australian colonial history
meg dillon
© Meg Dillon 2008
First Class Barracks Maria Island
Australian History
Dr Margaret (Meg) Dillon
Dr Meg Dillon graduated in 2008 and
is a social historian who lives in
Benalla (Victoria, Australia) and has a
strong interest in convict and
regional studies, especially the
exploration of convicts as the first
colonial working class in the Australian colonies. Her original research
focused on Tasmania and the groups of convict workers employed in
the Midlands of Tasmania, a rich farming district populated by middle
class settlers with the capital to establish farms of several thousand
acres. Her thesis is available on this website as well as on the Library
of the University of Tasmania website: Convict Labour and Colonial
Society in the Campbell Town Police District: 1820 to 1839.
Transported Women
Meg has edited The Report Enquiring
into the Present State of Female Convict
Discipline in this Colony (Van Diemen's
Land}: December 1842 which is only
available in manuscript form from the
Archives of Tasmania. This report was
never printed and made available to the public, but now it provides
detailed information for historians about women's behaviour during
periods of incarceration as well as the anxieties prison authorities
experienced about their inability to reform the general female
prison population and break the will of the persistent resisters. You
can soon access her edited version of the manuscript and
associated papers on this web site
Australian Print Makers
Meg has recently developed interests in early twentieth century
Australian artists.
Convict Data
Meg’s thesis collected data from the Charges Books of the Campbell
Town Police District and other sources and aggregated into a
database. We are now experimenting with giving access to some of
this data via AirTable, a cloud-based database. Check out Lists in the
menu bar.
History of Western Civilisation
History helps us understand some complex issues, even though it
can’t and doesn’t predict future outcomes. Today our Western
Civilization is strongly attacked as corrupt, militaristic and nihilistic.
But is it? How did it evolve and what aspects of should we embrace
and be proud of?These history sessions will look at the current
situation, then briefly explore those past cultures that have created
our complex Western world.
Female Factory in Ross
Commisariat on Maria Island