Documenting Democracy
Australia's Story

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Colonel David Collins arrived with the First Fleet in 1788

Colonel David Collins arrived with the First Fleet in 1788 and, under the Governor, was responsible for the administration of legal matters in New South Wales until he returned to England in 1797. This portrait is from that time, when he was aged 42. In 1804 he chose the site of Hobart as the base for the new settlement he had been sent out to establish, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land until he died in 1810.