Babette Smith, Australia's Birthstain: the startling legacy of the convict era.(Book review)

Babette Smith, Australia's Birthstain: the startling legacy of the convict era, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 2008, viii + 400 pages; ISBN 978 1 74114 604 2.

A shame so strong it led to national amnesia? A concealed past that has caused Australians to doubt their national identity? Family stories not just lost to the families, but obliterated from the national consciousness? These provoking ideas lie at the heart of this book about convict Australia.

Extending her research about convict women of the Princess Royal who had featured in A Cargo of Women, Smith has turned her investigations to the lives of male convicts arriving on four transports--Sir William Bensley (NSW 1817), John (NSW 1832), St Vincent (VDL 1853) and Lord Dalhousie (WA 1863). Extensive research into the backgrounds, crimes and subsequent colonial lives of these men provides a complex account of the diversity of the convict experience. Smith provides detailed accounts of the circumstances of the crime, where most seem to have been convicted on sufficient evidence to prove their guilt, and has then carefully tracked them through government service, private assignment, tickets of leave, conditional pardons and their adjustment to colonial life and eventual anonymity.

The convict experiences range across time and space, offering for the first time a continuum from the eastern convict colonies of New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land through to the later, and lesser known Western Australian convict establishment. About 1100 individuals have been traced. Extraordinary stories emerge, such as that of William Brodribb and the Berkley poachers who were transported on the Sir William Bensley. The men on the John were really boys, with 40 per cent under 20 years old, the youngest a 12-year-old. The St Vincent was the last male transport to arrive in Hobart, and among its 207 convicts were 99 who had already spent years at hard labour in Gibraltar. The Lord Dalhousie included 43 convicted soldiers. The wide-ranging analysis of these convicts indicates that, despite long-held views that Western Australian convicts were more serious offenders than those sent to the east, this may not be the case.

Smith's research ...