LETTITIA  MUNRO   SYNOPSIS…

Letitia Munro is a true tale of those who in witless ignorance transform a wilderness into a land of free enterprise and pride.

To relieve the pressure of overcrowded gaols, Britain began, in 1787, despatching pickpockets, thieves, forgers and other petty criminals over a period of eighty years to New South Wales. Such was the beginning of the white Australian civilisation. That ancient land became, overnight, the biggest prison in the world.

Letitia Munro was of the First Fleet. Seven hundred and fifty convicts in chains, their military guards and a score of government administrators with no real idea of what they would discover on landing, made their eight month journey half-way around the world. Only slowly and painfully did every soul come to realise the aches, pains and anguish of founding a settlement in a wilderness so far from help and succour.

For the convicts in particular it was fear personified.

Australia’s convict forebears were essentially British in culture, staunchly British in allegiance, yet the axiomatic sense of freedom in their descendants was inherited not from British freedom but from British oppression. It was the very ignominy of servitude that cast their blood and guts dignity and bred in them their irrefragable support for the underdog. Determination of purpose henceforth, developed towards mateship and a flippant attitude to authority. Conventions of class distinction became a barrier to be bested as they cleaved their several paths out of adversity, grasping any chance to create opportunities of easing pain.

So these ‘vagabonds’ became leaders by example in establishing the cultural trends of Australian society. Convicts emerged from their world of oppression and intimidation establishing traits of self-reliance, doggedness and obstinacy of purpose, essential ingredients in creating a culture of initiative and stubborn resolve. They unwittingly established social standards suited to their unique circumstance.

Titia, illiterate and cowed when arrested at nineteen years of age for stealing ten yards of cotton from a draper on London’s Fenchurst Street, to earn her fourteen year sentence of transportation, was to illustrate latent strengths emerging as she bested her hardships. Many convict records survive in Australian archives and she was one who became unique in Australia’s history as she played her part in establishing the ethos of today’s Australians, living to the grand age, for the times, of ninety. Titia not only saw Australia’s convict beginnings from its day of inauguration at Botany Bay to its day of demise in Van Diemen’s Land but lived to become its last surviving convict, matriarch to thousands of descendants.

In her long and significant life there was nothing to suggest that the sum total of the lives, experiences and fortunes of her and her convict friends and families were unique. Each was broadly typical of the 162,000 convicts transported to Australian shores 1788 through 1868 to found a nation, a culture, and a unique heritage. 

Kev Richardson