Republicanism though is not a newcomer to these shores. Republicanism came to Australia with the first fleet of convicts in 1788 that included Irish Nationalists exiled by the British for pushing the cause of Irish independence. The ship also transported English radicals including Chartists, machinery- wrecking Luddites, as well as the Tolpuddle Martyrs, a group of six farm labourers exiled from Dorset in 1834 for setting up a Trade Union.

Many of these unwilling migrants brought revolutionary fervour with them and continued political activities in the early penal colony. But they were up against the British Empire at the height of its world dominating power. Small-scale rebellions were swiftly dealt with. In 1854 a group of disgruntled gold miners built a stockade around the Eureka Hotel in Ballarat, declaring it the "Republic of Victoria". The British response was swift and bloody.

New attitudes

Australian republicans would have to wait over a century before their cause gained widespread appeal. As the Second World War ended and the British Empire dissolved, the advantages of a close relationship with "the mother country" were less apparent.

Some servicemen back from the Pacific believed that Britain had abandoned Australia during the war. This view was confirmed for many when the UK turned its back on Australia as a trading partner and joined the Common Market.

The same year that Britain voted to join the Common Market, 23 years of Liberal Government were ended with a landslide win for Gough Whitlam's Labor Party. At the time Labor was a monarchist party - but that changed when Whitlam came into conflict with Parliament and was sacked by Governor General Sir John Kerr. "Well may we say 'God Save the Queen,'" he told the crowds outside parliament, "because nothing will save the Governor General."

Father of republicanism

Paul Keating

The father of modern Australian republicanism is another Labor Prime Minister, Paul Keating. His Irish heritage gave him an informal, less deferential manner with the Queen. He caused outrage in some circles by appearing to put his arm round Her Majesty during a state visit for which the British tabloids dubbed him the "Lizard of Oz". But he set in motion the chain of events that leads to the present referendum.

In 1993 Keating established a "Republic Advisory Committee" to look at the constitutional changes necessary. According to Dr Helen Irving, a social historian at the University of Technology in Sydney, this was a vital step.

"Paul Keating was absolutely crucial" she said. "Until you got a Prime Minister who was willing to commit themselves to the ideal of becoming a republic and then to take the steps to push that view there was no chance of republican sentiment crystallising into a real change."

In the early 1990s Malcolm Turnbull, then a prominent lawyer, started the Australian Republican Movement (ARM). It was an attempt to increase public pressure for constitutional change. Turnbull was well-known as the barrister who defeated the British Government over the "Spycatcher" affair.

A republican poster

Now a successful merchant banker Turnbull says he decided to set up the ARM after watching British Royals preside over the celebrations to mark Australia's bi-centenary in 1988.

"It rather depressed me that when the world was looking at Australia, as it was on that day we were showing them not an Australian but a foreigner," he said. "It made a lot of us feel that no Australian could be safely entrusted with a pair of scissors, and really underlined how inappropriate from a symbolic point of view it was to have the monarch and the British royal family in that head of state position in Australia."

Although the tide of Australian History seems to be sweeping the Republicans' way, a Yes vote on 6 November is by no means certain. To succeed the Yes camp has to get not just a majority of Australian voters but a majority in four out of the six states that make up the Commonwealth of Australia - and that seems a very difficult proposition.

Election analyst Anthony Green says his guess is the referendum will fail. "I think it might get a majority of the vote but I think it will struggle to get a majority of the states," he said. "If that's the case it will put the Queen in a very difficult position that the majority of the Australian people might have said that they don't want her anymore yet she retains the monarchy."

If the republic vote does fail it's certain this won't be the last we hear of the issue, Support for the monarchy is dying out in Australia. An older generation that remember the Second World War is being replaced by younger more questioning Australians.