What did Ann do all day?
Student activities
Task no. 1
What did Ann do all day?
As most of the people in the colony did not have a clock or a watch, drums were beat by soldiers to let people know what time it was and to call them together. A bit like a school bell!
Read Judge David Collins’ record in 1789:
The drum for labour was to beat as usual in the afternoons at one o’clock.
Read what he writes in January 1793 about the start of church service every day:
Divine service was now performed at six o’clock in the morning... The lieutenant-governor… directed the church call to be beat at a quarter before six in the morning.
Life in the colony was quite regimented by the drums beating. When convicts were not working or attending church, what were they doing?
Discover some of the happenings of a convict’s daily life.
Look at this image of the landing place for boats in early Parramatta.
We know Ann travelled along the Parramatta River between Sydney and Parramatta as she is recorded as being “in the Parramatta Passage Boat” in February 1804. Passage boats were privately owned boats that operated like ferries. The Rose Hill Packet (also known as ‘The Lump’) was a boat that took paying passengers up the Parramatta River from Warrane/Sydney Cove to Parramatta from October 1789. It often took up to 12 hours to sail between the two settlements. Rose Hill was the original European name for the area of Parramatta and is still the name of a suburb of Sydney today. If you took a ferry from Circular Quay in Sydney to Parramatta today it would take you 1 ½ hours with 12 stops along the way.
Look at the image, below. The boat called the Rose Hill Packet, or The Lump, would have looked similar to this boat.
Image 1: A detail from Britain's glory, or, Ship-building unvail'd : being a general director for building and compleating the said machines / by William Sutherland.
Some people may have been bathing in the water of the harbour. In 1788 women would walk over the hill from The Rocks to bathe or wash in the harbour after finishing their work. Most European people could not swim, even sailors! So, they would not have gone in very deep.
Some people were tending their own gardens in order to grow food to eat. Gardening was an important activity for the colony. Food supply was an ongoing problem for the colony and convicts were encouraged to grow their own food to relieve the stress on the government’s food stores. Convicts could tend their own gardens in their own time after they had completed their work.
Read Judge David Collin’s report in 1788 about Governor Phillip’s order for convicts to have Saturdays off:
for the purpose of collecting vegetables and attending to their huts and gardens.
In 1790 he added that convicts now had:
the afternoon of Wednesday and the whole of Saturday in each week… given to them.
Answer these questions:
- What do you think the convicts were growing?
- Do you think the convicts had much experience with growing plants?
Other than gardening and bathing in the harbour, convicts were also gathering together and enjoying themselves!
David Collins described the convicts:
carousing and revelling
Define the words carousing and revelling.
Ann was punished for doing exactly that. Most people in the colony drank rum and beer (which was often safer to drink than water) and inns and pubs were established quite soon after the First Fleet arrived. When groups of people meet socially, then music, singing and dancing is always a possibility. Dancing was very popular in Britain with the lower and upper classes, and convicts didn’t leave their culture or interests behind when they were transported.
Research types of dances that were was popular in Britain in the late 18th century that may have been performed in the colony. Then try them out - dance!
At least one of the convicts on the First Fleet, James Strong, was a fiddler by trade and although he had no fiddle to play, he may have found innovative ways to express his love of music. Other common instruments included flutes or pipes and recorders.
Get creative with a box of recycled materials and basic stationary items in your classroom and make some musical instruments.
[For more information on what else convicts were doing in their day see the Idle Hours Learning Activity and for more information on food see the Food of the Colony Learning Activity.]
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