Convicts

On 14 January 1834, the last ship built at the closing Macquarie Harbour penal station on Sarah Island — the brig Frederick — was seized by ten convicts led by James Porter, a former sailor with previous experience in Chile. Using only dead reckoning, with no charts or chronometer, they sailed the untested vessel roughly 13,000 km across the Pacific to Chile, before scuttling her off the coast and reaching Valdivia, where they lived under assumed identities as shipwrecked sailors for two years.

James Meehan was sentenced at 26 for his role in an uprising against British rule in Ireland and arrived in Australia in 1800 as a convict servant to English explorer Charles Grimes. Through talent and persistence he rose to become Acting Surveyor General of the New South Wales colony, working under five governors from 1800 to 1822.

Ian Brand and Michael Sprod's history of the probation system — the major experiment in convict management that replaced the assignment system in Van Diemen's Land from 1839 and shaped the colony's labour system, landscape and penal administration for the following fifteen years.