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A
continent for a nation
 When
Western Australians voted to become part of a new nation not everybody was
happy with the idea of joining with the eastern colonies. There had been
considerable opposition from the colonial Parliament, which reflected to
a large extent the opinions of the colony's more established and wealthier
families. These groups were not convinced that Federation was in their best
interests. The sharp divisions of opinion which ran throughout the colony
of Western Australia followed regional lines, separating those who wanted
to remain a British colony and those who were excited by a new sense of
Australian nationalism.
In the 1890s many Western Australians were still indifferent to the idea
of Australian nationalism. Enthusiasm for Australian involvement in the
Boer War -
a campaign waged in South Aftica (1899-1902) to defend Empire - was not
necessarily translated into enthusiasm for an Australian nation. Local patriotism
seemed more important than national identity. The following letter to the
editor of the Greenbushes Advocate, dated 21 July, 1900 reflects
concern that individual rights would be lost in a Commonwealth conceived
by the powerful elites of Eastern Australia.
 "Who
wanted Federation? It was not a people's movement. The labor members in
all the colonies held aloof from it; it was a commercial and conservative
movement. A well laid scheme to cut the ground
from under the labor party in all the colonies, and so well have the plotters
succeeded that only one labor member was returned as a delegate to frame
the Commonwealth Bill. We are told of its great democratic constitution
for the people and in the people's interest. Its [sic] a measure of the
interests of the great manufacturing and commercial houses of Melbourne,
Sydney and Adelaide - a movement in the interest of boodlers. The young
men of today have inherited from their grey-headed fathers a local Constitution
that gives them manhood suffrage, vote by ballot, and free churches in
free States, food land laws, State railway, a telegraph run by the people
and in the people's interests. All these great reforms had to be fought
for by a stubborn people who, in many cases, left the Motherland because
they were unable to carry such reforms at home."
 The
Australian Natives' Association - an organisation established in Melbourne
for Australian-born, white people - and later the Federal League promoted
the idea of Australian nationalism in Western Australia. The reception they
received was sometimes lukewarm away from their strongest areas of support
and membership in the goldfields.
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