Bunyip aristocracy
Was a term coined by Daniel Deniehy in his attack on W. C. Wentworth's proposal for the introduction of hereditary titles in NSW. As chairman of the select committee that ...
Bunyip aristocracy Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
...bill. In a famous public address in Sydney on 15 August 1853 , Deniehy mocked the local peerage as a ‘bunyip aristocracy’ and denounced it as contradictory to notions of democracy and egalitarianism. His play on the word bunyip , with its overtones of anachronistic absurdity, reflected the refusal by Australians to institutionalise an upper class. While most historians share Deniehy's contempt for the proposal, Ged Martin's Bunyip Aristocracy (1986) argues that it was a serious possibility. Helen...
bunyip aristocracy Reference library
A Dictionary of Australian Colloquialisms (5 ed.)
...aristocracy. 1976 Australian 14 Jun. 7: The grafting of knighthoods on … the Order of Australia is a laughable concession to bunyip snobbery. 1981 Max Harris Australian 21 Nov. Mag. 7: The bunyip aristocracy [The Old Families of Adelaide] were not as sure of themselves as their feeble imitation of their English betters made them seem. 2000 Max Walsh Bulletin 26 Sep. 10: Sydney’s gratitude [for the award of the 2000 Olympics] did not mean it would allow the Olympics and the bunyip aristocracy pretensions of the International Olympic Committee and its...
Bunyip aristocracy
Bunyip Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2 ed.)
...Dynevor Lakes in the Thargomindah district of south-western Queensland. A notable use of the word ‘bunyip’ was in ‘Bunyip Aristocracy’, used derisively in 1853 by Daniel Deniehy to ridicule W. C. Wentworth 's suggested colonial peerage. Norman Lindsay created a koala character, Bunyip Bluegum, in his famous book for children, The Magic Pudding ( 1918...
Bunyip Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
...Daniel Deniehy in his attack on the ‘ bunyip aristocracy ’. Helen...
Pure merino Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
... pastoralists who were served by convict labour and whose grand lifestyle emulated that of American planters or the European landed gentry. They wielded considerable power in colonial parliaments and were the proposed parliamentary representatives of W. C. Wentworth 's ‘ bunyip aristocracy’ . Helen...
Deniehy, Daniel Henry (1828–65) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
...to the solicitor N. D. Stenhouse , who was at the centre of Sydney's literary community. Deniehy became famous by his speech in denunciation of William Wentworth 's scheme to create a landed nobility for the colony's upper house. He described the would-be peers as a ‘bunyip aristocracy’ . His wit and brilliance made him the darling of the popular cause. He was briefly a member of the new parliament, representing Goulburn and later Bathurst, the towns where he practised law, but he could not cooperate with the liberal democrats. He was appalled at the...
Wentworth, William Charles (1790–1872) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2 ed.)
...In 1852 , under Wentworth's leadership, the Legislative Council demanded and received approval for self-government for NSW; Wentworth was chairman of the committee formed to draft the constitution. His proposal for a colonial peerage, dubbed by Daniel Deniehy ‘a bunyip aristocracy’, came to nothing. His active political career finished in 1861 and he returned to England to live in 1862 . His biography by A. C. V. Melbourne , William Charles Wentworth was published in 1934 . Charles Harpur 's satiric poem ‘The Patriot of Australia – An Heroic...
‘Squatter’ Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2 ed.)
...wealth and power. The squatters did not, however, succeed in fulfilling W. C. Wentworth 's 1853 ambition of establishing a colonial peerage based on ‘our Shepherd Kings’; that proposal was ridiculed out of existence by Daniel Deniehy 's derisive comments about a ‘bunyip aristocracy’. Notable among the many squatters’ memoirs and reminiscences are W. A. Brodribb 's Recollections of an Australian Squatter ( 1883 ), E. M. Curr 's (q.v) Recollections of Squatting in Victoria ( 1883 ) and James Kirby 's Old Times in the Bush of Australia (q.v., ...
Deniehy, D. H. (1828–65) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian Literature (2 ed.)
...the Sydney Mechanics' School of Arts and by his radical speeches at public meetings on the political controversies of the day. One of his memorable satirical speeches was his ridicule in 1853 of W. C. Wentworth 's suggestion of a colonial peerage, dubbed by Deniehy a ‘bunyip aristocracy’. As a member of parliament in 1857–60 he made effective parliamentary speeches on land and immigration matters and on electoral reform. Disillusioned by politics and lacking a clear purpose in life, he began drinking heavily. In 1862 he went to Melbourne, where he...
Wentworth, William Charles (1790–1872) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
... 1843 he had promoted the interests of his fellow wealthy landowners. In the early 1850s, when Wentworth chaired the committee appointed to draft a new constitution for NSW, his unsuccessful plea for an upper house based on a hereditary colonial peerage was mocked as a bunyip aristocracy . He denied crossing the political spectrum, declaring that he was never a democrat or republican, but ‘I was a Whig, I admit, till I was ashamed of Whiggism.’ Wentworth's constitutional role is examined in J. B. Hirst , The Strange Birth of Colonial Democracy (1988) ....
Languages Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
..., corroboree , kangaroo ). Some words are part of the constructions of Australian notions of identity ( Digger , Anzac , Aussie , mate ). Some define differences, including interstate rivalry ( banana bender , crow-eater , Sandgroper ), social differentiation ( Bunyip aristocracy , westie , bogan , silvertail ), or country of origin ( balt , pom , seppo ). Other words and phrases carry the history of names ( Buckley's chance , Furphy , Goyder's line , jacky howe , lamington , do a Melba , game as Ned Kelly ) and folklore ( blind...
Press Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
...the earliest proprietors was William Charles Wentworth , a strong champion of self-government and a man of High Tory instincts. Among other things he campaigned for the establishment in Australia of a local nobility‐derisively dismissed by his fellow Australians as a ‘bunyip aristocracy’. By far the oldest surviving Australian newspaper is the Sydney Morning Herald , which began life in 1831 as The Sydney Herald . Throughout much of its existence it has been a champion of conservatism . It opposed democracy as ‘mobocracy’. It opposed universal...
New South Wales Reference library
The Oxford Companion to Australian History
...of a colonial nobility. By this time there was a liberal and radical movement which succeeded in removing this part of Wentworth's plan. An Australian nobility, only attempted in NSW, received a memorable Australian reply. The radical Daniel Deniehy denounced it as a bunyip aristocracy . The liberal-radical movement bundled the landed gentlemen from power as soon as the new constitution came into force. This was the first of the two rapid transformations which have marked NSW political history. The new rulers introduced manhood suffrage and passed a...
Politics and literature Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
...Writers’ interventions in politics have not been frequent in Australia, but a couple are worthy of remark. In 1853 a single phrase of the poet Daniel Deniehy scotched politician W. C. Wentworth 's plan for a native Australian peerage: Deniehy lampooned the notion as ‘a bunyip aristocracy’. Wentworth had been a poet before he became a politician, and was noted for his second-prize winning Australasia, a poem written at Cambridge in 1823 wishing for ‘a new Britannia’ to arise in the south. In 1999 referendums were put to the Australian people on the...
Liberal democracy Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
...aristocracy with tightly held influence over government did not develop because it was not supported by centuries of influence and tradition. This explains the failure of ‘exclusives’ (who sought to maintain a social position separate from ex-convicts) to secure for themselves political benefits at the expense of ‘emancipists’ (ex-convicts). During debates about the structure of responsible government in New South Wales, suggestions that to make bicameralism effective there should be a class of ‘nobles’ equivalent to the House of Lords (a ‘bunyip aristocracy’)...
New South Wales Reference library
Oxford Companion to Australian Politics
...the lower house was not supreme because the colonists had chosen a bicameral legislative system in order that an upper house, representing ‘men of property’, would be a brake on the ‘whims’ of the popular house and ensure conservative stability. The idea of creating a ‘bunyip’ aristocracy to fill the upper house was quickly laughed out of existence, but the upper house was indeed the bastion of the Australian approximation, the squattocracy. Moreover, the Governor retained important discretionary powers, legitimised in the written constitution, which were...
bunyip n. (Aus., Sydney) Reference library
Green's Dictionary of Slang
...Herbert Capricornia ( 1939 ) 357: What did I tell you about the Great Bunyip gettin' us all down, eh? 1955 N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land ( 1957 ) 231/1: bunyip – a legendary animal, according to the abos. It has come to mean an impostor. 1993 K. Lette Foetal Attraction ( 1994 ) 122: That made her royalty at home. An antipodean Princess Di. Part of the bunyip aristocracy. 1999 G. Seal Lingo 16: (ref. to 1850s) At this time, in Sydney underworld parlance, ‘bunyip’ meant an imposter or con man...
