Bowland

Bowland Federal Republic
Flag Coat of arms
Motto: Audax at Fidelis (Bold but Faithful)
Anthem: Waltzing Matilda
Location of Bowland
Capital	Brisbane
Largest city	Bribane
Official languages	English
Demonym	Bowlander
Government	Constitutional parliamentary republic
• President	Gordon Brown
• Deputy President	Garland Headly
• Speaker of the National Council	Peter Barton
Legislature	National Council
Establishment
• Union Proclamation	14 October 1943
• Autonomy from the APR	3 February 1989
• Independence declaration	26 November 1989
Population
• 2011 census	5,072,314 (119th)
• Density	1.66/km2 (4.3/sq mi) (241st)
GDP (PPP)	2013 estimate
• Total	$116.773 billion
• Per capita	$23,021 (48th)
HDI (2013)	0.781 high · 59th
Currency	Bowland shilling (BOS)
Time zone	UTC+10:00
Date format	dd/mm/yyyy
Drives on the	left
Calling code	+695
Internet TLD	.bl
Website www.bowland.gov.bl

Bowland, officially known as the Bowland Federal Republic, is a sovereign state located on the Australian continent and islands in the Torres Strait. It is the world's eighth-largest country by total area, however, it also has remarkable sparsity due to the large arid regions of the nation's south and south-west, thereby being one of the least densely populated countries in the world.

For 40,000 prior to the first European landing, Bowland was inhabited primarily by Australian Aboriginals who spoke languages grouped into 250 language groups. After the discovery of the continent by Dutch explorers in 1606, the continent was colonised Great Britain, who claimed the eastern portion of Australia in 1770 and first settled convicts in 1788.

Bowland was first settled in 1824 by John Oxley who founded the first settlement on the banks of the Brisbane River. After steady population growth throughout the mid-19th century, Bowland (then named Queensland), separated from New South Wales in 1859 to become a separate colony. In 1901, Queensland federated alongside the other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia.

During the Australian Civil War, Queensland remained fiercely partisan in favour of the Commonwealth government, and the state capital of Brisbane was the last major city to fall to the Communist league. In 1943, Queensland was amalgamated into the Northern Territory and adopted the name Bowland, named after the first governor of Queensland, George Bowen. The state continued to exist in this form until the collapse of the Australian People's Republic in 1989 when it became the first new Australian state to declare independence.

Bowland today is a constitutional parliamentary republic with a unicameral legislature, the National Council, the representatives being elected via optional preferential voting with 95 seats available. With a population of approximately 5.8 million citizens, Bowland is considered a developed nation, with heavy urbanisation on the nation's east coast and a large farming population to bolster the economy, currently the 59th largest in the world. With 0.781 on the human-development index, Bowland ranks moderate to high in many international comparisons to national performance, such as quality for life, heath, and education. However, the nation's also been criticised for more low civil liberty rankings, having received a "partly-free" ranking on the 2013 Freedom in the World international survey. 

History

Pre-European Bowland

The aboriginal occupation of the Australian continent is believed to pre-date 40,000 BC, the indigenous peoples having crossed over a land bridge across south-east Asia and the Torres strait, and spread across the mainland, diversifying into hundreds of different cultural groups. In Bowland itself, there were up to 90 different language groups, and over a hundred different cultural groups, each separated futher into individual hunter-gatherer families. 

Arrival of Europeans

In February 1606, the first European to land on Australia, Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon, landed on what is now the western shore of Cape York in far-north Bowland, and also marked the first interaction between European explorers and Australian Aboriginals. Over the next century and a half, several expeditions were sent to "New Holland", including those from Portugal, France and England, until the exploration of Lieutenant James Cook in 1770. Under the orders of King George III, on 22 August, 1770, Cook claimed the eastern half of the continent at Possession Island, naming East Australia, including Bowland, 'New South Wales'. Eighteen years later, the first British settlement on the continent landed in Sydney Cove under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip, who founded the city of Sydney.

In 1823, British explorer and Surveyor General of New South Wales John Oxley sailed north from Sydney in search of locations for a convict settlement near Moreton Bay. Whilst exploring the bay area, he discovered the Brisbane river, and in 1824 he established a settlement at what is now Redcliffe, eventually tranferring the colony to location of the Brisbane city center. Over the next thirty years, free and convict settlements along what is the north and east coast of the continent expanded, usually into traditional aboriginal land, Brisbane becoming the major administrative city of the north-east by 1850. Along the continents northern coast, the small trading outpost of Darwin (founded in 1839), was becoming to grow in population and size around this time also.

Colony of Queensland

Although public meetings where held between 1851 and 1858 on the matter, the area that would become Bowland didn't become a separate colony until 10 December 1859, when the British author and first governor of the colony George Bowen, under the direction of a letters patent signed by Queen Victoria, proclaimed it separated from New South Wales, eponymously naming it 'Queensland' after the British monarch. On 22 May 1860,  Robert Herbert, a British private secretary, became the first premier of Queensland following the colonies first election, forming the first Australian parliament with pending time as a crown colony under the absolute jurisdiction of the British parliament.

During the second half of the 19th century, the colony experienced rapid economic and population growth due to the discovery of gold. In 1867, James Nash discovered the metal on the Mary River near the town of Gympie, sparking a gold rush that, whilst significant to the Queensland economy, was not as large as other gold rushes in Victoria or New South Wales. It was also during this period in which Queensland's agricultural sector began to grow, sparking the growth of the Kanaka population (labourers originating from the Pacific islands) to the colony to work on the vast sugar cane plantations. These labourers remained in the colony until the passage of the Pacific Island Labourers Act of 1901, which deported all foreign workers from Australian shores.

Federation and Civil War

Following a series of referendums between 1898 and 1900, all the Australian colonies voted in favour of federation, an event that would occur on 1 January 1901, with Edmund Barton becoming the first Prime Minister of the united Australia. One year later, in 1902, the Queensland state capital of Brisbane was officially declared a city, and in 1905, Women were granted the right to vote in state elections (federal suffrage was granted in 1902). In 1914, Australia became one of the first British dominions to fight against the Central Powers in the conflict, Queensland eventually sending over 60,000 men overseas. In 1916, Queensland became one of the only states to vote 'no' against the conscription plebiscite, which eventually saw a conscription bill pass in the Australian Parliament, an event that has often been suggested as the first step towards the Australian Civil War. 

During the rise of both the Country Party and Communist Party nationally during the early 1920's, Queensland remained sided with the moderate Labor Party led by Ted Theodore, who abolished the state's upper house in 1922 to form a unicameral legislature, the only one on the state level. By 1925, Theodore's Labor government was the sole remaining state Labor government in the nation, other's having lost the electorate to the Country party, Commonwealth Liberal Party, or the Communist Party.

In 1928, following the beginning of a national economic depression, the radicalised members of the Communist party (under the pseudonym of the United Workers League) began their guerilla campaign in the Tasmanian highland's, having overthrown the state legislature in Hobart, leading many members of the Communist party, and more radical members of the Labor party, to lead strikes against the national Commonwealth Liberal government. In Queensland, the growing situation in the other states, especially after the 1929 international economic collapse, had still not touched the state, and the incumbent Country Party government remained sided with the national government.

It would not be until mid-1930 in which workers, labourers and disgruntled farmers rose up alongside the United Workers League (UWL) in revolution, marching on the cities of Cairns and Townsville in an effort to weaken the position of the national Australian government. During the Queensland campaign, members of the UWL were forced into the jungles of the far-north, having to rely on guerilla tactics to avoid the Australian defence force. By the end of the war in 1933, after the fall of Adelaide and Sydney, the Queensland UWL began their march south towards Brisbane, which eventually became the final state capital to fall after the New South Wales and Queensland soldiers met outside the state legislative council following brief fighting.