Was Australian colonisation started as a penal colony? It seems to be a very wide spread claim that Australia was started as a British penal colony. When I first heard of it as a young kid, I envisioned some crime infested dystopia like in the movie Escape from L.A. From those claim it seems that the **main** reason for the initial British colonization of Australia was not territorial gain, mercantile (creating new markets for British goods), resource excavation or military, like in the colonization of Africa, America and the conquest of east Asia, but the creation of a Penal colony. Was the main reason for the colonization of Australia the creation of penal colonies, or was it only a side affect of the vast unexploited areas that the already established Australian colonies had? Examples of the claim online: here, here and here

Yes, a vast majority of the people aboard first European ships to settle Australia were convicts.

The first European settlers arrived in Australia in the First Fleet.

Wikipedia:

> The total number of free people was 348 and the total number of prisoners was 696, coming to a total of 1044 persons.

This is supported by a quote from the Empire Newspaper of 1850:

> The founders of the colony therefore consisted of one free person to every two prisoners.

(Your childhood vision was inaccurate though. The same sources indicate over 200 marines were also sent. The convicts were still under the control of the British military.)

The Second Fleet was predominantly convicts. Over 1000 convicts left England, but there were many hundreds of deaths on the voyage or shortly afterwards. Ref, Ref

It should be noted that not all British Settlements were penal settlements. Example