Maria Island

Among the convicts who served time at Maria Island, on the east coast of Van Diemen's Land, was Young Irelander William Smith O'Brien. O'Brien stubbornly refused to give his parole not to escape and thereby obtain a ticket-of-leave — despite remonstrations by the authorities, as well as by his family and friends. Consequently, he was kept on board the Swift, without being allowed to set foot in Hobart Town, before being transferred on the government steamer Kangaroo to the convict probation station at Maria Island on the Island's east coast. There he was incarcerated for ten months in a small cottage, within the convict precinct, until August 1850.