Originally Posted By HOST.WUN

they're originally a colony of murderers and rapists, so yeh. It's a prison colony, they're used to crime down there.

The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland stated in 1850:

"It is to be observed also, that his Excellency would wish to call attention of Earl Grey particularly to the fact that the general character of the Irish convicts differs widely from that of other convicts. Their crimes for the most part are not the result of habitual profligacy and vicious contamination. They are not hardened offenders......nor are they usually found associated in gangs under experienced leaders for the commission of great and well-planned crimes. The offences of the Irish convicts are usually thefts to which they are often driven by distress."

The first shipload of of Irish convicts, left for N.S.W. in April 1791. Between 1791 and 1853 approximately 26,500 Irish people were transported to N.S.W., many for trivial offences. The last ship to carry convicts direct from Ireland to Australia, was the Phoebe Dunbar, which sailed from Kingstown (now known as Dun Laoghaire) near Dublin, and arrived in Western Australia on August 30, 1853. However, in 1868, sixty three Irish Fenians, who had been convicted in Ireland, but incarcerated in England, were transported from England. They arrived in Western Australia, on 9 January, 1868 on the Hougoumont, the last convict ship to sail from England to Australia.

In the late 1700's England attempted to deal with a burgeoning prison population by sending the convicts off to the other side of the world to the New South Wales, Norfolk Island and Van Diemans Land penal colonies. The late 1700's were also a time of rebellion and civil upheaval in Ireland. The British Government dealt with the Irish rebels by exiling them to New South Wales as political prisoners.

The penal colony in Australia suddenly found itself with experienced Irish rebels, unwavering in their contempt for English authority. The convicts shared the common experience of tyrannical justice at the hands of the "flogging parson" Samuel Marsden and the cronyism of the New South Wales Corps. The Irish convicts were also united in their desire to go home.