 Flag adopted by the Anti-Transportation League | |
Region served | South Eastern Australia and New Zealand |
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The Australasian Anti-Transportation League was an organisation that opposed penal transportation to Australia. [1] It was established in Van Diemen's Land (present-day Tasmania) in the late 1840s, and expanded rapidly with branches in Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney in Australia, and Canterbury in New Zealand. The Colonial Office abolished transportation to eastern Australia in 1852. [2]
Penal transportation to the Colony of New South Wales (a colony covering the eastern Australian mainland in modern New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland) had ceased in 1840, and the number transported to Van Diemen's Land increased sharply. A two-year suspension of the transportation of male convicts to Van Diemen's Land was implemented in May 1846. It was the intention to resume transportation under new arrangements but that decision was conveyed to the Lieutenant Governor William Denison in the following terms: "it is not the intention that transportation should be resumed at the expiration of the two years"; the words "under the present system" were omitted. The dispatch, taken to mean what it said on its face, was made public before the imperial authorities corrected their error. [1]
By 1851, it had developed into the Australasian League for the Abolition of Transportation with branches on the mainland and New Zealand. In Van Diemen's Land's first partially elective Legislative Council, its supporters won all 16 seats up for election. [3] The Legislative Council subsequently voted 16 to 4 to request Queen Victoria to revoke the Order in Council permitting transportation to Van Diemen's Land and Norfolk Island in spite of the strong opposition of Denison.
The Victorian gold rush, also commencing in 1851, led the Colonial Office to discontinue penal transportation anyway, because it was seen as an incentive for criminals to be transported to eastern Australia. Transportation was abolished in 1852 and the last convict ship to be sent from England, the St Vincent , arrived in Van Diemen's Land in 1853.
The League had its own flag, the Union Jack with the Southern Cross which was created before 1851 by John West, [4] a Launceston congregational minister, author and newspaper editor. [5]
Tasmania is an island state of Australia. It is located 240 kilometres to the south of the Australian mainland, and is separated from it by the Bass Strait. The state encompasses the main island of Tasmania, the 26th-largest island in the world, and the surrounding 1000 islands. It is Australia's smallest and least populous state, with 573,479 residents as of June 2023. The state capital and largest city is Hobart, with around 40% of the population living in the Greater Hobart area. Tasmania is the most decentralised state in Australia, with the lowest proportion of its residents living within its capital city.
Van Diemen's Land was the colonial name of the island of Tasmania used by the British during the European exploration and colonisation of Australia in the 19th century. The island, inhabited by Aborigines, was first encountered by the Dutch ship captained by Abel Tasman in 1642, working under the sponsorship of Anthony van Diemen, the Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. The British retained the name when they established a settlement in 1803 before it became a separate colony in 1825. Its penal colonies became notorious destinations for the transportation of convicts due to the harsh environment, isolation and reputation for being inescapable.
The history of Tasmania begins at the end of the Last Glacial Period when it is believed that the island was joined to the Australian mainland. Little is known of the human history of the island until the British colonisation of Tasmania in the 19th century.
The Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, a former British colonial penal settlement, established on Sarah Island, Macquarie Harbour, in the former colony of Van Diemen's Land, now Tasmania, operated between 1822 and 1833. The settlement housed male convicts, with a small number of women housed on a nearby island. During its 11 years of operation, the penal colony achieved a reputation as one of the harshest penal settlements in the Australian colonies. The former penal station is located on the eight-hectare (twenty-acre) Sarah Island that now operates as a historic site under the direction of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.
Alexander Pearce was an Irish convict who was transported to the penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, Australia for seven years for theft. He escaped from prison several times, allegedly becoming a cannibal during two of the escapes. He was eventually captured and was hanged in Hobart for murder, before being dissected.
The West Coast of Tasmania has a significant convict heritage. The use of the west coast as an outpost to house convicts in isolated penal settlements occurred in the eras 1822–33, and 1846–47.
Sir William Thomas Denison was Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1847 to 1855, Governor of New South Wales from 1855 to 1861, and Governor of Madras from 1861 to 1866.
The Australian Anti-Transportation League Flag is a flag used historically by members of the Australasian Anti-Transportation League who opposed penal transportation to the British colonies that are now a part of Australia, which was to become Australia's first major movement arguing for national self-determination. It is particularly significant as it is the oldest known flag to feature a representation of the Southern Cross with the stars arranged as they are seen in the sky.
Between 1788 and 1868 the British penal system transported about 162,000 convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia.
William Thomas Napier Champ was a soldier and politician who served as the first Premier of Tasmania from 1856 to 1857. He was born in the United Kingdom.
The modern history of the Australian city of Hobart in Tasmania dates to its foundation as a British colony in 1804. Prior to British settlement, the area had been occupied definitively by the semi-nomadic Mouheneener tribe, a sub-group of the Nuenonne, or South-East tribe. The descendants of theses indigenous Tasmanians now refer to themselves as 'Palawa'. Little is known about the region from prehistoric times. As with many other Australia cities, urbanisation has destroyed much of the archaeological evidence of indigenous occupation, although aboriginal middens are often still present in coastal areas.
1851 in Australia was a watershed year. It saw the start of the Australian gold rushes with significant gold discoveries in both New South Wales in February and Victoria in July. As a result of the Gold Rushes, the European population of Victoria increased from 97,489 in 1851 to 538,628 in 1861 and the population of NSW increased from 197,265 in 1851 to 350,860 in 1861. Victoria became a self-governing colony. Sentiment in the eastern Australian colonies moved decisively against penal transportation leading to the end of transportation to Tasmania in 1853. Melbourne's major suburb/satellite city in the Dandenong Ranges, Belgrave was first settled, making it the oldest town in the Dandenong Ranges.
John West emigrated from England to Van Diemen's Land in 1838 as a Colonial missionary, and became pastor of an Independent (Congregational) Chapel in Launceston's St. John's Square. He also co-founded The Examiner newspaper in 1842 and was later editor of The Sydney Morning Herald.
John Lee Archer was the Civil Engineer and Colonial Architect in Van Diemen's Land, serving from 1827 to 1838. During his tenure, Archer was responsible for all Tasmanian government buildings including those for penal and military purposes.
Lady Denison was launched in 1847 at Port Arthur, Tasmania. She went missing in 1850 while sailing between Port Adelaide and Hobart, Tasmania. At the time there were strong allegations that convicts being carried on board murdered the other passengers and crew and headed for San Francisco, but all contemporary evidence supports the assertion that she sank off the far north-western tip of Tasmania.
The Colony of Tasmania was a British colony that existed on the island of Tasmania from 1856 until 1901, when it federated together with the five other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The possibility of the colony was established when the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed the Australian Constitutions Act in 1850, granting the right of legislative power to each of the six Australian colonies. The Legislative Council of Van Diemen's Land drafted a new constitution which they passed in 1854, and it was given royal assent by Queen Victoria in 1855. Later in that year the Privy Council approved the colony changing its name from "Van Diemen's Land" to "Tasmania", and in 1856, the newly elected bicameral parliament of Tasmania sat for the first time, establishing Tasmania as a self-governing colony of the British Empire. Tasmania was often referred to as one of the "most British" colonies of the Empire.
William Buelow Gould was a painter born in the United Kingdom and later working in Van Diemen's Land. He was transported to Australia as a convict in 1827, after which he would become one of the most important early artists in the colony, despite never really separating himself from his life of crime.
The British colonisation of Tasmania took place between 1803 and 1830. Known as Van Diemen's Land, the name changed to Tasmania, when the British government granted self-governance in 1856. It was a colony from 1856 until 1901, at which time it joined five other colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. By the end of the colonisation in 1830 the British Empire had annexed large parts of mainland Australia, and all of Tasmania.
On 11 and 12 February 1851, teams from Van Diemen's Land and Port Phillip District played the first cricket match between two Australian colonies, recognised in later years as the inaugural first-class cricket match in Australia. It took place at the Launceston Racecourse, known now as the NTCA Ground, in Tasmania. The match was incorporated into celebrations marking the separation of the Port Phillip District from New South Wales in 1851 as the colony of Victoria.
Crime in Tasmania has existed since the earliest days of the European settlement in 1803. Laws creating criminal offences are contained entirely in statutes, statutory regulations, and by-laws, common law offences having been abolished by the Criminal Code Act 1924 s 6. Most offences are enforced by Tasmania Police, although a small category of offences are prosecuted by other statutory authorities such as local governments, and the Tasmanian branch of RSPCA Australia. All offences are prosecuted through the Tasmanian justice system, and sentences of imprisonment are administered by the Tasmania Prison Service. Some crime statistics for Tasmania are provided on the Tasmania Police website.