ABSTRACT
Climate, topography, soils, population and remoteness shaped rural/agricultural activities. Convict labour was pivotal to early pastoral/agricultural development, clearing land, building roads and providing labour to farmers and pastoralists including remote leases free-labour shunned. Strikes and absconding were largely confined to a single workplace, but there are instances of workers absconding from neighbouring estates or being arrested as absent/out after hours in town on the same day implying a degree of collusion. Collective action by rural/farmworkers during this period was overwhelmingly informal. Organization was overwhelmingly informal and confined to a single mine. In this case government convicts were included in mining rather under the government industry category because combining them provided a more meaningful picture of mining activities. With regard to informal collective action at single farms/estates, there were distinctive aspects for different categories of labour, so the examination distinguishes convicts, indentured non-European and European indentured/free-labour.
