Sport and Colonialism in 19th Century Australasia - LA84 Foundation

context. Inglis has pointed out that an interpretation of the
results of colonial cricket games before 1900 could not "escape
entirely the influence of that tradition of speculation about
evolution which culminated in The Origin of Species". 68
Cricket
too, according to Mulvaney, provided more food for evolutionary
thought when the Australian aboriginal tour of 1867-68 inspired
'Darwinian controversialists' to generate some rather 'superficial
and dubious' racial comparisons. 69
Period reporters of
many types of athletic exercises were actually quite convinced
of the application of the social doctrine of evolution. 70
At first, in early 1860s, the inference was confined to
the superior nature of transplanted and adapted sports. Articles
on hunting and coursing gave Bell's Life the opportunity to
praise Australian conditions. The kangaroo, as opposed to the
British fox, was proclaimed 'a glorious game'. The kangaroo
dog was declared "a far nobler animal than the delicate greyhound
used after hares". And the excitement of a ride in the
bush was considered "far superior to the plain going on the
English downs". 71
Meanwhile, the Australian turkey, "that noble
specimen of Australian ornothology," far excelled its European
counterpart in size, both height and weight. 72
But the antipodean
colonies had advantages which went beyond its game. The
climate was a supplementary benefit which would help "to foster
the love of open-air life" and "give a direction to the national
character"; it would fashion a hardy, active and vigorous
race, a healthy sign of growth in Britain's southern communities.
73
Advancement was also possible through competition in
sport,
74
and especially in the struggle with the Mother Country.
Games against England's cricketers in 1861-62 and in 1863-64
prompted lengthy discourses on their positive moral and physical
effects on the Australian people. 75
These claims would be
developed more fully in following years as progress became the
'great beacon of the age' and the substance of Charles Darwin's
ideas was more commonly used to describe and explain a rapidly
developing nation. 76
At the start of the 1880s an article in The Victorian Review
looked closely at the features of 'An Australian Dominion'. 77
The Legacy of British settlement and the deliberate reproduction
of many of Britain's values, customs and institutions,
29