The Dark History of Sydney

Australia is the only country in the world that began as a penal colony for those who where too resourceful for their own good. After the undesired independence of USA, Great Britain faced a new difficulty; the trans-Atlantic transport of her less wanted subjects should stop and another final destination for petty criminals like chicken thieves had to be found ASAP. After all, it was important to reign in the proliferating underworld.

Then it so happened that a captain Cook crashed his ship on a coral reef on the coast of Australia. He was by means not the first white person to set foot on Australian soil, probably he was not even the second. However, Cook had one benefit over the previous visitors. He realized he had found Australia and he claimed it for Great Britain. (Apparently the other white people who had come in touch with Australia had assumed they had landed on one more island belonging to Papua New Guinea or Indonesia.) So Australia became British and all the numerous criminals doing their time in the crowded prison ships on Thames soon found themselves on a ship sailing towards the southern hemisphere.

Convict settlements in Australia

Until 1970's the origin of Australia as a penal colony was something people did not talk about. Your average Australian would have been horrified to find out that someone in their family had had a too entrepreneurial soul and as a direct consequence, unfortunately ended up in Australia instead of hangman's noose. Those kind of branches of the family tree were chopped down immediately. Luckily the attitudes have changed and nowadays the distant chime of chains and leg irons is probably like beautiful music that many Aussies wish to hear in their family tree. Australians are proud of their history and that's good.

We visited the Hyde Park Barracks to familiarize ourselves with the circumstances in which the convicts lived. The place is slightly depressing. The most interesting fact was that at some point in the history, some people committed crimes to reunite with their families. If one of the brothers was shipped to Australia, he soon untruthfully described Australia as heaven on earth in his letters home and tempted the ones staying there to actively seek a one-way ticket to Australia, e.g by stealing a loaf of bread. For example 4 brothers of the same Irish family came to Australia like this.

Hyde Park Barracks

Internationality has long been a feature of Sydney. In addition to the British and Irish, Chinese soon appeared in the newly found country. The Sydney of today is a truly international city where anyone can probably feel like home not depending on the country of origin. It's a feature I most like about Sydney. The city had people representing every religion, every political orientation, every continent. No one stands out from such a variable crowd. You are as likely to hear English on the streets as Chinese or German. I can imagine living here a bit longer.

That's why I was very surprised to hear that things haven't always been like this. In my Vietnamese class there is an elderly man from Vietnam, he has lived in Australia since childhood and has now retired. He told me that in his childhood immigrant children were not allowed to the classroom. The teacher just checked they appeared in the morning and then sent them outside to play. ”This is not your country, you don't need to learn English.” There were separate restrooms for the white and the first floor of a double decker bus was only for the white people. Well, here you see that the one who is intolerant of the other loses most. The view form the upper floor of a double decker bus is way better. Let's all be happy that Sydney has gone through a remarkable ”face lift” since those times.