Between and the British penal system transported about , convicts from Great Britain and Ireland to various penal colonies in Australia. The British Government began transporting convicts overseas to American colonies in the early 18th century.
After trans-Atlantic transportation ended with the start of the American Revolution , authorities sought an alternative destination to relieve further overcrowding of British prisons and hulks.
Earlier in , James Cook had charted and claimed possession of the east coast of Australia for Britain. Seeking to pre-empt the French colonial empire from expanding into the region, Britain chose Australia as the site of a penal colony, and in , the First Fleet of eleven convict ships set sail for Botany Bay , arriving on 20 January to found Sydney , New South Wales , the first European settlement on the continent.
Other penal colonies were later established in Van Diemen's Land Tasmania in and Queensland in South Australia and Victoria , established in and respectively, officially remained free colonies. However, a population that included thousands of convicts already resided in the area that became known as Victoria.
Penal transportation to Australia peaked in the s and dropped off significantly in the following decade, as protests against the convict system intensified throughout the colonies. In , almost two decades after transportation to the eastern colonies had ceased, the last convict ship arrived in Western Australia.
