THE AUSTRALIAN ARK – Federation to the Modern Era | 1900–1982
By the time Japan fully invaded China in 1937, there was heightened concern for the stability of the region. Against this tense backdrop, trade opportunities were weighed against vulnerability to attack. There was a belief that Japan’s economic investments in the Pacific and the Australian mainland were a feature of the country’s southern expansion policy. Exports of wool and iron ore to Japan dwindled and eventually evaporated as a worker-led movement halted the trade. Attorney-General Robert Menzies, who, out of this ruckus, became known as Pig Iron Bob, accused the union of dictating foreign policy, and the events heralded the rise of a more militant and powerful union movement in Australia. On the other side of the world, the rise of fascism in Italy also had the government on tenterhooks, with many local Italian communities in Australia, particularly in Melbourne and Sydney, swept up by their home country’s new nationalism and the aura of Benito Mussolini’s authoritarian dictatorship. The ascendancy of the Nazi Party in Germany also stirred national concern, especially after Adolf Hitler abolished the office of the president (Reichspräsident) and declared himself the Führer of Germany in 1934. But in Australia, despite the odd sympathiser, there was much less fervour or support for the Nazi cause among the multigenerational German-speaking communities. Still, after war broke out, many Australians with Italian or German heritage – many of whom were involved in the wine industry – were interned. On the home front, awareness of local risks had emerged. It was becoming apparent throughout the 1920s and 1930s that the great pastoral expansion during the colonial era had deteriorated Australia’s fragile landscape. Broad-acre agriculture, the introduction of chemicals, the disappearance of natural habitat, and indiscriminate hunting were eroding Australia’s unique fauna and flora, the most notable extinction being the thylacine, the Tasmanian tiger. Hunted to extinction, the last of these living marsupials died in a private zoo in Hobart in 1936. Frontier conflicts, as they were known, between Indigenous Australians and settlers had been ongoing since 1788, starting within months of the First Fleet’s arrival. It is generally accepted now that these conflicts continued right up to 1934. In his 2021 book, Truth-Telling, eminent historian Henry Reynolds estimates that a minimum of 100,000 Indigenous Australians and between 2,000–5,000 settlers died in these conflicts, which occurred in various locations across the country. . . . Reflecting the emerging national economic disaster, over 30% of South Australia’s population found themselves unemployed during the Great Depression of 1929–1933. Against this setting, many agricultural industries were coping with a collapse in international commodity prices, including wheat and wool. The severe trading conditions and massive drop in employment led to economic hardship
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