The Future of Botany Bay

Abstract

We add, as Documents II and III, articles which appeared in the London newspapers on about the dates mentioned above, and which also refer - though in a much more frivolous vein - to the possible future of the settlement at New South Wales. It is curious that the papers should have predicted a revolution in the colony at about the time that New South Wales in fact won substantial self-government, the 1850s. We do not attempt to explain the various allusions to the London prisons, penal system and underworld. The first of these two items comes from the 'General Advertiser', 30 September 1786, but as it also appeared in the 'Public Advertiser' on the same day, it was presumably pirated from some earlier publication, now lost. The second comes from the 'Public Advertiser', 10 OCtober 1786.