Colony of Victoria in the context of "Federation of Australia"

The New Zealand land confiscations took place during the 1860s to punish the Kīngitanga movement for attempting to set up an alternative Māori form of government that forbade the selling of land to European settlers. The confiscation law targeted Kīngitanga Māori against whom the government had waged war to restore the rule of British law. More than 1,200,000 hectares (3,000,000 acres) or 4.4 percent of land were confiscated, mainly in Waikato, Taranaki and the Bay of Plenty, but also in South Auckland, Hauraki, Te Urewera, Hawke's Bay and the East Coast.

Legislation for the confiscations was contained in the New Zealand Settlements Act 1863, which provided for the seizing of land from Māori tribes who had been in rebellion against the government after 1 January 1863. Its stated purpose was to achieve the "permanent protection and security" of the country's inhabitants and establish law, order and peace by using areas within the confiscated land to establish settlements for colonisation, populated initially by military settlers enlisted from among gold miners at Otago and the Colony of Victoria (Australia). Land not used by for military settlers would be surveyed and laid out as towns and rural allotments and then sold, with the money raised to be used to repay the expenses of fighting Māori. According to academic Dr Ranginui Walker, this provided the ultimate irony for Māori who were fighting to defend their own land from European encroachment: "They were to pay for the settlement and development of their lands by its expropriation in a war for the extension of the Crown's sovereignty into their territory."

The first colonies of the British Empire on the continent of Australia were the penal colony of New South Wales, founded in 1788, and the Swan River Colony (later renamed Western Australia), founded in 1829. Over the next few decades, the colonies of New Zealand, Queensland, South Australia, Van Diemen's Land (later renamed Tasmania), and Victoria were created from New South Wales, as well as an aborted Colony of North Australia. On 1 January 1901, these colonies, excepting New Zealand, became states in the Commonwealth of Australia. Since federation, the internal borders have remained mostly stable, except for the creation of some territories with limited self-government: the Northern Territory from South Australia, to govern the vast, sparsely populated centre of the country; the split of the Northern Territory into Central Australia and North Australia, and then the quick merger of those back into the Northern Territory; and the Australian Capital Territory, a federal district ceded from New South Wales.

Outside of the continent, Queensland attempted an expansion into New Guinea, but British authorities rejected this; the claim would later be made a British protectorate and ceded to Australia. The League of Nations mandated northeast New Guinea to Australia after World War I, as well as Nauru, which was placed under joint Australian-British-New Zealand jurisdiction. These mandates (and, later, United Nations trust territories) became the independent nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea in the mid-20th century. Australia has also obtained several small island territories, mainly from earlier British colonies, and has a large claim on Antarctica.

The Port Phillip District was an administrative division of the Colony of New South Wales from 9 September 1836 until 1 July 1851, when it was separated from New South Wales and became the Colony of Victoria.

In September 1836, NSW Colonial Secretary Alexander Macleay declared Captain William Lonsdale the "Police Magistrate" of "the location of Settlers on the vacant Crown Lands adjacent to the shores of Port Phillip." This position was someone "of which all persons concerned are hereby required to take notice."

Ned Kelly is a 2003 bushranger film based on Robert Drewe's 1991 novel Our Sunshine. Directed by Gregor Jordan, the film's adapted screenplay was written by John Michael McDonagh. The film dramatises the life of Ned Kelly, a legendary bushranger and outlaw who was active mostly in the colony of Victoria. In the film, Kelly, his brother Dan, and two other associates—Steve Hart and Joe Byrne—form a gang of bushrangers in response to acts of police brutality. Heath Ledger stars in the title role, with Orlando Bloom, Naomi Watts and Geoffrey Rush. The film received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $6 million worldwide.

The Eureka Rebellion involved gold miners who revolted against the British administration of the colony of Victoria, Australia, during the Victorian gold rush. It culminated in the Battle of the Eureka Stockade, which took place on 3 December 1854 at Ballarat between the rebels and the colonial forces of Australia. The fighting resulted in an official total of 27 deaths and many injuries, the majority of casualties being rebels. There was a preceding period beginning in 1851 of peaceful demonstrations and civil disobedience on the Victorian goldfields. The miners had various grievances, chiefly the cost of mining permits and the officious way the system was enforced.

Tensions began in 1851, with the introduction of a tax on gold mines. Miners began to organise and protest the taxes; miners stopped paying the taxes en masse. The October 1854 murder of a gold miner, and the burning of a local hotel (which miners blamed on the government), ended the previously peaceful nature of the miners' dispute. Open rebellion broke out on 29 November 1854, as a crowd of some 10,000 swore allegiance to the Eureka Flag. Gold miner Peter Lalor became the rebellion's de facto leader, as he had initiated the swearing of allegiance. The Battle of Eureka Stockade ended the short-lived rebellion on 3 December. A group of 13 captured rebels (not including Lalor, who was in hiding) was put on trial for high treason in Melbourne, but mass public support led to their acquittal.