Captain James Cook had two missions when he set out on the Endeavour from Plymouth in Great Britain in 1769. One was to take a group of scientists to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti. He was then to explore and chart the South Pacific and search for the land mass known until then as Terra Australis.
Ships had been bumping into it for a couple of centuries but, like the blind men and the elephant, each had come upon it from a different direction, formed an opinion and left while those who actively sought it missed it completely.
Cook bumped into it on purpose having sussed out its whereabouts from observations made by Abel Tasman on an earlier voyage. Cook went west after charting New Zealand, which Tasman had discovered, and made land fall at a sandy bay which he named Botany Bay in honour of Joseph Banks, a botanist on board, who merrily tripped about collecting Banksia plants and thus ensured himself a lifetime of honours as well as membership of the prestigious Royal Society.
Cook on his way northwards planted a flag at Possession Island in the Torres Strait after he had actually left the mainland to lay claim to Australia. It seems a bit odd to stick a flag on a tiny island to lay claim to a very large continent but he probably planted a few more here and there for good measure. Explorers must have had a sense of honour in those days because anyone could have come and ripped a flag out and replaced it with another. Ships' logs must have been inarguable for they surely would be the only record of who got where first. At any rate Cook had laid claim to a continent only second in distance to his home in Britain as the planet Venus.
The British Government thought Australia would be a good base from which protect their interests in the East Indies where they vied for goods and territories with the Dutch, French and Portuguese. For years, however, nobody really knew what to do with this new acquisition. It was too far from anywhere to be of much use. That is, unless you wanted to send something, or somebody as far away as possible.
For years various people in or around the government had suggested that Australia would be a good place to send convicts but it wasn't until the 1780's that Britain's gaols had become so full that many convicts were housed in ships moored in ports. The conditions were horrendous and the prisoners never saw daylight.
Even those destined for the bright sunlight of Australia could wait on board these floating cesspools for up to a year.
On January 26, 1988 twelve years after Cook had left Australia, Captain Arthur Phillip, a pretty decent guy compared to some later Governors, arrived with three ships at Sydney Harbour. One was carrying solely women convicts.
There was nowhere to the prisoners could run to escape so they were let ashore and a ration of rum given to each person. After Arthur Phillip and his officers finished their evening meal aboard, the officers also went ashore. It should be noted that officers and prisoners, male and female, found niches, nooks and crannies and settled into an all night drunken orgy.
This is how the British put their first mark on Australian soil. The next morning Captain Phillip admonished one and all saying something along these lines: "Tut, tut, there'll be no more of that sort of thing."
Rum would become the currency of the fledgling nation and whale and seal killing the backbone of its economy until sheep took over. But in the first five years the colony almost starved. The first ship with supplies was slow coming from Britain and Phillip finally took a chance and sent one of his ships to Africa to replenish supplies. Fortunately it came back.
The British weren't fond of fresh fish and preferred the preserved, pickled beef that floated in brine in barrels. Well you had to be slightly mad venture so far from home and, if that stuff didn't kill you, you must have been hardy. The first crops only succeeded enough in supplying seed for the next crops. Eventually the settlers moved inland and hit pay dirt in a place where their crops took hold and yielded plentiful harvests and gradually the colony became self-sufficient.
By the next century freed prisoners, who were called 'ticket of leave' men or women, were writing and telling their relatives to come to the land of opportunity. Some were even allocated land to start life afresh. So popular did Australia become that the British government chose increasingly sadistic Governors to run the penal settlements to put terror into the hearts of convicts so they would stop waxing enthusiastic about the place. Transportation was not to be seen as a bonus and reprieve, and the parade of these sadistic governors who ran our prisons in Tasmania, Norfolk Island and Moreton Bay should have put people off, but didn't.
Captain Patrick Logan was head of the penal settlement at Moreton Bay in Queensland. Suburbs and highways now bear his name but on the night he was murdered when out exploring, the prisoners, on hearing the news, roared with glee and applauded all night.
To read Robert Hughes' "The Fatal Shore" is the biggest eye opener I have ever experienced in regard to Australia. I am also filled with admiration for those who not only chose to stay after being freed but to those who came voluntarily. Hughes provides an insight into the anti-class system that arose, not from throwing off the old British class system as I had thought, but from the snobbery that arose between the free settlers, or exclusives, as they were called, and ticket of leave men and women.
Those who came voluntarily did not want to be tarred with the convict brush, however, the crimes of the majority of people who were transported arose from poverty and desperation. There were definitely re-offenders and hard criminal types who kept breaking laws once freed, or stood up to authority in prison. These were sent to the dreaded prisons on Norfolk Island and Tasmania. Such dreadful and inhumane things happened in these places it will forever be a blot on our history.
The bushrangers were mostly escaped convicts and so many became legends and anti-authority figures. The mind set of Australia arose from those who had been raised under the tyranny of poverty and an unequal class system. The horizon here was as far reaching in its actual and social possibilities as Britain's was not.
The light of Australia was not only from the sun but from enlightenment, from possibilities and new frontiers. I am truly proud to be an Australian. It is a country that just keeps broadening its horizons mentally to fit its extraordinary size. It has no wars. It accepts all people and cultures. I only hope some of these do not bring the mindsets of the wars they have left behind. This country can be physically cruel and it is not a place for man to set against man. We have to live in harmony so the land doesn't swallow us whole. There is no room for aggression or petty antagonisms.
This is the lesson we can learn from the very first settlers, the aboriginals. They did not abuse the land but lived in harmony with it. Australia is both a terrible and fragile country. It is terrible if you take it for granted and go unprepared into its vast interior spaces. But its green rim is fragile and must be protected and the greatest danger to it is us.
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