A convict story

A CONVICT STORY

It was the 1st of December 1825 and I had never traveled outside of England before. It had been the coldest winter on record, and I had become a prisoner of the English army for the most ridiculous reason. The famine made us resort to stealing soup and. I knew it was wrong but I had to survive. But apparently it was so wrong that I caught by the police and sent to Australia.   Before leaving, I left a love letter to my wife telling her that I was going to miss her. The journey was long and boring: I'm sure it took more than 200 days, but I stopped counting because I was starting to get depressed.

When we landed in Australia, an Englishman welcomed us with our uniforms and, marked with an arrow, we became property of the British Government. We were supposed to change clothes once or twice a week, but we never did. They were too big and got torn after a few days work. My companions told me to write my name on my uniform as theft was common. Later, I saw that they even dried their uniforms on their shoulder so they couldn't be stolen. There was another uniform used as punishment for stubborn or rebellious prisoners. It was yellow,black and the most ugly thing I’d ever seen, prisoners who wore it were called “canary men.” I only had to wear it once for lashing out against a prison guard who ordered me to do impossibly hard work (even though it was similar to what I did before: I was a builder in England and in Australia I had to build houses).

We slept at Hyde Park Barrack, up there with the worst places in the world. There were 50 of us in a dormitory-imagine the stench-with our clothes drenched in sweat. The first nights, I couldn't sleep, thinking about my wife and how much I missed her, and how much I just wanted to be home. After some time passed, I got exhausted and did what they asked me to do. I became a machine, forgetting my old life and accepting my fate.

I stayed for three more years, praying to escape this Hell and hoping I could forget these troubled days. It was 10 years ago now but every night, I still relive these memories.

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