7 - Industrialising Australia’s natural capital

Summary

This chapter combines chronological and thematic approaches to highlight the contributions of the chief resource industries to Australia's economic development. It discusses three key periods, being those associated with the forming of a pastoral economy to 1850, the augmenting of the resources economy by minerals and new land during 1850-90, and the adjustments and diversification of primary industries during 1890-1914. Within these periods the narrative explores the connections of the natural resource industries with enterprise, skills and technology, institutions and social capital, export-led growth, a staples trap and resource curse, and extracted resource rents and sustainability. In 1820 Australia's settler economy was confined to a narrow coastal strip of New South Wales and the riverine valleys of Van Diemen's Land. The first pastoral boom was faltering in the 1840s, although slower population growth ameliorated a tendency towards GDP per capita retardation.