One piece of history that always fascinated me was the policy of the British to ship off any troublesome criminal, even those with relatively minor offenses, to Australia. A fine example is the man painted below, his name was James Davis and he was from Scotland.

Aged only fifteen, Davis stole a sum of 2 shillings, 6 pence, from a church donation box. He was then taken into custody and placed on a ship headed to Australia. Once in Australia his sentence soon ended but in prison, Davis had become a hardened criminal… he walked free, only to find himself unable to get hired due to his past conviction. He committed a robbery and immediately got sent back to jail… then, in the year 1829, he escaped together with a fellow convict…

Davis ran straight into the deep wilderness, where he hid out amongst the natives. A strong lad, he mystified them with his tall stature and straw blonde hair… he decided to learn their language and ways, and was given a native name — Duramboi — a name first held by the dead son of a local chief. The chief felt the Scottish convict had some facial features in common with his son, and decided he must be his reincarnation. He was then presented with a native wife… he lived with the Aboriginals for 13 years and eventually learned to hunt, climb and walk barefoot and naked across long distance as well as any local.

In 1842, James Davis rejoined “regular society”. He married twice more, having had a daughter by his aboriginal wife. And then, in 1889, he was beaten to death, aged 82, by his third wife. By then he was a tradesman with a relatively prosperous business. To go from “stealing money from a church donation box and being sent to another continent for it” to “being adopted into an Aboriginal tribe” all over the course of one lifetime is wild. The 19th century was not for the faint of heart…