Convicts At King George Sound
The first convicts to arrive in what is now Western Australia were convicts of the New South Wales penal system, sent to King George Sound in 1826 to help establish a settlement there. At that time the western third of Australia was unclaimed land known as New Holland. Fears that France would lay claim to the land prompted the Governor of New South Wales, Ralph Darling, to send Major Edmund Lockyer, with troops and 23 convicts, to establish the King George Sound settlement. Lockyer's party arrived on 25 December 1826. A convict presence was maintained at the settlement for nearly four years. In November 1830, control of the settlement was transferred to the Swan River Colony, and the troops and convicts withdrew.
Read more about this topic: Convict Era Of Western Australia
Famous quotes containing the words convicts, king and/or sound:
“So long as State constitutions say that all may vote when twenty-one, save idiots, lunatics, convicts and women, you are brought down politically to the level of those others disfranchised.”
—Susan B. Anthony (1820–1906)
“The children won’t leave without me; I won’t leave without the King; and the King will never leave.”
—Elizabeth (b. 1900)
“One of those sound slumbers which, lasting in reality some half hour, seem to the sleeper to have been protracted for three weeks or a month.”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)