The dawn of a pandemic—as seen through the news and social media posts that vanished from China’s internet. LATE ON THE night of February 2, as her insomnia kicked in, a Beijing woman whom I’ll call Yue took out her phone and religiously clicked open WeChat and Weibo. Over the past […]
The story of Australia’s last convicts (short story)
The Hougoumont, the last ship to take convicts from the UK to Australia, docked in Fremantle, Western Australia, on January 9, 1868 – 150 years ago. It brought an end to a process which deposited about 168,000 convicted prisoners in Australia after it began in 1788. Convicts had ceased to […]
The convict experience
In nineteenth century England, the sentence for a variety of crimes was transportation to Australia, a harsh punishment with many convicts never seeing their homeland again. The convict experience During the first 80 years of white settlement, from 1788 to 1868, 165,000 convicts were transported from England to Australia. […]
Convict ESCAPE STORIES
Western Australia with its harsh climate, unyielding vegetation and dangerous fauna, was for the early settlers and convicts a wild and forbidding place compared to the ‘tamed’ landscapes of England and Europe. Henderson regarded the Convict Establishment as a prison within a prison, and the Western Australian landscape a ‘vast […]
The story of Australia’s last convicts (short story)
The Hougoumont, the last ship to take convicts from the UK to Australia, docked in Fremantle, Western Australia, on January 9, 1868 – 150 years ago. It brought an end to a process which deposited about 168,000 convicted prisoners in Australia after it began in 1788. Convicts had ceased to […]
Buddhism Comes to the West
An extract of a talk by Bhikkhu Bodhi from a seminar on “The Necessity for Promoting Buddhism in Europe,” held on the first death anniversary of Ven. Mitirigala Dhammanisanthi Thera – Colombo, Sri Lanka 2nd July 2000. The topic of this seminar is very timely, for in many Western countries […]
CONVICT HULKS
CONVICT HULKS A BERMUDAN CONNECTION HULKS IN AUSTRALIA THE FLOATING MUSEUM In the 21st century we are accustomed to thinking of imprisonment as one of the more obvious forms of punishment for convicted criminals. This was not so in the past. The industrial revolution, social change and war caused great changes […]
Edward Grisdale’s convict wedding at Parramatta
0 On 3 June 1835 a female convict named Sarah Jones married in Saint John’s Anglican Church in Parramatta, Sydney. Her husband was a free man called Edward Grisdale. What was their story? I will reconstruct it as best I am able given the paucity of the records. This little […]
460 convict ships sailed to Australia Of these only 41 came to Western Australia
460 convict ships sailed to Australia Of these only 41 came to Western Australia Adelaide Voyages to Australia The ‘ADELAIDE’ was built 1832 in Calcutta. Wood ship of 640 Tons. 1849 voyage: Departed London 17 Aug 1849. The convicted persons were then known as ‘Exiles’ because they had served […]
Pyramids In The Pacific
The Unwritten History Of Australia Chapter 1 Footprints From The Dreamtime Australia’s Unknown Stone-Age Past “When Giant fellas alive, them big animals still bin walkabout this country, Ground shake when he walk. He eat peoples” Wullagun Tribal Elder of the Yabuduruwa people of Arnhem Land, concerning the Nagarun, a race […]
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