One in Five
One in five Australians can trace their ancestry back to convicts. That's approximately 4-5 million people descended from the 160,000 men, women and children transported between 1788 and 1868 - ranging in age from children as young as nine to adults well into their sixties.
When I was at university, I remember reading this statistic and being struck by just how significant it was. Yet for most of my life, I had no real understanding of my own convict ancestors.
A Global Anomaly
This proportion makes Australia unique among colonial societies. Britain transported convicts elsewhere: about 50,000-60,000 to North America before the American Revolution, smaller numbers to the Caribbean.
In America, those convicts were absorbed into a much larger stream of free migration. France transported around 70,000 convicts to New Caledonia and French Guiana, but they remained marginal to those societies. Only in Australia did transported prisoners become the demographic and cultural backbone of a nation.
This is why Australia's relationship with its convict past has been so complex, and why the transformation in attitudes has been so dramatic.
From Shame to Pride
For much of Australian history, convict ancestry was seen as a "stain" on family honour, a shameful secret to be hidden. As journalist Christine Kenneally notes, "before it became cool it was downright shameful. Australia's convict descendants went to great lengths to slough off the penal colony stain."
In Tasmania the stigma endured especially strongly. Historian Hamish Maxwell-Stewart comments that many Van Diemen's Land families "sought to hide their ignominious past." Even into the 1970s, Tasmanians commonly denied any convict ancestors.
Since the 1988 bicentenary, this has completely reversed. Museums began featuring convicts openly. By the 21st century, what "was a stain is now a bit of a badge of honour." Genealogical tourism flourishes, convict ancestry societies thrive, and families proudly mention their "convict princess" or "lag" forebears.
My Personal Journey
There were vague family stories in my childhood - the usual tale of "stealing a loaf of bread and being shipped to Australia", but it wasn't something we really talked about. Our convict past was ignored, which wasn't unusual.
Now? I'm tremendously proud of my two convict ancestors, Hannah Brown and Thomas Maslin.
Hannah Brown was sentenced to death at 18 for stealing muslin and lace under Britain's "Bloody Code", its the brutal legal system I've written about before, where over 200 crimes carried the death penalty. Thomas Maslin took cloth from a bleaching field. These weren't hardened criminals; they were desperate people making survival choices in a system that made little distinction between theft and murder.
Yet they endured what I've described elsewhere as a "Marathon of Misery" - the hell of transportation, the voyage across the world, and the harsh realities of colonial life. Hannah and Thomas found each other in impossible circumstances and started the family line that led to me. As I explored in "Lagged for Life," their descendants became successful farmers and community builders in North Queensland.
That's not a stain but a triumph.
The Bigger Picture
We're all human. We all make mistakes and bad decisions. For many of our convict forebears, that's exactly what happened. But they also showed incredible resilience, survived unimaginable hardships, and helped build this country.
Former sites of punishment (Port Arthur, Fremantle Prison) have become museums celebrating rather than hiding convict stories. As one Tasmanian noted, "this shame that many had about their convict past gradually has faded. People are looking back at their convict past. Now they talk about things like convict chic!"
Australia now embraces its convict origins as foundational, recognising both the suffering and the contributions of the "involuntary colonists" who helped shape the nation. Given that one in five of us can trace our family lines back to those transported prisoners, it's about time.
