Convicts in Australia
The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 17th century. When transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution, an alternative site was needed to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks. Earlier in 1770, James Cook charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in 1787, the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay, arriving on 20 January 1788 to found Sydney, New South Wales, the first European settlement on the continent. Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land (Tasmania) in 1803 and Queensland in 1824, while Western Australia, founded in 1829 as a free colony, received convicts from 1850. South Australia and Victoria, established in 1836 and 1850 respectively, remained free colonies. Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the 1830s and dropped off significantly the following decade as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In 1868, almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.
Convicts in Australia
Along with bushrangers and other stock characters of colonial life, convicts were a popular subject during Australia's silent film era. The first convict film was a 1908 adaptation of Marcus Clarke's "For the Term of His Natural Life", shot on location at Port Arthur with an unheard-of budget of £7000. This was followed by two more films inspired by Clarke's novel: "The Life of Rufus Dawes" (1911), which draws on Alfred Dampier's stage production of "His Natural Life", and the landmark "For the Term of His Natural Life" (1927), one of the most expensive silent films ever made. W. J. Lincoln directed many convict melodramas including "It Is Never Too Late to Mend" (1911), an adaptation of Charles Reade's 1856 novel about cruelties of the convict system; "Moodyne" (1913), based on John Boyle O'Reilly's novel; and "Transported" (1913). Other early titles include "Sentenced for Life", "The Mark of the Lash", "One Hundred Years Ago", "The Lady Outlaw" and "The Assigned Servant", all released in 1911. Few convict films were made after 1930; even the Australian New Wave of the 1970s, with its emphasis on Australia's colonial past, largely avoided the convict era in favour of nostalgic period pieces set in the bush around the time of Federation. One exception is "Journey Among Women" (1977), a feminist imagining of what life was like for convict women. Alexander Pearce, the infamous Tasmanian convict and cannibal, is the inspiration for "The Last Confession of Alexander Pearce" (2008), "Dying Breed" (2008) and "Van Diemen's Land" (2009).