Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Convicts to Queensland
By the 1820s Sydney was a busy port, teeming with soldiers, merchants, children, school-
mistresses, criminals, preachers and drunks. The farms prospered, and in the streets chil-
dren were chatting in a new accent that we would probably recognise today as 'Australian'.
The authorities now looked north to the lands of the Yuggera people, where they estab-
lished another lonely penal colony at Redcliffe. Here, men laboured under the command of
the merciless Captain Patrick Logan, building their own prison cells and sweating on the
farms they had cleared from the bush. These prisoners suffered such tortures that some wel-
comed death, even by hanging, as a blessed release.
Logan himself met a brutal end when he was bashed and speared while riding in the
bush. Shortly after his murder, a group of soldiers reported that they had seen him on the
far bank of a river, screaming to be rescued. But as they rowed across to investigate, his
tormented ghost melted into the heat…
Logan's miserable prison spawned the town of Brisbane, which soon became the admin-
istrative and supply centre for the farmers, graziers, loggers and miners who occupied the
region. But the great hinterland of Queensland remained remote and mysterious - in the
firm control of its Aboriginal owners.
