[2] Backler arrived in Sydney on board the Portland on 25 May 1832[1][2][5] and was assigned to the Department of Surveyor General Sir Thomas Mitchell.
[3] Within a year he was sent to the penal settlement at Port Macquarie as a punishment for further crimes committed in the colony.
[1] In 1843, Backler obtained permission to move to Sydney[1] on the condition that he remained in the employment of Messrs Cetta & Hughes, frame makers, carvers and gilders with an office on George Street.
[1] During the late 1840s he also travelled to Yass, Bathurst, Maitland and Newcastle painting portraits and landscapes, activities which he claimed during his insolvency proceedings in 1849 had caused him financial hardship.
His style of composition, with a focus on the detail of costume and realistic depiction of his subjects (sometimes unflattering),[4] owed its genesis to the flourishing genre of provincial English portraiture.