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History Lab
Season 7
Episode 6
Caribbean Convicts
5.0
0 MIN
- Synopsis
- Credits
Caribbean Convicts weaves together the story of the Caribbean men who arrived in Sydney onboard the convict ship the Moffatt on August 30, 1836. Most had been enslaved, including William Buchanan, a Jamaican man transported for participating in the Christmas Day slave uprising in Jamaica in 1831-32.
Join historical novelist Sienna Brown as she explores the diverse fates of Buchanan and the other men who arrived that day. As they fanned out across the country, some became bushrangers, others stalwarts of the community, but they all worked hard to make a new home for themselves.
Voices
Cassandra Pybus is a FAHA Fellow and specialises in historical narratives about people who have been marginalised, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King’s College London.
Elizabeth Wiedemann is a local historian in Inverell, NSW.
Marg Young is a relative through marriage of Dick Holt, Richard Holt’s Son who is featured in the program.
Felix Cross is a composer, director and producer whose work has been performed nationally and internationally. From 1996 to 2015, he was the Artistic Director of Nitro/Black Theatre Co-op in England, developing and producing new musical-theatre from a black British perspective. He also worked as a composer for a number of major theatre companies in England. In 2012, he was awarded an MBE for services to Musical Theatre. In 2013 he moved with his family to Australia, working as a freelance director and composer. In 2025, he’s living back in London, while studying for a PhD at Western Sydney University.
Michael St George is one of the most unique performance artists to have emerged from Jamaica. Of Maroon heritage, he’s a poet/singer/songwriter who has worked with national and international artists and dedicates his work to equity, justice and universal love. St George uses poetry and music to dismantle borders, celebrate the power of diversity and self-elevation. The Ontario Federation of Labour presented St. George with the Art and Culture Award for outstanding contribution to his field.
Archival documents read by Scott Cumming and Christian Price
Credits
This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.
Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown
Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington
Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios
Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios
Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs
An earlier version of this episode was made for the ABC Radio National’s History Listen programme, with Michelle Rayner as Executive Producer.
Support
The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).
We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.
Podcast playlist
EPISODE 5
Caribbean Echoes Live with Zahra Newman and Alana Valentine
In this special episode of Caribbean Echoes, series producers Ben Etherington and Sienna Brown are in conversation with star Jamaican-Australian actress Zahra Newman and acclaimed playwright Alana Valentine.
They discuss the making of the series and how performance emerged as a key theme across it. Zahra reflects on being a Black Caribbean-Australian actor today, and the persistence of the racial politics that afflicted earlier generations of Caribbean immigrants.
Alana takes us through the joys of bringing Nellie Small, the subject of Caribbean Echoes episode 3, back to the stage in her cabaret Send for Nellie! And we hear about Nellie’s solidarity with Indigenous performers.
The panel also talks bloopers and highlights from their performing careers in this conversation recorded in a packed room at the Abercrombie Hotel in Sydney on October 23, 2025.
EPISODE 4
Caribbean Echoes: Susannah Andrews – Jamaican Matriarch to Footy Legends and Mining Startups
What connects a VFL “Champion of the Colony” to a woman born enslaved in Jamaica?
In 1919, Richmond footballer Vic Thorp won the league’s highest honour for the second time — the equivalent of today’s Brownlow Medal. But just a century earlier, his great-grandmother Susannah Andrews was enslaved in Jamaica, before gaining her freedom.
This episode uncovers Susannah’s remarkable journey: from enslavement, to freedom, to becoming matriarch of an Australian family that would include football legends and mining startups.
We hear from her descendant Garry Chapman, who discovered Susannah’s story while sifting through his father’s papers.
Jamaican historian Suzanne Francis-Brown — a regular on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? — helps us reconstruct Susannah’s life as an enslaved, then free, woman living with a Jewish merchant in Kingston.
So how does one woman’s survival ripple through generations?
And why does remembering Susannah’s life matter for how we tell Australian history today?
EPISODE 3
Caribbean Echoes: Nellie Small – Queer Black Caribbean-Australian Icon
Who was the Caribbean-Australian cabaret star who could bring down the house — and come back at racism with a joke?
“Come sit by me, we don’t eat people anymore.”
Nellie Small was born in Sydney in 1900, just before the White Australia policy was introduced.
She became one of the country’s most beloved performers, famous for wearing men’s suits on stage and off, and for her sharp comebacks.
In show business circles around Sydney in the 1940 and 50s, the phrase was: “When a show’s not strong enough — send for Nellie!”
“I’m proud of my Australian birth. But I’d be much happier if more of my fellow countrymen would forget my skin colour is different from them.”
Negotiating Australia’s vexed racial politics, Nellie carved out a public space for Black music and queer performance in 1950s Australia. We explore her career and uncover the previously unknown stories of her Caribbean forebears.
Nellie Small is played by Jamaican-Australian actor Zahra Newman.
