AHC: Multiple countries on Australian continent

A simple challenge: come up with a situation where the continent of Australia is divided between two or more sovereign states, preferably (but not necessarily) with different languages and distinct cultures. How remote would the POD need to be?

I suspect the easiest option is to have Western Australia secede, or never join the federation. However, I'm looking for something less obvious and more exotic.
 
Didn't the Dutch discover Western Australia? If so, they could colonize the western half.

Or the Portuguese, because they need more colonies.
 
If you go pretty far back, perhaps the Dutch could have started colonizing Western Australia when they originally discovered it, maybe as a way station on the route to Indonesia that turns into a settler colony. It could develop along the same lines as the Afrikaners, but with a significantly smaller native population to contend with.

You could also have a POD in 1787 and have the First Fleet arrive in Botany Bay a few weeks or even days late. In OTL, the French explorer Jean François de Galaup arrived in January of 1788, just after the First Fleet did. If he gets there first and claims the area for France (and is somehow able to enforce it) I could see Arthur Phillip going somewhere else, maybe the Melbourne area, to start the penal colony.
 
Have Malays settle parts of northern Australia (which could lead to parts of Australia being part of *Indonesia?)
 
The Dutch seem like a solid choice for the west and north, considering the proximity to the Dutch East Indies. The two colonies might even have been administered as one unit, "Dutch Oceania", or something like that. That would result in a totally different linguistic and ethnic makeup in the west and north.

I want a Romance-speaking colony, but I can't think of how this might plausibly be achieved. Perhaps the Napoleonic Wars go differently, and the French are awarded territory in Australia?
 
It is supremely difficult to get the French, Dutch, or Portuguese to colonise Australia in the 18th century; they've simply no reason to do so. Britain colonised the place only as a means to get rid of prisoners. Australia really doesn't have much going for it for an 18th century European - arid, far away, no obvious resources and no plunder. The best way, I think, is to butterfly the British need to for a penal colony away and push colonisation up to the 19th century. Even then though there's the problem of New Zealand, which was colonised under very different circumstances to Australia, and which would encourage the British to claim Eastern Australia by virtue of security, and that Australia remains far away and seemingly resource poor. You need to find a reason for other European states (or maybe non-European if you're particularly adventurous) to want Australia. Non-British western Europeans never seemed quite so keen on settler colonies, or had quite the culture of penal deportations. To feasibly get other Europeans to come here you probably need an early POD or some rather specific circumstances in the 18th/19th centuries. Certainly possible, but not at all simple.

As to having two or more states in Australia, this is quite possible but only if the colonisation is simultaneous, or part of the continent is gained through war. 3/4ths of the population is concentrated in the South-Eastern quarter (including Brisbane), and for good reason. It's where all the good stuff (by 18th-19th century standards) is located. To get two states, this area basically needs to be shared, unless you want one to totally dominate the other. Probably the easiest and most stable way of doing this is to have one state based in OTL Victoria and the other east of the dividing range, with the rest of the continent shared somehow, or maybe with the resources of the south east diluted occupied by a third party. This still leaves the Murray-Darling system as a point of serious contention, but that's probably more interesting. It's also important to remember that all these states would have very small populations, with strong potential for economic issues.
 
Could Britain claim eastern Australia and leave the west alone, as they have no use for it? This could be an independent region with no state-level societies. Realistically, however, somebody will want to claim the area at some point for some reason or other, but that would fit the challenge nicely.
 
Could Britain claim eastern Australia and leave the west alone, as they have no use for it? This could be an independent region with no state-level societies. Realistically, however, somebody will want to claim the area at some point for some reason or other, but that would fit the challenge nicely.

Britain claimed WA for strategic purposes, in order to preclude the French from claiming it. This was done in 1791, not long after settlement in the East began. Getting the French there before '91 is possible, though there needs to be a motivation, but keeping them there considering that the Napoleonic Wars are about to begin (though this could be butterflied) is tricky. The Brit's had a habit of seizing settler colonies when it suited them, and considering that WA has a tiny population even today and that the French were never big settlers it'd be hard to maintain such a colony. Even if it were, it'd be dominated in every way by British Australia.

Edit: Oh and forgot to mention it, but leaving it unclaimed just means that it'll be settled from the east probably around the same time as OTL.
 
If the British never do anything with it[1], is there any chance we could see Australia becoming a German settlement by the late 19th century? Consider the randomness of German Southwest Africa or the German colonial efforts in New Guinea and the Solomons; as a newly emerging Great Power, overseas effort represented more of a prestige project than an actual need for resources and land to settle [2]. I don't know offhand what the dates were for the discoveries of gold and other minerals Down Under were, but maybe those could influence Germany's industrialization and performance in ATL's Great War. If and when Germany comes to blows with its more established Great Power rivals (which seems unlikely to change with a "small" POD like this one), they may divvy up Australia amongst themselves, if the German settler population isn't too big to govern peacefully. Assuming Japan industrializes at the same rate as OTL and participates as eagerly in the *Great War, maybe they'll grab a slice and settle it as aggressively as they tried to do in Korea OTL?

[1] I think this would be relatively easy to do without butterflying a huge amount away. Maybe different immigration patterns to the Americas.

[2] Although they apparently ran a few palm oil plantations in Melanesia and turned a neat profit for such a small and insignificant holding.
 
If the British never do anything with it[1], is there any chance we could see Australia becoming a German settlement by the late 19th century? Consider the randomness of German Southwest Africa or the German colonial efforts in New Guinea and the Solomons; as a newly emerging Great Power, overseas effort represented more of a prestige project than an actual need for resources and land to settle [2]. I don't know offhand what the dates were for the discoveries of gold and other minerals Down Under were, but maybe those could influence Germany's industrialization and performance in ATL's Great War. If and when Germany comes to blows with its more established Great Power rivals (which seems unlikely to change with a "small" POD like this one), they may divvy up Australia amongst themselves, if the German settler population isn't too big to govern peacefully. Assuming Japan industrializes at the same rate as OTL and participates as eagerly in the *Great War, maybe they'll grab a slice and settle it as aggressively as they tried to do in Korea OTL?

[1] I think this would be relatively easy to do without butterflying a huge amount away. Maybe different immigration patterns to the Americas.

[2] Although they apparently ran a few palm oil plantations in Melanesia and turned a neat profit for such a small and insignificant holding.

If you can keep other Europeans out until the 1870's and the prestige colonisation craze, this is quite possible. Actually the whole prestige "let's not care about how much it costs" is a good way to get multiple countries wasting money on unsustainable, tiny colonies with non-existent populations. A "scramble for Australia" would probably consist of a bunch of tiny settlements for the first few decades, thereon after developments could become very... interesting. Resources like gold probably won't come till sometime after settlement; they're generally inland and in areas that won't be settled first. Still, on the offchance they're discovered early it would create a very interesting dynamic in the competition. The big question is keeping anyone out until this sort of colonisation arises, if you want the Germans at least.
 
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