National Library of Australia - Gateways

ISSN 1039-3498 | no. 63 | June 2003


Australiana Collection
Pamphlet on Irish Emigration to Western Australia

The Library has also recently acquired the very rare pamphlet Emigration to Western Australia (Dublin, c.1837)—unrecorded in any specialised bibliographies, and with no known holdings. The pamphlet was produced to promote the attraction of the colony to potential migrants at a time when labour in the eight-year-old Swan River Colony was mainly supplied by male convicts. According to several sources, the 1830s was a period of radical transition from convict to free immigration, with government immigration schemes operating in 1831 on the principle of achieving a balance of the sexes.

The pamphlet encourages would-be migrants to read the first (1836), second (1837) and third reports (unpublished) of the Western Australian Association. The efforts of the Association to ease the acute labour shortage were not successful, as the population grew by only 225 between 1834 and 1837; and only 209 migrants arrived during 1838 and 1839 (Statistical Register of Western Australia, 1900). The pamphlet includes two maps.

This acquisition is the first Irish imprint relating to Western Australian migration, and complements several London imprints on colonisation of Western Australia around this period.
—Wanda Horky

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