G'day Again ChrisE,

It occurred to me after posting last night (Sydney Time) that I may have overstated the case in respect of Tasmania as a 'second sentence' site. Once the settlement built up (founded in 1805) and civilised, convicts were sent there as first destination. Port Arthur even had a special separated prison at Point Puer for juvenile offenders.

Port Arthur also received Irish fenians with a bit higher profile than normal. Smith O'Brien was an Irish Member of Parliament convicted of treason. At Port Arthur, after he signed a parole, guaranteeing not to escape, he was housed in a small separate cottage. During the 1960s I did some restoration work on Smith O'Briens Cottage, which was then being used as the Youth Hostel at Port Arthur. It was up the hill, behind the Women's Prison, next to the Lunatic Asylum - later used as the Town Hall!
Smith O'Brien was contacted by the Irish/American group that financed the American Whaler The Catalpa to rescue Fenians sent to Australia. He explained that he had given his word of honour not to escape - and they carried on to rescue the 7 fenians in Western Australia - look up The Catalpa in the DT.

jofield: The lines are more like -

"They'll yoke you to the plough, my boys,
To plough Van Diemen's Land."

These lines come from the English broadside ballad usually called Van Dieman's Land

This song was proabably of the class of broadsides quietly encouraged by the Government to depict life in the convict settlements as babdly as possible - to counter rumours filtering back to Britain of convicts that served their time and then did well in the new country.

Many of the London poor (including hordes of dispossesed Irish: economic refugees /those evicted by the 'land clearances' of British landlords wishing to run sheep and cattle for the London market / rural labourers left unemployed by changes to broad acre land use / (later) those starved out by the Potato Famine, started to think it might be a good idea to steal something ... and eat that day ... or else get caught and end up in Australia (including V.D.L.) and prosper as they could not in England!

Another example of this class of reverse propaganda broadside is The Convict Maid (should be in DT) - a song that Trish Noakes, in my band of the 1980s Selectors, used to sing as a bit of a weepy. It obviously didn't work on her - she and her husband moved to Tasmania in the early '90s!

Regards,

Bob Bolton