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What if communication between the new British colony in Australia and the rest of the world was cut off for several years after the third fleet arrived.

Cause of the lack of new ships coming in? Please don't focus on it. Maybe something to do with Britain being more preoccupied with the Napoleonic Wars. Maybe the infant US and Britain get into a war. Whatever.

In any case, no more ships reach Australia for the maximum non-ASB time period--maybe 5 years. Much less likely ten years.

My back-of-envelope calcs say there were probably around 3000 men and 650 women in the British colony by that time, most of them convicts. Both those totals could be off by several hundred. The colony had the beginnings of agriculture, but was not self-sufficient. They had a few cattle, most of whom had temporarily gone feral, and a few horses.

A military unit, nicknamed the Rum Corp, was at least partly in place. Historically, the military became a power onto itself in the Australian semi-isolation and rebelled against one governor. So, the military could become a factor.

Local aborigines had been devastated by a smallpox epidemic already (possibly spread deliberately) and would take decades to recover, even without further disease spread.

So, what happens? Does the colony survive the five year (or ten year) isolation? What kind of structure emerges in the isolation, among a colony mostly of convicts, with nearly five times as many men as women, with a military made up of the guys all the other units wanted to get rid of, now with no effective home-government supervision?
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