Free settlement

Despite the emphasis on the early convict settlements, free immigrants, that is, those who came of their own free will, had settled in New South Wales from the earliest days of British Australia. Mass immigration to Australia, however, did not really get underway until the disruption caused by the Napoleonic Wars had eased (c.1820).

Even from that early date, Australian immigration showed marked differences from other migration centres favoured by Irish emigrants. In retrospect, the distinctive aspects of Australian immigration are very obvious, and the reasons for them likewise very clear. The distance involved, and the logistics of the journey, meant that the numbers going to Australia as compared with, say, North America, were much smaller. For the same reasons Australian immigration was also much more controlled. Regulation was applied at points of departure in Britain and Ireland and at entry points in Australia. The highly bureaucratic nature of Australian immigration may also, at least at the Australian end, have been a legacy of officialdom having been geared in the first instance to handle the regulation and administrative processing of batches of convicts, and the bureaucracy of transportation was undoubtedly one of very precise, small-grinding cogs. All the various government-assisted schemes of Australian immigration are marked by the very complete paper record they have left in Australian archives.

While the majority of Irish emigration was paid for out of public funds, usually raised by the sale of land, this does not imply that these immigrants were from a lower class or poorer than, for example, those who went to North America. It has been suggested that it was the middle-classes, who could read, who took advantage of the advertised government schemes. On the other hand, landlords anxious to clear their estates of the poorer classes would have opted for the cheaper passage to the North Americas. Those who immigrated without government assistance, less than 1,000 a year before the 1850s, had to have much more in the way of resources than those who left Ireland for North America as the total costs involved were so much higher. Australia, therefore, attracted a significant proportion of immigrants with resources to set themselves up either in business or on the land. These were usually the younger sons of the gentry, or of well-to-do tenant farmers, who could be given funds by their families to establish themselves in Australia.

One such Ulster immigrant was Henry Osborne from Dernaseer, near Dromore, Co. Tyrone. A younger son of a tenant farmer, with gentry connections, he took his portion of the family inheritance and bought a range of what he considered necessary and useful items in Belfast. After arriving at Sydney in May, 1829, on the ship Pyramus, he sold these goods off at a considerable profit. Osborne had been encouraged to migrate to Australian by two brothers, both of whom had served as ships' surgeons on the Australia run, and who had themselves developed Australian commercial interests. They later joined Henry in his undertakings. Thereafter, by Ulster thriftiness, business sagacity and sheer hard work and determination, he amassed huge tracts of Australian pasture lands until, at his death in 1859, he was one of the richest men in Australia.

His sheer grit is demonstrated by his cattle and sheep drive - in Australian parlance a 'mob' - from Dapto in the Illawarra district, near Sydney, to Adelaide. This exploit, a difficult and dangerous journey of over 1,000 miles, took from December 1839 until April 1840 but it was worth the effort. The prices fetched by his cattle and sheep added significantly to Osborne's fortune.

Osborne also enhanced his fortune by becoming a 'Squatter' - that is he took possession of some of the land reserved by the government for future settlements. This was not an uncommon practice among ambitious landowners and gave rise to an entire class.

On the plus side, Osborne did help populate Australia. He brought out from his original homeland in the west of Ulster other family members as well as farm workers and skilled artisans to work the lands he had gained (by means fair and foul!) He either subsidised their passage himself or helped them obtain one of the assisted government schemes. Those men he brought out from Co. Tyrone and Co. Fermanagh also, in their turn, and on a much more modest scale, encouraged friends, relations and neighbours of their own to emigrate and join them. This is a classic example of 'chain migration' and the high incidence of immigration from counties Fermanagh and Tyrone can clearly be traced back to Henry Osborne, Australian entrepreneur extraordinare.