Less than 1 percent of Australia's 19-million-plus population can trace their ancestry back to the convicts who began the white settlement of the country more than 200 years ago.
Thousands of convicts were shipped from the British Isles to Australia for a 60-year period from 1788 to 1848, according to docents at the Hyde Park Barracks in downtown Sydney, where some of the early prison cells are still preserved.
These convicts helped build the roads, buildings and infrastructure of the fledgling country, but they did not, understandably, have many children.