Six Colonies Become the Commonwealth of Australia

On 1 January 1901, the Commonwealth of Australia was officially proclaimed at Centennial Park in Sydney, uniting six self-governing British colonies into a single federal nation. New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, and Western Australia ceased to be separate colonial possessions and became states within a newly created constitutional framework. Edmund Barton was sworn in as caretaker prime minister to lead an interim ministry until the first federal elections, held later that March. The proclamation represented the culmination of several decades of political debate, intercolonial bargaining, and popular referendums.

Proposals for unifying the Australasian territories had circulated since the 1840s, but early plans repeatedly stalled due to intercolonial rivalry and local indifference. During the 1850s, colonial figures such as William Charles Wentworth urged the creation of a general assembly to manage matters of shared concern. A limited cooperative step arrived in 1885 with the establishment of the Federal Council of Australasia, prompted by Queensland’s 1883 attempt to annex eastern New Guinea and wider anxiety about foreign powers in the Pacific. However, the council possessed neither an executive arm nor independent revenue, and the absence of New South Wales severely limited its authority.