Surfer, I am sorry to have to say this but you really need to learn some history.

Go pick up John Hirsts Sense and Nonsense in Australian History for a more accurate picture of the convict settlement.

In fact, I have had a good look at some of the convict documents and the bulk of the transportation were white collar crooks. Then, once on the continent, they were treated like kings with rights to sue their employers for mistreatment and a free plot of land when they finished up.

Brutality only emerged in a handful of of isolated cases.

Oh dear, Jonathan. Maybe it's you who need to go back and study your history. The brutality of convict settlement is well documented. Try Port Arthur, Moreton Bay, Norfolk Island, Macquarie Harbour, the work camps west of Sydney and in the Blue Mountains. Then there were the penal settlements in WA.

The white-collar crims DID do well, but the rest of them, mostly, didn't. Most of the criminals were NOT white-collar. I'm not going to argue with you, however. You have made a blanket statement about my lack of knowledge of Australian history when these things are not only well-documented, but a whole host of information is available out there to disavow your of your deluded and misguided belief that penal settlement on this continent wasn't violent.

Off the top of my head, I can name one person here just in this story whose father did 7 years in Van Dieman's Land - Ned Kelly's father, and for rustling two pigs. I doubt whether most of the convicts who did suffer through that era would be convinced as to the veracity of your point of view were they alive today.

oh sure, there was brutality, but it's probably overstated. To imply there was more than anywhere else in the world is inaccurate.

Heck, when the men and women first hit the shore, an orgy broke out on sight since they hadn't seen the opposite sex in months of travel.

But that's really beside the point.

Jon, it WAS violent. It was brutal, in fact. No, perhaps not any different to anywhere else. Except that the convicts transported to Australia were little more than white slaves, and as an Aussie, you know this to be true as well as I do. The other big difference: convicts and their offspring formed the bulk of the population here at one stage, especially in the earler years of the first colony.

However, this part of the story is only to offer an opinion on why Australians are so accepting of the kind of crime that sees gangsters dropping dead left right and centre, and why we just shrug our shoulders - because, as has been speculated by people more knowledgeable than me, it's part of the very fabric of our collective psyche.

And remind me next time you post a story to be the first poster, and to shoot it down in flames in the first few moments :) I hate to be ageist, but you're saying I don't know our history. I do know it. The gangland wars are also part of our history, and I think I was out there living it while you were but a twinkle in your daddy's eye.

Yeah, I know Stan. But is it really fair to call them slaves when they received a wage and could lodge complaints and sue their employer for mistreatment? Wage slaves and cheep labour maybe, but not slaves in the full sense of the word.

It's a popular speculation that the convict past weighs heavily in the Australian psyche; but remember they were superseded by free settlers very quickly and never had an uprising.

In fact, very few of present day Australians have any connection to the convict roots. If there is a generational legacy it could only have been passed down in the sorts of laws and institutions that have been developed and kept since that period.

Any time Stan, I mean, half the time I write stuff is to get it denounced by the loonies that frequent these boards. :)

Oh and while I'm at it... always wanted to tell you that Christmas article of yours from 06 is gold.

Jon, thanks buddy. We love our Christmases in the sun. You'll kniow how hot it gets up in Queensland, which is where all my immediate family comes from.

I'll just add here on the topic that it wasn't until the 1830s and the passing of the Magistrate's Act that convicts actually got a fair deal in terms of their punishments and their courts. Even then, the establishment was violently opposed to it - because they saw the convicts as scum who could be treated away from the norms people had come to expect from the British justice system.

Indeed Governor Bourke passed the law because he was so affected by the brutality meted out to the convicts in NSW. He made a number of submissions to London in regard to it, which in turn led to simmering opposition to transportation among the public in Britain and eventually an outcry in that ultimately led to the end of the transports to WA. That is all very well documented, especially Bourke's correspondence.

It was only in WA and Victoria that the convicts were treated reasonably, and even then not always.

Places like Moreton Bay, Macquarie Harbour, Port Arthur and the Blue Mountains camps were indeed hell holes. I will never subscribe to the view that the convicts were well treated - until the very end and before the transports stopped.

There is far too much evidence to suggest the exact opposite. You and the author of the book are entitledv to your views of course, but I don't believe they are right and plenty would agree with me, including serious historians.

Doc Dread ... there is something very strange going on with the comments thread here (apart from the fact Jonno and I are going hammer and tongs). Any chance of fixing it up old boy before I belt my terminal with a sledgehammer???

Well, most of my knowledge is from what I read during and since I undertook Australian History at uni, and in that case it was only one unit.

I'll defer to your better judgement... in my own experience, most of the people who jump up and down about the violence and brutality of the convict settlements do tend to overstate things because their primary school teachers always tried to make it more exciting.

Oh and yes, there does indeed seem to be a glitch with the comments.

The comment problem stems from the peculiarities of the Southern Hemisphere (as opposed to the normality of the Northern). :>)

Interesting article, SS. I know little about Aussie history, so it's a real eye-opener for me. While reading it, I reflected on the resiliency of the human spirit; that such a magnificent country as contemporary Australia is could have sprung from such inauspicious beginnings.

I don't know about a comment problem, but there does seem to be something cockeyed going on. The page layout is all over the place from where I'm sitting.

I'll get on to Chris and see if he knows how to fix it.

Picky, picky, Doc. You knew my meaning...

Chris CAN fix it (I think).

Fascinating piece, BTW, mate, and I wish you'd write more.

I only know Richard Roxburgh from his portrayal of the effeminate and psychotic Duke in Moulin Rouge, so it's kind of hard for me to picture him in that sort of tough guy role.

Highly unlikely that Underbelly will ever make it across the Pacific, of course, so I'll have to look for some clips on YouTube.

That's how I get my fixes of Kath and Kim and Chaser, after all!

Interesting piece, Stan.

It's helpful to be reminded from time to time what kind of hell an open air prison can be.

The page looks fine to me. Anyone else having problems?

I don't see anything wrong, of course that's not a comment on the editoral content...

Oh, NOW it looks fine!

I'll never understand the Internet, never...

[shuffles off into corner, mumbling to self]

It was the Amazon codes, surfer -- they get separated by commas, not semi-colons. It looks okay now because I fixed it a short while ago.

Thanks Lisa and Doc ... I thought that might have been the problem. Must remember not to use semi-bloody-colons.

Doc Dread, if you like Richard Roxburgh (I saw him recently in a movie set in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne where he stars with Justine Waddell and does a perfect Geordie accent - called the One and Only, and fantastic) you can get a copy of this in the US apparently. I say to Americans: if you can't understand the lingo, try bloody harder. It's not rocket science for anyone with an IQ above 65.

It's one of the best shows I've seen, but I think it hasn't gone down well in the US because of the Aussie accents (well, it IS set in Australia, silly).

I saw a review of it where the reviewer said it needed subtitles (lol) and suggested the storyline was improbable (whoops. The storyline is very close to what actually happened, the minor deviations being only for script and dramatic licence purposes).

Truth sometimes is stranger than fiction.

Apparently, the guy who wrote The Shield said he got most of his ideas from Blue Murder. I had to laugh a few weeks back when one of the posters on a gun thread here said the Australian police forces weren't known to be corrupt. Riiiight ...

The actor who does Neddy Smith (Tony Martin) also gets the criminal just about perfect. That's wyhy it's so good.

An old mate of mine also had one of the key roles, and proved to me once and for all that he's no ham actor - an affliction that seems to strike many of those of dramatic bent in this country.

One in particular who'll remain nameless because I don't want any trouble :)

Not Jason Donovan?

No, although ...

The person is one who does a great American accent but reached his limit IMO pretending to be a pom.

I think we've discussed this before, non??

"The Roots of Violence are:
Wealth without work,
Pleasure without conscience,
Knowledge without character,
Commerce without morality,
Science without humanity,
Worship without sacrifice,
Politics without principles"

Gandhi

...just a reminder

@ #22:

Aha! That guy...

#23 Troll ....


Gandhi's never been that popular in Australia. We've never had much time for passive aggressives. Be aggressive or be passive, I say, but never both at the same time.

Although there was a popular TV character here whose name was Mahatma Kote.

I liked this very much.

I must admit,I have a decent idea of Australian history relative to my North American brethren. It comes from a combo of reading, drawing analogies with Canada's own colonial past (les filles du roi is a type of settlement. In addition, my brother dated an Aussie chick (daughter of a diplomat) and I have relatives who reside in Melbourne. But that stays between us - they're so weird (in a Weirdly kind of way) to the point of never visiting. But that's another story. My cousin apparently "hangs out" in the Outback.

That all being said, now I know why Aussie rules football is what it is. What a rough and rugged past. I'll never forget the first team I watched on TV: Hawthorne and some blonde guy jumping in the air to show his feet into the back of another player. Now THAT'S a sport.

Just wondering, does Australia produce gangster flicks American style as opposed to documentaries? Sounds like there's enough story lines to produce quite the cottage industry on the subject.

surfer dude #25 - I am not surprised that Aussies with their own history of racist oppression and imitating empire in their own small ways would be down on G's tactics

but I agree - we don't need passive aggressives now...rather we need aggressive pacifists

Congrats, SS!

Blogcritic Of The Day!

Are you buying the house a round??

Yep. My shout. Anything youse all want, top shelf, beer, plonk. Name it.

How did that happen? I didn't even see it.

But look, I'm so proud, and I'd just like to say thanks to my dear old mum, who used to send me to bed withiout any dinner where I'd read by torchlight until I feel asleep.

Also, blah blah .......

Yeah, congrats. Mine's any Aussie beer. And I mean Aussie beer, not Foster's.

How does one get to be Blogcritic of the Day, anyway?

Payola.

Pass it on...

Endemic, systemic corruption, eh??

If you can't beat 'em...