Year 5 - HASS First Fleet

Facts About The First Fleet

Here are some resources to explore the First Fleet bringing the convicts and settlers to Australia.

Did you know that Australia has not always been called Australia?

The land that is now known as Australia was called by various names by the Indigenous peoples who lived there for along time before the arrival of Europeans. These names were different for each group of Aboriginal people because they spoke over 200 different languages.

For example:

When the Aboriginal people talked about Australia, they just called it the land or ground.

Some different language words that meant land or ground were:

uthuru (Midwestern Australian Aboriginal groups)
barna (Murchison region Aboriginal groups)
biik (Woiwurrung language - Melbourne)
kurrek (Wemba Wenba language of Victoria)

The Aboriginal people had a deep spiritual connection to the land and had a name for every feature of the land.

For many centuries Europeans believed there must be a vast land in the southern hemisphere (bottom half of Earth), variously called ‘Terra Australis Incognita’ or ‘Unknown South Land’. Tasmania was called, "Van Diemens Land."

In the 1700's the Dutch people the land, "New Holland."

Captain James Cook took a ship to find 'New Holland.' He was from a place called Britain in England. England is a small country inside of the continent Europe. He renamed 'New Holland' to 'New South Wales.'

In the 1780's in England alot of people were very poor. They didn't have a lot of food.

The government made laws to try to stop people from doing the wrong thing. The people had to follow the rules. The government made the consequences for breaking the rules, very harsh.

People were stealing to survive, even if it meant they would get into a lot of trouble. They did not have the money to pay for food, so they stole it. They wanted food to eat.

If they were caught for stealing, they were sentenced to death, because there was no room in the jails for any more prisoners!

Because there were so many criminals doing the wrong thing, and punishments for crime were so awful, there were many jails that were full.

The British government tried sending some criminals to America as a punishment, but that had to stop after a war. America told Europe that they would not take any more convicts. So now the English had no where to send there criminals anymore. What would they do with so many criminals?!

They came up with a plan to put convicts on ships on the river Thames. These ships were called Hulks, and they were used as a jail. They became full of prisoners too. Lots of prisoners on the Hulk ships died because the ships were so horrible to live on.

The European government had to come up with a plan.

The plan was to get them out of Europe, and send them to Australia! Australia was far away across the ocean. This punishment would be called, "transportation." The convicts were transported by the First Fleet (11 ships), that sailed to New Holland. New Holland was the new British jail!

Later in 1803, an English explorer named Matthew Flinders sailed around the entire continent of New Holland, and renamed it to Australia.

Other Pages of Information and Facts:

First Fleet facts for kids: First Fleet Facts for Kids (kiddle.co)

TV Series: Convict Kids : ABC iview

The movie 'Oliver' portrays an orphan from the year 1838, that pick pockets.

· Oliver Twist YouTube clips. Meeting the Artful Dodger https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPGRUrvuNGk

· Food Glorious Food: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hEQDllvuy1I&list=PL638E3E1EE7CC02BB

· Oliver! – Oliver, Oliver: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlJugdk4OGc&index=2&list=PL638E3E1EE7CC02BB

· Oliver! - You've Got To Pick A Pocket Or two: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VogHwP0C5VY

Visit Sydney Australia website - The History of Sydney: The First Fleet (visitsydneyaustralia.com.au)

Child convicts that arrived on the First Fleet:

Lifestyle: Child convicts of Australia | MHNSW