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.
Wellington Convict and Mission Site
The Wellington Convict and Mission Precinct is historically significant as the site of the first ongoing contact between British colonists and the Wellington Wiradjuri. The settlement occurred on the frontier of the colony and made possible subsequent pastoral expansion. The place is historically significant as a remote convict agricultural station for difficult and "educated" convicts. It provides rare physical evidence of the way of life at a rural convict settlement. The murder of an Aboriginal girl by Overseer Brown and the 1927-28 court case is important evidence of early application of colonial law in relation to Aboriginal people. The Wellington mission was the first inland mission in Australia and the first of a series of missions around Wellington. The mission archives are in themselves highly significant due to the record of the Wiradjuri culture made by the missionaries, including a record of the Wiradjuri languages. The Wellington mission is historically an early example of the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families.