Well we can’t be accused of sitting around doing nothing can we! It was another early start this morning so after a quick shower in the water tank amenities we were off towards Port Arthur.
The drive is just over an hour and the journey is easy in the early morning with little traffic on the roads.
Port Arthur is a place steeped in history, a convict prison from the 1800’s which has always created curiosity for tourists even in the early days. Sadly it was also the scene of a violent massacre in 1996 where a number of people were killed by a lone gunman. On our travels around Australia we’ve heard of ‘conspiracy theories’ about the later event and how the place is so eerie and unbalanced that people couldn’t stay overnight anywhere and just wanted to leave. We travel with an open mind and just hope to leave here wiser and more respectful.
Your admission ticket to the site includes a short cruise in the morning, two days access and a convict card so you can play the ‘Lottery of Life’. What with our
The guided tour gets our day off to a good start, Sue is very informative, very jolly and we’re amazed at the sight in front of us. Today Port Arthur looks stunningly beautiful, the sort of place you would expect to find an ancient castle not a convict prison.
Sue gives us a great welcome as she describes the history to the site, a timber getting camp established in 1830 which was turned into a penitentiary in 1833 for repeat offenders transported to Van Diemans land from mainly Ireland and England, the regime was seen as a machine to grind rogues honest. It was a harsh place with cruel methods and experiments of what came to be known as asylums in later years. There was a whole community that lived within the settlement; military men with their wives and children, doctors, chaplains and hospital staff making up the total of 2000 people by 1840. With the exception of the convicts held in the Separate Prison, they worked producing, amongst other items, ships, shoes, clothing and bells. As we walk past the ruins of the main prison, Sue is busily building us a picture of the discipline and punishment regimes that the inmates were ruled by. The prisoners rations of salt meat and flour were subsidised by additional vegetables they grew in their own gardens. In 1833 Governor Arthur confiscated the gardens stating that they were a privilege the prisoners should not be afforded, outbreaks of scurvy soon followed. One of the toughest jobs in the early days of the penitentiary was working in the flourmill and granary during 1845. Powered in two ways, a water wheel and a by convicts who drove the treadmill. It was a dreaded punishment which could result in severe injury and exhaustion.
136 separate cells at the bottom of the main prison were for those convicts who had to be separated from others, men under a heavy sentence. On the top floor dormitory, 480 better behaved prisoners were housed but in 1849 a new threat was established for them all. The Separate Prison was built further up the hill with an intention to ‘change the evil tendencies of the convicts minds’.
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