The Botany Bay Medallion

Westminster – 1786, August 18: Lord Sydney advised; ‘His Majesty has thought advisable to fix upon Botany Bay’.

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1787 – 25 April, London: ‘We have ordered about 600 male and 180 female convicts…to the port on the coast of New South Wales…called Botany  Bay. Heads Of a Plan [1786] for Botany Bay. Frank Murcott  Bladen, Historical Records of New South Wales. Vol. 1

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‘In determining the daily ration no distinction was drawn between the marine and the [male] convicts…the standard adopted was that of troops serving in the West Indies’. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts to the Colonies, Library of Australian History, Sydney 1990

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‘Four companies of marines landed with the first Europeans to settle Australia, and twenty-five regiments of British infantry served in the colonies between 1790 and 1870’. Peter Stanley, The Remote Garrison, The British Army in Australia. Kangaroo Press, 1986

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1788 – Sydney Cove, Wednesday February 6:   ‘The day the convict women disembarked…they landed by rowing boats between 6 am and 6 pm.’ John Moore, First Fleet Marines 1786-1792, Queensland University Press, 1986

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‘And whereas, from the great disproportion of female convicts to those of males..and without sufficient proportion of that [female] sex it is well known that it be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders it appears advisable that a further number…should be introduced.

The tender [HMS Supply] may be employed in convoying to the new settlement a further number of women from the Friendly island, New Caledonia etc…from whence any number may be procured without difficulty’.Bladen. op.cit.

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‘The tender [HMS Supply] …may be employed in conveying to the new settlement a further number of women from the Friendly islands, New Caledonia etc…from whence any number may be procured without difficulty; and without a sufficient proportion of that sex it is well known that it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’. 1786 – Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay

1788-1813: While other European nations included convicts in their settler-mix Britain’s occupation of Australia was unique, in so far as, the first generation 1788-1813 was almost exclusively male.

‘The fact itself of causing the existence of a human being is one of the most responsible actions in the range of human life. To bestow a life which may either be a curse or a blessing, unless the being on whom it is bestowed will have at least the ordinary chances of a desirable existence, is a crime against that being’. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty.

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‘Dear Jack…I value Death nothing but it is in leaving you my dear behind and no one to look after you’. Denis Prendergast, Oxford Book of Australian Letters, ed. Brenda Niall and John Thompson, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998

1788 – 1868: Of 163,000 convicted criminals transported from the British Isles to Australia between 1788 and 1868 only 25,000 were women. Of these 12,500 went directly to Tasmania and none (zero) to West Australia. See: G is for Genocide

‘The tender [Supply] may be employed in conveying to the new settlement a further number of women from the Friendly Islands, New Caledonia etc. from whence any number may be procured without difficulty; and without a sufficient proportion of that sex it is well known that it would be impossible to preserve the settlement from gross irregularities and disorders’. London, Heads of a Plan for Botany Bay, 1786

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‘The death penalty was brought to Australia with the First Fleet’. Mike Edwards, The Hanged Man, The Life and Death of Ronald Ryan, 2002.

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‘I don’t think that he [Thomas Barrett] had the least thought that he was to suffer…the body hung for an hour and was then buried in a grave dug very near the gallows’.  Marine Lieutenant Ralph Clark, First Fleet Journal

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‘In determining the daily ration no distinction was drawn between the marines and the convicts…the standard adopted was that of the troops serving in the West Indies’. Wilfrid Oldham, Britain’s Convicts to the Colonies, Library of Australian History, Sydney 1990

‘When leaving Botany Bay Phillip noticed two [2] French ships in the offing…there would seem to be “some justification for the saying that England won Australia by six [6] days”. Edward Jenks, History of the Australian Colonies cited H.E. Egerton, A Short History of British Colonial Policy, Methueun, London 1928

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‘In British eyes it [the First Fleet], if it has been noticed at all, was a small, peace-time convoy, which founded a colony’. Roger Knight, Studies [no. 10] From Terra Australia to Australia, eds. John Hardy and Alan Frost, Highland Press, Canberra 1989

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Botany Bay – 1788 – January, 18-20: A large armed English fleet of 11 vessels with a complement of 1500 souls reached Botany Bay in the middle of January 1788.

Overwhelming male one-half were convicted criminals – 750 male combatants and 193 women prisoners – reprieved death on condition they be exiled ‘from the realm’ .

Sydney Cove – 26 January: By ‘8 pm’ on the 26th of January the entire  English fleet having evacuated Botany Bay were riding at anchor in Sydney Cove nine (9) miles (14km) north of the original beach-head. 

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