What challenges did Governor Macquarie face when he arrived in Australia?

CHALLENGES HE FACED:

M.H. Ellis, one of his biographers, wrote:

The country was divided by faction as a result of the Bligh rebellion, and was almost starving; its morals were in ‘the lowest state of debasement’. Public buildings were in ruins; roads and bridges were impassable. There was no ‘public credit or private confidence’. Macquarie’s first step towards mending these depressing conditions – Ellis went on – was to bring together the warring sections of the colony though the institution of official gatherings and community functions, among which the colony’s first horse races and agricultural fairs were notable.[1]

Deeply depressing conditions, however, existed in the colony he inherited, which he immediately set about transforming.

HOW DID HE SOLVE THEM?

That was Macquarie’s way – reflected still in the Australian preference for conciliation and consensus, for negotiation and discussion rather than the brute exercise of authority.

In the years that followed, he instituted a period of unprecedented progress. And in many ways he set the pattern, and defined the priorities of enlightened public administration in the modern era. He built schools, hospitals, roads – what we like to call infrastructure – on a scale not seen before. He instituted our system of public and private education. We see his influence today in the emphasis given to education by all Australian governments.

Two hundred years ago he saw the role of education in building a nation and made it one of his first priorities. So today, when we hear talk of an education revolution, remember Macquarie thought of it first. At the end of his governorship, one-fifth of the colony’s revenue was being spent on educational services.

To a large extent, Macquarie established the nation’s economy – an environment in which commerce and manufacturing could flourish. In 1813 he introduced coinage; in 1817 the colony’s first bank – the Bank of New South Wales – opened its doors. Under Macquarie, the colony acquired its first courthouses, its first magistrates, its first places of public worship, its first independent newspaper.

When he left office in 1821, he could point to 265 public works carried out during his term, many designed by Francis Greenway, the former convict appointed civil architect – roads to Parramatta and the Blue Mountains, the five planned towns, including Richmond, Liverpool and Windsor, built beyond reach of floodwaters from the Hawkesbury River. The city of Bathurst was largely his creation.

Early in his administration, encouraged by the Reverend William Cowper, of St. Philip’s Church, he presided over a meeting to set up the Benevolent Society, which was later detached from the church to function as an independent agency. The Society’s aims were “to relieve the poor, the distressed, the aged and the infirm, and to encourage industrious habits among the indigent poor …”

For a contemporary Governor, especially one with a professional interest in mental illness and the plight of the abused and the traumatised, Macquarie’s example has been an inspiration. In 1810 he established the colony’s first psychiatric hospital, the Castle Hill Asylum, which received its first 30 patients from Parramatta Gaol. It is remarkable that, almost 200 years ago, we had a governor with a sympathetic understanding of the needs of the mentally ill.