Page 6

As you can expect, labour in Australia's early day was executed primarily by the convict population. In some ways they had to adapt to whatever group that happened to arrive and pray someone knew some basics of trades like tailoring, farming etc. This was particularly difficult in the earliest days in Australia. As Robert Houghes recounts in his book The Fatal Shore, in 1788 "Only a third of the prisoners could work- 320 men out of the 966 victualled from public stores. More than 50 convicts were too feeble from age or incurable illness to work at all and many others slum raised, utterly ignorant of farming- 'would starve if left to themselves'.

Another account from 1788 revolved around the procurement of flax, which was required for rope, canvas, and clothing. No one thought to staff any expeditions to the antipodes with folks capable of this trade and England took two years to send a single individual who is said to have only produced a couple yards of "the costliest  textiles ever woven by man." From this debacle sprung the bright idea to go kidnap Maori from New Zealand as their clothing was often noted as quite impressive from explorers. Naturally those sent to kidnap the Maori didn't really ask anyone who did what and ended up taking a young chief and a priests son, who when they arrived in Australia and were finally able to communicate advised their captors that only females were raised to do this kind of work. Surprisingly after six months they actually returned them to New Zealand which was, for the time, a bizarrely polite thing to do.

As we fast forward into the comics time frame in the early mid 1800s, things were considerably more established but even still, the colony was extremely remote even more so Van Dieman's Land whose population remained primarily convict, and to know any trade set you up to be much better treated and valued than your fellow prisoner.