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Australia, from the perspective of 18th-century Great Britain, was “Down Under”. Located on the other side of the world, it took anything from three to six weeks of sailing to reach Sydney, and the island continent was about as far away from the home country as any place on earth.
So it made perfect sense for England to transport its penal convicts to this land. Between 1788 and 1868, some 162,000 convicts were transported there, and Wikipedia tells us that some 20 per cent of modern-day Australians are descendants of those who survived or remained.
Coincidentally, the first grape vine cuttings were
