about 75 per cent of Australia’s white population was male, and in 1851 there
were still 138 males for every 100 females, though the ratio was much higher
in Victoria (Vamplew 1987, pp. 23–33). The First World War marked thefirst
time that females equalled males in an official Australian population count.
This unique statistic was made possible largely because several hundred thou-
sand men were away—they werefighting in Europe. After the surviving
soldiers returned, the male ascendancy returned and was quite pronounced
in the 1930s. Without a long-term policy of assisted migration, the shortage of
women would have been larger, and persisted longer. Traditionally, the scar-
city of women had been larger in the countryside and outback than in the big
towns. Thus it was notable in Western Australia and its booming goldfields,
where, in 1901, there were 158 males for every 100 females. In the same year,
the Northern Territory’s tiny population consisted of 558 males for every 100
females (Vamplew 1987, ch. 3). In that total, the ubiquitous Chinese—mostly
males—were systematically counted but not the Aborigines, who mostly lived
in remote places.
The high proportion of men, especially single men, in the population in the
mid-nineteenth century helps to explain the nation’s increasing premium on
leisure. Many workmen with a high standard of living now called for shorter
working hours rather than for higher pay, and they were more likely to win
their claims if they were government employees or builders working on
government contracts. Many of Sydney and Melbourne’s building workers,
especially the stonemasons, achieved an eight-hour day in 1855 and 1856.
The hot summers spurred their demand. The movement for a shorter working
day and for a half-holiday on Saturday (as well as the traditional religious
holiday for Sunday) was also strong in public works, the government-owned
railways, and also the gold mines. The rise of Australian Rules football in
Melbourne by 1880 to be one of the most popular winter spectator sports in
the world owed much to the abundance of public parklands and to the new
Saturday half-holiday. It was not, strictly speaking, a half-holiday, for many
workplaces opened early and closed only at 2 p.m. Therefore, football matches
did not usually begin until 3 p.m., and in midwinter theyfinished in near-
darkness.
Indeed, the mania for spectator sport—and its rising role as an avenue for
Australian nationalism—would have been impossible but for the shorter
working hours in many city and town occupations. Likewise, the crowds
attending horse races were enlarged by the public holidays which were more
frequent in Australia than in the British Isles. As early as 1877, Melbourne
enjoyed a public holiday on the Tuesday of the Melbourne Cup. The spread of
the eight-hour day, however, was not as quick as is commonly believed, and
in 1900 probably half of the workforce in Australia worked more than 48
hours a week.
Geoffrey Blainey