EUROPEAN SETTLEMENT
After a shaky start as settlers adapted to an unfamiliar land, the settlement at Sydney Cove grew rapidly in the early years of the nineteenth century, as thousands of free settlers took advantage of land grants and promised riches. Britain's stringent inheritance laws, under which firstborn sons claimed all land titles, led second and later sons in particular to the chance to strike out for themselves in this land of opportunity. Adelaide, in 1836, and Melbourne, in 1837, was settled by just such opportunists.
Transportation of convicts ended in 1864. It is estimated that around 1, 60,000 convicts were sent to Australia over 76 years, most of who stayed on once they were freed.
While the number of convicts was insignificant when compared to the free settlers who streamed into Australia in the latter half of the nineteenth century attracted by gold, cheap land, and the promise of a new life-convict labor played a major role in building Australia's nascent cities. Strict inheritance laws saw that land in Britain was passed from father to the eldest son and could not be subdivided. Younger sons traditionally entered the clergy or the military.
The promise of generous land grants in New South Wales drew the younger sons of England's wealthy to emigrate and establish stock stations of a magnitude they could never have imagined back home - many of which still exist today. As freed convicts joined the increasing number of settlers attracted to the promise of this burgeoning southern land (where labor was in great demand), many began to appreciate that they were better off than if had they stayed in an over- crowded and recently industrialized England. Together, these disparate colonials and their children battled hostile environments to establish an indigenous culture based on solidarity and a distaste for authority.
