To Plough Van Diemen's Land...  SYNOPSIS

   The first white Australians were convicts, pickpockets, thieves, forgers and other petty criminals despatched from bulging British gaols. In 1788, that ancient continent of Australia became the biggest prison in the world.

   Letitia Munro, first in the trio, told the true tale of those who in witless ignorance as they landed on the naked shores of Botany Bay, began transforming a wilderness into a land of free enterprise and pride.

   To Plough Van Diemen’s Land tells of their children—introduces a next generation of convicts that arrived to marry the sons and daughters of the first, to together, not only carve further into the land but carve further notches in the new culture they were unwittingly developing.

  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 every chance to create opportunities of not only easing pain but laying foundations for an honourable future.

   These ‘vagabonds’ became leaders by example in establishing the cultural trends of Australian society. Convicts emerged from their world of oppression and intimidation with established 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.

   Influenced more by whips and chains in servitude than by examples set for them, they became perforce, overt, their opinions forthright and even blunt, traits adopted by their children.

   Society values over years, change, and as new immigrants began arriving en-masse, so the community discovered that social standards could change. They grew to recognise that the stains of convict blood continued to seep through the pages of their life and should be hidden.

   So should the descendants of convicts, comprising the vast majority of the nation’s population, more than nine-hundred shiploads having been despatched over a period of eighty years, have to deny their very heritage?

   A great dilemma was visited upon the people to cause considerable havoc within families. Must parents lie to their children, deny their very parentage?

   To Plough Van Diemen’s Land takes true characters through this life until the cessation of convictism and change of the colony of Van Diemen’s Land’s name to Tasmania, a change to hopefully expunge the convict image.

   The Terrible Truths, third in the trio, takes the reader by the hand into the hearts of parents of the then next generation, aided by an untruthful education system, in denying that the country was tainted with convict blood, that the convict stigma could remain forever buried.