ABSTRACT
This chapter traces moments from Australian sovereignty's morphogenesis that can render the complex emergence of border security intelligible. The arrival of national sovereignty 'in' Australia continues to be untimely. 'Australia Day' celebrates the arrival of the First Fleet as part of the British policy of penal transportation, whose exclusive focus on Britain's American colonies from 1718–1776 was put to an end with the success of the American Revolution in 1783. On October 10, 1835 Governor Bourke, governor of New South Wales, re-figured the entire continent as 'terra nullius' in order to facilitate its British conquest on the semblance of legal grounds. 'Australia' appears naturally obvious on most typical twentieth-century European maps – in a way that few continental nation-states do – because of way the physical geography of the mainland is represented, as 'girt by sea'. As a territory of the Commonwealth, Christmas Island is one part of Australia that belies the unifying boundedness of 'the island continent'.
