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The Road to Batemans Bay is the story of competing ventures to
create 'the Great Southern Township' on the South Coast of New South
Wales in the early 1840s. The idea of developing the furthest reaches of
settlement was linked to the hopes of southern woolgrowers for a road from their
properties to the coast, over the Great Dividing Range. The township proponents
dreamed that having a quicker and cheaper connection to Sydney would allow them
to open a port second only to Port Jackson. The scene begins with the proposed
coastal township of St Vincent, in an age of optimism: settlement is expanding,
exports are growing and land prices are soaring, generating Australia’s first
land boom. Before long, however, the colony experiences a catastrophic economic
depression whose ‘pestilential breath’ infects those with a stake in the coastal
townships. Alastair Greig follows the fate of these individuals, while also
speculating on the broader fate of South Coast development during the
mid-nineteenth century. Greig gives a unique insight into many aspects of
colonial life—including the worlds of Sydney’s merchants, auctioneers, land
speculators, surveyors, map-makers and lawyers—as well as its maritime
challenges. The Road to Batemans Bay is a chronicle of how Australia first
developed its land-gambling habit and how land speculation led to the road to
ruin.
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Keywords
- 1840s depression
- Australasian & Pacific history
- Batemans Bay
- colonial biography
- History
- Humanities
- land speculation
- Literature & literary studies
- Prose: non-fiction
- Regional & national history
- south coast history
- thema EDItEUR::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::D Biography, Literature and Literary studies::DN Biography and non-fiction prose
- thema EDItEUR::N History and Archaeology::NH History::NHM Australasian and Pacific history
Links
DOI: 10.22459/RBB.2023Editions