AUSTRALIAN TIMELINES

Convicts
The Story of the Penal Settlements
that created Australia

by Kenneth Muir

The story of modern Australia’s beginnings is inextricably linked to 160 000 people who came to the land as convicts.

Here we see how a nation was founded not on free settlement or immigration but by criminal offenders who were transported to a ‘land beyond the sea’ where many went on to create new lives for themselves. Follow the story of greed, brutality, inhumanity, and occasional decency as a small group of people learn to cope with an environment utterly alien to them.

This is how Australia grew into a prosperous nation from the cheap labour of so many hapless convicts who had little say in their destiny.