Is there a distinctive Australian criminology? Was there a criminology before the discipline? Was the formation of the discipline in Australia shaped by the historical contexts of colonial settlement and its aftermath? And how was the international development of the discipline during the middle decades of the twentieth century reflected in the emergence of Australian institutions of criminology, academic and governmental at that time? This article examines these questions as a contribution to a richer historical understanding of the factors that prefigured the late twentieth century acceleration of the discipline in Australia. In particular it approaches this history through the voices of those who shaped its early concerns and activities. It is suggested that some outstanding features of Australian historical experience from the time of European settlement - above all its penal colony origins and its dispossession of Indigenous peoples - struggled to make an impact on the intellectual shape of the discipline during its formative years. On the other hand the institutional forms and intellectual concerns traced here demonstrate the importance of trans-national contexts in shaping a discipline from its early days.