Backbencher

Lecture 4 was based on the theme of Convicts and Pilgrims. Dr. Isern gave us a tour of modern day Sydney, Australia where some of the first convicts landed in the late 1700s. At this time, England had the American colonies rebelling against sending convicts to Georgia. The solution prior to sending criminals to Australia was overcrowded hulks, floating offshore from England. The incorrigibles, they were sent to Norfolk Island also known as the Botany Bay of Botany Bay. Ironically, the convicts that were banished from England were really not the hardened criminals that one might suspect a country to try and rid itself of. Instead, England sent the political rebels, petty crimes only after too many offenses and the subculture criminals that had organized crime of mostly theft. The development of a vocabulary came with the life of the convicts. Some of which the terms are still understood today like the term "government stroke." After some time, convicts could be lent out to wealthier people to work for them.In New Zealand, there was a pilgrimage and a systematic formation of the colonization. One problem that that Edward Gibbon Wakefield, the man with the vision for New Zealand, had been with the Maori already had made claims to the land. New Zealand was formed mostly on small parcels of land for settlers with farm workers brought in for labor and a cultured class of landowners. With the discovery of Gold in Otago and Wesland, a less civilized group of prospectors disrupted Wakefield's dream of a upper class New Zealand.
I found it interesting that Dr. Isern mentioned on Norfolk Island, being developed for the holdings of a "dangerous"breed of convicts, that there is only one known murder or serious crime and it was a murder some time ago by a New Zealander not originally from the island. I also am curious to know if people actually tried to escape Norfolk Island. When it comes to gold rushes, does New Zealand and Australia have anything comparable to the ghost towns in North America? I know Dr. Isern showed a few pictures of abandoned mine shafts and caves that people lived in.