On 22 June 1846, Andrew left the shores of Britain forever. He travelled with 298 other convicts. They began the long and dangerous voyage to Australia. On 9 November 1846, the clipper Maitland docked in Port Phillip Bay in southern Victoria. Andrew Ballantyne, by this time, was twenty-two years old. He must have been a very different man from the lad arrested in Fort Augustus two years earlier.

The passenger manifest states that Andrew was able to read and write. It says he was formerly a shepherd, and the trade taught in prison was shoemaker. He was, of course, single and his crime was horse-stealing. His sentence remained at seven years transportation even though he had already served two years in prison. He had received a pardon under warrant dated 10 June 1846. The terms of this stated that he must not return home before the stated period of his original sentence. When he arrived in Australia he was a free man.

Andrew was one of 299 men who sailed for Australia on the Maitland. This was a 648 ton sailing ship, with John Gray as captain and John Robertson as surgeon.

The Maitland was launched at Calcutta in 1811. She made four voyages for the British East India Company (EIC) between 1812 and 1830. She also made three voyages transporting men to Australia between 1840 and 1846. Thereafter she traded widely before she was wrecked in 1869.

A full list of the convict can be found here – https://convictrecords.com.au/ships/maitland/1846

The Maitland sailed from Spithead on the south coast of England. Spithead is part of the solent, a sheltered area of water between the Isle of Wight and the mainland, near the city of Portsmouth. The ship left for the Isle of Wight on 22 May 1846. The Maitland pick up seventy-two Parkhurst boys. These were teenagers between the ages of 13 to 17 who had been convicted of such crimes as stealing bread and picking pockets; real ‘Artful Dodgers.’ For their crimes, the boys had been sentenced to between seven to ten years deportation to the Colonies.Andrew, being slightly older had spent almost two years in the adult prisons of Millbank and Pentonville.

The Maitland left Spithead on 29 June 1846. The clipper headed first for for Van Dieman’s Land, Tasmania, and disembarked eight male prisoners there on 27 October 1846. The clipper set sail again. On 6 November 1846, it docked at Port Phillip, Victoria. There, the remaining men and boys disembarked. There were no female prisoners on the Maitland.

The average sentence of those on board was nine years. No one had been sentenced to life for their crimes. Between 1787 – 1867, approx. 160 000 men were transported to Australia. Women were also transported for petty crimes. Between 1788 and 1868, approximately 25 000 women were sent to Australia. Most of these women were in their twenties and thirties, good marrying age, but others were children or old women. Life was harsh for these women and were regarded as prostitutes even though prostitution was not a transportable offence. In order to survive, the female convicts were under great pressure to exchange sexual favours in order to survive, or marry male convicts.

• 85.7% male
• 14.3% female
• 19% convicted for stealing
• 6% burglary
• 2% horse theft
• 28 000 convicts received life sentences
• 16.7% were labourers
• 6.7% farm labourers
• 3.2% farmers
• 1827-1834 saw the highest number of departures to Australia
• Transit lasted 251 days

On board the Maitland, three men died during the voyage. Andrew survived harsh conditions to continue his life in the New World.

The manifest shows that Andrew’s initial employer was Montgomery & Wright, for a term of 1 year at £20 per annum. Montgomery and Wright were presumably the same Scottish men, who with Alexander Anderson, owned a large sheep run near the present town of Skipton (near Ballarat) from 1839 till 1851. It was then sold to Francis Ormond. It can be assumed that Andrew was employed as a shepherd on such a rural property.

Anderson, Montgomery and Wright first leased land from the Crown to establish a sheep run in 1839. The lease was for approximately 21 000 acres. We should remember the land ‘owned’ by the British crown was, and always will be Aboriginal land.

The sheep run was named Bamgamie. When the property was sold and broken into lots, they were known as, Langi-Willi, Mooramong, Baangal, and Borriyalloak. There is a cairn monument to Andreson, Montgomery and Wright in the Skipton area at Montgomery Street, Stewart Park, Skipton.

in 1839, the three men built a primitive hut on the spot where the cairn now stands. This became their homestead. Skipton was about 186 miles from Port Philip and Andrew must have travelled through a variety of terrains to get there. When he arrived in 1846, the men had been working the sheep run for seven years. The run played an important role in the development of the region. It played a major part in the development of the wool industry. It also established a place for Europen settlement in that area.