Colonial penal stations and uneven legal reform after the Bigge Commission of Inquiry: the Port Macquarie absconders at Macquarie Harbour

Abstract

Between 1822 and 1824, just under 100 convict absconders from the mainland penal settlement at Port Macquarie were relocated to Van Diemen’s Land under executive orders they be retained at the island’s new penal station at Macquarie Harbour. The subsequent fate of this cohort reveals an early moment of divergence in policy and practice between the two colonies. Two years later, when the New South Wales government tacitly acknowledged that many convicts had been illegally sentenced to penal stations by magistrates, the benefits of that disclosure were not extended to those mainland convicts who had been relocated south to Van Diemen’s land. Nor, importantly, were they extended to Vandemonian convicts whose sentences were equally suspect. This article considers how developments in New South Wales which served to sharpen thinking about the nature and role of colonial penal settlements passed virtually unnoticed in Van Diemen’s Land, allowing the local authorities to evade much larger questions about magisterial sentencing practices and the application of English criminal transportation law.