Читать книгу Australian History For Dummies - Alex McDermott - Страница 81

Phillip, who didn’t think much of convicts as settlers, had fairly strictly separated the areas where convicts, ex-convicts and free settlers would be given land to settle, and Grose and Paterson (as heads of the NSW Corps) had largely followed this process. Yet Hunter, through his negligence, shook up the established pattern of giving out land grants. Hunter didn’t follow any fixed rule when distributing grants — he just assigned grants higgledy-piggledy.

This alteration had profound consequences. NSW society became increasingly homogenous (if not harmonious); the free and unfree and ex-unfree-but-now-free all mixed together to a remarkable degree. Completely by laxness and accident, the NSW populace became tightly knit. The colony seethed with the feuds, fights and factions common to all small outposts, but avoided any type of segregation or caste alignment, which turned out to be a very good thing indeed and became a defining feature of Australian society.