Of course I am talking of Australia here; The birthplace of federation was a small NSW town on the NSW/Qld border. On the 24th of October 1889 the then premier of NSW one Sir Henry Parkes stopped in Tenterfield on the way back to Sydney; he had been visiting brisbane and had been discussing Federation there it seems. he had an unusual enthusiastic reception from the Townsfolk. this of course earned him the title father of Federation. Quiet statesmanship and dogged persistence were to achieve for Australia what cannon and sword won so dearly for the 13 American colonies. Australia's founding fathers were not confronted with the same obstinacy and greed from Queen Victoria that the Yankees encountered in George III. George was really insane and it is believed he suffered from the hereditary disease of Porphyria. So all in all America had a tough time of it defeating a maniac; they still defeat maniacs but that is another story entirely. Any opposition to it in fact came from us ourselves and not Great Britain. The vote in favour of Queensland becoming part of Australia was needed of course and lies were told I believe so what's new lol politics again. The Australian Labor Party was formed at Barcaldine and for seven turbulent days in December 1899, Queensland enjoyed the distinction of having the world's first Labor government. Queensland was plunged into one of it's most tumultuous period's, with the great shearers strike of 1891 prompting workers to again raise the Eureka flag; and again armed troops were sent in by the government to quell the uprising. Passions were running high and in the turbulent aftermath of the burning of the Dagworth station woolshed, Banjo Patterson put pen to paper to write the stirring words of Waltzing Matilda.why that was never our national anthem I and thousands of others will never know conventions were called, the premiers met yet again to draft enabling acts to elect delegates for a new convention to revise and amend the draft Constitution and then finally, in 1898, referendums were held. Even then, Queensland did things its own way, boycotting the 1898 vote. With its sugar industry heavily reliant on Kanaka labour, the northern colony had serious misgivings about the "White Australia Policy" component of Federation and it was not until the other colonies sweetened the deal financially that Queenslanders went to the polls. Not all Queenslanders, however. Indeed, it was anything but. For starters, Queensland's 215,000 females were denied to vote, so too all Aborigines. And of the other races, only the richest Indian and Chinese merchants were eligible to vote. What's more, a six-month residential qualification meant that Queensland's large itinerant workforce – shearers, canecutters and navvies – also were denied. That meant that out of a Queensland population of around 482,000, fewer than 70,000 were granted a say on whether Queensland was to become a state in the new Commonwealth, a homogeneous white vote for an homogeneous white land. Still I understand that this happened in northern countries as well. Women were denied the vote in the UK; not the case now thank goodness. Western Australia were also needed and it was feared they would back down; all ended well however and we became a federation and the Commonwealth in 1901 The upshot of all this is we are now a very modern Island nation Thanks to all concerned and that includes the poor convicts that started us off and free settlers as well naturaly; migrants we have always had although the method of getting into a country which is truly multicultural now is difficult and at times hard to understand.