EARLY AUSTRALIA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 70, 23 March 1935, Page 2 (Supplement)

EARLY AUSTRALIA.

Expeditionary Films, Limited, have prepared a film illustrating the old convict days ill Australia, selecting the period between the retirement of Governor Philip and the arrival of Governor Bourke. This grim story (admirably portrayed in Marcus Clarke's "For the 'Term of His Natural Life") many Australians would like to forget. Mr, C. Chauvel'(author of "In the Wake of tho Bounty") lias written the novel of the film "Heritage," and Angus and Robertson publish it. The romances and hardships .of those early days are described, and the chief centres are Sydney and Bathurst. Bathurst lias forgotten the early days, and has succeeded in becoming almost quakerlike in general deportment; whilst Sydney is now "Paris of the South," and almost .regardless of appearances. In Mr. Cham-el's period "expire;! men" (ex-convicts), bushrangers and murderous aboriginals were in contact with new, free settlers, and convict slavery was accepted as a normal means of making roads and extending settlement. Labour was cheap, and a wild freedom went side, by side with revengeful law. Drink was, as to-day, the cause of wickedness and unrest. Land was seized as often ae legally acquired, and fortunes were founded on cattle, slief'p and free land. The marriage of emigrant women imported only for this purpose, provided a fertile field of tragedy, for male slaves were apportioned female slaves of their own, and only tlie hardiest women could find bearable domestic conditions. New Zealand, with no such history, lias no

''convict taint," but even liore no net has been invented which will keep out criminality.