Empire, Convicts and First Encounters in Australia's North

By Tim Flynn

My interest in Fort Dundas began not in an archive but on the Tiwi Islands themselves.

Having worked on the islands, I came to appreciate their distinct character. Although only a short distance from the Northern Territory mainland, the Tiwi Islands possess a powerful sense of place, identity and separation. Even today, with modern transport and communications, they can feel remote. Standing there, it is not difficult to imagine the sense of isolation experienced by the soldiers, convicts and officials who arrived by sailing ship in 1824 to establish Britain's first settlement in northern Australia. 

That settlement was Fort Dundas, established on Melville Island, part of the Tiwi Islands group. It was named after Robert Dundas, the First Lord of the Admiralty, while the island itself honoured his father, Henry Dundas, one of the most influential figures in the British Empire of the era. Even in its naming, the settlement reflected the reach of imperial power into one of the most remote corners of the world. 

The British Government's objective was straightforward. Imperial planners wanted a strategic foothold in northern Australia to secure Britain's claim to the continent and foster trade with regional powers. The reality proved far more challenging. Supplies were irregular. Disease was widespread. Scurvy stalked the settlement. The climate was punishing. The commercial opportunities anticipated by officials never materialised. Within five years, Fort Dundas had failed and was abandoned. 

Yet the ruins of Fort Dundas tell a story that reaches beyond military failure. They reveal a fascinating intersection of Tiwi sovereignty, British imperial ambition and the often-overlooked role of the Irish within the Empire.

The settlement was built largely by convict labour. The original expedition included forty-four convicts, many of them skilled tradesmen such as sawyers, bricklayers, carpenters and nailmakers. Archaeological evidence suggests their work was often competent and professional despite the conditions under which it was performed. Men such as Henry Feathers, a bricklayer, William Potter, a nailmaker, and Edward Chapman, a sawyer, helped construct the infrastructure on which the settlement depended. 

Among those convicts was a man whose story carries a distinctly Irish resonance.

Thomas Sullivan, a gardener from County Cork, was transported to Australia and later sent to Fort Dundas. In September 1826, he died of scurvy in the settlement hospital and was buried on Tiwi country, far from the county of his birth. His story is both deeply personal and profoundly symbolic. An Irishman who may never have imagined leaving Cork ended his days on a remote island north of Australia, swept up in the currents of empire and transportation. 

The Irish connection almost certainly did not end there.

The military garrison that accompanied the expedition consisted of soldiers from the 3rd Regiment of Foot (The Buffs) and detachments of the Royal Marines. Later rotations included troops from the 57th Regiment of Foot and the 39th Regiment of Foot. While these were not Irish regiments in name, the British Army of the period recruited heavily throughout Ireland. It is highly likely that many of the rank-and-file soldiers stationed at Fort Dundas were Irish-born.

This creates one of the most intriguing aspects of the story.

On the shores of the Tiwi Islands, Irish convicts and Irish soldiers may well have found themselves serving on opposite sides of the colonial system. One group wore uniforms. The other wore chains. Yet many could have shared similar backgrounds, accents and experiences of life within the United Kingdom. Both groups were products of an imperial system that drew heavily upon Ireland for labour and manpower.

For modern readers, it is tempting to divide history neatly into categories of coloniser and colonised. Fort Dundas resists such simplicity.

The Irish convicts who built the settlement were undoubtedly subject to a harsh penal regime. Yet they also helped construct the physical infrastructure of British occupation. The same ambiguity applies to Irish soldiers. Many came from a country with its own long history of British domination, yet they served within the institutions that extended imperial power across the globe.

Most importantly, however, Fort Dundas was established not on empty land but on Tiwi country.

Long before the arrival of British ships, the Tiwi people had lived on these islands for thousands of years, developing a distinct culture, language and identity. The British viewed the settlement as an extension of sovereignty. The Tiwi saw the arrival of strangers attempting to establish themselves on country that was already occupied and governed. 

The Tiwi were not passive observers of the settlement. They resisted the British presence and maintained their own authority beyond the immediate vicinity of the fort. Historical accounts repeatedly note the difficulty the settlers experienced moving inland and establishing control over the wider island. In the end, the British never truly mastered the landscape they sought to possess.

Indeed, one of the most striking aspects of Fort Dundas is how temporary the British presence proved to be. The settlement lasted less than five years. The Tiwi people endured.

That reality should give us pause.

The traditional narrative presents Fort Dundas as a failed colonial experiment. It was certainly that. But it was also something more. It was a place where Indigenous sovereignty, convict labour, military service and imperial ambition collided. It was a place where men from Ireland, Scotland, England and elsewhere found themselves on a distant frontier they barely understood.

Nearly two centuries later, the ruins remain as a reminder of both the reach and the limits of empire.

Having spent time on the Tiwi Islands myself, I find that perhaps the most enduring lesson of Fort Dundas is not about British power but about resilience. The settlement disappeared. The Empire that created it is gone. The Tiwi people remain connected to their country. And among the fragments of that history lie the stories of Irish convicts and Irish soldiers whose lives intersected briefly with one of Australia's most remote frontiers.

In that sense, Fort Dundas is more than a footnote in Australian history. It is a chapter in the wider story of the Irish diaspora, a story that continues to reveal surprising connections between identity, migration and empire.

On Tiwi country, beneath a fort bearing the name of a Scottish aristocrat, Irish convicts and Irish soldiers found themselves together on one of the Empire's most distant frontiers. Their presence reminds us that the Irish story is not merely a tale of emigration, exile and survival. It is also a story of how a colonised people became entangled, willingly and unwillingly, in the making of the modern world.

About the Author

Tim Flynn (T.S. Flynn) is an interim CFO, author and member of the Irish diaspora. Writing as T.S. Flynn, he is the author of the novel Part an Irishman, a story shaped by migration, identity and belonging. His professional career has taken him across Australia, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, including work in remote and frontier environments such as the Tiwi Islands. He writes regularly on history, identity and the global Irish experience.