Birks family also part of 1890s Murtho village in South Australia; shares utopian socialist vision with 'New Australia'
The 1890s Murtho village irrigation settlement along the River Murray near Renmark in South Australia lasted until 1899. It involved members of Adelaide's prominent Birks family that also had George Napier Birks and his wife Helen (nee Thomas) join William Lane's New Australia religious socialist utopian project in Paraguay. Murtho was set up on similar lines.
Image courtesy State Library of South Australia
Brothers, chemist John Napier Birks and Walter Richard Birks, were among settlers at Murtho village settlement – set up on a religious socialist utopian model – near Renmark on the River Murray, in South Australia, in the 1890s.
Murtho was one of 11 village settlements initiated by the South Australia government to turn "waste lands for irrigation" during high unemployment from an economic depression deepened by a bank collapse and major strikes. The settlements idea also responded to South Australians being among those leaving to join William Lane’s New Australia project in Paraguay. Prominent among those in 1894 was George Napier Birks and his wife Helen (nee Thomas) – from two of the province’s most prominent settlement names – and other family members. Murtho village was to be set up on the same principles as New Australia.
The Birks’ part in these utopian ventures was part of a particularly South Australian empathy with the radical agrarian ideas from Britain in the late 19th Century. The radical agrarian movement opposed land being left unused only to collect rent or to speculate on its value. A Land Nationalization Society, formed in London in 1884 by Alfred Russel Wallace (of evolutionary theory fame), believed the best way to abolish the monopoly of big land holdings was to vest all property titles in the crown. All land, they argued, should eventually be owned by the state, with landholders paying yearly rent to use it.
In the 1880s, land nationalisation society branches opened in some South Australian rural or mining centres as well as Adelaide and its suburbs. Land nationalisation merged into the single-tax ideas of Henry George, who visited Adelaide in 1890. The single tax would be applied to land speculators. The special South Australian embrace of agrarian land politics drew on Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s vision for a colony of small farms – a vision corrupted by selling big land holdings to vested interests. Middle-class Protestant Dissenters, as a major force in founding South Australia, were sensitive to the land privileges of the English aristocracy and the Church of England.
As a single taxer and land nationalisation society member, the devoutly Christian George Napier Birks lumped capitalism with the evils of land speculation and sold his own commercial interests to pursue the cooperative dream in Paraguay with New Australia Movement founded in 1892 by William Lane, prominent in the Australian labour movement. Lane chose Paraguay to build a society based on a common hold (not common wealth), a brotherhood of English-speaking whites, life marriage, preserving the white “colour line”, teetotalism and communism.
The Murtho village, started on similar lines to New Australia, was different from other 1890s South Australian settlements by being a private enterpise of wealthier settlers who could afford the £50 fee stipulated by the government. Murtho, and another village at Mount Remarkable, were the only ones allowing women to become association members. Murtho also provided general access to account books; permitting three, instead of the usual two weeks' holiday; and omitted the rule that: "Each villager is to be obedient and respectful to trustees and officers".
John Napier Birks’ daughter Elsie left a teaching academy in North Adelaide to join Murtho in 1894. A cooperative life on the land, she believed, would be more equitable, “less artificial”, and altogether “better than [the] existing conditions of society”. Roman Catholic priest Thomas Lee, who visited the River Murray settlements in 1894, reported that he didn’t go to Murtho because "this is run on the Communistic principle and I am very pleased so say you have no Catholics there.”
The Murtho experiment ended by 1899, mainly due to the difficulty of irrigating crops at its cliff-top site. The Paraguay New Australia colony also collapsed under disagreements and Lane’s despotic rule.