The John Goode Story

 

Extract from “Everyday Life in Australia – Convicts and Penal Settlements” – John Goode

 

A Convict Heritage – The colonies of Australia were used as penal settlements for about 162,000 men, women and children transported from Britain between 1788 and 1868.

It was these people who cultivated the first paddocks and gathered the first harvests.   On the earliest journeys into the unknown interior of the continent, it was convicts who acted as carriers for the explorers.   And when the Blue Mountains had been crossed, the convicts built the first roads, even though they were bound with chains and confined at night in boxes so small that they could not lie down to sleep.

In many places, time has removed the results of their labours.   The buildings they erected in the short-lived northern settlements at Melville Island in 1824 and Port Essington in 1844/45 were soon overrun by tropical scrub after these outposts were abandoned.

Similarly, there are few traces of convicts in Melbourne, where some were housed in hulks; and none in South Australia, which was inhabited only by free settlers.

The most obvious remains are the later work of transported prisoners such as Fremantle Gaol in Western Australia which was built in 1856.

Many examples of convict buildings can be seen in Tasmania.   As well as the ruins of the notorious “model prison” at Port Arthur, other convict buildings include Constitution Dock in Hobart, and the oldest surviving bridge in Australia – the one across the Coal River – built at Richmond in 1823.

In Brisbane, the Observatory on Wickham Terrace (originally a windmill) has long been a prominent landmark and is one of two surviving convict buildings.  The other is the Commissariat between William Street and Queen’s Wharf Road.   Only at Norfolk Island far into the Pacific Ocean do the remains of buildings from the second period of convict habitation (1826-56) give a picture of what a penal settlement might have looked like when it was in use.

But it is in New South Wales, particularly in Sydney and its outer suburbs, where many of the best-preserved convict buildings can still be seen.   The famous churches of St James in Sydney and St Matthew’s at Windsor were designed by Francis Greenway, a convict architect, and built by convict labour.   Others include Vaucluse House overlooking the harbour and Experiment Farm

Cottage at Parramatta.