Book Review: The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding by Robert Hughes – Part Two
“The horror… The horror…” we hear Marlon Brando as Kurtz say at the end of the film Apocalypse Now. Such a somber chant would suit the mood of much of The Fatal Shore. It is almost unbelievable that humans could purposefully inflict so much suffering upon their fellows, but of course the founding of Australia is by no means an isolated instance of man’s inhumanity to man; history is full of examples.
As I read on, I came across exciting stories of convicts attempting to escape. Some hijacked ships and sailed away, and others fled into the bush and tried to live off the land. These sometimes became legends to those left behind, but most of them were captured and either killed or horrifically punished.
The inherent problem with the system was the motivations of the authorities in England who had instituted the program of transportation of criminals to Australia. First of all, their ideas of who constituted felons worthy of transportation were seriously flawed. Up to half of those sentenced to remote exile were guilty of nothing worse than petty theft. Many were teens, women, or old people. But worse than the choice of convicts was the motivation for sending them in the first place. They had no desire to reform the prisoners. They wanted the people of Great Britain to fear being transported to Australia, so they gave orders to make the penal colonies as terrifying as possible. To accomplish this, they sent harsh sadistic governors and other officers who were only too eager to humiliate and torture the prisoners in their care.
In some parts of the book, the author Hughes seems to be trying to find excuses for the authorities behaving as badly as they did, but really there are no excuses for such violent, murderous, inhuman behavior. As I read, I kept thinking that the politicians and judges in England and the overseers in Australia should have been forced to live for a few days as a convict so they could see for themselves what they were perpetrating. But really, no one should ever have to go through what the convicts went through. And as if their standard treatment was not bad enough, the authorities set up special detention centers in places such as Norfolk Island and Macquarie Harbor that were designed as places of torment and punishment. These powerful men were like mad scientists intent on inventing methods of inflicting greater pain. If any governors or commandants, such as Alexander Maconochie, sincerely wanted to help and reform prisoners, they were ridiculed by free settlers and relieved from their posts by the British authorities.
Hughes points out that as a deterrent to crime in England, the program of the transportation of convicts to Australia was a flat failure. Despite the efforts of authorities to create an image of Australia as a place of dread, too many people living in poverty in England saw it as a place where they could escape their hardships and make a new start. The final straw to the transportation system was the discovery of vast quantities of gold in the early 1850s, which further established Australia in the public mind as a land of opportunity.
The author explains that for a long time convict ancestry was a cause for shame in Australia. I found this saddening, as it was the convicts who pioneered the land, albeit unwillingly, and whose hard labor laid the foundation for what it became.
In conclusion, I would say that this book is probably not for everyone. It is long and complex and full of examples of humankind at its worst. Still, I was unaware of much of this history. It is fascinating, if frightening, to read of the origins of this vast island nation. I recommend it if you can handle the harshness and you enjoy well-told histories.
