"Australia is the only country in the democratic world which, ever since the first census in 1832, has regularly and systematically destroyed the working papers to draw a veil over when and why its citizens arrived in the country. For more than 100 years the passenger lists of the convict ships were kept under lock and key in a safe at the Public records Office. Historians were only allowed access on the understanding that no individuals were named. In 1882 The New South Wales High Court ruled that it was not in the public interest for a person's criminal ancestry to be made known. For this reason, any such allegation (even if true) would be libellous (slanderous?) […] In old Birth Certificates you can read that the father, or sometimes the mother, "works for the Government", which in the strictest sense of the word, was true. In other Certificates a parent's occupation would be given as "F.S.". This somewhat cryptic designation was intended to make you think it meant "Free Settler", when it actually stood for "Freed by Servitude". It was therefore actually a convict whose sentence (usually seven or fourteen years) had expired. In other Certificates a parent's name was simply missing, as if the child were born illegitimately – a disgrace one would sooner suffer than recognise the even more unpalatable truth. Generations of Australians, right up to today, were just not inclined to pat themselves on the back for having created a modern state out of such unprepossessing human potential."

According to my notes the above is my translation of a german passage on Suzanne (skw)'s Judy Small webpage. (Judy is incidentally descended from two First Fleeters)