Convict History Matters in Australia. But What Else?

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One of the first things you learn as a foreign correspondent is that history matters. Everywhere. So as I toured Port Arthur this week on a brisk Tasmanian morning, I wondered what the restored convict camp might have to teach.

Our guides gave us clues more than conclusions. They pointed to the garden for guards’ families, set up to resemble an English country estate. They told us about punishment. They shared tales of individual prisoners and the British commandants who ran the place.

But it was the cemetery just off the coast that lingered in my mind.

Port Arthur’s upper-class overseers called it Isle of the Dead or Isle de Mort, and they were buried with headstones on the island’s highest point.

The convicts just called it Dead Island. Their remains landed in unmarked graves near the water so their watchmen, our guide told us, “could look down on them in death as in life.”

Some of the convicts probably deserved it. But walking among Port Arthur’s dead, it was hard to escape the sanctimonious rigidity of the English class system, made even more extreme by the culture of 19th-century incarceration.

I found myself imagining a prisoner who had arrived young, grinding out a 10-year sentence under the harsh condescension of British soldiers. He’d depart with a skill — Port Arthur was basically an industrial labor camp — but how could he not also leave with a deep disgust for class distinctions and authority?

Here, I thought, lie the roots of Australia’s egalitarian ethos, traced back to a visceral rejection of the hierarchy that defined prison settlements like Port Arthur.

This, after all, was the place for castoffs. Delinquent boys as young as 9 and troubled men with wives and children (not to mention a few meddlesome Irish and American activists) were all shipped off in former slave ships and put to work here in a country that was not easy to tame.

The challenges of the land required camaraderie. The British system enforced divisions, putting a small elite above a mass of rebels and rogues. No wonder that those who stayed in Australia preferred to see themselves as “mates” more than gentlemen.

Nick Dyrenfurth, a historian who wrote “Mateship: A Very Australian History,” has argued that convicts were the first to embrace the concept.

“The convicts brought with them from Britain the term ‘mate,’ and they used it amongst themselves,” Mr. Dyrenfurth said when his book was published. “They even rather provocatively termed their jailers ‘mate’ and the basic message was, ‘You’re no better than us.’”

American culture bears a similar imprint. We like to see ourselves as revolutionaries who defeated British pomp and monarchy with guerrilla war tactics and demands for equality.

But, of course, history is a forever struggle. What we choose to promote and overlook often changes, and reveals more than we may intend.

The United States continues to grapple with the legacy of slavery; It took until 2016 for the country to create and open The National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.

Tasmania’s convict past was also sidestepped for decades, with Port Arthur left in ruins before becoming what it is today: an impressive apparatus for remembering, complete with a ferry, interactive exhibit for children and well-trained guides.

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But seeing Port Arthur transformed raises additional questions. (The mass shooting that happened here in 1996 is a subject for another day.)

Richard Flanagan, the Tasmanian novelist, laid out the challenge better than I could in a recent speech to the National Press Club, in which he asked why the “state-funded cult of Anzac will see $1.1 billion spent by the Australian government on war memorials between 2014 and 2028.”

His critique was not with remembering the Great War’s heroes, but rather with the lack of investment in other elements of the country’s past — one glaring blind spot in particular.

“We could ask why — if we were actually genuine about remembering patriots who have died for this country — why would we not first spend $100 million on a museum honoring the at least 65,000 estimated Indigenous dead who so tragically lost their lives defending their country here in Australia in the frontier wars of the 1800s?” he said. “Why is there nowhere in Australia telling the stories of the massacres, the dispossession and the courageous resistance of these patriots?”

His full argument goes beyond questions and critique (though there are plenty of both). He also offers a path forward and a measure of hope even for those who disagree with him.

And it’s rooted in what I observed on Dead Island, in the way that the rigidity of one era had given birth to something more fluid, more equal and new.

“We pretend that our national identity is a fixed, frozen thing,” Richard said. “But Australia is a molten idea.”

In other words, history matters not just because it never disappears, but also because it does not dictate. It can prompt change.

The question is: How?

I’d love to hear about your views on that — and about your experiences with Australian history.

When did you connect with the past in a way that felt real and revealing? Or when have you thought the process of remembering needed to evolve?

You know how to find me: Email nytaustralia@nytimes.com. Join our Facebook group while you’re at it.

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Now for some of my favorite stories this week, and a recommendation we know you’ll love.

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Brexit and Nostalgia

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Speaking of England and rebellion, check out this feature on Grimsby, the English town that voted heavily in favor of Brexit in part to protect a dying industry (fishing) at the expense of one that’s growing (fish processors).

Does the past hold too much sway for all of us, or just those who romanticize a rugged cruel occupation?

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The Women Easing Coders’ Stress

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Now here’s an interesting opener for a story about the new global economy: “China’s vibrant technology scene is searching for people like Shen Yue. Qualifications: Must be attractive, know how to charm socially awkward programmers and give relaxing massages.”

Hats off to the writer, Sui-Lee Wee, who pitched this story at our correspondents meeting in Hong Kong a few months ago.

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Australia This Week

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• Damage to Great Barrier Reef From Global Warming Is Irreversible: A huge heat wave killed 30 percent of the reef’s coral in 2016, and continuously high temperatures are preventing its recovery.

• Trump Decides American Envoy Headed to Australia Will Go to Seoul Instead: The decision to nominate Adm. Harry Harris as the ambassador to South Korea is seen as a diplomatic blow to Australia, a close American ally.

• Diary of a Song: Watch how Australian songwriter Sarah Aarons and her producing team made “The Middle,” which started as a voice memo and ended up being an international hit.

• This Man Doesn’t Star in Every Australian TV Show. It Just Seems That Way. Patrick Brammall, an award-winning actor who appears in some of Australia’s most prominent recent series, is all over Netflix, Hulu and Amazon.

• For These Characters, Foreign Cultures Are Just Another Consumer Good: The globe-trotting cosmopolitans in Michelle de Kretser’s satirical new novel, “The Life to Come,” make a fetish of travel and prepare exotic meals with an eye to Instagram.

• Road Trip to Nowhere: The search for a new botanical garden that might as well have been a mirage.

• Kangaroo Pelted With Rocks Dies in Chinese Zoo, and Fury Flies: Attacks on the animals in southeastern China have unleashed anger and bafflement about the behavior of visitors.

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Around the Web

Time to mix it up: Here are a few things I’ve been reading beyond The New York Times …

Richard McGregor offers a level-headed response to questions about whether China will punish Australia for its focus on Communist Party interference in Australian politics, arguing that China has neither the time nor inclination. [The Interpreter]

Emily Nussbaum manages to cut the “Roseanne” boosters off at the knees with her deconstruction of The Joke, you know, the one Roseanne made about “all the shows about black and Asian families.” [The New Yorker]

James Bennet, our Opinion editor, opens up in a lengthy Q. and A. with his friend John F. Harris, explaining his attempt to create a space for civil discourse, and the difference between reporting for Opinion and reporting for the newsroom. [Politico]

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... And We Recommend

We noticed that you like our monthly guides to Netflix Australia (here’s April’s) so we’ve decided to experiment with some additional movie assistance.

Here’s our list of what movies to see (or skip) in Australian cinemas this month, with summaries, release dates and links to reviews from our New York Times critics.

“A Quiet Place” seems to be a local and international favorite.