For the Term of His Natural Life

For the Term of His Natural Life is a 1983 Australian three-part, six-hour television miniseries based on the classic 1874 novel of the same name by Marcus Clarke. Each episode aired for two hours on Nine Network on 23 May, 30 May and 6 June 1983. Plot Well-educated but adventurous young British aristocrat, Richard Devine, son of Sir Richard Devine, learns his mother's secret - his biological father is in fact Lord Bellasis. To protect his mother's reputation, he leaves home to take ship to India, but is arrested after Lord Bellasis is murdered. He is tried for murder and acquitted but found guilty of theft of a pocket-watch which was given him by Lord Bellasis. Under the alias of Rufus Dawes, he is sentenced to transportation for life. Dawes is shipped to Van Diemen's Land on the Malabar, which also carries Captain Vickers, who is to become the new commandant of the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbour, his wife Julia and child Sylvia, Julia's maid, Sarah Purfoy and Lieutenant Maurice Frere, During the voyage, Dawes starts to tutor an illiterate young convict boy, known as ‘Blinker’, in the basics of arithmetic. Life is brutal for the convicts. Vickers tries to be relatively humane but Frere goes out of his way to be as brutal as possible. Because of his gardening knowledge, learned at the family home, Dawes is assigned to create and maintain a garden around the commandant's house.