Wi: Partitioned Colonial Australia?

Every single thread on this website that I've seen has Australia colonized by only one major power--usually Britain. But what if and how could Australia be colonized by multiple colonial powers and end up partitioned into different nations?
 
you could conceivably have dutch and portuguese settlement as well as british. maybe even french.
 
Seriously, how else than UK gave a shit about Australia?
The only other tentative of colonization (and an unwilling one) was the one of Batavia.

For a multi-colonization, you need to have quickly discovered resources, in order to make other western countries interested to gain a part of the island.
 
Britain used Australia as an open prison, it was not originally designed as a colony.

I guess that other countries could have had the same idea such as a new Devil's Island for the French (Tasmania?) etc.
 
Britain used Australia as an open prison, it was not originally designed as a colony.

I guess that other countries could have had the same idea such as a new Devil's Island for the French (Tasmania?) etc.

That's actually actually a complete myth, you are confusing ends with means. Britain wanted a secure, self supporting naval base in the South Seas for military purposes and for better access to the South East Asian trade, that was the goal and the reason for the colonisation of Australia. Sending convicts (who were never more than 40% of settlers) was a way of boosting the growth of the colony and incidentally getting rid of undesirable people thus killing two birds with one stone.
 
Isn't the biggest problem of a divided Australia, that it is mainly uninhabitable desert. There isn't much room for many colonies. If you have a colony were Perth is now, you basicly control all of western Australia, because the other part is mainly uninhabitable. If you want different colonies, you need to split the west coast.

So, you can split Australia basicly in 2 parts and that is the bigest division you can make.
 
The easiest way is to have the other countries feel threatened by the prospect of all of Australia being British, especially so close to their own colonies.

IMO the most likely scenario wuld be the British controlling the East, the Dutch or French the West and the Dutch or Portuguese the North and possibly Fench Tasmania, depending on how who controls what.
 
The easiest way is to have the other countries feel threatened by the prospect of all of Australia being British, especially so close to their own colonies.

The problem here is that the other countries feel concerned about this prospect of Oceania and began to study how strike-back. And they found that Australia was just a geographical subject of studies, at the contrary of other islands, as Papuasia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Tahiti, etc. that seemed more usable as naval base, by exemple, and seemed more rich.
 
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