Australia A Prison with 14 000 Mile Thick Walls
... The English settled Australia in the hope of defending against the criminals living within its own country (Hughes 1). ... After 1717 George I passed a law that allowed minor criminals to be sent to America for 7 years and major offenders would be sent to America for 14 years. ... James Cook had explored a continent called Australia with a famous botanist called Sir Joseph Banks. ... As a result under the reign of King George III a colony named Australia was formed. ... The entire continent was about to become and jail and the closest sanctuary was more than 14,000 miles away across a vast ocean. There were more than 160,000 children, women and men moved to the settlement, making it one of the largest forced-exiles in the pre-modern history. The official birth of Australia was on January 26, 1788. ... The voyage to Australia from England took eight months and one week. ... Port Jackson and all of Australia, being unknown and untamed, was dangerous to all of the new visitors. ... It was believed that the jails in England did not reform the prisoners because they were not separated, so this was something that was hoped to be changed in Australia. Because the military and most of the rest of Britain ignored the continent, Australia decided to regard themselves free from all but the military law. ... The conditions on the ships transporting the criminals were so poor that when they did arrive in Australia, they were too sick to work (O’Brien 171). ... In all about 160,000 convicts were transported to Australia over a period of 80 years. ... Convicts continued to arrive in Western Australia until 1868. ... Assignment was as important to colonial Australia as black slavery was to antebellum South (Hughes 284).