Australian Colonial Settlement

The First Fleet, carrying convicts, officers, marines, and their families, landed in Botany Bay on 18 January 1788, but did not disembark.

The Fleet then landed in Port Jackson, where Sydney is now located, on 26 January 1788, to establish a convict colony.

There was no Captain of the Second Fleet of convicts to Australia, just skippers for each of the individual ships. This was because the Second Fleet was not placed under government command, but was contracted out to private shipowners and businesses.

The youngest male was nine-year-old chimney sweep John Hudson - transported for stealing clothes and a pistol.

The youngest female was thirteen-year-old clog maker Elizabeth Hayward - transported for stealing a linen dress and a silk bonnet.

Captain Bligh's ship, on which the famous mutiny led by Fletcher Christian was held, was named the 'Bounty'.

Bacterial colonies are defined as the assamblage of bacteria growing on a solid surface such as the surface of an agar culture medium, the assemblage often is directly visible, but also may be seen only microscopically.

It could easily be said that convicts were the ones who built Australia - socially, economically and politically. Much of Australia's emerging national pride in the 1800s came from the sense of coming from a "downtrodden" class, and developing into a rich and vibrant country. Already in the early years, there was a distinction between the "currency lads and lasses", i.e. native-born Australians, and the British free settlers and officers (sometimes colloquially known as the "Sterling interlopers", for obvious reasons). The whole ethos of the "working bushman" (a concept which Australians still take pride in) came, in many respects, from a combination of the radical young currency class, together with the Irish political rebels and the working-class convicts. Had Australia been settled purely upon free British, we may have merely become a British outpost, instead of a young country struggling to throw off those "British bonds". It was upon this that Australia's social and political environment was built. Economically, it was the convicts who did all the foundational work - tilling, planting and harvesting seed; experimenting with their own farms or setting up their own trades once they were free; constructing the roads and bridges of the new colony while on the road gangs; felling the timber, making the bricks, literally constructing so many of the buildings in the early decades. Strategically, it would useful to have a colony which established Britain's claim on Australia as this helped expand the British Empire and provide a physical presence in the south Pacific. This held both strategic and economic/trade advantages for England. The presence of a colony would enable England to lay claim to Australia during a time when France was rapidly expanding its empire as well. The continent had natural resources which England wanted, and having convicts work the land was a cheap and easy way to get the resources - or so it was thought. The convicts actually proved to be unwiling workers. Ultimately, the advantages of convict settlement in Australia helped to solve the problem of Britain's overcrowded prisons by establishing a new penal colony in a land which showed promise for eventually becoming self-supporting. There was no way that, even if they escaped, convicts would be able to return to England to cause trouble there.

It is not known how many crew members were on the 'Prince of Wales' ship of the First Fleet, as accurate crew records were not kept. However, the ship carried only one male convict (who had tried to escape during the stop at Tenerife) and 49 female convicts.

Willem Jansz crossed the Arafura Sea from New Guinea into the Gulf of Carpentaria in far northern Australia. On 26 February 1606, Jansz became the first recorded European to step foot on Australia's shores at the Pennefather River, near where the Queensland town of Weipa now stands, on the western shore of Cape York Peninsula.

Dysentery was the most common disease on the First Fleet, caused by the unsanitary conditions. Fevers were common. Cholera and typhoid were also diseases experienced by many, and there was also some venereal disease, as the soldiers quite happily took the women convicts for their own use whenever they wanted.

No single country mapped the entire coast of Australia.

The Portuguese were believed to be the first explorers to sight Western Australia, but all records of their journey have been lost. The Dutch did extensive exploration and charting of much of the western coast, but the French also had input into the southern corner. The Dutch, the French and the English all made forays into various parts of Tasmania.

The first to chart the eastern coast was Captain James Cook of England, and he named many features along the coast, but did not explore every bay and inlet.

Between December 1801 and June 1803, Matthew Flinders, also English, charted the entire coastline of Australia. During this time, he filled in some of the information Cook had missed. John Oxley and George Bass were more Englishmen who added to the knowledge of Australia's coastline

No. The Endeavour was the ship commanded by James Cook in 1770 when he made his journey from England to Tahiti, then to New Zealand, before finally charting the east coast of Australia.

The primary difficulty was illness. The conditions in which convicts were kept below decks were dark, dank and extremely unhygienic - very conducive to the spread of diseases such as typhoid and dysentery. They were given no exercise, and were only allowed out on top of the deck in the light and air for a very short period of time every few days. Nutrition was minimal, leading also to scurvy. The convicts were treated brutally, with women frequently being abused and raped by the officers, and consequently venereal disease also developed into a problem.

There were four main reasons why Captain Arthur Phillip decided that Botany Bay was unsuitable, and moved the First Fleet north to Port Jackson:

1. The soil was too sandy and not suitable for growing crops.

2. There were no visible sources of fresh water available.

3. The harbour was unsuitable for bringing in large ships and sheltering them from the elements.

4. The trees were spindly, and insufficient for providing the timber the new colony would need.

Sydney is the oldest Australian city. This is where the first European settlers landed when they arrived to establish the colony in 1788.

The Charlotte was built in 1784. Skippered by Master Thomas Gilbert, the Charlotte carried 88 male convicts and 20 female convicts. The ship weighed 335 tons, and was 105 feet long and 28 feet at the beam. After returning to England, the Charlotte did the London - Jamacia run until she was sold to a Quebec merchant in 1818. Sadly, this noble ship was lost off the Newfoundland coast that very same year.

The Swan River colony (Western Australia), established on Australia's western coast in 1829, was begun as a free settlement. For the first fifteen years, the people of the colony were generally opposed to accepting convicts, although the idea was occasionally debated, especially by those who sought to employ convict labour for building projects. Eventually convicts did come to Western Australia, and they were used as a cheap form of labour for many projects.

It did not take long for conflict to occur between the newcomers and the indigenous people. When the white settlers came, the Aborigines were dispossessed of their land and, much later, "encouraged" onto reserves, supposedly for their protection. They were forced off their traditional hunting grounds, and certainly herded away from the fertile coastal areas where there was plenty of food. White settlers wrecked the very effective native fishing traps, cleared native habitats and reduced the native food supplies, as well as polluting their water.

Massacres of the indigenous people occurred on a regular basis. The Coniston massacre, the massacre at Myall Creek, the "Battle of Risdon" in Tasmania and many others, all were perpetrated against the Aborigines by the Europeans. There were years of conflict between Tasmanian Aborigines and white settlers which eventually resulted in the loss of the purebred aboriginal race from Tasmania - virtually genocide.

The Europeans also introduced foods and diseases, all of which were perfectly harmless to the white settlers, but lowered the life expectancy of the aboriginal people. Simple diseases like Measles and Influenza had devastating effects on Aborigines. Foods containing wheat and sugar resulted in heart disease and obesity among the indigenous Australians. Europeans introduced new flora and fauna which took over native habitat, leading to the extinction of many plants and animals on which the Aborigines relied.

When the aboriginal children were forcibly taken from their families, this directly led to a loss of culture, language, customs and traditions among the Aborigines. When the Europeans first came to Australia, there were around 250 different aboriginal languages in Australia. There is just a fraction of that number now. Many stories from the aboriginal Dreaming (creation legends) have disappeared forever.

The First Fleet to Australia carried convicts, officers and marines from England, as well as supplies that would be needed to establish and maintain a new settlement.

For a complete list of the supplies and provisions taken aboard the First Fleet, click on the related link below.

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