Life for convicts in Sydney could be harsh, though it was preferable to the death sentence they faced at home.All they had to do was survive the tough eight month voyage to the other side of the world.The Hyde Park Barracks Museum reveals some of what the convicts endured.When they arrived in Sydney, some convicts were held in compounds, such as the Barracks, or made to work on government initiatives, but most were put to work under a master.Convicts assigned to a good master could live comfortably, working in exchange for food, board and clothing, even getting paid for working in their spare time.Bad masters treated convicts no better than slaves, providing poor food and clothing, paying little or nothing for after-hours work.
Skilled convicts were more likely to be enrolled in government projects, employed in their own field of expertise.
For these convicts, transportation provided them with an opportunity to start afresh, leaving their criminal convictions behind.
Few convicts ever returned to Britain: some stayed because they had built lives for themselves around their trades during service, but others simply could not afford the journey back home.Former convicts became the foundation of Australia’s population, and many modern Australians can trace their ancestry back to them.One of Australia’s founding mothers was Mary Ann Wade, one of the youngest convicts to be transported, aged 11.Found guilty of stealing another child’s clothes, she was sentenced to death by hanging, which was changed to a sentence of transportation.She arrived in Sydney with the Second Fleet in 1790, where she lived as a convict, until marrying and eventually having 21 children.At the time of her death, she had 300 living descendents, who now number tens of thousands.