Note: Updated 2 August 2007. This Blackheath Connection website as part of The Merchant Networks Project is a minimally-modified mirror copy of the original production which appears on the Internet at Dan Byrnes' own domain at: http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/index.html
E-mail response to the original website at www.danbyrnes.com.au/ has indicated that netsurfers may not realise that The Blackheath Connection has a total of 71+ files. Please navigate around the website to that extent to ensure you get the best from it - Ed

Prepare to learn much about the sweep of events which from 1786 linked a long-lost Australia to the rest of the world...
The how and why of a global network of shipping, the world-wide web of its day...

The Blackheath Connection: a new view of the "founding" of European-Australia as a British convict colony - a review of the history of the transportation of British convicts 1717-1810 to North America, then to Australia...
The Blackheath Connection ... derived from discoveries made in London in 1989 by Dan Byrnes and Neil Rhind
For more information on present-day Blackheath in London, visit a site managed by the noted local historian there, Neil Rhind: http://www.blackheath.org

- Dan Byrnes

The Blackheath Connection aims to re-tell the earlier stories of how Australia - the continent - was introduced to the rest of the world ... Revised or new material is presented on settlers/planters on Jamaica after the 1690s Scottish Darien Company debacle; the Boston Tea Party; Britain's handling of convicts from 1776; how London aldermen reacted as the First Fleet to Australia was being mounted. How London-based merchants avoided new opportunities in the Pacific region... new material on whaling and maritime history. And much else ...

FEEDBACK: If you have any doubt about the usefulness to researchers of the material mounted on this website, please see the FEEDBACK FILE.

Note: Research for this project overall was supported in 1993 by a Writer's Project Grant from Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.

This Blackheath Connection website as part of The Merchant Networks Project is a minimally-modified mirror copy of the original production which appears on the Internet at Dan Byrnes' own domain at: http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/blackheath/index.html

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