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Creating a Rural Civilization

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The Ghost Cities of Australia

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Geography ((BRIEFSGEOGRAPHY))

Abstract

This chapter scopes the early to mid-twentieth century period (1901–1945) in which Australians strove to create a “rural civilization.” The fantasy that propelled this proposed civilization was that Australia might one day support a rural population of hundreds of millions. This, the proponents of the “garden city” model suggested, would deliver both physical and social health benefits while bolstering Australia’s defenses with a healthy “country-raised” population. The numerous new city proposals that emerged following the Second World War included a scheme to build cities around a permanently flooded Lake Eyre and dotted along vast railway networks circumscribing Australia’s arid interior. All these proposals floundered, however, because of the harsh realities of Australia’s interior and the enduring tyranny of distance. Added to this was the dominance and livability of the existing capital cities on the coast.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Charles Bean (1879–1968) was a historian and journalist who fervently believed in the redemptive power of rural areas and was involved in the Town Planning Association (Inglis 1979).

  2. 2.

    Ion Idriess (1889–1979) was a prolific writer from Sydney. The combination of an ambitious view of Australia’s progress and the romance of its history ensured the popularity of his books (National Centre of Biography 2017). His publishers sometimes resorted to locking Idriess in a room until he had finished a newspaper article or book chapter because (allegedly) he was a notorious drunk. This could partly explain some of his more outlandish proposals which are covered later in this chapter…

  3. 3.

    The term “pathology” is used in this book to refer to any deviation from a healthy condition, as opposed to the study of diseases.

  4. 4.

    There was little evidence cited to support this claim and, with the exception of poor urban slums, the physical health of rural dwellers was not necessarily better than that of suburban city dwellers.

  5. 5.

    This division was within the Department of Post-War Reconstruction and was disbanded following the change of government in 1949 (Cities Commission 1973).

  6. 6.

    British authorities did not formally recognize planning as a discipline at this time.

  7. 7.

    Alfred Brown had been involved in the planning for the British garden city of Welwyn.

  8. 8.

    William Hatfield (1892–1969) was a writer and “bushman” who worked for many years in the north of South Australia, Central Australia, the Northern Territory, and Queensland. He was passionate about the agricultural development of Australia’s interior (Serle 1983).

  9. 9.

    At the conclusion of the First World War groups of war-weary ex-soldiers were becoming a disquieting presence in Australian cities. One solution was to engage these often disruptive servicemen with a new patriotic battle—the battle to conquer the “vast open spaces” of Australia (Cathcart 2010).

  10. 10.

    Alfred Griffiths (1879–1948) was director of a company that built locomotives, other rolling stock, and steel sleepers (French 1983). He was widely known throughout his home state of Queensland, particularly in the engineering and pastoral worlds (Idriess 1944).

  11. 11.

    Nonetheless, watered down versions of Howard’s garden city model, “garden suburbs,” proliferated in Australia’s capital cities.

  12. 12.

    The unhealthy conditions (i.e., slum areas) in the capital cities in time were addressed not through the decentralization of population away from these cities but by focused urban renewal that aimed to eliminate “slum” conditions in situ.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Australian Urban Design Research Centre, University of Western Australia, Perth, WA, Australia

    Dr. Julian Bolleter (Deputy Director)

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  1. Dr. Julian Bolleter
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Correspondence to Julian Bolleter .

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Bolleter, J. (2018). Creating a Rural Civilization. In: The Ghost Cities of Australia. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89896-4_2

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