find your way to freedom in van diemen’s land

Find your way to Freedom in Van Diemen’s Land

The year is 1926 and you are a British convict that has been sent to Port Macquarie settlement to serve a term of 7 years-hard labour for Larceny. In the settlement conditions are tough; you decide to escape with two other convicts, however your first objective is to pick a work detail. Each work details may provide opportunities and challenges that will affect your escape.

Wood Chopping down by the River.

Cooking food at

the camp.

Heading into town

to resupply

You head downstream to the mouth of the Hastings River, otherwise referred to as Settlement Point, or Big Bay. While chopping wood, you and your accomplices realise that if you head East you will end up stranded and trapped on the Beach. Making west or south your best options. As the guards routinely change position and are pre-disposed of; “YOU RUN”.

Go West

Go South


While everyone disperses to their different jobs for the day, you and a small group of prisoners are left back at the settlement to prepare lunch and dinner for everyone. You and your accomplices discuss taking a small boat and heading north across the river , or possibly west.

Go West

Go North


You and your work detachment head south into the town of Port Macquarie to resupply. While there you discuss with your accomplices three options. 1. Heading east to the beach and then following it south. 2. Heading south using the dense bushland, forests, and terrain as cover. 3. You notice a family travelling west by stagecoach, and decide to climb aboard.

Go West

Go South

Go East

While running west you encounter a tribe of the local Biripi indigenous people. You and your accomplices begin to panic after hearing gruesome stories about aboriginals killing and maiming British soldiers stationed at the settlement. You all agree to go in the opposite directions to avoid detection and a possible conflict.


Go South

Go South-East

You and your companions come to a billabong being used by cattle, farmers and cattle drovers. You decide to:

Ask the cattle drovers for food, water and assistance

Keep heading further South


You successfully steal the small boat and manage to paddle to the middle of the river, however the current picks up and you decide to:

Abandon ship and swim for the other shore.

Allow the current to take the boat further downstream into the mouth of the Hastings River and Big Point


You set off on foot and do not make it far before you run into a patrol of soldiers heading back from town.


Your escape is over and you, and your accomplices are rounded up and taken back to the settlement.


The family agrees to take you as far west as Bathurst where they can put you in touch with people to smuggle you out of the country.

Go West

Whilst heading south you encounter the infamous bushranger Matthew Brady and his gang. You decide to:

Ask the bushrangers for assistance and a ride to the nearest town. Continue

South


Heading east you and your accomplices are cornered by a patrol from the town and soldiers heading to the town from the settlement.


You surrender yourselves to the soldiers and return to the settlement to await punishment.

You come to a mountain range; you are safe from patrolling soldiers and indigenous tribes, however you fear that you do not have enough food and water to cross the mountain range


Cross Mountains

Whilst heading south-east you find you way to the beach.

Go SouthAlong Beach

Head West Inland


The cattle farmers and drovers mistake you for bandits and begin shooting at you and your accomplices.


One of your accomplices is killed and you and your other companion are taken prisoner and returned to the settlement for a reward.


Whilst heading south you become disorientated and lost, and you begin to realise that you are heading in circles.

After walking the bushland for a week, one of your companions die and you decide to turn yourself in at the next possible chance


When the small boat is beginning to drift in the direction of the settlement you order everyone to “abandon ship”, which they do and swim to the other side.

Whilst swimming you feel something brush past your legs, and before you can get to the shore, you and the group are attacked by a bull shark.

You and your accomplices believe rather then struggling against the current it is best to just ‘go with the flow’, and decide to drift down stream quietly past the settlement and guards.

You and your accomplices manage to drift quietly past the unsuspecting guards. However it isn’t long before your small boat is dragged out to see and crushed by the waves


You and your companions travelling with the family in the stagecoach arrive at Bathurst under the cover of night time. The man agrees to send you to one of two families that may assist you to get out of the country.

The Smiths are a farming family from York England. They are protestant and avid supporters of the crown.

The McGuiness family is a mercantilist family, with its origins from Belfast Ireland. They are Irish Catholic and support they crown, though not avidly like the Smiths.


You and your accomplices ask the infamous Matthew Brady and his gang of bushrangers for assistance. They agree to take you to the nearest town.


Town


You are your accomplices travel south for days. Due to lack of decent drinking water you all decide to drink from an germ-infested waterhole.

Two people in the group come down with dysentery and are unable to move and the other succumbs to exposure and dehydration.

Whilst crossing the mountains, your footing because unstable and you fall approximately 200 meters down the face of a cliff to the ground.

You die instantly suffering severe head trauma.


Whilst heading west, and back inland your accomplices and yourself come across a small party of Biripi tribesmen. They look shocked and stunned to see you and both parties panic and freeze.

After a moments hesitation you reach out your hand to shake hands with them and greet them. They consider this a threat and an insult; one of them spears you.


Whilst heading south along the beach you are spotted by a patrol boat offshore. They disperse men to apprehend you.


You decide to scatter inland, however you are outnumber, become disorientated, lost and captured by soldiers. You and one of your accomplices are taken back to the settlement, however the other escapes capture.

Upon receiving word of Matthew Brady and his gang’s intentions to rob a local bank, governor Ralph Darling disperses a detachment of 20 soldiers, police and local indigenous trackers to arrest Matthew Brady and his gang.

Upon entering the town the waiting police and soldiers open fire on the unsuspecting Brady. He is killed and you and one of your accomplices are returned to the settlement. The other is killed during the fire fight; mistaken for one of Brady’s gang members.


The Smith family are avid crown supporters and do not take kindly to harbouring fugitives.


While you and your accomplices sleep, Mr Smith sneaks out to the local police station to alert the authorities to your whereabouts. He returns with a detachment of police, who arrest you and your accomplices and return you to the settlement.


Mr McGuiness and his family are sympathetic about your situation, and agree to take you in and make arrangements for your safe passage out of the country.

The next day you are your accomplices are given money, tickets, documents, food and transport to Sydney. Once there you all board a schooner sail ship bound for New Zealand.

The ship departs the harbour and bay without incident and soon you are on your way to freedom.

FREEDOM


find your way to freedom in van diemen’s land

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