Sir George Gipps (23 December 1790
Peninsular War
In 1809 he joined the Royal Engineers and was initially posted to Ireland before being transferred in 1811 to serve in the Peninsular War. Gipps took part in the Siege of Badajoz in 1812 where he was wounded in the arm leading an assault on the fort of La Picurina. He was deployed to other cities in Spain as well as elsewhere in Europe (although he missed the Battle of Waterloo due to his posting in Ostend, Belgium where he was preparing fortifications).
Lower Canada
After a few years serving as a commanding engineer for the government in the town of Sheerness, Gipps became Private Secretary to the First Lord of the Admiralty, Lord Auckland in 1834. A year later, on Auckland's recommendation, Gipps was knighted and sent to Lower Canada as a Commissioner, together with the Earl of Gosford and Sir Charles Edward Grey, to examine grievances against colonial rule there. Although the commission was a complete failure which helped to ignite the 1837 Lower Canada Rebellion, Gipps gained a reputation for political negotiation and colonial administration. On returning to England in April 1837, he found that he was promoted to the rank of major and was being considered for the role of Governor of New South Wales. He accepted and was officially appointed to the position on 5 October 1837.
thumb|right|Sir George Gipps
Gipps attempted twice to introduce legislation that allowed for Aboriginal evidence to be given in the courts. In 1839, an Act was passed in the NSW legislature but was later vetoed by the British government. In 1844, Gipps tried again but the proposed Aboriginal Evidence Bill was defeated by the squatters in the NSW Legislative Council.
Additionally, the British government requested Gipps to oversee the introduction of an Aboriginal Protectorate in the Port Phillip District of the colony. Although it provided important documentary evidence of widespread abuses toward Aboriginal people, the Protectorate suffered from under-funding and financial mismanagement. Despite strong pressure from the squatters in the region to disband the scheme, Gipps kept it going during his time as governor. It failed, however, in providing protection to the Aboriginal people.
Land managements
One of Gipps' major tasks was to try to bring some control over the "squattocracy" spreading outside the "boundaries of location" and to minimise conflict between them and the Aboriginal people who resided in these lands. In 1839, Gipps amended an Act brought in by Governor Richard Bourke three years earlier that attempted to restrain the unauthorised occupation of Crown Lands. Gipps' amendment allowed for the formation of the Border Police of New South Wales, which were paramilitary units controlled by various Commissioners of Crown Lands that enabled the enforcement of the land laws in the frontier regions. The Border Police were also meant to control the violence between the squatters and Aboriginals, but in reality this force were often utilised to kill Aboriginal people in large numbers.
Further to this, in April 1844 Gipps introduced legislation that expanded the annual licensing fee for squatters, demanding £10 a year for every station they had taken up. Each property was to be limited to with no more than 500 head of cattle and 7000 sheep. Although the bill also allowed for a longer term 8 year tenancy of a small part of each property, the squatters were infuriated by these restrictions. This storm of protest from the squatters led to the foundation of the Pastoral Association of New South Wales and added to the already toxic resentment felt toward Gipps by the wealthy colonists which continued until his departure.
Expansion of the colony
Despite Gipps' attempts to rein in the squatters, the expansion of the frontiers of British colonisation increased dramatically under his governorship. The Moreton Bay region (later known as Brisbane) and the Darling Downs were opened up to the colonists in the north, while the Portland Bay District in the south was quickly overrun with graziers. Gipps was commemorated during this period of growth through the naming of Gippsland in 1840. This acceleration of invasion of Aboriginal lands led to even more frontier conflict and massacres during the early 1840s. After feeling the wrath of the squatters around the Myall Creek affair, Gipps was no longer willing or able to make a meaningful intervention into the violence. Well connected colonists and squatters such as Angus McMillan, Patrick Leslie and Arthur Hodgson were in large part a law unto themselves in how they took up land and how they dealt with the Aboriginal residents.
New Zealand
In 1839, two groups of British colonists had been attempting to acquire large amounts of land in New Zealand by duping the resident Māori people. The New Zealand Company, led by Edward Gibbon Wakefield, and a consortium of Sydney speculators led by William Wentworth, had each laid claim to around 8 million hectares which amounted to nearly two thirds of the entire New Zealand land mass. The British government wished to prevent this transaction and declared sovereignty over New Zealand, altering Gipps' jurisdiction as governor by Letters Patent to include both the territory of New South Wales and New Zealand.
Elected representation
In 1842, the British government passed the Constitution Act for New South Wales. This act allowed, for the first time, elected representatives to outnumber those nominated by the Crown in the Legislative Council of New South Wales. The following year, Gipps implemented the changes with him nominating 12 members, and another 24 being elected by eligible land-holding male citizens of the colony. Although these changes seemed to increase democratic governance in New South Wales, it in fact markedly increased the influence of the wealthy land-holding squatters due to the prerequisite of owning at least £2,000 worth of land in order to be a candidate.
Although Gipps still had the power of veto, this new legislature almost entirely extinguished his ability to restrain the squatters. Elected squatters such as William Wentworth, Robert Lowe, Hannibal Macarthur, Richard Windeyer and William Foster attacked Gipps consistently for his land policies that worked against their exclusive claims on property beyond the settled areas, previously the domain solely of their Indigenous inhabitants. When Gipps was removed from the governorship in 1846, he and his appointees on the Council were the last obstacles to the squatters, who were then able to pass favourable pastoral leasing laws that increased the security of their claims and entrenched their power and wealth for at least the next fifty years.
Although many squatters disliked Gipps' scheme because it collected tax off them and resulted in more expensive workers, Gipps was successful in transforming the penal colony toward a free society of worker immigrants with the European population of New South Wales nearly doubling to 190,000 people by 1846.
Drought and economic depression
From Gipps' arrival in the colony there was a devastating three-year drought, which resulted in the economic depression of the early 1840s. Wool prices and land values plummeted while unemployment rose and graziers went bankrupt. Financial institutions such as the Bank of Australia, failed and many colonists lost their fortunes. Revenues to fund policies such as the assisted migration scheme dried up and Gipps was forced to borrow large amounts of money to finance government spending. The drought ended in 1843 and the economic recovery was assisted by the new profitable industry of boiling down, where excess livestock were killed, cut up and placed in huge boiling vats to make tallow.
Education in the colony
Gipps was a vociferous advocate for a secular government school system and wished to improve the situation in the colony where in 1844 fewer than half of the children received any form of education, whether public or private. With the Attorney-General John Plunkett, Gipps proposed a strong public school system to be funded alongside the denominational system. Although their plan was unresolved during Gipps' tenure, it paved the way for the passing of the National Education Board Act of 1848. This Act established the secular public school system that exists today in New South Wales.