Hazardous Beginnings

Abstract

Europeans living in the northern half of the Australian continent during the nineteenth century were united, and spurred on by, a dominant ideology of material progress, combined with a strong fear of being engulfed, both numerically and culturally, by foreign invaders. These bulwarks of Eurocentricism gave voice to strongly pro-natalist policies, coupled with intense immigration drives. The image of vast, uninhabited stretches of country waiting to be tamed by resolute, hard-working Britons added to the momentum for increased population. Progress, conceived in the masculinist framework of aggressive expansion, ruthless destruction of the Aboriginal people, economic development and environmental exploitation, needed not only capital, brawn and sheer determination to succeed but, also, healthy young citizens. Demographers graphs, however, fuelled anxiety that this dream might be undermined - for infant and maternal mortality rates in the tropics and sub-tropics were high compared with the rest of Australia and Britain. Masculinist attributes alone could not build the new society. Childbirth was potentially a hazardous and lethal undertaking which threatened to deprive the nascent colony of many fertile women and, in their demise, future generations.