Walter Griffiths, backed by South Australian federationists, leads fight for breakaway Western Australia state
The proposed new state of Auralia (meaning "Land of gold"), to join the Australian federation and separate from the rest of Western Australia, was the cause taken up by Walter Griffiths in 1899.
Walter Griffiths, Adelaide-born and -educated representative for the Northern Territory in the South Australian parliament, achieved national fame by leading the fight for a new state called Auralia to break away from Western Australia to join the proposed Australian federation.
Born in 1867 at Kent Town, Adelaide, to a wealthy ironmonger, Walter attended St Aloysius College at Sevenhills and the Collegiate School of Saint Peter, Adelaide. At 15, Griffiths joined his uncle William, a storekeeper with mining interests, at Yam Creek in the Northern Territory.
Griffith joined investor and importer Vaiben Louis Solomon in mining ventures in the territory and in the Kimberley, Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie goldfields, Western Australia. They owned the Northern Territory Times and Griffths helped Solomon to produce an influential Guide to the WA Goldfields and became prominent in the Kalgoorlie Chamber of Mines.
When his uncle died in 1892, Griffith took over the business, and in 1893, at 25, joined Solomon as the members for the Northern Territory in the South Australian House of Assembly.
Griffith took up the cause of Western Australia goldfields who wanted to join the commonwealth. He worked with South Australian federationists, including Paddy Glynn, Charles Cameron Kingston and Josiah Symon, to advise and encourage the Eastern Goldfields Reform League, formed in December 1899 after Western Australian government refused to hold a referendum. The league gathered signatures for a giant petition to be presented to Queen Victoria seeking “separation for federation” and creating a state, Auralia, to join the federation.
Griffiths was chosen to take the petition to London in 1900, to support the Australian delegates and lobby the British government to agree to separation or force Western Australia to join federation. British colonial secretary Joseph Chamberlain refused to see Griffiths who wrote persistent strong letters that petitioners were “justly incensed” at being blocked from presenting their case.
Edmund Barton, Alfred Deakin and Kingston thanked Griffith for support in preventing the British government from amending the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution bill. Kingston congratulated him “on the courageous and tactful manner in which you represented the interest of Westralian Federationists and Separationists”.
Griffiths left London after Chamberlain had advised him that premier John Forest had conceded and Western Australians would vote on entering the commonwealth. Arriving home in June, Griffiths reported that “the petition of separation had achieved all that was desired”. A few weeks later, he was diagnosed with typhoid fever and died in Wakefield Hospital, Adelaide, on September 4, 1900.
