Introduction

The convict settlers were Australia's first migrants. Surprisingly, few Australian historians have recognised that the transported convicts were not just criminals deported to a penal colony. One exception is Geoffrey Blainey whose analysis of the impact of ‘the tyranny of distance’ has done so much to focus attention on the importance to Australian economic growth of importing labour from overseas. By 1830 Australia's population, excluding Aborigines, was about 70,000 and nearly 90 per cent had been transported or were the children of those transported. ‘It is difficult to imagine’, commented Blainey, ‘that the population even under the most favourable conditions would otherwise have exceeded 10,000’.

Peopling Australia with free immigrants would not have been easy. British North America and the United States were far more attractive destinations for free settlers. The cost of the passage from Britain to Australia, five to six times greater than that across the Atlantic, deterred migration. Even when the state intervened to subsidise the shipping fare, the long period of unemployment while at sea imposed a high opportunity cost upon free migrants in terms of the amount of earned income forgone. There was little chance of a migrant returning home. This led to Blainey's claim that transportation of convicts should be viewed as Australia's first immigration policy.

Historians have viewed the convicts as, quite literally, good for nothings. A.G.L.Shaw described them as ‘ne'er-do-wells … quite unable to earn an honest living’.