The convict settlement at Hunter's River

John Thomas Bigge visited Hunter's River (Newcastle) in 1819-20 as part of his investigations for the British government into the cost and effectiveness of the convict transportation system.

The convict settlement at Newcastle provided coal and timber for Port Jackson. After the closure of Norfolk Island in 1813 it was also the place where convicts who had re-offended in the colony were sent as a secondary punishment.

Major Morriset, the commandant, lived on a hill overlooking a town of 890 inhabitants, of whom 700 were convicts. The town's seven streets contained thirteen houses owned by the government and 71 by convicts. Convicts who could not find their own lodgings or who "were not to be trusted in the houses of others" were housed in a newly-built wooden barracks of four rooms and two sheds. Here men slept three to a "crib" - a space 4 feet 3 inches wide and 6 feet long. The barracks accommodated 246 men. Bigge reported that the construction of the barracks had reduced the number of instances of men bartering their rations for tobacco and other "illegal articles" and prevented "nocturnal escapes". Escapes from houses were reduced by making householders responsible if their lodgers "[quit] the settlement without leave".

By 1818, Newcastle had a the commandant's house, a church, hospital and gaol. The following year a surgeon's quarter, officer's quarter, workhouse, blacksmiths and forge had been completed and the breakwater was under construction. By 1820 a parsonage and windmill had been built.

Bigge reported that convicts worked from 5 am to sunset in summer, with six hours off on Saturdays. They were mustered four times each day. Constables and overseers, convicts themselves, received increased rations, but the superintendent reported he "had no confidence in the constables, and they connived at the escapes of the prisoners".

Convicts worked as timber-cutters, miners, builders and lime-burners. Some were sent 70 miles inland for a month at a time to cut timber and float it downriver. Others worked at a coal mine close to the barracks or were set to work building a breakwater. Those who had re-offended or who had "bad characters" were sent across the river where they collected oyster shells and burned them into lime which they carried in baskets on their shoulders to boats moored in the shallows. Bigge reported that the convicts' shoulders, being unprotected, were sometimes "slightly burnt" when sea spray mixed with the lime. Lime-burners also suffered eye damage from smoke, sometimes deliberately "exposing themselves...that the state of their eye might afford a pretext for their removal from the settlement".

"The punishment for offences at Newcastle", Bigge wrote, "consists of work in the chain gang, and flogging inflicted with more severity than at other settlements."

Bigge goes on to describe the inadequacy of rations (convicts often ate their day's ration at one meal), the frequency of escape attempts, the role of local Aborigines in recapturing escapees, the establishment of a settlement at Wallis Plains (Maitland), the measures taken to restrict alcohol, the requirement for convicts to attend church services, the opening of a school for children of soldiers and convicts, and the completion dates of Newcastle's public buildings, houses and boats.

Bigge's Report of the Commissioner of Inquiry into the state of the Colony of New South Wales [London] 1822

The section of Bigge's report dealing with The Convict Settlement at Hunter's River is published online by Hunter River Genealogy.