The look of the Irish: The landscape of a small rural Irish community in colonial South Australia

The colony of South Australia was an experiment. Unlike the other Australian colonies, which began as penal settlements for the unwanted of the British Empire, South Australia, established in 1836, was a colony of free settlers-free from convicts, free from unnecessary tithes and poor rates, and ideally free from the Irish. It was to be populated instead with hardworking, sober, respectable, law-abiding English migrants, forming a 'thoroughly British colony' (Dutton 1846, 6).