Convict Flags of Origin

Research By: Anne Gibson
Editor:  First Fleet Folio, Journal of the First Fleet Fellowship of Victoria.
Contributor to the Eureka Council's College of History

Commentary By:  John Hibberd PhD
Editor:  Eureka Times Australian History Archive

This Register of Convict Flags of Origin has been created to honour the cosmopolitan nature of our modern Australian nation. Two distinct groups of people arrived from England in 1788. The first group, the English Imperial Forces and their civilian attachments were exclusively English in their allegiance and would have recognised this flag only at that time. 

These Imperial Forces were soon supplemented by English "Gentlemen of Name" on the lure of free land and a government administered slave-labour force to work it. 

Today the descendants of this immigrant group are known variously; the Imperial Australians, Polite Society, the Nobs, the Black Hats, the White-shoe Brigade, the Bosses, etc.  

The other group, the Convicts, the descendants of that government regulated slave labour force are an entirely different matter.

As this register of flags clearly demonstrates, no matter how the order to select prisoners for Transportation may have left the English Parliament, by the time it arrived in the prisons it apparently read  "All foreigners plus the following list..."  Just look at what a cosmopolitan group the Convicts we actually were.   See how many continents we come from.  Count the languages and religions."

These four flags contributed the overwhelming majority of the people who arrived in Australia as Convicts, but now look at the other peoples and nations who joined us in the Great Southern Land. Truly we are a cosmopolitan people.