On Friday the 22nd of March year 4 traveled by bus, to the Rocks for an excursion.

When we got there our guide ‘Julie’ took us to an old sandstone wall to discover what we already knew.

She said “ Captain Cook was a very famous English explorer who was sent all over the world to trade goods. In 1770 Captain Cook traveled along the east coast of Australia, but he couldn't find anyone to trade with. He called Australia Terra Nullius (land of nothing). He then sailed to a place called Botany Bay, named after his botanist ‘Joseph Banks’.

Botany Bay on that day was lush and green, He thought it was a great place to start a new colony. Joseph found lots of amazing flowers and wildlife such as the banksia flower also named after him.

English authorities found his diaries and then read how awesome Botany Bay was. England had lots of convicts ( prisoners) who had done very small crimes such as stealing a loaf of bread, but England had way too many people so they wanted to send them away.

So King George sent all the convicts to Australia to start a new colony. There was 11 ships called the First Fleet , 6 of them were used to hold the convicts, 2 for supplies and 3 for the soldiers and captains. They realised when they landed that Botany Bay was not a good place at all to start a new colony so they came to a place called Sydney cove.

After all that we got dressed up as convicts and free settlers some people were even captains. We also got name tags that had information about our character and the role they had. My character was Mary Reibey she was 17 yrs old and her crime was stealing horses while disguised as a boy, I got married to a free settler and then I became a free settler however my husband ( Thomas Reibey) died from sun stroke. I the took over his well running company and became very wealthy. I, Mary is the one on the $20 note.

Julie then took us down to Tench arcade named after Watkin Tench who wrote journals in the time of the First Fleet. She also introduced some other important roles like the surgeon, Author Philip and Francis Greenway.

We then walked down to Cadman Cottage which was one of the oldest buildings, it was built at the time of the First Fleet. Then we strolled up to some old buildings that had some platforms and a rope to pull up supply in the olden days.

A few minutes later we went to a wall with shells in the mortar the women made but this made them sick so they stopped using it. For our last activity we went to a statue with 3 sides 1 representing convicts, 1 representing free settlers and the other representing the soldiers.

I learnt so much on this excursion I also had lots of fun, I would like to learn more about life on the First Fleet ships.

By Poppie O'Brien