There was a scheme to
bring out the families of convicts once they were re-established. 
The convicts are never referred to as "criminals".  These days having a
convict in the family is considered quite fortunate.  The benefit of
hindsight shows that these people did the extremely hard work of
establishing the first settlements, knew that regardless of the sentence
received they would never return to England and when you follow their lives
you find them as small farmers or practising their trades.  It is not
unusual to find them moving to a new district when they have their freedom
and find them signing petitions for teachers for their children, buiding
churches and hiding the convict past from their children sometimes with
elaborate stories.  As you can see from the two examples above the
sentences were harsh for very small crimes.

Free settlers didn't really start arriving until the 1830's and not in any
real numbers until the goldrushes of the 1850's by which time the main
cities were quite civilized.

Convict Information Courtesy of 
Wendy Suzan Meredith