New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a state on the east coast of Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria to the south, and South Australia to the west. Its coast borders the Coral and Tasman Seas to the east. The Australian Capital Territory and Jervis Bay Territory are enclaves within the state. New South Wales' state capital is Sydney, which is also Australia's most populous city. As of September 2025, the population of New South Wales was over 8.6 million, making it Australia's most populous state. Almost two-thirds of the state's population live in the Greater Sydney area.
The Colony of New South Wales was founded as a British penal colony in 1788. It originally comprised more than half of the Australian mainland with its western boundary set at 129th meridian east in 1825. The colony then also included the island territories of Van Diemen's Land, Lord Howe Island, and Norfolk Island. During the 19th century, most of the colony's area was detached to form separate British colonies that eventually became the various states and territories of Australia. The Swan River Colony (later called the Colony of Western Australia) was never administered as part of New South Wales.
Lord Howe Island remains part of New South Wales, while Norfolk Island became a federal territory, as have the areas now known as the Australian Capital Territory and the Jervis Bay Territory.
History
Aboriginal Australians
The original inhabitants of New South Wales were the Aboriginal people who arrived in Australia about 40,000 to 60,000 years ago. Before European settlement, an estimated 250,000 Aboriginal people inhabited the region.
1788: British settlement
In 1770, James Cook charted the unmapped eastern coast of the continent of New Holland, now Australia, and claimed the entire coastline that he had just explored as British territory. Contrary to his instructions, Cook did not gain the consent of the Aboriginal inhabitants. Cook originally named the land New Wales, but on his return voyage to Britain, he settled on the name New South Wales.
In January 1788, Arthur Phillip arrived in Botany Bay with the First Fleet of 11 vessels, which carried over a thousand settlers, including 736 convicts. A few days after arrival at Botany Bay, the fleet moved to the more suitable Port Jackson, where Phillip established a settlement at the place he named Sydney Cove (in honour of the secretary of state, Lord Sydney) on 26 January 1788. This date later became Australia's national day, Australia Day. He formally proclaimed the colony on 7 February 1788 in Sydney. Phillip, as governor of New South Wales, exercised nominal authority over all of Australia east of the 135th meridian east between the latitudes of 10°37'S and 43°39'S, and "all the islands adjacent in the Pacific Ocean". The area included modern New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, and Tasmania. He remained as governor until 1792.
The settlement was initially planned to be a self-sufficient penal colony based on subsistence agriculture. Trade and shipbuilding were banned to keep the convicts isolated. After the departure of Phillip, though, the colony's military officers began acquiring land and importing consumer goods obtained from visiting ships. Former convicts also farmed land granted to them and engaged in trade. Farms spread to the more fertile lands surrounding Parramatta, Windsor, and Camden, and by 1803, the colony was self-sufficient in grain. Boat building was developed to make travel easier and exploit the marine resources of the coastal settlements. Sealing and whaling became important industries.
In March 1804, Irish convicts led around 300 rebels in the Castle Hill rebellion, an attempt to march on Sydney, commandeer a ship, and sail to freedom. Poorly armed and with their leader Philip Cunningham captured, the main body of insurgents was routed by about 100 troops and volunteers at Rouse Hill. At least 39 convicts were killed in the uprising and subsequent executions.
Lachlan Macquarie (governor 1810–1821) commissioned the construction of roads, wharves, churches, and public buildings, sent explorers out from Sydney, and employed a planner to design the street layout of Sydney. A road across the Blue Mountains was completed in 1815, opening the way for large-scale farming and grazing in the lightly wooded pastures west of the Great Dividing Range.
In 1825, Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) became a separate colony and the western border of New South Wales was extended to the 129th meridian east (now the West Australian border).
New South Wales established a military outpost on King George Sound in Western Australia in 1826, which was later transferred to the Swan River colony.
In 1839, the UK decided to formally annex at least part of New Zealand to New South Wales. It was administered as a dependency until becoming the separate Colony of New Zealand on 3 May 1841.
From the 1820s, squatters increasingly established unauthorised cattle and sheep runs beyond the official limits of the settled colony. In 1836, an annual licence was introduced in an attempt to control the pastoral industry, but booming wool prices and the high cost of land in the settled areas encouraged further squatting. The expansion of the pastoral industry led to violent episodes of conflict between settlers and traditional Aboriginal landowners, such as the Myall Creek massacre of 1838. By 1844, wool accounted for half of the colony's exports, and by 1850, most of the eastern third of New South Wales was controlled by fewer than 2,000 pastoralists.
The transportation of convicts to New South Wales ended in 1840, and in 1842, a legislative council was introduced, with two-thirds of its members elected and one-third appointed by the governor. Former convicts were granted the vote, but a property qualification meant that only one in five adult males was enfranchised.
By 1850, the settler population of New South Wales had grown to 180,000, not including the 70,000 living in the area that became the separate colony of Victoria in 1851.
1854 to 1943
In 1856, New South Wales achieved responsible government with the introduction of a bicameral parliament comprising a directly elected Legislative Assembly and a nominated Legislative Council. William Charles Wentworth was instrumental in this process, but his proposal for a hereditary upper house was widely ridiculed and subsequently dropped.
The property qualification for voters had been reduced in 1851, and by 1856, 95 per cent of adult males in Sydney, and 55 per cent in the colony as a whole, were eligible to vote. Full adult male suffrage was introduced in 1858. In 1859, Queensland became a separate colony.
In 1861, the NSW parliament legislated land reforms intended to encourage family farms and mixed farming and grazing ventures. The amount of land under cultivation subsequently increased from 246,000 acres in 1861 to 800,000 acres in the 1880s. Wool production also continued to grow, and by the 1880s, New South Wales produced almost half of Australia's wool. Coal had been discovered in the early years of settlement and gold in 1851, and by the 1890s wool, gold and coal were the main exports of the colony.
The NSW economy also became more diversified. From the 1860s, New South Wales had more people employed in manufacturing than any other Australian colony. The NSW government also invested strongly in infrastructure such as railways, telegraph, roads, ports, water and sewerage. By 1889, it was possible to travel by train from Brisbane to Adelaide via Sydney and Melbourne. The extension of the rail network inland also encouraged regional industries and the development of the wheat belt.
In the 1880s, trade unions grew and were extended to lower-skilled workers. In 1890, a strike in the shipping industry spread to wharves, railways, mines, and shearing sheds. The defeat of the strike was one of the factors leading the Trades and Labor Council to form a political party. The Labor Electoral League won a quarter of seats in the NSW elections of 1891 and held the balance of power between the Free Trade Party and the Protectionist Party.
The suffragette movement was developing at this time. The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales was founded in 1891.
1901: Federation of Australia
A Federal Council of Australasia was formed in 1885, but New South Wales declined to join. A major obstacle to the federation of the Australian colonies was the protectionist policies of Victoria which conflicted with the free trade policies dominant in New South Wales. Nevertheless, the NSW premier, Henry Parkes, was a strong advocate of federation and his Tenterfield Oration in 1889 was pivotal in gathering support for the cause. Parkes also struck a deal with Edmund Barton, leader of the NSW Protectionist Party, whereby they would work together for federation and leave the question of a protective tariff for a future Australian government to decide.
In early 1893, the first Citizens' Federation League was established in the Riverina region of New South Wales and many other leagues were soon formed in the colony. The leagues organised a conference in Corowa in July 1893, which developed a plan for federation. The new NSW premier, George Reid, endorsed the "Corowa plan" and in 1895 convinced the majority of other premiers to adopt it. A constitutional convention held sessions in 1897 and 1898, which resulted in a proposed constitution for a Commonwealth of federated states. However, a referendum on the constitution failed to gain the required majority in New South Wales after that colony's Labor party campaigned against it and Premier Reid gave it such qualified support that he earned the nickname "yes-no Reid".
The premiers of the other colonies agreed to some concessions to New South Wales (particularly that the future Commonwealth capital would be located in NSW), and in 1899, further referendums were held in all the colonies except Western Australia. All resulted in yes votes, with the yes vote in New South Wales meeting the required majority. The Imperial Parliament passed the necessary enabling legislation in 1900, and Western Australia subsequently voted to join the new federation. The Commonwealth of Australia was inaugurated on 1 January 1901, and Barton was sworn in as Australia's first prime minister.
1954 to 2020
The first post-federation NSW governments were Progressive or Liberal Reform and implemented a range of social reforms with Labor support. Women won the right to vote in NSW elections in 1902, but were ineligible to stand for parliament until 1918. Labor increased its parliamentary representation in every election from 1904 before coming to power in 1910 with a majority of one seat.
The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 saw more NSW volunteers for service than the federal authorities could handle, leading to unrest in camps as recruits waited for transfer overseas. In 1916, the premier, William Holman, and a number of his supporters were expelled from the Labor Party over their support for military conscription. Holman subsequently formed a Nationalist government which remained in power until 1920. Despite a huge victory for Holman's pro-conscription Nationalists in the elections of March 1917, a second conscription referendum held in December that year was defeated in New South Wales and nationally.
Following the war, NSW governments embarked on large public works programs including road building, the extension and electrification of the rail network and the construction of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The works were largely funded by loans from London, leading to a debt crisis after the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. New South Wales was hit harder by the depression than other states, and by 1932, one-third of union members in the state were unemployed, compared with 20 per cent nationally.
Labor won the November 1930 NSW elections and Jack Lang became premier for the second time. In 1931, Lang proposed a plan to deal with the depression which included a suspension of interest payments to British creditors, diverting the money to unemployment relief. The Commonwealth and state premiers rejected the plan and later that year Lang's supporters in the Commonwealth parliament brought down James Scullin's federal Labor government. The NSW Lang government subsequently defaulted on overseas interest payments and was dismissed from office in May 1932 by the governor, Sir Phillip Game.
The following elections were won comfortably by the United Australia Party in coalition with the Country Party. Bertram Stevens became premier, remaining in office until 1939, when he was replaced by Alexander Mair.
A contemporary study by sociologist A. P. Elkin found that the population of New South Wales responded to the outbreak of war in 1939 with pessimism and apathy. This changed with the threat of invasion by Japan, which entered the war in December 1941. In May 1942, three Japanese midget submarines entered Sydney Harbour and sank a naval ship, killing 29 men aboard. The following month, Sydney and Newcastle were shelled by Japanese warships. American troops began arriving in the state in large numbers. Manufacturing, steelmaking, shipbuilding and rail transport all grew with the war effort and unemployment virtually disappeared.