# Quote — Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore

> If Australia had not been settled as a prison and built by convict labor, it would have been colonized by other means; that was foreordained from the moment of Cook’s landing at Botany Bay in 1770. But it would have taken half a century longer, for Georgian Britain would have found it exceptionally difficult to find settlers crazy or needy enough to go there of their own free will.

- Author: [Robert Hughes](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes.md)
- Book: [The Fatal Shore](https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/the-fatal-shore.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Robert_Hughes#The_Fatal_Shore_(1986)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/robert-hughes/the-fatal-shore/if-australia-had