This chapter examines eighteenth-century textual records about the Australian colonies, from the early British press reports of the establishment of the penal colony at Port Jackson to the accounts of religious personnel such as the first colonial chaplain Richard Johnson. It reveals how convicts and Indigenous people were represented in texts designed for metropolitan audiences. The isolated voices of evangelical reformers provided rich accounts of the problems and failures of the penal colony. They questioned the morality of the military governance of the penal colony and the dispossession of Indigenous peoples. Evangelical accounts from New South Wales became part of a global knowledge economy and a thriving print culture; they provided evidence that thickened, and at times contradicted, official accounts that circulated in the British media.