Backbencher

Lecture four was titled "Settlement: Convicts and Pilgrims". We first talked about the mythistory that is in New Zealand and Australia. There were two main people involved with this concept, William McNeil and Austin Fife. Mythistory is where historians made up some information regarding the history of the two countries. The next thing that we talked about was the convicts. Some of the most popular convicts set away from England to Australia were political convicts and petty criminals were involved as well. When they got to the area, there were three colonies that were set up in Australia for them: New South Wales in 1788, Van Diemen's Land in 1812 and Western Australia in 1829. Over time, each settlement stopped receiving convicts, and the transportation was over by 1868. Next, we talked about the colonization of New Zealand. There were five planned colonies that were established by 1850. Gold was found in New Zealand, and that created even more of a rush for people to settle in the country, which greatly increased population.
I thought that this lecture was very interesting, especially since I did not know a lot about where the criminals went when the arrived in Australia. I also liked how we talked about the vocabulary that the convicts would use. I did not think that they would have different terms, but I was proved wrong. The settlement of both countries is different and that is interesting since they are so close together. I wonder what the countries would be like if they were settled differently, example, Australia not receiving the convicts and how that would have affected England.