Page 82 - All About History - Issue 11-14

Three weeks before Admiral Phillip had set sail
for Australia, he had received instruction from the
government to set a colony up on Norfolk Island to
prevent any foreign power, such as France, from claiming
it for themselves. At around 35 square kilometres (13.5
square miles), it was easily large enough to settle on. It
was an abundant source of pine wood and flax appeared
to grow particularly well on the island too. Both of these
resources were strategically important: the tall spruce
pines for main masts and flax because it could be used
to make sails.
Early on, as the island brimmed with settlers, it
rapidly became apparent that no one had the required
trade skills necessary to weave the flax. In addition,
despite the stature of the trees on the island, the timber
was too fragile to endure the rigours of a ship’s main
mast. The Norfolk colonists attempted to farm the land
but with crops either failing in the briny wind or eaten
by caterpillars and Polynesian rats, the islanders were on
the verge of starvation.
Norfolk Island continued to be dogged by misfortune
and bad management, and was abandoned in 1814 due
to its high running costs and remote location. A second
penal colony was established there ten years later
under Governor Darling’s incredibly punitive regime,
Caged prisoners below deck on a
transport ship bound for Australia becoming the place convicts were sent for committing
further crimes or trying to escape their mainland duties.
Conditions on Norfolk Island were so horrible that
“ Convicts had the opportunity to start rebellion was almost inevitable and in 1834 an uprising
involving hundreds of convicts ended after seven hours
again with a clean slate, to take advantage and was followed by sadistic reprisals.
of the opportunities Australia offered”

Australia’s first penal colony brought children with
them or had given birth at some point during the
eight-month voyage. Their babies stayed with them
What made Norfolk Island until they were weaned, at which point they were
such a dreaded penal colony? taken away and put into an orphanage, where they
could be claimed back once the mother had earned
A classic punishment taken to the extreme on Norfolk her freedom.
Island. Incredibly, legislation had to be brought about While life was hard for everyone when the
by the mainland government to limit the number of Botany Bay colony was established, it was
lashings a convict could receive in one sitting to ‘only’ undoubtedly a better fate than some of the convicts
50. A flogging could be given for the slightest hint of would have met back in Britain. Records show that
insubordination and the sadistic island guards revelled
in goading the convicts into committing an offence. the quality of a convict’s food was much better in
Australia than it would have been in Britain. For
some, there were ripe opportunities abound in this
Solitary confinement of around two weeks at a time new land, too. With Botany Bay and Port Jackson
© Corbis; Alamy; Getty; Looka and Learn; Thinkstock; Mary Evans; Ian Moores Graphics cell and left there. In the hot climate, this hellish term colonies offered. If a convict behaved, adhered to would gradually turn against the Transportation
would be awarded for the slightest of transgressions,
growing every year, free men and women began
carried out in a filthy cell 2.4m tall x 2.4m wide (8 x 8ft)
to migrate from Britain to seek their fortune and
called the ‘nunnery’. Despite being called ‘solitary’, as
to take advantage of the cheap labour the penal
many as a dozen people would be crammed into the
Over the following 50 years, public opinion
must have felt like an eternity.
the rules and served their time, they were free to
go. They could buy their passage back to Britain if
Act as it became thought of as a particularly
cruel form of punishment. In 1850, 17 years after
they wished, but most chose to stay and not just
While the mainland penal colony was relatively well
because of the high price of a ticket: the stigma
slavery was finally abolished, transportation to the
fed, Norfolk’s islanders could look forward to distinctly
less luxurious fare. Governor Darling intended the
of being an ex-con in Britain simply didn’t exist
growing colonies in New South Wales was also
colony to be as close a punishment to the death
in this new land. Convicts had the opportunity to
abolished. But by then, hundreds of thousands of
sentence that the convicts could receive. Giving
start again with a clean slate, take advantage of the
Europeans had settled in the new land, many of
just enough stale bread and water to misbehaving
behind them, setting the future course of this new
white European citizen and even climb the social
of ensuring this policy.
Australian nation.
ladder – something unthinkable back on British soil.
82 colonists to keep them alive and upright was one way many opportunities that Australia offered a free, them changing their names and leaving a dark past