Grid Girl Gets The Flick For Racist Shticks...

[draco664]

I guess they "forgot" that the Brits sent murderers, thieves, and rapists as the "flagship" population, and treated the tribes as less than human.

My response would be along the lines of "really, you dump the vilest forms of human refuse in their backyard(they were so horrible you didn't even want them in the country anymore), and expect them to be friendly? I consider it a major sign of higher morals and great strength of character that they don't shank every white person they see."

Er, murderers and rapists were pretty much hanged as a matter of course back then. There was very little in the way of appeals too. Thieves though, yeah, lots of them.

One of my ancestors was transported in 1812 for the theft of 3 linen shirts from a washing line in Bath. The crime was actually committed by his father, but the son took the rap because of his father's ill health. (That guy is sort of famous in our family, and it was a very big family, since he had 21 living children out of 30-odd from two different wives. Wife number 2 he married at 63 (she was 19...) and his last child by her was conceived when he was 83. That child died in 1979, which meant that about 30 years ago, at least one child of a convict was still alive!)

Not exactly pillars of the community, true, but not the vilest either.

Anecdotally, it was the convicts who got on the best with the natives. It was the legal settlers who brought with them the whole 'land-ownership' concept, which came hand-in-hand with the 'get off my land' and 'trespassers will be shot' ideas...

I find it amusing that it was literally the War of Independence (or, as the Brits call it, the American Revolution ) that created Australia. The Brits were stopped from sending their convicts to the colonies, and suddenly the local population swelled uncontrollably. They needed somewhere to go, and the other side of the world seemed just the place.