Introduction
Most European settlers in Australia in the early colonial years were convicts sent by the British government. There were also some free settlers, however—people who chose to leave their homes in Britain and make a new life in the colony. Those who made the long and difficult journey to Australia received assistance from the British government, which wanted to make the remote colony stable and capable of supporting itself.
History
The First Fleet arrived in Australia in 1788 carrying more than 700 convicts to start a new penal settlement at Sydney. Additional convict ships arrived in 1790 and 1791. Those early fleets also brought hundreds of free people to the colony, mostly soldiers and their families. However, the first people to be considered free settlers—that is, people who made their own decision to migrate to the colony—arrived aboard the Bellona in early 1793. Thomas Rose and his family, plus several others, settled on land that they called Liberty Plains, which is now in the suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales. Although free settlers continued to arrive in New South Wales in the years that followed, they were outnumbered by convicts for the first few decades.
The first free settlers paid their own way to Australia, meaning that they were typically quite prosperous. To encourage free settlement among the less wealthy, the British colonial government began to pay the transportation costs for many migrants in the early 1800s. It also gave them free land on the condition that it be used for a productive purpose. The offer appealed to people who were suffering from unemployment and poverty in Britain as a result of the Industrial Revolution. The government also provided the settlers with free agricultural tools and convict labor to help them establish farms.
New South Wales was not the only colony with free settlers. The Swan River Colony in western Australia was founded as a free settlement in 1829. It was renamed Western Australia in 1832. The colony struggled, however, and by the 1840s the colonists were in need of additional workers to keep the settlement viable. At their request the British government converted Western Australia to a convict colony in 1849. South Australia, founded in 1836, was the only British colony in Australia to begin as a free settlement and remain that way.
The colonization of Australia happened at the expense of the continent’s Indigenous peoples. At first, relations between the Aboriginal peoples and the European newcomers were generally friendly. Conflict soon developed, however, as the Europeans expanded their settlements into Aboriginal territory. Aboriginal resistance to the invasion of their lands led to violent clashes. Ultimately, more than 20,000 Aboriginal people and almost 2,000 Europeans are estimated to have died in the conflicts. Two of the most notorious events were the Myall Creek Massacre in New South Wales and the Pinjarra Massacre in Western Australia. Diseases carried by the colonists killed many more Aboriginal people.
In the 1830s and 1840s both the British public and the Australian colonists grew increasingly critical of transportation—the British practice of shipping convicts to Australia. The British government ended transportation to eastern Australia in 1852. In Western Australia transportation continued until 1868. After that, all of Australia’s settlers were free.
Daily Life
Life was very hard for most of Australia’s early settlers. The colonists of New South Wales struggled to find fertile land, and the hot, dry climate made farming even more difficult. The seasons were different from Britain’s, and most of the plants and animals were unfamiliar. Starvation was a constant concern during the colony’s first few years. All of the settlers—men, women, and children—had to contribute to keep the colony from failing. Conditions improved in the early 1800s as settlers expanded inland from the coast, opening up more fertile lands for farming as well as vast tracts for raising livestock.
Work
Most of the early free settlers were farmers. They developed the land that the government granted them with the help of convicts assigned to work for them. The first challenges were to clear the often thickly wooded land and to build a fence around it. Then they did their best to grow crops in the unfamiliar environment, learning from their successes and failures. Wheat became an important crop. They also made great strides in raising cattle and sheep, particularly Merinos. The export of wool became a crucial source of income for the colony.
Some free settlers worked in trades, such as carpentry or blacksmithing. Their skills were highly valued in building the colony. There were also small numbers of doctors, lawyers, and clergy.
Women played important roles in the development of colonial Australia. Married women typically managed their households, which included raising and teaching children. Single women often worked as house servants. Some educated women served as tutors or governesses. Women also worked alongside men in doing the hard labor required to build the colony.
Food
In the first years of the New South Wales colony, food was so scarce that everyone—from the convicts to Governor Arthur Phillip—received rations. That means that each person received measured amounts of foods, such as pork, flour, and rice, which were brought to the colony by ship. Anyone caught trying to steal food faced severe punishment. The food shortages eased as the settlers learned to grow crops.
Soon the settlers began to make use of native foods. They adapted recipes from home using local meats such as kangaroo, wombat, and emu. They learned which wild fruits and nuts were good to eat. They also obtained abundant fish and shellfish from the sea, developing an especially strong appetite for Sydney rock oysters.
Housing
The first settlers found an abundance of trees, but few were useful for building. The eucalyptus (gum) trees in the Sydney area were large and bulky, and their wood was so hard that it often broke the settlers’ tools. Over time the settlers found different kinds of trees that were strong and durable but easier to cut. With wood from those trees they built crude homes known as slab huts. They split pieces of timber from logs, using some to make posts and leaving others as rough slabs. They used the posts to build a frame and the slabs to make walls. The roof was made of thatch, shingles split from trees, or sheets of bark. Bark roofs were modeled on those they saw on the shelters of Aboriginal peoples.
The settlers also built houses using a technique called wattle and daub. They put wooden stakes in the ground and wove branches between them to make walls. They then daubed (smeared) the walls with clay or mud to make them weatherproof. Acacia trees were most commonly used for those houses because of their flexible branches. For that reason Australian acacias are often called wattles. Wattle-and-daub houses usually had two rooms, one with a fireplace and chimney.
The houses of wealthy landowners and government officials were larger and more elaborate. Built by convict laborers, they were typically made from materials such as sandstone or brick and surrounded by gardens. Those homes usually consisted of many rooms, including living quarters for the servants.
Children’s Lives
The children of most free settlers had to work hard alongside their mothers and fathers. Typical chores included fetching water from the well or river, washing the dishes, helping with the laundry, and gathering wood. Children also did farm work, such as feeding the hens, gathering eggs, milking the cows, shearing sheep, and harvesting crops. Girls were expected to knit and sew, cook, clean, and make beds as well as look after younger siblings. Boys sometimes helped their fathers in construction work. There were few schools in the early years of settlement, and most children did not attend. Schooling did not become compulsory (required by law) in New South Wales until 1880.
Children in wealthy families had more privileged lives. Servants did the work that occupied so much of the time of children in poorer families. Children of the elite attended school or were educated at home by tutors or governesses. Some wealthy parents sent their children back to England to be educated.
