The ‘Father of Federation’, Sir Henry Parkes made his famous Tenterfield Oration in 1889 at the Tenterfield School of Arts in New South Wales.

In a speech that has been compared to Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Parkes called for the colonies to ‘unite and create a great national government for all Australia’.

The primary reason Parkes gave for Federation in the Tenterfield Oration was the need for a united defence of the Australian continent. The oration also marked the first time that the word commonwealth was used in connection with the Federation of Australia.

Parkes said, Australia has now a population of three and a half million.

The American people numbered only between three and four million when they formed the great commonwealth of the United States… Surely what the Americans did by war, the Australians can bring about in peace.

In The Annotated Constitution of the Australian Commonwealth leading authorities on Federation, Sir John Quick and Sir Robert Garran, said that it was the Tenterfield Oration that set the ball rolling. Sadly, after a life at the forefront of the Federation movement, Sir Henry Parkes died in 1896 without seeing his dream realised.

Image: Sir Henry Parkes, Tom Roberts (1892), the Art Gallery of South Australia