Eleven British ships carrying convicts, marines and officials reached Sydney Cove in January 1788 and founded New South Wales. The settlement struggled initially with poor soil and shortages. Its expansion dispossessed Eora and other Aboriginal peoples through disease, violence and seizure of country.

Convict ballads recorded transportation, separation and survival from below. Later Aboriginal poets, especially Oodgeroo Noonuccal, confronted the celebratory colonial story by restoring invasion, dispossession and Indigenous endurance to Australian verse.