Every fortnight, I host a discussion with a few friends where we talk about interesting ideas and debate topics. It's fascinating to hear about the experiences and different opinions of others, especially people as amazing as my fellow Kellogg students.

Last week, we decided to try a different structure, where people prepared a discussion or a talk about certain topic. In this case, it was alcohol. We heard from people about the chemistry of fermentation and the issues of alcohol in the workforce.

This is the story I shared:

Three Stories

I wanted to tell you three stories. The first is about a rebellion, the second is about a hospital and the third is about a hole. Each story has to do with alcohol and the role that it had a development on my homeland, Australia.

The Rebellion

In the early 1800s, the Colony of New South Wales covered half of the continent of modern Australia. After years of mismanagement and corruption, the colony needed a new Governor. Tradition at the time was to appoint a former British naval officer as Governor and so in 1806 Captain William Bligh arrived in Sydney.

While William Bligh had distinguished himself during the Battle of Copenhagen, he was most famous for the Mutiny on the Bounty, in 1789, where Bligh and 12 people sailed 6500km (4000mi) in a small boat after disaffected crew took over their ship. And so, by the time he arrived in Sydney in 1806, Bligh was a pretty tough guy and a strict disciplinarian

Bligh immediately started work on fixing a lot of the corruption and dysfunction that had taken over early New South Wales. Bligh introduced new port restrictions and started questioning a lot of the excessive land grants that had been given to some of the colony’s richest people.

One controversial things that Bligh did involved rum. At that time, rum was the most popular form of currency in New South Wales. Bligh made it illegal to use rum, or any other form of alcohol, as a currency

All of these tensions boiled over when Bligh threatened 6 members of the NSW Corps with Treason and the Commander of the NSW Corps, George Johnston, decided that enough was enough. On 26 January 1808, 20 years from the day that the first colonists landed in Sydney, Johnston led 400 troops and deposed the Governor.

Today, this rebellion is known as the Rum Rebellion and remains the only successful armed takeover of a government in Australia's recorded history.

The Hospital

By the time 1810 rolled around, the British Government decided to try something new and appointed a former Army officer, Lachlan Macquarie, as the Governor of New South Wales.

Lachlan Macquarie was a man with a vision about the sort of grand society that New South Wales could become. Macquarie organised the city of Sydney into a grid layout and sponsored explorers to go beyond Sydney, establishing Australia’s first inland city. 

Macquarie was a strong emancipist, and believed that reformed criminals should be allowed to reintegrate into society. He made former criminals the Colonial Architect and the Colonial Surgeon. He also championed a change in the name of the continent, from “New Holland” to “Australia”, a name which was first used in a dispatch by Macquarie in 1817

One of the things that Macquarie wanted to do was to build Australia’s first hospital, to replace a series of hospital tents and other structures. He only had one problem – the British Government wouldn’t give him any money to pay for the hospital.

So what do you do if you’re Macquarie and you don’t have any money for the hospital? You get someone else to pay for it.

Macquarie convinced a consortium of businesspeople to build the hospital for him, in exchange for convict labor, materials and, most importantly, a monopoly on rum imports into the colony. Expecting to get very rich from the rum imports, the consortium built a lavish, but poorly designed hospital.

However, Macquarie soon after changed the law to allow for increased rum imports and the consortium incurred heavy losses.

The hospital, which became known as the Rum Hospital, now houses the Parliament of the State of New South Wales.

The Hole

So without rum as a currency, how could the Colony of New South Wales operate?

At the time, many different foreign currencies were also being used, with their value largely based on their metal content and weight. The problem was that there was always a shortage of coins, often because the coins would be exported out of the Colony.

To address a shortage of coins in 1813, Macquarie imported 40,000 Spanish coins and had a former convicted forger punch out the centre of the coins, to make them useless outside of New South Wales. Both the centre and the outside were restamped, with the words NSW and their value. In doing so, Macquarie created Australia’s first currency

The design of this coin (a circle with a hole in the middle) was adopted as the logo of Australia’s largest investment bank, which is aptly named Macquarie bank.