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First thread, folks. Be gentle!

Instead of actually starting with an ill-fated TL I thought it might be stimulating to begin my forum career with a discussion based on an idea I had that absolutely fascinated me: An Australia in the American West.

With a possible POD of BNA joining the American Revolution, Britain feels it needs to strengthen its quickly diminishing hold in North America elsewhere as well as the Pacific and buys (possibly both halves of) California from Spain. In its reluctance to sell, the Spanish government retains some of its Viceroyality over the region by demanding that Spanish and Mexican settlers and subjects still be allowed loyalty to her Crown and the Spanish will continue to be allowed to establish missions.

Australia remains mostly Dutch (and French) and colonization there is slow. Therefore England establishes it's penal colonies in a seemingly useless California Purchase. Surrounded by lengths of unexplored desert, the presumably unescapable Prison Colonies of California also provide a buffer to American expansion and a staging ground for defense or attack in further American wars.

Thousands of English, Irish, and Scottish convicts were transported to California before its admission as a state in the First Mexican Empire in 1821. While much loyalty to the British Crown persists in the penal colonies, many English settlers and prisoners as well as American filibusters and settlers accept and in some cases support the Californian Mexican's admission into the Mexican Empire.

However, with England's failed attempts at recapturing its former colony and the intervention of America and to a lesser degree, Mexico and Spain, much of the Crown loyalty is beginning to dissolve... as is loyalty to Mexico who did too little to support and defend its state. At the end of the brief conflict, California accepted re-entry into the British Empire as a responsible self-governing dominion.

California continues to operate as a British prison while also continuing to open its borders to Spanish, American, and Mexican immigrants. With expansion inevitable and indecisive opinions on which government to remain loyal to, John C. Fremont arrives in California in 1846 to stir up trouble for Mexico and the Bear Flag Revolt establishes the short lived Republic of California. The convicts are freed and England rather atypically does not attack California too devoutly.

California is accepted into the United States of America and within two years thereafter, (much to England's chagrin) gold is discovered there...

...but I'm going on aren't I?

Long story short, let's discuss a world where the west is also populated by what would have been Australians OTL, a world in which the Golden Gate Bridge casts a shadow on the Sydney Opera House every day and the Old West was crawling with Bushrangers.

Political changes? Different wars? Sports? Art? Film? Anything goes...

Also plausibility arguments, comments, compliments, questions, and criticism would be nice and perhaps lead to a legitimate TL (in which everyone is invited to participate.)

Thanks!
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