Jon asks "Did convicts transported to Australia from the UK 'in
the beginning of transportation' take part in mining".
As far as metal mining goes, I guess the answer is no....
On one of my trips to Oz I bought a book "Australia's Earliest
Mining Era", by Ian Auhl and Denis Marfleet (Rigby Ltd, 1975)
ISBN 0 85179 886 1, which reproduces contemporary paintings
(some underground) by S.T. Gill.
The first copper lodes were discovered in South Australia in
1841, and the colony, as it then was, became known by 1845
in New South Wales and overseas as "The Copper Kingdom".
The industry thrived in South Australia until 1851, when local
miners left in droves for the goldfields just discovered in the
eastern colonies.
So the earliest convicts did not go to metal mines, because
there were no metal mines for them to go to.
Tony Brewis
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