Discover the First Fleet: For Teachers

The Aust. National Maritime Museum’s online educational game, The Voyage, is based on real convict voyages. Players must make decisions, solve problems and deal with conflicts on a perilous journey across the globe.

1. A link to an audio file of the song "We're bound for Botany Bay" is provided on the home page and in the 'Resources' box (here), if you wish to provide an immersive experience.

2. A larger version of some of the First Fleet images are provided below, for teachers to use as stimulus pictures.

3. Allow students time to explore the "Voyages of Discovery" site and tabs 3, 4 & 5, commensurate with their year level/ ability. A longer enquiry could be conducted around this site, if time permitted. 

4. Topics can be hidden from view if not relevant.  Contact a Teacher Librarian  with any requests or comments.

5. Student Activity: All the answers to the worksheet are available from the article on "3. The Origins of the First Fleet" and the short version of the video. Most are 'right-there' questions with a couple of higher level questions at the end. An answer sheet is provided here, in the 'Resources' box.

Backgound:

The State Library of New South Wales hold the most extensive collection in the world of journals, letters, diaries and sketches and paintings produced by people who journeyed to Australia on the First Fleet.

This collection provides insights into one of the most significant changes that the Australian continent would experience: the establishment of a British settlement in Sydney. This settlement would almost immediately introduce profound and revolutionary change to the flora, fauna, and Indigenous people.

The First Fleet was made up of many different types of people. Some wrote letters, some wrote diaries, and some wrote accounts of their experiences to be published back in England. Others drew or painted the people, plants and animals they saw in this new land.

These sources are an important record of the first contacts between the British and the Indigenous people. They also provide a valuable insight into the wonderment and joy as well as the difficulties and interal struggles of the people who came to 'Botany Bay' in the First Fleet.

The State Library's Voyages of Discovery has made a wide selection of stories written by the people of the First Fleet available on the Internet.

Students use images and written sources to ask historical questions about the past.

• The activities are designed to introduce students to images and written sources as historical records of people, places and events in the past.
• Students examine images and written sources from the State Library of NSW to investigate the journey of the First Fleet to Botany Bay, Port Jackson and Sydney Cove.