1820's-1830's Australian Bushrangers: Recs needed

[fisher_queen]

Thank you all for indulging my fairly creepy little question last time. Now, for something completely different, and fairly sane and normal. I've had a plot bunny nibbling away at me, and I'm having a difficult time dealing with the research for it, as I can't get to the school databases over this semester

Comments

[clio75]

I'd be a little wary of stuff written by Edgar Penzig (the guy was loopy)
I'm Australian and have done a bucketload of Aussie history from primary school through to uni.
So what in particular are you after? Just bushranger references, stuff on life in the colony, convict life???
Otherwise I'll be giving you a mountain of reading :)

[chilperic]

I strongly recommend reading Marcus Clarke's novel (written in the mid nineteenth century) For the Term of His Natural Life. The convict in that story went to Tasmania, and spent some time in Port Arthur, the biggest of the prisons. The historian Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, who is at the University of Tasmania, has written books on this, including a book about another prison in Tasmania, called Hell's Gates (on a small island off the largely unpopulated west coast of Tasmania.) Port Arthur is now a museum, devoted to the history of convicts there and in Tasmania in general (I was there in 2008) and I imagine has a good website of its own.

As Clio75 implies, there are LOTS of books on bushrangers, convicts, etc. And lots of controversial stuff about relations between settlers and aborigines. (The so-called History Wars in Australia have been fought in the last decade or so over the problems of the extent of genocide, above all in Tasmania.)

[mudg3t]

I'm not so sure that a lot of the criminals were necessarily transported to Port Arthur. Back then it would've taken a rather long time to travel from NSW to Tassie, and by most accounts I've read (and was taught) the law was more in favour of hanging these types of criminals. Here in Melbourne (I'm an Aussie) many a criminal was held - and hanged (such as Ned Kelly) at Old Melbourne Gaol, and murderers, bushrangers and baby killers co-habited alongside petty thieves. Obviously, Melbourne Gaol wasn't built until the mid 1830's, so doesn't fit with your time line, but gives an example that not all callous criminals were sent to Port Arthur. I'm not as well versed on the major gaols that existed in NSW though cause I'm from Victoria, but Darlinghurst Gaol, where Jimmy Governor and "Captain Moonlight" were held and hanged was a significant prison. I think Maitland Gaol was too, but this was built a bit later. Anyway, the point is that there may not have been a reason for your character to necessarily be transported to Port Arthur, given