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Act One: Scenes 1-4

• The following version of this book was used to create this Lesson Plan: Wertenbaker, Timberlake. Our Country's Good. Dramatic Publishing, 1988. Paperback.

• Act One: Scene 1 is titled “The Voyage Out,” and takes place in the old of a convict ship headed for Australia in 1787.

• Convict Robert Sideway is being flogged.

• Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark is counting the strokes of the whip.

• Once the punishment is finished, Sideway is untied and dumped into the hold where he collapses.

• Convict John Wisehammer describes what it is like in the hold of the ship.

• He believes there is no comfort except to “seek English cunt” (7) and find comfort in one another and remembering England.

• In Scene 2, a solitary aboriginal Australian describes when the first convict ship arrives in Botany Bay on January 20, 1788.

• The aborigine describes the ship as a “giant canoe” drifting on the sea with “clouds billowing...

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