What if the British Never Colonized Australia?

See MAP.




Comparison India



Comparison North America



During the age of colonial imperialist aggressions, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain used the semi-rigged and full rigged sailing ships to explore spice routes to eastern Asia. They fought and squabbled on the world ocean and exported their local societal troubles onto the rest of the planet. Depending on how shrewd the aggressors were and how resistant the local inhabitants were or became, the colonial imperialist aggressors imposed rule or settled into discovered new lands. They used navigatable rivers to make inward encroachments on the local human inhabitants. 

In the case of India, the land was pre-settled  and fractured into political subdivisions. It was possible for the British to nibble the region one piece at a time pitting one Indian state against another Indian state and thus establish an "empire" via technological superiority, political gamesmanship, and DUMB luck.  This was seen previously in history. It was how Rome established her empire in the Mediterranean basin. The method only works when another polity is weak and disorganized and the distances and resources and means expended are not cost prohibitive and the climate is "friendly" to trekking on foot or afloat on the rivers.

In the case of North America, the climate was friendly, the rivers plentiful, the local peoples were hunter gatherer proto-agriculture stage above the Rio Grande River and there were very few of the local inhabitants. YET the British stayed fairly close to the seacoasts in the east. It was left to Americans, after we threw the British out, to carry on the continental settlement across the midband latitudes. Gold in California and internal American politics shaped that drive. There was no British incentive and they did not endeavor. Notice that factor in how sparsely and unevenly and poorly Canada was settled, even though it remained a part of the "empire". Outside the Saint Lawrence River Valley, the internal communications  by river and trek was hindered by harsh climate. The coasts, reachable by ship were settled; but down to the present, the interior might as well be considered "underpopulated". As an aside, the United States exhibits the same coastal population concentrations and an underpopulated interior; but we still have dense populations in our great plains compared to Canada. Rivers and trek friendly terrain plus WEATHER accounts for that outcome.                     

Look at Australia. Climate indicates coastal settlements and the hunter gatherer stage local inhabitants indicates colonial settlement rather than imposed rule on a local polity by a foreign imperialist aggressor. 

The location of Australia that far south off the spice routes, its horrible interior climate, lack of easy rivers and gentle climate for trekking all combined to render it almost last by default for European aggressors to find and settle. The British took one look at it, at first, and decided it was a place "fit for convicts".   
 
The French actually looked at it and settled for strip mining New Caledonia instead. 

The "convicts" and later settlers built themselves a country anyway.  Their settlement pattern followed the geophysical access and climate realities, which as a sidebar is WHY the Allies *(ANZACs Americans) in WWII battered their way through New Guinea and moved through the Philippines rather from India and the Malayan straits, or through the eastern half of Dutch held Indonesia. By ship, by railroad logistics and supplied local industry and agriculture and by climate, eastern Australia was the only way to go.   

You do know that a south to north railroad and paved road to DARWIN from Alice Springs was a postwar endeavor? That is how tough the interior of Australia was and is to cross. Only necessity compels lazy humans to do "difficult" things like that. 

Well Belgium did try to purchase Cuba so anything is possible here and imagine if Leopold II got a hold of it during OTL's Scramble for Africa...that would be nightmarish indeed.

Of course, considering just how large Australia is geographically, and how much coastline it has, there's another distinct possibility that no-one's so much as entertained yet, but which represents one of the most plausible and likely outcomes IMHO. Namely, that without the British ever colonizing Australia, it remains uncolonized ITTL until the late 1800's, with its eventual colonization thus ultimately more closely resembling that of OTL's 'Scramble For Africa' (and OTL's colonizations of Melanesia and Polynesia, for that matter). In other words, with a whole myriad of European would-be Colonial Powers embarking on a race to claim various sections of Australia for themselves (predominantly for prestige purposes and bragging rights, with few if any of these Australian colonial territories actually turning a profit, and a bunch of them being bought and sold along the way), leading to an eventual treaty agreement to partition it between them along stipulated arbitrary lines, but with relatively little actual colonization taking place across much of it on account of its 'inhospitable climate'.

It is a possibility, but so very distant from anything reasonable or historically based as to be dismissed. It is more likely that China and Japan gets invaded successfully by Spanish conquistadors - no real chance.

The same era saw exploration of the South Pacific and increasing contacts with the Maori in New Zealand, leading to settlement there.

A Scramble for Australia? There isn't the same level of resources, available land or attractive territory and, not to put too fine a point on it, the continent had been claimed through Cook's action in 1770.

Coastline length means not much at all. The available realistic colony sites are Port Philip Bay, Sydney Harbour, Adelaide, Brisbane/Moreton Bay and the Swan River/Perth. The first four are on the eastern seaboard 'curve' and aren't suited to multiple occupants. Perth and WA are the outliers (as they are today), but aren't really sustainable in the long term in their own right until after the epoch of colonisation. It is more than just looking at a general map, but rather digging deeper and seeing why certain areas were settled, at what pace and with what obstacles.

There needs to be a reason, a logical reason, as to why Britain abandons its long established interests in the region, which have previously been outlined, and just goes off elsewhere for a few decades. If we are just piling multiple PoDs atop each other, then we create a Jenga Tower wrought of blocks of unset jelly - no basis for an in depth examination.