Smithsonian Museum tells the story of harsh treatment of convicts:
http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/history/2012/08/the-neverending-hunt-for-utopia/
Convict architecture in Sydney:
http://melbourneblogger.blogspot.ca/2010/07/francis-greenway-convict-architect-in.html
Outlines Cook’s three voyages:
http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?groupid=2130&HistoryID=ab95
Details of previous century womens’ clothing (may have been worn by convicts):
Garrick – Inspiration for Robert Sideway
Aborigine inspiration
Russel Crowe from Master and Commander – Harry Brewer inspiration
18th C. Woman – Mary Brenham inspiration
“Diva” – Duckling inspiration — what she aspires to be
Awkward pose – Liz Morden inspiration
Arthur Phillip
Muskets
Naval swords
Pistols
Small sword hilt
Wikipedia:
1700–1769
Throughout the 18th century, knowledge of Australia’s coastline increased gradually. Explorers such as the Englishman William Dampier contributed to this understanding, especially through his two-volume publication A Voyage to New Holland (1703, 1709)
1770: Cook’s Expedition
In 1768 British Lieutenant James Cook was sent from England on an expedition to the Pacific Ocean to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti, sailing westwards in HMS Endeavour via Cape Horn and arriving there in 1769. On the return voyage he continued his explorations of the South Pacific, in search of the postulated continent of Terra Australis.
He first reached New Zealand, and then sailed further westwards to sight the south-eastern corner of the Australian continent on 20 April 1770. In doing so, he was to be the first documented European expedition to reach the eastern coastline. He continued sailing northwards along the east coast, charting and naming many features along the way.
He identified Botany Bay as a good harbour and one potentially suitable for a settlement, and where he made his first landfall on 29 April. Continuing up the coastline, the Endeavour was to later run aground on shoals of the Great Barrier Reef (near the present-day site of Cooktown), where she had to be laid up for repairs.
The voyage then recommenced, eventually reaching the Torres Strait and thence on to Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia). The expedition returned to England via the Indian Ocean and Cape of Good Hope.[16]
Cook’s expedition carried botanist Joseph Banks, for whom a great many Australian geographical features and at least one native plant are named. The reports of Cook and Banks in conjunction with the loss of England’s penal colonies in America after they gained independence and growing concern over French activity in the Pacific, encouraged the later foundation of a colony at Port Jackson in 1788.[17]
New South Wales
On 18 August 1786 the decision was made to send a colonisation party of convicts, military, and civilian personnel to Botany Bay. There were 775 convicts on board six transport ships. They were accompanied by officials, members of the crew, marines, the families thereof and their own children who together totaled 645. In all, eleven ships were sent in what became known as the First Fleet. Other than the convict transports, there were two naval escorts and three storeships. The fleet assembled in Portsmouth and set sail on 13 May 1787.
The fleet arrived at Botany Bay on 20 January 1788. It soon became clear that it would not be suitable for the establishment of a colony, and the group relocated to Port Jackson. There they established the first permanent European colony on the Australian continent, New South Wales, on 26 January. The area has since developed into Sydney. This date is still celebrated as Australia Day.
There was initially a high mortality rate amongst the members of the first fleet due mainly to shortages of food. The ships carried only enough food to provide for the settlers until they could establish agriculture in the region. Unfortunately, there were insufficient skilled farmers and domesticated livestock to do this, and the colony waited on the arrival of the Second Fleet. The second fleet was an unprecedented disaster that provided little in the way of help and upon its delivery in June 1790 of still more sick and dying convicts, which actually worsened the situation in Port Jackson.
Other Resources:
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/convicts-and-the-british-colonies
http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/colonial.asp
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/convict-women-in-port-jackson
Wikipedia:
The impact of British settlement
1788–1900
In 1770, Lieutenant James Cook claimed the east coast of Australia in the name of Great Britain and named it New South Wales. British colonisation of Australia began in Sydney in 1788. The most immediate consequence of British settlement – within weeks of the first colonists’ arrival – was a wave of European epidemic diseases such as chickenpox, smallpox, influenza and measles, which spread in advance of the frontier of settlement. The worst-hit communities were the ones with the greatest population densities, where disease could spread more readily. In the arid centre of the continent, where small communities were spread over a vast area, the population decline was less marked.
The second consequence of British settlement was appropriation of land and water resources. The settlers took the view that Indigenous Australians were nomads with no concept of land ownership, who could be driven off land wanted for farming or grazing and who would be just as happy somewhere else. In fact the loss of traditional lands, food sources and water resources was usually fatal, particularly to communities already weakened by disease. Additionally, Indigenous Australians groups had a deep spiritual and cultural connection to the land, so that in being forced to move away from traditional areas, cultural and spiritual practices necessary to the cohesion and well-being of the group could not be maintained. Proximity to settlers also brought venereal disease, to which Indigenous Australians had no tolerance and which greatly reduced Indigenous fertility and birthrates. Settlers also brought alcohol, opium and tobacco, and substance abuse has remained a chronic problem for Indigenous communities ever since. The combination of disease, loss of land and direct violence reduced the Aboriginal population by an estimated 90% between 1788 and 1900. Entire communities in the moderately fertile southern part of the continent simply vanished without trace, often before European settlers arrived or recorded their existence.
The Palawah, or Indigenous people of Tasmania, were particularly hard-hit. Nearly all of them, apparently numbering somewhere between 2 000 and 15 000 when white settlement began, were dead by the 1870s. It is widely claimed that this was the result of a genocidal policy, in the form of the “Black War“. However, such claims are disputed by historian Keith Windschuttle, who claims that only 118 Aboriginal Tasmanians were killed in 1803–47 and that many of these were killed in self-defence. Another scholar, H. A. Willis, has subsequently disputed Windschuttle’s figures and has documented 188 Palawah killed by settlers in 1803–34 alone, with possibly another 145 killed during the same period.[21] Such counts do not consider undocumented violence and must be regarded as minimum estimates.[22] It is also claimed, but untrue, that the last Indigenous Tasmanian was Truganini, who died in 1876. This belief stems from a distinction between “full bloods” and “half castes” that is now generally regarded as racist. Palawah people survived, in missions set up on the islands of Bass Strait.
Dreaming map
Dreaming/Songlines map
Britannica:
the Dreaming, also called dream-time, or world dawnAustralian Aboriginal languages altjira,altjiranga, alcheringa, wongar, or djugurba, mythological period of time that had a beginning but no foreseeable end, during which the natural environment was shaped and humanized by the actions of mythic beings. Many of these beings took the form of human beings or of animals (“totemic”); some changed their forms. They were credited with having established the local social order and its “laws.” Some, especially the great fertility mothers, but also male genitors, were responsible for creating human life—i.e., the first people.
Mythic beings of the Dreaming are eternal. Though in the myths some were killed or disappeared beyond the boundaries of the people who sang about them, and others were metamorphosed as physiographic features (for example, a rocky outcrop or a waterhole) or manifested as or through ritual objects (see tjurunga), their essential quality remained undiminished. In Aboriginal belief, they are spiritually as much alive today as they ever were. The places where the mythic beings performed some action or were “turned into” something else became sacred, and it was around these that ritual was focussed.
The Dreaming, as a coordinated system of belief and action, includes totemism. Together, they express a close relationship: man is regarded as part of nature, not fundamentally dissimilar to the mythic beings or to the animal species, all of which share a common life force. The totem serves as an agent, placing man within the Dreaming and providing him with an indestructible identity that continues uninterruptedly from the beginning of time to the present and into the future.
Other Resources:
http://australia.gov.au/about-australia/australian-story/dreaming
http://www.aboriginalartonline.com/culture/symbols.php
http://dl.nfsa.gov.au/module/1566/ — songlines
1744 Map of Australia
1769 Map of ‘Sydney’
1789 Painting of Port Jackson
1788 – Landing in Port Jackson
Arrival in Australia
1783 – Death of Capt. Cook
18th C. British ships
Military men at camp
Royal Military – tall boots
Sir. Watkin Tench
Travelling solider – Royal Military
Re-enactment – shows uniform difference between ranks.
Colonel’s uniform
Officers of Royal Military
Military Captain – note the tassels
Military jacket detail
Double breasted vest detail for Captain uniform.
Caricature of military dress
1795 Military Capt. in formal dress
1760 Military Capt. – note buckle detail
Men in chains
Botany Bay convicts
Convicts in a line
Ladies sleeve detail
Convict jackets
Arrival at Botany Bay
1781 – Blacksmith — idea of poorer clothing.
1796 Caricature of street fashion
1795 Fishwife
1795 – Note ladies shoes
1793 Milkmaid
1793 Flower seller – note waistline
1791 Children’s book illustration of a woman
1769 Woman in dress – inspiration for Mary’s dress neckline.
Our Country's Good - Research 