section_path: History/Colonial expansion
section_name: Colonial expansion
paragraph_text: Colonial expansion
  
  In 1803, a settlement was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania), and in 1813, Gregory Blaxland, William Lawson and William Wentworth crossed the Blue Mountains west of Sydney, opening the interior to European settlement. The British claim extended to the whole Australian continent in 1827 when Major Edmund Lockyer established a settlement on King George Sound (modern-day Albany). The Swan River Colony (present-day Perth) was established in 1829, evolving into the largest Australian colony by area, Western Australia. In accordance with population growth, separate colonies were carved from New South Wales: Tasmania in 1825, South Australia in 1836, New Zealand in 1841, Victoria in 1851, and Queensland in 1859. South Australia was founded as a free colony—it never accepted transported convicts. Growing opposition to the convict system culminated in its abolition in the eastern colonies by the 1850s. Initially a free colony, Western Australia practised penal transportation from 1850 to 1868.
  
  The six colonies individually gained responsible government between 1855 and 1890, thus becoming elective democracies managing most of their own affairs while remaining part of the British Empire. The Colonial Office in London retained control of some matters, notably foreign affairs.
  
  In the mid-19th century, explorers such as Burke and Wills charted Australia's interior. A series of gold rushes beginning in the early 1850s led to an influx of new migrants from China, North America and continental Europe, as well as outbreaks of bushranging and civil unrest; the latter peaked in 1854 when Ballarat miners launched the Eureka Rebellion against gold license fees. In the 1860s an increasing number of South Sea Islanders were recruited, kidnapped, tricked or coerced by colonists into becoming indentured labourers (mainly in Queensland) in a practice known as blackbirding.
  
  From 1886, Australian colonial governments began removing many Aboriginal children from their families and communities, justified on the grounds of child protection and forced assimilation policies. The Second Boer War (1899–1902) marked the largest overseas deployment of Australia's colonial forces.