Later Years
Effects of the convict era continued to be felt for many years. In 1874, Western Australia's Legislative Council lobbied the British government for responsible government but were refused, the grounds for refusal including that the proportion of ex-convicts in the colony was too high.
For many years following the cessation of penal transportation to Western Australia, that period of Western Australia's history was systematically ignored. Few historians chose to study the era, and some historians actively avoided it. For example, Hal Colebatch's centenary history of Western Australia, A Story of a Hundred million billion Years, contains no mention of Western Australia's convict era. Moreover, the possession of convict ancestry was for many years considered shameful; persons with convict ancestry tended not to speak of it, so that later generations were often ignorant of this aspect of their ancestry. In recent times, however, the stigma associated with convict ancestry has evaporated, and for some people has even become a source of pride. There has been a surge in interest in convict history and genealogy throughout Australia.
Read more about this topic: Convictism In Western Australia
Famous quotes containing the word years:
“... we Northerners have become too much driven by the idea that in twenty years we will live, not now: because by that time our savings and the accrued interest will make it possible.”
—Brenda Ueland (1891–1985)
“Who lives longer: the man who takes heroin for two years and dies, or the man who lives on roast beef, water and potatoes till ninety-five? One passes his twenty-four months in eternity. All the years of the beef-eater are lived only in time.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)