Wall in Battery Point, September 2009.
Look at that wall will you? Just look at that shoddy workmanship. Bloody convicts. No wonder they got sent off to the other end of the world...
Tasmanians are a funny mob when it comes to convicts. You are probably aware that one of the primary reasons for the British settlement of Australia was the establishment of a penal colony far, far away to send their overabundance of criminals. Over the whole period of transportation of convicts, over 165,000 rapists, murderers, handkerchief thieves were dispatched to Australia.
For us Tasmanians, we have an extra-special relationship with these
vile scumpesky miscreants. You see, the soft, feeble and indolent New South Welch-people decided that the vilest, smelliest and foulest criminals would be better suited to somewhere else, away from them. Thus, a new penal colony was established in Van Diemen's Land! All those
buggerers perverts cannibals kiddie fiddlers Irish prisoners who were unable to keep their emotions in check were detoured away from
the most overrated city in the world Sydney, and detoured south.
Eventually, the colonies attracted free settlers (no doubt interested in [ahem]
utilising ‘cheap’ convict labour), and Australia evolved to a point that people were sick of the continued arrival the pale, wretched refuse of Mother Britain. Although it received the largest stock of crims, Van Diemen's Land saw the rise of a well-coordinated anti transportation movement, but the novel Victorian – as in Queen of England, not colony – approach to crime and punishment saw sustained overcrowding of British prisons, and the desire to maintain transportation as an effective deterrent. By the late 1840s though, most convicts being sent to Van Diemens Land were designated as "exiles" and were free to work for pay while under sentence.
That said, the transportation of convicts was nearing its end. By 1853, the celebration of fifty years of European settlement coincided with the official end of transportation. Three years after that, and – so it is claimed – to remove the unsavoury connotations with crime associated with its name, Van Diemen's Land was renamed
Tasmania. Of course, just because they stopped
sending criminals here did not mean that the criminals suddenly went away. Indeed, the last penal settlement in Tasmania – Port Arthur – didn’t close its doors until 1877. Indeed, some of those transported to Tasmania were alive into the twentieth century.
That said; the history of transportation left its mark on Australia, not just English or New Zealand cricket supporters. Now of course, to have a convict in the bloodline is a very fashionable thing, all the cool kids are doing it. If you believe the average punter on the street, the convicts were a bunch of poor little tykes who liked a laugh and were punished for their poverty. It hasn’t always been that way, however. Until well after the Second World War, most Australians felt a sense of shame about the existence of British and Irish convicts, and many did not even attempt to investigate their families' origins, for fear that they could be descended from criminals. The fear of the
Convict Stain has ensured that researching family trees is all the more difficult.
This no doubt infuriates the latte sipping set in Bondi, who with no irony whatsoever are green with envy at the prospect of a wretched Paddy washed up on the shores of their past. Just as long as he’s in Hobart, I guess...
