The First Fleet

• Marlee Welham, Grade 4
• Short Story
• 2017

Hi my name is Lauren Gray. I’m nine years old and I live in London. It’s so filthy here and the sky in dark. It’s just not the best place to be. I clean houses for a living. My mum is in prison and my dad died when I was about three years old. I live by myself. It’s hard here because you get treated badly. Before my mum went to prison, things were good. I would go for walks and play with my friends. But then my mum killed a man. She went to prison for seven years and in that time I was working for my mum’s friend’s boss. When I was cleaning his house, I saw some lovely food in the kitchen and I stole an apple and some bread. He saw me take it. He called the police. I tried to run away but they caught me.
So off I go to court. The judge thought I was too young to get hung, so they sent me to Australia on the First Fleet for seven years. It took two years to get across from England to Australia.
When we got there, we were treated like idiots. The soldiers had no respect for others. One day I met this seventeen year old girl named Kayla. She thought she was little miss perfect, she would punch me kick me and even cut me. One day I had enough of it. We started fighting. The soldiers stopped it. A couple of weeks later, we became friends again. We would help each other and care for each other.
7 years later, I was released. I was given a small plot of land in Australia to start my own farm. I found my mother and we lived happily ever after.