse ecosystem, and vibrant economy.

Geography and Biodiversity

Australia is the world’s smallest continent but the sixth-largest country by land area. It boasts a diverse geography, from the arid deserts of the Outback to the snowy peaks of the Australian Alps. This diversity extends to its wildlife, with species like kangaroos and koalas that are found nowhere else on earth.

Australian culture is a blend of its Indigenous roots and more than two centuries of immigration. This multicultural mix has created a vibrant, inclusive society that values diversity. Australians are known for their laid-back attitude and friendly demeanor, often characterized by the term ‘mateship’.

Australia has a strong, stable economy, ranked 13th largest in the world. It is rich in natural resources, including coal, iron ore, and gold. The services sector, including tourism, education, and finance, also plays a significant role.

500 Words Essay on Australia

Australia, also known as “the land Down Under,” is a country known for its rich cultural heritage, diverse ecosystems, and progressive economy. The country is characterized by its unique flora and fauna, captivating landscapes, and vibrant cities that blend modernity with tradition.

Australia is the world’s sixth-largest country by total area and is located in the Southern Hemisphere. It is surrounded by the Indian and Pacific Oceans, featuring a wide range of geographical landscapes, from arid deserts and stunning beaches to lush rainforests and snow-capped mountains. This geographical diversity has resulted in a unique biodiversity. Australia is home to a myriad of endemic species, including the kangaroo, koala, and emu. The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef system, is another testament to Australia’s rich biodiversity.

Australian culture is a blend of its Indigenous heritage and multiple waves of immigration. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, the country’s original inhabitants, have a rich cultural history dating back at least 65,000 years. Their stories, traditions, and living cultures are a significant part of Australia’s identity.

Influences from British colonization are also evident in Australian culture, particularly in its legal and political systems. More recent immigration waves from Europe, Asia, and Africa have further diversified the cultural fabric, making Australia a multicultural society with a high degree of social integration.

Education and Research

Australia is a vibrant and dynamic country with a rich history, diverse culture, and robust economy. Its unique biodiversity, commitment to education and research, and multicultural society make it a fascinating subject of study. Understanding Australia’s complexities and nuances provides valuable insights into how diverse elements can coexist and thrive in harmony.

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Prisoner health and wellbeing.

Health issues, health care, special needs and diet information

Health and wellbeing

Menus and nutrition.

Prison menus are developed by the Food Services Manager at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and meet nutritional and portioning guidelines. Menus generally run on a 28 day cycle with changes twice a year to cater for seasonal produce.

Prison industries provide milk, bread and seasonal fruit and vegetables. Prisoners prepare the food under instruction of qualified supervisors.

Special diets

Upon admission prisoners will be asked if they have any special dietary requirements. Prisoners who identify themselves as vegetarian upon admission are eligible for the vegetarian menu option.

Prisons endeavour to provide meals for prisoners with cultural, ethnic or religious beliefs that require special food preparation. If a prisoner has a medical condition that needs a special health diet then the medical staff must prescribe it.

Eating arrangements

Prisoners are provided with an appropriate cup, plate and utensils. Meals will usually be eaten in a cell but there may be a dining room where prisoners can dine with others. Prisoners can buy food and soft drinks that are available via the canteen system.

Find out more about t he canteen system .

DCS has a dedicated prison health service. Health records are kept confidentially by the SA Prison Health Service. The prison health service will only share information with DCS in special circumstances such as when the prisoner is assessed as being at risk, requires medical treatment or requires a special diet.

All prisons have a health clinic. Some prisons have a 24 hour health service, others have a nurse present until 9 pm. An on-call service is available for other times.

Doctors are available for appointments on set days. Prisoners can request a doctor's appointment by completing a prisoner health form. If a medical emergency occurs or the prisoner sustains an injury a visit from a doctor or nurse can take place.

Health records are kept confidential by the SA Prison Health Service and DCS does not have access to them.

Find out more on the SA Prison Health Service .

The medical staff will determine if hospital treatment is required and organise transport. If an ambulance is required it will be called. Correctional staff will escort at all times during the transfer.

Prisoners in hospital can make phone calls and have visitors after they have been in hospital for five consecutive days. All calls and visits must be approved by the General Manager of the prison.

The General Manager can approve earlier visits if there are compassionate grounds or extenuating circumstances.

Find out more about supporting prisoners in hospital .

Hygiene products

Feminine hygiene products are freely available where there are female prisoners.

Dental care

Dental hygiene products including tooth brushes and toothpaste are freely available. Dentist appointments can be arranged by request using the prisoner health form.

Opticians and glasses

Opticians are available by request using the prisoner health form. Glasses and contact lenses are permitted. They might be removed if there are concerns about a prisoners safety or others.

Prisoners are not eligible for Medicare.

Health issues

All South Australian prisons and prison grounds are smoke free.

DCS offers a range of supports to help prisoners give up smoking.

Alcohol abuse programs

Alcohol abuse programs and groups are available to help those who are having a problem with alcohol.

Drug rehabilitation programs

Drug rehabilitation programs are also available to support and help prisoners that are suffering withdrawal symptoms and need medical help. Methadone replacement programs are available.

Group therapy and information sessions are available in some prisons. Progression to lower security classification or successful parole application may depend on participation in these programs.

Hepatitis, HIV and other blood diseases

People in prison have higher rates of blood-borne diseases than the general population. DCS educates prisoners and our staff about the risk of Hepatitis, HIV and other blood diseases.

To reduce the possibilities of passing on an infection all activities involving needles are banned. This includes sharing needles, body piercing, tattooing, sexual activities and medicines and vaccinations that require injections.

Mental health issues

DCS has a team dedicated to the mental health of prisoners.

Prisoners are assessed and asked a series of questions on arrival to prison. This allows medical staff to make an informed decision on how well the prisoner is coping with entering prison. A range of services and support is available to all prisoners.

Staff are continually looking for symptoms of depression, anxiety or evidence of self-harm. If a prisoner has worries or concerns about themselves or another prisoner they should speak with their case manager or medical staff.

A mental health assessment may be necessary. If a prisoner is detained under the Mental Health Act 2009 they will be moved to a mental health facility. This is a decision for health professionals and not corrections staff.

Preventing self-harm and suicide

Prisons have cells that are designed to reduce the risk of a prisoner attempting to self-harm or commit suicide. These cells have limited fixtures and fittings and have 24 hour cameras.

Prisoners with self harm thoughts or are worried and concerned about someone should contact any member of staff immediately.

Prisoners with physical disabilities

DCS has facilities to cater for physical disabilities. Some cells have features such as wider doors and no steps to assist with wheel chair access and poor mobility.

Prisoners with a physically disability will receive the same level of support they would receive in the community.

Physical disabilities are noted in the prisoners offender plan to ensure that they have access to the required medical and health facilities.

Prisons provide health and wellbeing care to elderly prisoners which is of an equivalent standard to what they would expect to receive in the community.

Transgender and intersex prisoners

DCS is committed to meeting the needs of transgender and intersex prisoners and ensuring their safety is not compromised.

Transgender prisoners will have an individualised management plan developed to take into consideration their individual needs.