I wonder if a strong french presence in Austriala and the presence of Harbour would mean an more aggresive (and a stronger presence of) France in Asia, How it would affect the French colonisation in Asia ? Did the French expedition to Korea happened ITTL, is yes the outcome is the same or it is different ?
Terre Australe: A history of France's Colony in Western Australia
- Thread starter Gabingston
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How is the colony in the West affecting British Australia? Also, I'd be interested in making a map of it, if you wouldn't mind.
Go ahead and make a map. As for British Australia, not a whole lot has changed, except that Western Australia isn't British. British Australia still got the best land, and still is more attractive for immigration, but if the policy favoring British immigrants over other Europeans (and forbidding non-European immigration) still exists, then that could potentially change.
Quick question:
What do you think will be the most popular sport in French Australia? The knee-jerk answer is football/soccer, but it's not that simple. It's not just the U.S. where soccer isn't the most popular sport, but also in Canada (hockey), OTL Australia (Aussie Rules Football) and New Zealand (rugby), plus the Spanish colony of Cuba (baseball). In fact, European settler colonies that became independent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries usually didn't have association football as their most popular sport, and not all non-settler colonies adopted the beautiful game (India is crazy about cricket, not football/soccer).
Soccer could very well end up being French Australia's sport, but it could go another way as well.
What do you think?
What do you think will be the most popular sport in French Australia? The knee-jerk answer is football/soccer, but it's not that simple. It's not just the U.S. where soccer isn't the most popular sport, but also in Canada (hockey), OTL Australia (Aussie Rules Football) and New Zealand (rugby), plus the Spanish colony of Cuba (baseball). In fact, European settler colonies that became independent in the late 19th and early 20th centuries usually didn't have association football as their most popular sport, and not all non-settler colonies adopted the beautiful game (India is crazy about cricket, not football/soccer).
Soccer could very well end up being French Australia's sport, but it could go another way as well.
What do you think?
I think Rugby being French Australia's sport is quite plausible, considering that they'd have quite good competition nearby with New Zealand.
Part 8: Choo Choo
Part 8: Choo Choo
From the establishment of Louisport in 1825, the transportation infrastructure of French Australia was built from the ground up. Early pioneers cut paths through the bush, setting up their own homesteads along the way. Ships would travel between coastal towns from Tricolore to Espérance, transporting goods and people. Horses served as a good means of transportation in the temperate south, but for exploration into the hot, dry north, camels were imported and cameleers were recruited from French colonies in North Africa, marking the first presence of Muslims in French Australia. However, the biggest transportation advance in the 19th century arrived in French Australia in the 1850s, something that goes choo-choo.
Enter: The Railroad
Railroads were first built in England in the early 19th century, and spread to other countries over the following decades. The first proposal for railroads in French Australia came in 1849, when it was proposed to build a rail line from Louisport to Saint-Germain in order to make travel easier between the two bustling colonial towns. The rail construction started in April of 1852, and the rail line was completed in January of 1853. Another rail line was constructed down the coast to Vasse, connecting the three P’s (Péronville, Port Orléans and Port Leschenault) as well. A second rail line was built from Port Leschenault to Quingarling, with towns such as Balingup, Gieglieu, Mangilieu and Nornaville springing up along the railway line. Another rail line was built paralleling the coast from Saint-Germain to Tricolore, with the other two major towns along that route being Gingin and Tongara. A southwestern line ran from Vasse to Cap Lionne to Mangilieu, with Pleindeleau growing as a town along the route (coming from the term “Pleins de l’eau”, meaning lots of water, being a translation for a native term for the area).
The railroads were built by a mixture of convicts, native-born Franco-Australians and recent settlers, mainly from France, Ireland and Italy. Jobs weren’t just laying down the track, but cutting down trees for the route, building bridges and terrain modification to make the routes easier through the often hilly terrain. The gauge of the railroads were matched to those in British Australia, so that a transcontinental line could eventually be built, something I will cover later on.
Part 9: GOLD RUSH!!!
Part 9: GOLD RUSH!!!
Through the 1870s, French Australia continued to grow. The Suez Canal was completed in 1869, thus greatly decreasing the travel time between Europe and Australia, and immigration doubled during the 1870s. Italy emerged as a much larger source of immigration (I will do a whole part on Italian immigration between Italian Unification and World War One), with Italians making up around half of new immigrants during the 1870s. By 1880, the population had grown to 325,000, and a certain event out on the frontier was about to greatly increase the amount of people flooding into Western Australia…
While gold resources had been discovered in French Australia before, leading to the growth of the small but thriving town of Saint-Giles-sur-Ruisseau, it hadn’t been the main economic driver of the colony. However, on the 8th of June in the Year of our Lord 1880, gold was struck.
While on an expedition into the desert, surveyor Patrice Lemoine (and his party of about two dozen men) stumbled upon deposits of gold. Setting up camp and searching the area, it became readily apparent that the deposits of gold in the area were massive. He reported back to the land claim office in Espérance and returned to the site that had garnered the name Cacoula, from the native name for the area. While he originally intended to invite only his family and friends along and keep the rich goldfields a secret, the secret he intended to keep private eventually went public, and soon prospectors were pouring into Cacoula. Neighboring gold rush towns were established like Orchamp and Cambalde. By 1883, 8,000 prospectors lived in the gold towns, with hundreds more arriving by the month. By this time, it wasn’t just residents of Australia moving there, but the word of the gold rush had also gotten to Europe and Asia, with settlement from 1883-1888 surging to 25,000 a year on average, before dipping back down to about 12,000 a year by 1891 as the gold rush died down, but not before the population had grown to 660,000 by 1890, a doubling of the population in only ten years.
It wasn’t just the frontier gold towns that were thriving, though. With the booming population, more and more land was being cleared for farming (which led to conflicts with the aboriginals, but let’s focus on the positives for now), mainly to grow wheat and to raise sheep and cattle. Inland agricultural towns such as Paquenbacque, Granitville, Lacs des Émeus, Creuselieu and Tamarlieu grew to become decent-sized (1-2,000 people) farming towns. Meanwhile, the coastal port cities were booming during the late 19th century, as Saint-Germain, the political center of the colony, now had a population of 55,000 in 1890. Port Leschenault had overtaken Louisport as the second city of the colony, growing to 39,000 by 1890, with Louisport in third at 33,000. Espérance, as the closest port of entry for foreign prospectors, had grown from a population of 3,000 in 1880 to a population of 16,000 in 1890, with much of the city made up of returning prospectors. I’ll cover more in the following updates.
Nice story. 
One question: does the political history of France is the same as OTL (July Monarchy, Second Republic, Second Empire, 1870 etc.) ? And does this Western Australia has an impact on French colonial history (like settlement in Algeria, conquest of Africa etc.)?
One question: does the political history of France is the same as OTL (July Monarchy, Second Republic, Second Empire, 1870 etc.) ? And does this Western Australia has an impact on French colonial history (like settlement in Algeria, conquest of Africa etc.)?I'm not changing much, because Western Australia is rather isolated and because I am a n00b that doesn't include the butterfly effect.Nice story.
Part 10: Gold Rush Part II
The Cacoula Gold Rush of the 1880s turned French Australia from a remote outpost at the edge of the world to a place people would go to find their fortune and build a better life. In 1899, the population officially surpassed the one million milestone, growing by 400,000 in the 1890s alone. With the discovery of massive gold reserves in Cacoula, gold fever gripped the colony, with many flocking out to explore the frontier, including into the remote and desolate deserts and savannas of the northern half of the colony. Gantheaume served as a forward operating base for expeditions into the northern bush, and Courbet was founded in 1885 with the same purpose. After several months of surveying the savanna, gold was struck at the place known as Petite Fourches. Thousands of prospectors poured into Petite Fourches, or rather attempted to pour into Petite Fourches, since it was located in a remote and destitute region completely unhealthy for Europeans to settle in, unlike the Mediterranean climate of Southwestern Australia or Temperate climate of Southeastern Australia, and hundreds died attempting to get to the gold rush.
Now, let’s explore what it was like in a gold rush town, and where better to go than the OG of gold rush towns in French Australia, Cacoula. So, Cacoula in 1888 was at the peak of the gold rush, with a population of 22,000 (it’s population declined to 6,000 by 1900, but it wouldn’t become a ghost town like so many gold rush towns would). The railroad had reached Cacoula in 1885, and the train station was conveniently located in the center of town. The town had a strange mix of buildings, such as their literally being a church next to a brothel in one part of the city. The core of the city had opulent buildings that looked quite a bit like the typical architecture of New Orleans, although that could be said about any good-sized city in Western Australia, since they found the New Orleans type architecture to be quite useful in providing relief from the intense heat. The population was 2-1 male, due to gold mining being a man’s game (or at least in the late 19th century it was), while, as previously mentioned, women were most known for working in the second most famous industry in the gold rush towns: prostitution (I’m not saying that most, or even many women were hookers, just that Cacoula got a reputation as a town full of brothels). Outside of the town center, houses were being constructed, but most prospectors still lived in tents.
There is another source for possible immigrants: Québec. Between 1840 and 1930, over 900,000 Québecois emigrated to the United States, especially to New England. When the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver opens in 1885, many of these French-speaking people might emigrate to French Australia instead, as they will have better opportunities in a culturally similar area. A few more might come from Manitoba (where French was abolished as an official language in 1890) and from New Brunswick.
Let's just count the Quebecois as French for the sake of this timeline.
I wonder how Australian French will sound like. Given the large distance from France and the influence of foreign immigrants, there will probably be some differences in pronunciation and vocubulary. Maybe also minor grammatical differences, but that's less likely.
Something that will surely be different is the numbering system. In France, it's partially based on the number 20, a remnant of Celtic influence. 70 is soixante-dix ("sixty and ten"), 80 is quatre-vingts ("four twenties"), 90 is quatre-vingts-dix ("four twenties and ten"), and 99 is the extremely cumbersome quatre-vingts-dix-neuf ("four twenties and ten and nine"). French-speaking areas in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland use the much simpler "septante" (70), "nonante" (90) and "nonante-neuf" (99). I am convinced that French Australia will follow this path. The people there might even adopt the typically Swiss habit of using huitante for 80.
Something that will surely be different is the numbering system. In France, it's partially based on the number 20, a remnant of Celtic influence. 70 is soixante-dix ("sixty and ten"), 80 is quatre-vingts ("four twenties"), 90 is quatre-vingts-dix ("four twenties and ten"), and 99 is the extremely cumbersome quatre-vingts-dix-neuf ("four twenties and ten and nine"). French-speaking areas in Belgium, Canada and Switzerland use the much simpler "septante" (70), "nonante" (90) and "nonante-neuf" (99). I am convinced that French Australia will follow this path. The people there might even adopt the typically Swiss habit of using huitante for 80.
I think it'll be similar to the differences between British and Australian English IOTL, similar but different, with Australian French likely having Italian influence with some additional influence from Irish, Australian English and Aboriginals. I think it's quite likely that the simplified number system would be used.
Starforce
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I wonder when this French Colony in Australia will gain independence or some semblance of being the equivalent of a dominion, in the French Empire. I also wonder what the flag of this colony looks like, and what its role in the world wars and relations to the other half of Australia will be like. Interesting idea.