page_title: History of Australia
section_title: Convicts and colonial society
hierarchical_section_title: History of Australia / Colonisation / Convicts and colonial society
caption_attribution_description: English: Wood engraving of 19th century English humanitarian Caroline Chisholm (30 May 1808 – 25 March 1877). A copy is available at Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA CALL NUMBER: BIOG FILE - Chisholm, Caroline &lt;item&gt; [P&amp;P] http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/cph.3c18009
context_page_description: The history of Australia is the story of the land and peoples of the continent of Australia. Aboriginal Australians first arrived on the Australian mainland by sea from Maritime Southeast Asia between 40,000 and 70,000 years ago, and penetrated to all parts of the continent, from the rainforests in the north, the deserts of the centre, and the sub-Antarctic islands of Tasmania and Bass Strait. The artistic, musical and spiritual traditions they established are among the longest surviving such traditions in human history.
  The first Torres Strait Islanders - ethnically and culturally distinct from Aboriginal Australians - arrived from what is now Papua New Guinea around 2,500 years ago, and settled in the islands of the Torres Strait and the Cape York Peninsula forming the northern tip of the Australian landmass.
  The first known landing in Australia by Europeans was in 1606 by Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon. Later that year, Spanish explorer Luís Vaz de Torres sailed through, and navigated, what is now called Torres Strait and associated islands. Twenty-nine other Dutch navigators explored the western and southern coasts in the 17th century and named the continent New Holland.
context_section_description: Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 161,700 convicts (of whom 25,000 were women) were transported to the Australian colonies of New South Wales, Van Diemen's Land and Western Australia. Historian Lloyd Robson has estimated that perhaps two-thirds were thieves from working class towns, particularly from the Midlands and north of England. The majority were repeat offenders. Whether transportation managed to achieve its goal of reforming or not, some convicts were able to leave the prison system in Australia; after 1801 they could gain "tickets of leave" for good behaviour and be assigned to work for free men for wages. A few went on to have successful lives as emancipists, having been pardoned at the end of their sentence. Female convicts had fewer opportunities.
  Some convicts, particularly Irish convicts, had been transported to Australia for political crimes or social rebellion, so authorities were consequently suspicious of the Irish and restricted the practice of Catholicism in Australia. The Irish-led Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 served to increase suspicions and repression. Church of England clergy meanwhile worked closely with the governors and Richard Johnson, chaplain to the First Fleet was charged by Governor Arthur Phillip, with improving "public morality" in the colony and was also heavily involved in health and education. The Reverend Samuel Marsden (1765–1838) had magisterial duties, and so was equated with the authorities by the convicts, becoming known as the 'flogging parson' for the severity of his punishments.
  The New South Wales Corps was formed in England in 1789 as a permanent regiment of the British Army to relieve the marines who had accompanied the First Fleet. Officers of the Corps soon became involved in the corrupt and lucrative rum trade in the colony. In the Rum Rebellion of 1808, the Corps, working closely with the newly established wool trader John Macarthur, staged the only successful armed takeover of government in Australian history, deposing Governor William Bligh and instigating a brief period of military rule in the colony prior to the arrival from Britain of Governor Lachlan Macquarie in 1810.
  Macquarie served as the last autocratic Governor of New South Wales, from 1810 to 1821 and had a leading role in the social and economic development of New South Wales which saw it transition from a penal colony to a budding free society. He established public works, a bank, churches, and charitable institutions and sought good relations with the Aborigines. In 1813 he sent Blaxland, Wentworth and Lawson across the Blue Mountains, where they found the great plains of the interior; however, central to Macquarie's policy was his treatment of the emancipists, whom he decreed should be treated as social equals to free-settlers in the colony. Against opposition, he appointed emancipists to key government positions including Francis Greenway as colonial architect and William Redfern as a magistrate. London judged his public works to be too expensive and society was scandalised by his treatment of emancipists. Egalitarianism would come to be considered a central virtue among Australians.
  The first five Governors of New South Wales realised the urgent need to encourage free settlers, but the British government remained largely indifferent. As early as 1790, Governor Arthur Phillip wrote: "Your lordship will see by my...letters the little progress we have been able to make in cultivating the lands ... At present this settlement only affords one person that I can employ in cultivating the lands..." It was not until the 1820s that numbers of free settlers began to arrive and government schemes began to be introduced to encourage free settlers. Philanthropists Caroline Chisholm and John Dunmore Lang developed their own migration schemes. Land grants of crown land were made by Governors, and settlement schemes such as those of Edward Gibbon Wakefield carried some weight in encouraging migrants to make the long voyage to Australia, as opposed to the United States or Canada.
  Early colonial administrations we
caption: The humanitarian Caroline Chisholm was a leading advocate for women's issues and family friendly colonial policy.
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