New Australia and Cosme papers, 1883-1897

MLMSS 232/Box 1
MLMSS 232/Box 2X

fonds

1883-1897

893122

0.15 metres of textual material (2 boxes and 1 outsize folder) - manuscript - printed;

New Australia was a utopian socialist settlement in Paraguay founded by William Lane of the Australian New Australian Movement. The colony was officially founded on 28 September 1893 as Colonia Nueva Australia and comprised 238 adults and children.

Paraguay was chosen as the site of the settlement, where the government was keen to get white settlers and had offered the group a large area of good land. There were some able settlers, but New Australia has been described as misfits, failures, and malcontents of the left wing of Australian democracy. Notable Australian individuals who joined the colony included Mary Gilmore, Rose Summerfield, and Gilbert Stephen Casey. There was conflict amongst the settlers from the beginning over prohibition of alcohol, relations with the locals and Lane's leadership. Problems intensified after a second group of colonists arrived in 1894. Dissention caused a rift in the colony and in May 1894, Lane and 58 others left New Australia to found Cosme, a new colony 72 kilometres farther south. Eventually New Australia was dissolved as a cooperative by the government of Paraguay, and each settler was given their own piece of land.


Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Australia (accessed 22 May 2012)

BOX 1
Correspondence received by James Allan, Albury, N.S.W., 1893-1895; cheque butts for the Union Bank of Australia, 1895; Minutes of the New Australia Association signed by Peter McNaught, 1894-1895; balance sheets of Gilbert Casey, 1893-1894; miscellaneous printed material, 1883-1897; Cosme monthly, 1894-1897; newscuttings, 1893-1896; notebook, 1891;
Cosme Colony Evening Notes, 30 August 1894-10 May 1895, 27 August 1897.

BOX 2X
Printed material including Cosme Monthly, 1894, 1897; The Worker, 22 July, 1893; New Australian 1893-1894; Articles of Association.

Information transferred from Manuscripts Leaf Catalogue No. 2 as part of the eRecords Project, 2009-2010