Botany Bay - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

• Despite the move to Sydney Cove, for many years the Australian penal colony would be referred to as "Botany Bay" in England - and in convict ballads such as Ireland's "The Fields of Athenry".
• A song named "Botany Bay" was performed in the 1890s, based on older tunes.
• A song entitled "The Shores of Botany Bay" was written by Brian Warfield and recorded by The Wolfe Tones in the early 1970s. This satirical song deals with a group of Irishmen volunteering for the transportation process in the hopes of finding wealth in Australia.
• In the 1941 historical novel Botany Bay by Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the protagonist, after various adventures and misadventures in England, gets transported to Botany Bay. A movie based on the book starring Alan Ladd and James Mason was shot in 1953.
• In the Star Trek universe, the SS Botany Bay is the sleeper ship that Khan Noonien Singh and his genetically modified followers are discovered on by Captain James T. Kirk and crew (the name was retained from an earlier draft of the script, when the ship was a prisoner transport).
• In the Stargate SG-1 episode "Prisoners", Daniel Jackson compares the British planned use of Botany Bay to the prison planet SG-1 is sent.
• The song "Jim Jones at Botany Bay" (aka "Jim Jones") is about a prisoner who is going to Botany Bay. The song has been recorded several times, including a well-known version by Bob Dylan.
• In the book Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, Abel Magwitch refers to returning to England from Botany Bay.
• In the musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street by Stephen Sondheim it is mentioned that Sweeney was sent to Botany Bay by Judge Turpin 15 years prior to the events in the musical.
• In the Paul and Storm song "The Captain's Wife's Lament", the Captain's Wife's cries could be heard "from here to Botany Bay"
• In The Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas refers to Botany Bay as the character Milady sits and ponders her captivity. "it is d'Artagnan who holds her prisoner and is about to send her to some filthy Botany Bay"
• In the MMORPG RuneScape Botany Bay is an area in the game designed to show accounts caught using illegal macros (or "bots") being punished.