Kimberley Plan

With rampant anti-Semitism in Europe, the Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonization was formed in London in July 1935, to search for a potential Jewish homeland and haven. The League was a non-Zionist organisation and was led by Isaac Nachman Steinberg. In late 1938 or early 1939, the pastoral firm of Michael Durack in Australia offered the League about in the Kimberley region in Australia, stretching from the north of Western Australia into the Northern Territory. The League sent a Yiddish poet and essayist Melech Ravitch to the Northern Territory in the 1930s to investigate the region and to collect data on topography and climate. ==Early Australian Commentary and Public Territorialist Proposals==

Public discussion of possible Jewish agricultural settlement in northern Australia pre‑dated the Freeland League’s Kimberley Scheme by several decades. Following the 1905 antisimetic pogroms in Russia that left thousands of Jews dead, in February 1907, a 17‑year‑old Jewish Australian journalist, Phillip L. Harris, published a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald titled “The Jew as a Farmer,” in which he challenged contemporary assumptions about Jewish agricultural capability and suggested that northern Australia could serve as a site for Jewish rural settlement.. Harris later became a prominent war correspondent and editor. During the First World War he founded Aussie: The Australian Soldiers’ Magazine, produced with the support of Sir John Monash, which played a significant role in documenting and shaping the emerging ANZAC legend.. Later in 1907, the writer and territorialist leader Israel Zangwill sought support for establishing a Jewish agricultural homeland in either the Northern Territory or north‑west Western Australia. Zangwill argued that such a settlement could provide refuge for persecuted Jews in the Russian Empire, including large numbers of Jewish agricultural workers, while contributing to the development of Australia’s sparsely populated northern regions. During a visit to London in 1907, Australian Prime Minister Alfred Deakin met with Zangwill to discuss the proposal. Deakin expressed sympathy for Jewish immigration but stated that Australia would not agree to the creation of an autonomous Jewish province or state within its territory. Zangwill raised the idea again in 1910 with Western Australian Premier Sir Newton Moore, who similarly rejected any form of territorial autonomy while remaining open to individual immigration. These early approaches formed part of the broader Jewish Territorialist movement, which sought potential sites for large‑scale Jewish settlement outside Palestine. Although the proposals were not adopted, they established a precedent for later schemes, including the Freeland League’s Kimberley Plan in the 1930s. Interwar Proposals (1933–1935) Interest in northern Australian settlement resurfaced during the early 1930s as conditions for Jews in Europe deteriorated. In 1933–34, Albert Einstein wrote in support of the idea of a Jewish agricultural settlement in Australia. Industry Support and Export Infrastructure Support for northern agricultural settlement schemes also came from figures within Australia’s pastoral and export industries. In 1934, W.B. Cramsie, Chairman of the Australian Meat Council, publicly argued that a 6,500‑square‑kilometre area in the Kimberley region could sustain a self‑sufficient agricultural settlement of approximately 25,000 young Jewish families. His comments reflected both confidence in the region’s pastoral potential and an industry‑level willingness to consider organised migration schemes linked to agricultural development. In the same year, Cramsie also argued against proposals to restrict Australian beef exports for domestic consumption, stating that such measures were opposed by producers and would harm the pastoral industry. Members of the Durack pastoral family also indicated willingness to make land available during this period.. Earlier, Robert Crowe, Victoria’s Chief Superintendent of Exports and later Director of Agriculture, played a central role in establishing the refrigerated export systems that underpinned Australia’s meat trade. During the First World War he oversaw the Government Cool Stores, which handled all frozen meat exports, helping maintain supplies to Britain despite wartime shipping disruptions. In 1931, as Director of Agriculture, Crowe was involved in efforts that contributed to the opening of the Chinese market to Australian beef, expanding export opportunities for northern producers. These developments formed part of the broader economic context in which proposals for large‑scale agricultural settlement in the Kimberley—including the later Freeland League scheme—were considered viable. The Freeland League for Jewish Territorial Colonisation, founded in 1935, later adopted northern Australia as one of its potential settlement sites, leading to the development of the Kimberley Plan in the late 1930s. ==Investigations==

The League investigated the proposal, hoping to buy an area of of agricultural land for 75,000 Jews fleeing Europe. The tract in question was that of Connor, Doherty and Durack Limited, including Auvergne Station, Newry Station, and Argyle Downs, and extending between the Ord and Victoria Rivers. Under the plan, an initial 500-600 pioneers would arrive to construct basic necessities for the settlement such as homes, irrigation works, and a power station, followed by the arrival of the main body of immigrants. By early 1940, he won the support of churches, leading newspapers, many prominent political and public figures (including Western Australian Premier John Willcock) and a number of Jewish leaders, but he also encountered opposition. Steinberg left Australia in June 1943 to rejoin his family in Canada. ==Opposition==

A 1944 opinion poll found that only 53% of Australians supported the scheme, with 47% against the plan. Opposition was primarily based on concerns that the settlers would inevitably drift away from Kimberley and begin migrating to the cities in large numbers. On 15 July 1944 the scheme was vetoed by the Australian government and Labor Prime Minister John Curtin (with bipartisan support In 1948 Steinberg published a book on his experience, titled Australia – the Unpromised Land: in search of a home. However, even after Israel was created in 1949, Steinberg tried once more – unsuccessfully – approaching the newly re-elected Robert Menzies in 1950. But Menzies replied that the idea ran contrary to his government's policy of assimilation aimed at achieving "the ideal of one Australian family of peoples, devoid of foreign communities." ==See also==