Many of the pictures in this part of the gallery are directly related to the establishment of federation, the coming into being of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The most significant and the most important contributor to that process through the 1890s was this man, Sir Henry Parkes. Many foreign visitors have never heard of Parkes, but are engaged nevertheless by this extraordinary head, this leonine presence, this tough colonist. Parkes was many times premier of New South Wales, but never served any public office under the commonwealth that he was so largely responsible for bringing into being. Sir Henry Parkes did more, perhaps, than any other individual to provide the glue with which the six separate colonies came together and stayed together through the 1890s, and without whom the Commonwealth of Australia Act that was signed into law by Queen Victoria in July 1900, one of the last acts of her remarkable reign, couldn't have happened.
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