as an apolitical call to racial unity among white Australians. New Australia Colony Contriving a division among Australian labour activists between the permanently disaffected and those who later formed the Australian Labor Party, Lane refused the Queensland Government's offer of a grant of land on which to create a utopian settlement, and began an Australia-wide campaign for the creation of a new society elsewhere on the globe, peopled by rugged and sober Australian bushmen and their proud wives. Eventually Paraguay was decided upon, and Lane and his family, including his brother John, together with hundreds of acolytes (238 total) from New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia, made their way to South America. The first group of pioneers departed Sydney in the ship Royal Tar on 1 July 1893. A second group sailed from Adelaide on the last day of 1893. Both voyages were bound for Montevideo, Uruguay, followed by an arduous overland trek to Paraguay. New Australia soon had its crisis, brought on by the issues of interracial relationships (Lane singled out the Guarani as racially taboo) and alcohol. Lane's dictatorial manner soon alienated many in the community, and by the time the second boatload of utopians arrived from Adelaide in 1894, Lane had left with a core of devotees to form a new colony nearby named Cosme. Eventually, amidst an array of criticism and objections to Lane's leadership, a strong internal dispute appeared between the two main groups that conformed the colony (one approving of Lane's politics and overarching decisions, and one very critical of them). Lane became disillusioned with the whole process, willingly abandoned Colonia Cosme, and returned to Australia in 1899. A number of important people were born and raised in New Australia's settlements, including world famous comic book writer Robin Wood; Anne Whitehead's 1997 book on New Australia, Paradise Mislaid, provides a chapter on Robin Wood's childhood with his extended Australian-Paraguayan family. To this day, there are as many as 2,000 Australian Paraguayans in Paraguay. Later life Lane left Cosme with his family on 1 August, 1899, and returned to Australia where he worked briefly as editor of the Sydney Worker before sailing to New Zealand. After initial melancholia, he soon refound his old verve as a feature writer from 1900 for the New Zealand Herald, writing under the pseudonym 'Tohunga' (the Maori word for prophet), only this time as ultra-conservative and pro-Empire. He had