What was it like for a convict of Australia?

Answer 1

In the early years, convicts were put to work immediately on building projects, particularly roads, and farming. New buildings needed to be constructed as the first shelters were just tents and lean-tos.

The first jobs involved clearing the land. The convicts had to chop down trees, then cut the wood up for practical uses such as building. They needed to clear the shrubs and low bushes as well, and prepare the ground for tilling and planting. This was hard work as most of the English tools were unable to stand up to the demands of Australia's harsher, rocky soil.

The convicts also had to quarry rock and haul it. This was used for building, and in the construction of roads and bridges.

Some of the convicts were assigned as servants to the free settlers or the officers. As the colony developed, the convicts worked in more skilled areas such as smithing, building tools, and even more intellectual pursuits where they showed aptitude. One of Australia's most famous architects, Francis Greenway, was a convict. Another convict with a background in printing was given permission to establish the colony's first newspaper.

Answer 2

In the days of convict transportation to Australia. There is very Little doubt that the thought of being sent to a penal colony was a pretty fearsome thought. and many met their end even before they got here. However it was a better fate then spending years rotting in a prison barge on the Thames river in London many convicts were given their freedom in Australia and made good here, in ways they would never have dreamt of back in England.

The convicts did not see Australia as a better option. They had travelled thousands and thousands of miles from their homes, and what they saw in Australia was so very different to what they knew in their homeland.

There was nothing familiar to them. The trees were not the beautiful and majestic green trees of home; they were tall and spindly, with branches that reached out erratically, and grey-green leaves. The "bush" had a strange sound to it - laughing kookaburras, ear-piercing cicadas, screeching cockatoos - these sounds made them very fearful.

The wildlife was completely unlike the animals at home, while the natives of the land were strange, stealthy people who came and went in silence, and whose eyes seemed to follow one everywhere. The convicts were fearful of being speared in the back, and they had no understanding of Aboriginal ways.

It was a hot and humid country in summer, and the seasons were back to front. The convicts missed the sense of a twilight, because the land would slip suddenly from day into night. The terrain was harsh - no gentle, rolling hills of home here.

Perhaps they expected cities: there were none - just vast, grey-green bushland as far as they could see. Many escaped from the colony, expecting to be able to walk to China. Those who didn't go mad with the strangeness of the bush, or get recaptured, died out in the silence of the bush.

Answer 3

They were put to work building the towns and farms that were being created around the colony's. many of them were eventually presented with land grants where they them selves became farmers tradesmen and as professionals of early Australia. some returned to England If they could afford to and many did not want to go back to the grinding poverty that they were forced to endure back home.

Answer 4

Australia was very strange for the people of the First Fleet. When the first European settlers arrived in Australia, they found a hot, humid country. The bushland was thick and unlike anything they had at home - instead of green, grassy hills and green trees, they found rocky terrain and strange, grey-green trees that smelled strong and sweet. There was an eerieness to the bushland, because it seemed all the same to their inexperienced eyes, and stories of the Aborigines were exaggerated to make the convicts fear stepping outside the camps. Any who did escape quickly became lost, and many convict bones lie scattered in the bush where they became hopelessly lost, and unable to fend for themselves.

The heat and humidity made it difficult to motivate the convicts to work, and English tools and implements were unusable in the tough Australian soil. There were strange hopping animals - the 'kangaroo' - and strange, noisy birds such as the kookaburra and cockatoos.

Answer 5

The convicts did not agree to go to Australia. They had no choice.