Resource Sheet 3
The new citizenship
The Hon. Sir S.W. Griffith
To-day Queensland ceases to bear the name of “Colony,” and becomes “The State of Queensland in the Commonwealth of Australia.”…But not only the name is changed…No Australian can henceforth say that anything Australian is no concern of his…
[T]he people of the States of Australia no longer regard their neighbours in the other States as strangers and foreigners, but as members of the same household, affected by the same joys and sorrows…Whatever mutual jealousies may have existed in the past between the lately existing Colonies…I am confident that the general sentiment of Australian Unity will prevail…Henceforth we are Australians first, then Queenslanders, but always Britons.
The Age, 10 May 1901.
‘A Federal song’ (extracts)
We have flung the challenge forward:
‘Brothers, stand or fall as One!’
She is coming out to meet us
in the splendour of the Sun…
We can face the roughest weather
If we only hold together,
Marching forward to the Future,
marching shoulder-firm together,
For the Nation yet to be.
All the greyness of the dawning,
all the mists are over-past.
In the glory of the morning
we shall see Her face at last…
He who sang, ‘She yet will be’,
He shall hail her, crowned and free!
Could we break the land asunder
God has girdled with the Sea?
For the Flag is floating o’er us,
And the star of Hope before us,
From the desert to the ocean,
brothers, lift the mighty chorus
For Australian Unity.