The Brand On His Coat: Biographies of Some Western Australian Convicts
Australian History Local History Convict History Biography Young Adult Non-Fiction Colonial History Historical Reference
First published in 1983 and now scarce in any collectible state, Rica Erickson’s The Brand On His Coat: Biographies of Some Western Australian Convicts is the foundational text that rescued the human stories behind Australia’s last convict era from dusty archives. This first-edition paperback from the University of Western Australia Press brings together meticulously researched life stories of men transported to the Swan River Colony between 1850 and 1868—men whose backs bore the broad-arrow “brand” that marked them as Crown property. Erickson, one of the country’s most respected social historians, goes beyond crime and punishment, tracing how these prisoners rebuilt lives, married, farmed, and quietly shaped the state’s early economy. The result is a vivid, personal window onto colonial Western Australia that no later reprint has ever fully replicated.
Collectors prize this 1983 first edition for its unique combination of scholarly rigor and narrative intimacy. The book is still cited in university Australian-history courses and by family historians trying to trace convict ancestry, yet it remains accessible enough for young-adult readers discovering the topic for the first time. Its generous biographical entries, detailed index, and local-source footnotes turn it into a ready-reference handbook for anyone delving into Western Australia’s convict past. Because the print run was small and most copies were used as working textbooks, clean copies with tight bindings—like this one—have become genuinely rare.
For the buyer, owning this copy means holding a tangible piece of Australian heritage: a vintage, first-issue book that can sit proudly on a history shelf yet still be pulled down for reliable facts. The light exterior wear and a single neat pen tick in the index testify to its life as a loved research tool, while the unmarked, dog-ear-free pages ensure it remains a crisp reading copy. Whether you are a local-history enthusiast, a teacher building a heritage collection, or a descendant hoping to understand how convict bloodlines helped build modern Western Australia, The Brand On His Coat delivers both the compelling stories and the authoritative detail you need.
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