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I’m reading The Fatal Shore, by Robert Hughes, about the settling of Australia.

It’s very good, and much more interesting than the blurbs make it sound. Hughes writes with humor and doesn’t leave out the juicy bits.

I didn’t know much about the convicts in Australia, but I was completely wrong about how it all worked.

The very FIRST English settlers to set foot in Australia were convicts (and their guards). That is, they didn’t arrive in chains to a country with jails and houses and farms. They arrived to nothing and were expected to build a colony there.

After a few years, some free settlers came, and things got moving.

The convicts weren’t thrown in a prison in Australia (unless they broke new laws while there). They weren’t kept in chains, once they arrived. They were more like indentured servants, lent out to free settlers to do farm work or housework, or anything else that needed doing.

While servants, they could often work extra jobs in their spare time to make money. And they could live in their own homes, and have wives or husbands. After their time was up, they got their freedom, and often a grant of land, from the government.

Speaking of wives, mine was born in Australia to immigrant parents. So her ancestry doesn’t include convicts from England, which is kind of boring. Her family history is just like practically everyone of European descent in America. War, poverty, repression, etc. pushed them to leave for a new home.

Boring.

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