Aussie utopian communards set sail for Paraguay

1893 Australia: On a Sunday afternoon one week after a large farewell gathering (10,000 people on July 9 [qv]) in Sydney's Domain, the Royal Tar sailed, arriving at Montevideo on September 13, and William Lane and his hundreds of followers worked hard to establish the New Australia and Cosme utopian communist settlements near Villarrica, Paraguay (he called it "socialism with a small 's'"). Descendants of some of the 600 settlers still live there.




Australia's famous writer Henry Lawson briefly wanted to go, as the famous poet Mary Cameron (later Dame Mary Gilmore) did actually go later and stay six years in Paraguay, but Lawson didn't have the necessary sixty pounds and later turned away from the ideology and methods of Lane, his former boss at the Brisbane Worker.

The 171-ft, copper hulled Royal Tar, the largest vessel built in Australia at the time, was built of bluegum and bloodwood by John Campbell Stewart (and/or W Marshall) at Copenhagen Mill, Nambucca Heads, on the north coast of New South Wales in 1876, near where this almanac is produced and also not far from many modern-day utopian-style communities (the Rainbow Region of northern New South Wales) ...

Categories: australian-labor-party, australia, alternative-lifestyle, utopia, australian-history, radical-history, henry-lawson