When this stopped, the prisoners were then transported all the way to Australia. Penal transportation was ... the harshest forms of punishment in the colony. “Convicts loathed it.

Being a convict at an Australian penal colony in the 19th century was a harrowing experience. Once there, convicts often came up with imaginative and, sometimes desperate, ways to try and escape ...

Australia was a British penal colony between 1788 and 1868 and over 160,000 convicts were 'transported' here. Learn about these child convicts, why they were transported, how they lived in the colony ...