What was Lachlan Macquarie's vision of Australia?

Answer 1

Lachlan Macquarie was Governor of the New South Wales colony from 1810 to 1821. With his military training and vision for organisation and discipline, Macquarie was an ideal candidate to restore order to the colony, following the Rum Rebellion against deposed Governor William Bligh. He was a strong disciplinarian, with a vision for order and consistency in the colony.

Macquarie had high standards for the transition of New South Wales from prison colony to free settlement. He introduced the first building code into the colony, requiring all buildings to be constructed of timber or brick, covered with a shingle roof, and to include a chimney.

Macquarie also ordered the construction of roads, bridges, wharves, churches and public buildings. This even extended to Van Diemen's Land, of which Macquarie was not directly governor, but over which he still held some influence as the island colony was still considered part of New South Wales at that stage. After inspecting the sprawling, ramshackle settlement of Hobart Town in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Macquarie ordered government surveyor John Meehan to survey a regular street layout: this layout still forms the current centre of the city of Hobart.

Macquarie was also a great sponsor of exploration. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the grazing plains of the interior. After their discovery, Macquarie ordered the establishment of Bathurst, Australia's first inland city. He appointed John Oxley as surveyor-general and sent him on expeditions up the coast of New South Wales and inland to find new rivers and new lands for settlement.

Macquarie was, unfortunately, criticised for his spending on public works, for his attempts to create an orderly colony out of the haphazard settlement that Sydney had grown into and for his efforts to expand the colony beyond its restricted area.