Head back to convict times in Tasmania

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Thousands of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish convicts transported to Australia, as well as people resisting colonial invasion and forced into the convict system, will be brought back to life in a digital exhibition revealing a new understanding of the convicts’ contribution to the struggle for Australian democracy.

The Monash University‑led exhibition, titled UNSHACKLED: The True Convict Story, will be officially launched by Federal Assistant Minister, former Tasmanian Labor leader and local MP Rebecca White at the Woolmers Estate, Longford, Tasmania, on January 30.

The UNESCO World Heritage-listed convict site will offer Tasmanians and interstate visitors an immersive encounter with the political prisoners, rebels and unfree workers who helped shape modern democratic rights.

UNSHACKLED reveals how Australia’s convict workforce of 160,000 resisted the exploitation of their labour in their place of exile - forging early forms of solidarity, improving conditions, and ultimately contributing to the end of transportation.

The exhibition also highlights more than 3,600 political prisoners transported for protest, democratic reform, media freedom, unionism and anti‑colonial revolution, many of whom had profound influence on democratic movements in Australia and abroad.

Associate Professor Tony Moore, project lead from Monash University’s School of Media, Film and Journalism, said political prisoners are central to the exhibition’s story.

“Few Australians realise that from the earliest days of the Sydney penal colony their homeland was once the British Empire’s Guantanamo Bay, where about 3600 rebels, radicals and protesters were transported as political prisoners in the late 18th and 19th centuries,” Moore said.

“ ‘Death or Liberty!’ was the rallying cry of a stream of political exiles including liberals, democrats and republicans; English machine breakers, trade unionists and Chartists; radical journalists, preachers and intellectuals; and of course Irish, Canadian and even American revolutionaries opposed to imperial rule.”

Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart added: “Over 20% of Australians have convict ancestry, and the figure is 70% for Tasmanians,”

Woolmers will serve as the exhibition’s Australian base, with a mobile pop up version of the exhibition travelling around Australian capital cities and regions, the UK and Ireland throughout 2026.