Did England Send Convicts to Australia?

In today's episode, Katie has 30 minutes to become an "expert" on... Did England Send Convicts to Australia? Answer: Yes it did! This was a fascinating look into a really dark part of history. England only sent convicts to Australia because it couldn't send them to the Americas anymore, because duh, the Revolutionary War. We don't want your tea or your convicts anymore! And the hulks - the ships-turned-prisons floating in harbors in England - were full (plus everyone on them was dying of typhoid and cholera). Man, this was a rough one! Between 70-year-old ladies being shipped across the world and sentenced to 7 years in prison for stealing a wheel of cheese, to hundreds of thousands of indigenous Australians being decimated by smallpox and colonization, not a lot to smile about in this one. But it's good to learn about history. Why? So we don't repeat it, of course!

Highlights Include:

- 160,000 convicts sent to Australia from England

- 1 in 5 Australians are descended from convicts

- The oldest indigenous population in the world outside of Africa

 

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Podcast artwork by Rick Radvansky

Music by Jake Radvansky