This is the first known painting of the settlement at Sydney Cove. It was painted by Thomas Watling. He was sentenced in 1792 to 14 years in Australia for forging a bank note. This was painted in 1794 and is titled ‘A Direct North General View Of Sydney Cove.’
The painting was presented by Sir William Dixson in 1929, and hangs in the State Library Of New South Wales.
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We find it stressful moving house and for some of us, those moves might be a considerable distance. However, it’s not like we just up and move, and when we do get someplace, we just say that this will do, and then move into a new house. No, we plan the move in detail, making sure there is a place to move into, that the power is turned on, there is a job to go, and everything is carefully laid out.
Captain Phillip first raised the flag at Sydney Cove and then started to build a whole settlement from nothing. He called the new country being settled New South Wales.
The two Naval ships Sirius and Supply stayed with the settlers, and the transports just set sail back for England.
That’s it then. It just had to be made to work. Find good water, food if possible, land that might support crops for food. Then clear the land and set up.
Phillip sent a small group on to Norfolk Island, charted by Cook and considered a good place to mount a further settlement. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? Norfolk Island is one thousand miles away, almost two weeks away by boat in those days, and they had to commute back and forth.
The settlement was raised there as well, also as a convict outpost, and the two ran in conjunction. In fact the Norfolk Island settlement thrived while back at Sydney Cove, it was slow work.
After 18 months or so, there was even some consideration as to abandoning the Sydney Cove settlement and moving to the one at Norfolk Island, but with patience and a lot of hard work things started to stabilise.
It wasn’t like they could call home and say that this was not working. You just did it or perished in the task.
As things started to very gradually turn around, in 1790, after two years on their own, the Second Fleet arrived.
This was an absolute horror story.
The First Fleet was under the command of the Royal Navy with Phillip in control, while all further convict fleets were under private contract, you know, the lowest bidder sort of thing. The Company with that lowest tender was practised in the slave trade, so things did not augur well, something that should have been picked up on at the time, but things were different in those days. After all, we’re only talking about convicts here, hardened stealers of handkerchiefs and loaves of bread, sentenced to 7 years, 14 years or life, and then exiled, forgotten as the boat sailed off over the horizon.
This second fleet set sail with a total of 1017 convicts, 78 of whom were women. 258 died during the voyage, and when they arrived at Sydney Cove, 500 of those who remained were sick and dying, all this adding more stress to a settlement just managing to get by themselves. The main cause of death was starvation, and those not sick and dying were emaciated, putting further strain on the food supply at the struggling colony. Tents were set up on the foreshore as a hospital, but conditions were basic at best. The ships dumped their human cargo and sailed back to England with sealed orders for the Admiralty, regarding this and further trips. Charges were laid over the terrible conditions experienced during that second journey, and lessons were learned. Even at this time when life was cheap, this was still a horrifying thing, and sensibilities were rightly offended at such callously poor treatment, even if they were convicts.
On the return journey of this second fleet, the third was on its way. This arrived in 1791, and even though the death rate was nowhere near the 25% of that second fleet, the conditions were still draconian at best and the death rate was 10%. Phillips loss of his convicts at just under 3% was incredible by comparison, and was only approached towards the end of convict transportation in 1850.
Whole fleets full of convicts sailed regularly from England to all points of the colonies for the next sixty years. When this finally ceased in 1850, more than 162,000 convicts had been transported to the colony into virtually every State of Australia.
This highlights the first of three mind sets I want to bring to your attention. As is patently obvious, early Australia was based solely around the convicts. Nearly all of them stayed and settled upon release. Conceivably, a great proportion of Australians can trace heritage back to convicts sent out from England. Having this in your family background might seem like something that has to be hidden. In Australia, however, it is a badge of honour.
Great store is set if you can trace your family tree back and find that your forebears came here on a convict ship.
If your lineage can be traced back to that first fleet, that is considered of immense stature here in Australia.
It’s not looked upon as related to the criminal dregs of English society, but as the people who made Australia what it is today.
Those lists of convicts from the first three fleets are pored over for linking names these days, and the immense pride in being descended from a ‘First Fleeter’ is a badge of honour.
This photograph is of the ruins of part of the prison at Port Arthur, the site now on the National Trust of Buildings.
Photograph Ken Hawkey.
Click on the image to open a larger image
The second mind set is this.
As the colony slowly got onto its feet, those in control kept sending out expeditions of exploration, naturally, you might say, but those voyages up and down the Coast were to find more places to settle.
Each time a new place was found a settlement was raised, and here’s the mind set part of it. They were raised not as settlements, but as sites for prisons to house convicts. Newcastle, 100 or so miles to the North of Sydney Cove was the second settlement. Port Macquarie came next, and then others came into being as more convicts arrived. Eventually, Norfolk Island was closed down, in 1814, never having become fully self sufficient, and considered too far distant to support from the base of Sydney, ironic in that early on it was actually considered to move all the colony to the Island. Norfolk was reopened in 1824 to house the worst of the convicts in, numbering 1500 to 2000, providing, and I quote, “the harshest possible conditions short of death”. This became an infamous chapter in Australia’s history. Transportation of convicts to Norfolk Island ceased in 1852, the last being transferred from Port Arthur in Van Diemens Land for the last two years after the cessation of the ships from England, and the Island was then given over to survivors of the Bounty mutiny. Today, it is a highly popular tourist destination, and the remains of the prison are on the National Trust of protected historical buildings.
Prison colonies stretched the length and breadth of the now slowly expanding Country. To the South was the settlement at Port Phillip Bay, the site of Melbourne, Australia’s second largest city and the Capital of the State of Victoria. Further south was the colony at Port Arthur in Van Diemens land, now Tasmania, close to what is their State capital Hobart. To the north, the settlement was close to Brisbane, the capital of the State where I reside, Queensland.
There were further settlements in South Australia, near their State Capital Adelaide, and one away across in the west, close to Perth the capital of Western Australia.
So, every point on the compass here in Australia was built on the backs of those original convicts.
