Convicts In Australia Essay

From 1788 through to 1868, across 806 British vessels approximately 162,000 convicts were transported to Australia and New Zealand to serve out their criminal sentence in the form of hard labour. For the first year of settlement, food supplies were scarce as the land was not as desirable as once portrayed by Captain James Cook (Dunn, 2013). Near starvation was one of the fore frontal reasons why settlers were strained to turn to a system where convicts could be freed with restrictions. A ticket of leave permitted "…convicts to work for themselves on condition that they remained in a specific area, reported regularly to local authorities and if at all possible, attend divine worship every Sunday" (NSW Government State Records, n.d.). By enticing convicts to become ‘half-free', the government hoped that ticket holders would be able to support themselves rather than continuing to live off the scarce food recourses, but still restrict them to working for masters so the government could capitalize on their labour. It is important to note that tickets were merely a ‘conditional remission of a …show more content…
Problems began with the land itself. The First Fleet found dry, infertile country that was highly unbecoming of the farming that was required to make the settlement self-sufficient. While the natives survived on fish, wildlife meat and local plants, the settlers resulted to living mostly on the food supplies brought over on the ships. Their total dependence was therefore in the shipping trade, which was monopolized by the East India Company (State Library of New South Wales, 2014). As food became dangerously insufficient, Governor King (1800-1804) issued the first tickets of leave to any convicts that appeared able to support themselves. Governor Brisbane (1821-1825) was the first to set down rules for convict eligibility after adopting the recommendations of John Thomas Bigge (Bennett,