This stamp issue commemorates the end of convict transportation to Australia, in 1868. Convict transportation began with the arrival of the First Fleet, in 1788, carrying 751 convicts from England. Eighty years later, the Hougoumont was the last convict ship to arrive here, delivering 279 prisoners to Fremantle, including 62…
View More Australia Philately: 2018 Convict Past
The Colonial Collection – a new series of stamp issues – is about to carry Australian historical themes beyond the Bicentenary. The first stamps, a se-tenant strip of five 39c stamps depicting the The Pastoral Era, will be released on 10 May 1989. The period between 1810 and 1850 saw…
View More Australia Philately: 1989 The Pastoral Era
A se-tenant pair of stamps will be issued on 1 November to commemorate the 300th anniversary (tercentenary) of the voyage of Willem de Vlamingh to explore the coast of Australia and his landing on Christmas Island. The stamps feature a painting titled Portrait of a Dutch Navigator by artist Jan…
View More Australia Philately: 1996 Tercentenary de Flamingh’s Voyage
A stamp and miniature sheet will honour two famous exporers whose names are forever linked with the rugged south coast of Western Australia. The first of the two is the English navigator, George Vancouver, who visited the coast in 1791 and named the spectactular King George Sound where the port…
View More Australia Philately: 1991 Exploration Albany WA
Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (1813 – c.1848), was a Prussian explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia. He arrived in Sydney on 14 February 1842. His aim was to explore inland Australia and he was hopeful of a government appointment in his fields of…
View More Australia Philately: Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt
Edward John Eyre (1815-1901) was born on 5 August 1815 at Whipsnade, Bedfordshire, England. At the age of 17, he had intended to enter the army, but at his father’s suggestion, he decided to emigrate to the Colony of New South Wales. Eyre, together with his aboriginal companion, Wylie, was…
View More Australia Philately: Edward John Eyre
George Vancouver was born on 22 June 1757 in the seaport town of King’s Lynn in Norfolk, England. He was the sixth and youngest child of John Jasper Vancouver, a Dutch-born deputy collector of customs, and Bridget Berners. In 1771, at age 13, Vancouver entered the Royal Navy as a…
View More Australia Philately: George Vancouver
William Buelow Gould (c.1803-1853) was born in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. While little is known of his early life, it is thought that he received artistic training under Irish painter, William Mulready, in London, and German lithographer, Rudolph Ackermann, in The Strand. It is also believed that he worked in Spode’s…
View More Australia Philately: William Buelow Gould
Sarah Island (Langerrareroune, Toogee people) was located in Macquarie Harbour, Van Diemen’s Land. The island was named after Sarah Birch, the wife of a prominent surgeon, merchant and shipbuilder in Hobart Town, Thomas William Birch. In January 1822, the Sarah Island penal station was established by Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell as…
View More Australia Philately: Macquarie Harbour – Sarah Island
Convict artist William Buelow Gould (c.1803-1853) created his masterpiece while imprisoned at Macquarie Harbour’s Sarah Island penal colony in 1832. As servant to medical officer Dr William de Little, Gould painted 36 delicate watercolour studies of fish and shellfish. This sketchbook, now at Allport Library and Museum of Fine Arts,…
View More Australia Philately: 2026 WB Gould’s Sketchbook of Fishes