Hey, I’m Jarrod, a descendant of 17 convicts, a Royal Marine, and a mixed bag of free settlers who either got shipped off or jumped ship straight into Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania).
Yeah, my family tree isn’t your standard “came over on a sailing yacht with champagne” story. And honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Back in 2017, my wife and I kicked off a tour company. I was the guide, walking people through Tasmania’s landscapes, talking trees and waterfalls. But here’s the thing: the stories, the wild, gritty, personal history of this place, that’s what really lit me up. And that’s what had people leaning in, hanging on every word.
So, I ditched the polite “here’s a scenic lookout” script and leaned hard into history tours. Because Tasmania? It’s overflowing with stories that punch you in the gut. Convicts, bushrangers, Indigenous resistance, soldiers, settlers, all tangled up in this brutal colonial experiment.
But the stories that hit hardest?
The ones tied to my own bloodline.
Let me show you what I mean.
This story starts with Mary Butler, my 5x great-grandmother. And Mary didn’t come quietly.
At just 14 years old, she found herself crammed aboard the Lady Juliana, a ship so notorious they called it “The Floating Brothel.” It carried 226 female convicts, most of them “prostitutes”, except here’s the twist: prostitution wasn’t even illegal. What was illegal was lifting a customer’s handkerchief or slipping a few banknotes into your pocket.
And Mary? She had a rap sheet.
At 14, she and four mates were charged with robbing a guy blind—a silver watch, silk handkerchief, cash, and two hefty banknotes. Classic setup:
The guy, Joseph Clark, gets lured into a brothel, plied with gin, stripped down and cleaned out.
Three days later, Mary’s caught. And what’s on her? Yep, Joseph’s handkerchief. She even claimed it was “brand new” until Joseph pointed out the distinctive hole in it.
Busted.
The result?
Seven years’ transportation beyond the seas. At fourteen.
Let that sink in.
She got shoved onto a floating brothel and sent halfway around the world. For being smart, scrappy, and doing what it took to survive.
And Mary?
She was just the first of many in my bloodline.
Dirty Records and Hidden Names
Digging into my family’s genealogy was like peeling an onion and crying through every layer.
Convict ancestors? Easy to find. Because they were treated like British government property: meticulously recorded when convicted, boarded, shipped, sentenced, married, or even just sneezed wrong.
Free settlers though? Way harder. They drifted around like ghosts with barely a paper trail.
Oh, and here’s something shady. I found some of my ancestors deliberately changing their ages to cop lighter sentences or fudging the spelling of their surnames to dodge the convict shame later on. Can’t say I blame them, but it makes tracking them down a bit of a headache.
Would You Have Survived?
I keep coming back to this uncomfortable question:
Would I have coped if I were them?
Would you have?
Imagine living in Industrial Britain, where life expectancy sucked, disease was basically winning, and you worked 14-hour days in filth just to barely scrape by. Morals? Survival had a funny way of steamrolling them.
Sometimes I wonder, how quickly would any of us ditch our moral compass if it meant a full belly and a fighting chance at life?
For Mary Butler and many like her, survival wasn’t about being good. It was about being smart, fast, and when needed, ruthless. And somehow, against all odds, her bloodline survived, endured, and ended up here, telling her story.
