I'm Mikey Robins, I'm here at the National Museum Of Australia to check out
their project, Defining Moments in Australian history. But what we gonna do
something behind the scenes we gonna check out some objects that tell the
stories about these moments, about who we are.
Stick around, it's going to be fun.
This Defining Moment sees us back inside the Museum, it's a beautiful day outside.
There are kids everywhere, so if you hear some noise its just the sound of joyful children learning.
I'm with Sophie Jensen from the Musuem, hi Sophie.
Hi Mikey
Now this object we're about to talk about, or these objects
are very unusual, I'd not heard of them up until recently. What are they?
These objects are called convict love tokens
but they also have been called leaden hearts and in a way that kind of sums up what they are.
These leaden hearts were tokens that were made by convicts before
their transportation to Australia. So after they were sentenced before they were
transported, they would make these tokens to give and leave with the people
that they loved left behind in England
they're very moving objects they're personal objects
what they're actually made from quite often is a coin
I've got one here, this is the most common kind of a coin that the tokens were made of
and it's a 1797 cartwheel penny.
It's surprisingly heavy
It's heavy , but it was cheap
and the other thing about it is, it's a very easy coin to smooth down and then to put in your own
message. So let's imagine I'm about to be transport you're my beloved sister Sophie
How do I get this to you?
There are a lot of different ways
that convict would have been able to kind of get things to their friends and
loved ones and of course they're often confined for long periods after
sentencing but before transportation and then put to work during that time.
They're often on the hulks, they're confined, so these tokens sometimes actually even reflect
mistakes in sentences for some people were sentenced to death and they've written
on the tokens cast for death actually end up in being transported. There are stories
within each token and I think that's when the real power of these tokens is
is that their individual they're unique and they're very very emotional objects
This is the largest collection of these tokes in the world
That's right. I'm assuming we got these from England?
We did
The National Museum actually has 314 of these in our collection
Some of them actually date from pre-transportation to Australian some of
these people would have been transported to the American colonies but we have them
right through the period of Australian transportation.
People haven't heard of them perhaps partly because they weren't so many in
Australia we bought them from a collector in Britain, one collection of
307, he had quite a thing for them and we were very lucky in that we
were able to purchase them to bring them in.
Transportation was the start of modern Australia history
I think it's one of those things, we can hear all the kids here today
convict history it's one of those things that everyone thinks of immediately when
they think of Australian history, and it is one of those things that does help to define the
start of European kind of colonisation of this kind of content but I think um
what these two particular thing about these technologies we all know our
date and figures about convict history we know of know 1788 it ended remarkable
late of course 1868 the last convict ship comes into Western Australia it had
ended earlier in other states in the 50s
As the gold rush developed, the need for convicts diminished
That's right
You talk about what we learned at school we had these images in our head of convicts being whipped
We know life was harsh and cruel but is that a stereotype? There is some stereotypes
about convicts that are certainly true
and there are others that we are interested in looking at more closely
obviously one of the big stereotypes about women convicts and prostitution
prostitution wasn't even actually a transportable offence. These objects
actually allow us to do if debunk a lot of those kind of things and actually
talk about personal stories. Convicts lives are incredibly well documented but what
we've don't have, what we kind of miss is the fact that every one of those records
related to an individual to a person that came to this country at a
particular point and actually then went through a life as a convict but these
particular tokens speak to their life before that, and they speak to the people
that lives were shattered through this experience they weren't emailing home
they weren't able to kind of catch up on Facebook there was no connection these
people were being lost
sent to the other side of the world and lives, families everything shattered ruined,
gone and these tokens capture that moment in these people's lives. There's just so much
history one small object. That's right, they're very powerful.
Thanks for watching
but it doesn't end here we want you to join the conversation, go to the
National Museum of Australia's web site that's NMA.gov.au and let us
know what you think of the defining moment in Australian history we'd love
to hear your opinion once again thanks for watching see you soon.