Tracing relatives back to the old country isn't exactly something that'd be encouraged among my people. The majority who went to the US did so because they had to, several escaping jail sentences or executions, and name changes were frequent. So whenever some tells some story about their great-grandfather being murdered in Ireland, I have to wonder if it was my great-grandfather who did it. And it odds a macabre sense to the phrase "Luck of the Irish."

The story I love - this may surprise some of you, but many of Australia's colonists from the old country weren't entirely voluntary travellers. For much of our history, this convict origin deal was regarded a bit shamefully. But then we got over it about the time we decided it was all the fault of the bloody Poms anyway, and seriously, who sends someone halfway around the world over a loaf of bread? Many of them were political prisoners too, sent from Ireland for various seditious activities, freedom fighters really. (In many ways, Australia's Irish heritage looms larger in the popular psyche than the English.) And whose insane idea of punishment is to send them from England to Australia? So, too bloody right and all that. It became a badge of honour to have a convict for an ancestor, especially around the Bicentennial of the arrival of the First Fleet, in 1988. So there was this one woman I heard about, who after coming to terms with this whole reclaiming the nation's past, did some delving and discovered - joy! - that she was indeed descended from a convict, who (IIRC) had arrived on the First Fleet no less! Virtual Australian aristocracy. Being excited about this, she would tell anyone who listened about her illustrious predecessor.

Until one day, when she suddenly went mysteriously silent about it. Subsequent questioning finally revealed the reason: she'd dug just that little bit further, and discovered just why her great-great-great-whatever had been forced from Merrye England's hallowed shores.

He'd been convicted of molesting a sheep.

I know what you're thinking: well then, why didn't they send him to New Zealand? Alas, the ways of British justice are at times unfathomable. And anyway, NZ wasn't taking convicts yet, as the Maoris still imagined they had some say in the whole matter. So for this historical accident, an Australian he became.

It's odd when stories about ancestors being multiple murderers is told the same way most families talk about how their ancestors were the first to move to Peshtigo after the fire. I went to school with the great-nephew of Bugsy Siegel (his part of the family made their money from white collar crime) and he'd talk about his Uncle Ben as if protection rackets and bootlegging were just some wacky old-fashioned hobbies like flagpole sitting.

So in Australia, having proof that a relative was a convict is the equivalent of those people who trace back to the Mayflower - I'm just having all these great images of DAR matrons proudly describing the exploits of their ancestors who were transported for prostitution and theft.

So in Australia, having proof that a relative was a convict is the equivalent of those people who trace back to the Mayflower - I'm just having all these great images of DAR matrons proudly describing the exploits of their ancestors who were transported for prostitution and theft.

Yep. It does help that most of them were transported for relatively minor offences (or, as noted, for fighting against English rule in Ireland). But you do occasionally find a doozy.

Well, due to the American method of teaching history, much of what I learned about transportation of criminals began with "Moll Flanders", so it leads to picturing ships full of Diana Riggs and Alex Kingstons being sent off with David Attenborough narrating.

Devil Hunter Yoko is pretty similar to BtVS in basic set up. But, as noted, there's a whole genre of supernatural high school stories.

Billytea - as Robert Hughes pointed out, more people were transported for sheep-buggery than for nationalism and trade unionism combined.

Brings a whole new meaning to a nation built on the sheep's back.

Can I get an ewww?

pardon

I don't wish to clog up my RAM with that kind of talk.

t looks sheepish Sorry.

t tries to resist 'oh dog, I can't stop'

Stop trying to lambpoon us.

It's that kinda woolly headed thinking that leads to being eaten.