18 November 1831, Sydney Harbour, Colony of New South Wales
They could wait, damn their eyes, thought outgoing Governor Ralph Darling, just like he had made them wait these last four weeks. He felt there was little appreciation either from locals who viewed his rule as far too heavy handed, even tyrannical, nor from the sort of milksops that were in charge of affairs these days in London. After the short tenure of Brisbane as Governor, the changes instituted during his own tenure would, in his opinion, stand the fledgling colonies in Australia in good stead for the future.
Events under his rule were many and varied. They had organised exploration parties that had ranged as far South as the Murray River in 1824, proclaimed Van Dieman's Land as one entity under one Lieutenant Governor the same year. In 1826 the whole continent had been brought under British control when a party had landed at King George Sound in Western Australia. This had been reinforced by London finally responding to his entreaties and sending a party to establish a permanent settlement in Western Australia in 1828. In 1829 a fixed border set at the 129 meridian was established. He had sent ships to explore Northern Australia, claiming Bathurst and Melville Islands.
He had fought to keep a British presence and post on Norfolk Island, a move that had now reaped it's own benefits with the discovery of sandalwood on New Caledonia and the New Hebrides, both of which he had quickly claimed for the British Crown. All the colonies had grown and he had expanded the number of counties that were available to settle in from 19 to 30, advertising free land for settlers in London, continuing the polices of Macquarie. Settlements on the East Coast now ranged from Bateman's Bay to Port Macquarie. It had resulted in large expansions of the population, Sydney alone now a large, spread out settle housing some 17,000 people. New South Wales population was now over 50,000. Van Dieman's Land was some 30,000. New Zealand and Western Australia 1,000 or so each plus 1000 scattered over the three islands in Norfolk, New Caledonia and New Hebrides.
His army career had made him less able to mix comfortably in society and he had little tolerance for Liberal ideas, yet for all that it was himself that had set up schools for child and women prisoners, not his so called Liberal opponents. He had come into conflict with "Liberal" emancipists who wished to introduce greater political and social freedom in New South Wales, it was true, yet it seemed all too clear to him that their main aim was to accumulate power for themselves, power that should rightly reside with the Governor. Major figures in the colony such as John Macarthur were implacably hostile for this reason.
Their main aim seemed clear enough to him. They wished to enact their own laws for their own advantage, a case in point being their desire to end the gifting of land to free settlers. Whilst land was available in the form of free land grants, the landowner's power to sell their own holdings for a substantial profit and likely scuttle back to the Home Country was limited indeed. Likewise they had commenced agitation for the cessation of transportation of convicts. In Darling's own opinion, the transportation of convicts was badly needed to provide bodies for the backbreaking work of land clearance that was still an everyday occurrence. In addition, a man earning an honest ticket of leave could still achieve far above what he ever could in Britain. That was another point of order. They said he treated the convicts too harshly, yet when they received a ticket of leave and earned a small plot of land the colony's elite then considered them to be rising above their station. It was hard to achieve an equitable result in the minds of such men.