Gold made Australia more profitable as a free man’s destination than a prisoner’s hold. The next year, the last convicts arrived in Van Diemen’s Land, including another thousand Irish. Three years after that, in an effort to shake a half century of notoriety, the island changed its name to Tasmania. Transportation was over for all but the far western coast of Australia, north of Perth. And while the end of the convict ships did not mean that those who were under sentence were paroled or given more liberties, it took away whatever justification remained for the British Empire to discard its
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