I'm Liking and endorsing the posts that mention the USA proximity factor.
The last thing one needs in establishing a prison colony is a revolutionary republic with a tradition of waving the bloody shirt about the powers that be running the prisons, and one hungry for settlers no questions asked and devoted to ruthless entrepreneurship, outpopulating the proposed prison colony ten to one, right there on the border with the better land and lots more strategic depth. The greater the proportion of total population of the BNA colonies is current and sentence-served convicts the greater the likelihood that some really large portion of the colonial population views incorporation into the USA as a positive good. The more prisoners Britain sends to the northern colonies, the more escapees and/or post-sentence emigrants the USA gets who are deeply soured on the British system and add to the US factions favoring conquest of Canada.
Now there were good reasons for the USA not to be gung ho about invading British protectorates of course; it isn't a slam dunk that say 10-20 percent of Canada's OTL immigration is augmented by forced transportees automatically leads to US conquest, or that the USA is certain to win such a war.
We did pretty abysmally in 1812 after all--but this I think related to the fact that the people inhabiting BNA that remained were hostile to the idea of being part of the USA. Create a huge fifth column, with some of that population moving to the USA and inciting deeper hostility to the British system, alienate and insult the OTL loyalist British settler population...no. I think British officials were bright enough to foresee these difficulties. If Australia did not exist as an alternative, perhaps they might have settled on South Africa instead; I think Canada would have been a pretty desperate choice and they might sooner have thought twice about "transportation" as a solution at all.
And what is to be done with convicts who have served out their sentences? I believe transportation sentences often stipulated in addition to a fixed and generally limited term of years of forced convict labor, that the convict is barred from ever returning to Britain itself for life or some longer term; besides it would be expensive for these ex-cons turned out of the prison yard onto the streets to be able to afford to pay passage back home anyway--clearly that was more true of Australia than Canada though! The former prisoners and on paper lifelong exiles will be accumulating in the prison colony, not under the control of the authorities (until caught committing some new crime of course--and I don't doubt the non-convict colonists would be very very suspicious of transportees and liable to convict them on the drop of a hat).
I don't know enough Australian history to know exactly how these considerations worked out there, but I do recall reading about a few insurrections.
I emphasize the USA factor because I think it makes a crucial difference. Right over the border is a bigger nation than the colony, even if we lump all the British North American colonies together into one big one (not done until 1867 OTL, and even then Newfoundland stayed out until the 1930s) which will honor British law if and only if its citizens feel like it, where persons of lower class British background can easily disperse and blend right in under false new identities.
This might work out pretty well as far as getting rid of undesirables from Britain is concerned; transportees who either serve out their sentences and then skulk over the border, or manage to escape before sentence is served and run over it, and either openly settle in the USA under their own names or assume a fake identity there, probably are never coming back to Britain. Some might argue that letting them sink or swim in the USA is no detriment to Britain and possibly of some benefit (British capitalists in fact had large investments in the USA and Britain traded with the USA a great deal). But having an alternative location where there is no place not under British rule for them to just walk away to is clearly better; as long as Australia remained under British control, any post-sentence life ex-convicts still under a Transportation for life sentence could manage for themselves would contribute to the resources of the British empire, not some upstart republican rival. Given the greater distance to Australia, one had to take a long view to argue this is more profitable, enough so to justify the costs, but given the slightest strategic aversion to aiding the Yanks and putting loyal British North American subjects at the slightest risk, Australia wins I think.
The last thing one needs in establishing a prison colony is a revolutionary republic with a tradition of waving the bloody shirt about the powers that be running the prisons, and one hungry for settlers no questions asked and devoted to ruthless entrepreneurship, outpopulating the proposed prison colony ten to one, right there on the border with the better land and lots more strategic depth. The greater the proportion of total population of the BNA colonies is current and sentence-served convicts the greater the likelihood that some really large portion of the colonial population views incorporation into the USA as a positive good. The more prisoners Britain sends to the northern colonies, the more escapees and/or post-sentence emigrants the USA gets who are deeply soured on the British system and add to the US factions favoring conquest of Canada.
Now there were good reasons for the USA not to be gung ho about invading British protectorates of course; it isn't a slam dunk that say 10-20 percent of Canada's OTL immigration is augmented by forced transportees automatically leads to US conquest, or that the USA is certain to win such a war.
We did pretty abysmally in 1812 after all--but this I think related to the fact that the people inhabiting BNA that remained were hostile to the idea of being part of the USA. Create a huge fifth column, with some of that population moving to the USA and inciting deeper hostility to the British system, alienate and insult the OTL loyalist British settler population...no. I think British officials were bright enough to foresee these difficulties. If Australia did not exist as an alternative, perhaps they might have settled on South Africa instead; I think Canada would have been a pretty desperate choice and they might sooner have thought twice about "transportation" as a solution at all.
And what is to be done with convicts who have served out their sentences? I believe transportation sentences often stipulated in addition to a fixed and generally limited term of years of forced convict labor, that the convict is barred from ever returning to Britain itself for life or some longer term; besides it would be expensive for these ex-cons turned out of the prison yard onto the streets to be able to afford to pay passage back home anyway--clearly that was more true of Australia than Canada though! The former prisoners and on paper lifelong exiles will be accumulating in the prison colony, not under the control of the authorities (until caught committing some new crime of course--and I don't doubt the non-convict colonists would be very very suspicious of transportees and liable to convict them on the drop of a hat).
I don't know enough Australian history to know exactly how these considerations worked out there, but I do recall reading about a few insurrections.
I emphasize the USA factor because I think it makes a crucial difference. Right over the border is a bigger nation than the colony, even if we lump all the British North American colonies together into one big one (not done until 1867 OTL, and even then Newfoundland stayed out until the 1930s) which will honor British law if and only if its citizens feel like it, where persons of lower class British background can easily disperse and blend right in under false new identities.
This might work out pretty well as far as getting rid of undesirables from Britain is concerned; transportees who either serve out their sentences and then skulk over the border, or manage to escape before sentence is served and run over it, and either openly settle in the USA under their own names or assume a fake identity there, probably are never coming back to Britain. Some might argue that letting them sink or swim in the USA is no detriment to Britain and possibly of some benefit (British capitalists in fact had large investments in the USA and Britain traded with the USA a great deal). But having an alternative location where there is no place not under British rule for them to just walk away to is clearly better; as long as Australia remained under British control, any post-sentence life ex-convicts still under a Transportation for life sentence could manage for themselves would contribute to the resources of the British empire, not some upstart republican rival. Given the greater distance to Australia, one had to take a long view to argue this is more profitable, enough so to justify the costs, but given the slightest strategic aversion to aiding the Yanks and putting loyal British North American subjects at the slightest risk, Australia wins I think.
. Foulweather Jack Byron (the poet's grandfather) is given command of the Pacific expedition; not being as interested in exploration as Cook, he spends less time in New Zealand and misses the storms that drove Cook to Australia -he also acquiesces more to the Royal Society's theory of the Great Southern Continent- and sails south of Australia, which as a result goes undiscovered by the British. The convicts are shipped to the west coast to be used for logging for forest clearing.