Monday, May 23, 2011

Aussie Aussie Aussie

I nearly cracked up when my Chinese Chinese (i.e. from China) friend emailed me this:

Need your help

"Select stories of two convicts (one male and one female) who came to colonial Australia and demonstrate how each were able to turn their lives around and become founding members of modern Australia."

I think u must have learned about Australian history, could u plz give me the names of the people required by this question ? u don't have to give me their stories, only names will be enough. i would really appreciate that.

I hope I'm not outing myself here, but I think it's universally acknowledged that Australian-born Aussies are deficient in their knowledge of Australian history. My first reaction to the email was, "Poor fella, he thinks I must know stuff cos I was born and educated here!". Sadly, I could NOT think of a convict done good. I could think of non-convicts done good e.g. Macquarie, Governor Arthur Phillip, the people on our currency and other people who've had suburbs named after them.

So tell me fellow Aussie, how is your knowledge of Australian history? Can you think of any convicts done good without resorting to google? I couldn't :P

3 comments:

  1. Apparently many generations ago, one of my ancestors stole some bread for his starving family and got shipped out. So his brother packed up both their families and moved out here. Not so much a founding member of society, but many years later my mum went to university, so after awhile it ended well. ;p Don't know his name, but a guy I went to school with worked out he was a very distant cousin, as we both got told the same story!

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  2. Francis Greenway. Convict architect.

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