Australia’s Long History of Being Invaded

No matter what China’s recent naval drills in the Tasman Sea were meant to provoke, the result has mainly been a lot of often vacuous discussion as to whether or not Australia should feel provoked. There has been a huge diversity in the coverage, from rather sensible-sounding reflections on adopting some kind of diplomatic stoicism, to the host of the Today Show eagerly asking his so-called defence expert whether we should “poke the bear”. Very little coverage mentions that we have been conducting similar drills around China for years. This was certainly lost on Shadow Treasurer Angus Taylor, who accused China of “gunboat diplomacy”. 

While the ABC declared that this was China’s reminder that Australia “has no hope” against it, and that it is no longer certain the US would come to our aid, one thing – unless I am much mistaken, which I could be –  seems to have been missed by the press entirely. This is that the Australian media has a very long history of hyping up our imminent seaborne invasion, despite there only being one example successful seaborne invasion of the continent, of which modern Australia is the product. Here are some of the more interesting examples from pre-Federation history of invasions that never happened – there were over two hundred war scares throughout the 19th century according to the History Guild.

Throughout its early history, Australia spent much effort preparing for a French attack that never came; although interestingly, in the mid-1790s, Spain was actually preparing a fleet in Montevideo with which it planned to seize the fledgling colony of New South Wales. This was in order to protect Spanish trade in the Pacific from the dodgy convicts who were sure to become privateers. Australians later mirrored those fears (in more racist terms), with an 1854 letter to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald worrying that the “mongrel republics of South America are infested with desperadoes to whom piracy would be pleasant pas-time”.

Fear of Spanish invasion was however generally far less pervasive than fear of French invasion, which waxed and waned throughout Australian history. The colonisation of New Caledonia provoked particular anxiety, the thinking seemingly being that once French troops were in the neighbourhood they would one day get bored and take Australia. In 1860, for example, the Adelaide Observer fretted, “Who knows but the intense desire of the French to join in the Chinese war may be merely a pretext for bringing into these seas a force which otherwise could not be brought here without exciting the gravest suspicions!”. To be fair, the arrival of a French fleet off Adelaide would certainly have aroused gravest suspicions, along with a great deal of puzzlement, had it actually happened.

Ironically, when seen from the present day, probably the most provocative move ever made by a foreign navy was made by the United States. In 1839 two American men-of-war ships entered Sydney Harbour at night and anchored at Sydney Cove, leaving the next morning with the grim warning that “If [we had been] enemies, it would have been in our power before daylight to have fired all the Shipping and store houses, laid the town under contribution and departed unhurt.”, though Lieutenant Charles Wilkes only said that later on. In fact, Australian-American relations were often quite tense throughout the 19th century, with conflict often centring around the whaling industry, where America was prone to throwing its weight around. For example, in 1841 the Southern Australian complained that “It appears it is not the intention of her Majesty’s Government to disturb the peaceable possession the Americans have obtained of our whaling grounds.”

Largely beginning with the outbreak of the Crimean War, Russia came to be Australia’s principal source of anxiety. Two incidents are particularly worth mentioning, firstly the hilarious defence of Melbourne against a Russian ship that didn’t exist in 1854, and the complete lack of defence against the 1863 Sydney visit of the 17-gun Bogatyr, which like the Americans before it, sailed into the harbour at midnight. According to a letter to the editor in the Sydney Morning Herald, this was to scout the coast and Botany Bay. The writer was very put off by the uneventful visit, telling readers to “LOOK OUT!!!”.

In 1864, upon learning of Russian plans to attack Australia in order to discredit Britain in the event of war, a NSW Legislative Assembly Select Committee was warned that “We are constantly exposed to unexpected attack through international complications involving the Mother Country”. It was around this time that the popular British fiction genre of “invasion scare novels” reached Australia. Some examples include the 1877 novel “The Invasion” (the feature image of this article), where 6000 Russian troops descend on Sydney and are only fought off after much bloodshed, or “The Anglo-Russian War of 1900”, in which Melbourne is taken with exaggerated atrocity by visiting Russian ships.

As The Australian pointed out in 1888, “a few minutes consideration of the smallness of the British fleet in Australian waters must convince even the most thorough Imperialist that, whenever war does break out, these colonies must depend principally upon themselves for their own protection against invasion.” That still holds true today, even with America having taken over Britain’s role. 

One thing worth repeating is that Australia has only ever been invaded once in recent history, and that invasion was largely made possible by the incomparably superior weaponry of the British, their considerable experience at large scale invasions and occupations, and their germs to which the Aboriginals had very little resistance. None of Australia’s putative invaders since have had these advantages. The Japanese bombing northern Australia in the Second World War is the closest it has ever come, and this was in no way an invasion.

As was made clear to the NSW Legislative Assembly way back in 1864, Australia is only ever threatened because of its association with a major power (Britain and now the US). China hasn’t suddenly figured out how to sail to Australia, what has changed is that our principal ally and the only one with genuine international reach is now at best undependable. Maybe we should thank China for the reminder.