What is Federation of Australia?
The '''federation of Australia''' was the way that the six separate [[British]] [[colony|colonies]] of [[New South Wales]], [[Queensland]], [[South Australia]], [[Tasmania]], [[Victoria (Australia)|Victoria]] and [[Western Australia]] joined together to become one country. When the [[Constitution of Australia]] came into force, on 1&nbsp;January 1901, the colonies became [[States and territories of Australia|states]] of the [[Australia|Commonwealth of Australia]]. People had been trying to get the colonies to join together in a federation of Australia during the 1850s and 1860s. In the 1890s, a number of big meetings, called conventions, were held to write a constitution for Australia. Sir [[Henry Parkes]], Premier of [[New South Wales]], was the main person supporting this idea. [[Fiji]] and [[New Zealand]] were going to be part of the federation but decided not to join the federation. As soon as the Federation happened, Sir [[Edmund Barton]] was put in charge as [[Prime Minister of Australia]] until the first Australian [[election]]s were held. Barton won the election and continued to be the Prime Minister. [[Category:1900s in Australia]] [[Category:1901]] [[Category:Government of Australia]]