On manumission the emancipated convicts were not allowed to return to their homelands but had to stay in the colonies. It was widely observed that they evaded the cities where the authorities ruled, preferring to find a new life in the bush where their ways often came to resemble that of the Aboriginal people with whom they sometimes had children, and these too were hidden from the authorities, their origins obscured and kept secret from the broader world. Some began to eat and live and even dress like Tasmanian Aboriginal people. A 40,000-year-old culture proved itself not so easily
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