Port Arthur UNESCO Historic Site, Convict History of Tasmania, Australia

An authentic 1800's Port Arthur Prisoner Uniform.  It appeared to be made out of wool which would have been common in the day.  Many sheep were already on the island and wool was plentiful.  This would have been awfully uncomfortable in the Spring, Summer, and Fall here in Tazzy as the Aussies call it.

We drove from Hobart to Port Arthur which is a small town of about 250 people. It's a lovely drive about an hour and 15 minutes from Hobart on a single lane highway. The Port Arthur Historic Site is part of the convict history of Australia and Tasmania. Basically the whole of the Tasman Peninsula was a penitentiary for the convicts because at the place called Eagle Hawk Neck is a tiny strip of land that joins the Tasman Peninsula to the island of Tasmania and the width of this tiny isthmus is at most 30 meters across. There was a Dog Line and what that meant was it was heavily guarded with seven big dogs and many more soldiers. There was no way that any of the prisoners made it from the Tasman Peninsula onto the main part of the island. 

The entry fee is $48 Aussie and Darren is no lover of History so it was just me that entered the site. He was lucky enough to be able to sit in the cafe and use the free Wi-Fi. I also bought the Port Arthur Essential History Tour for an extra $10 Aussie which I'm actually waiting for the tour sitting and watching on a bench in front of the Bay of Port Arthur which is lovely with gorgeous trees and forest. Its beautiful water to look at and with the old ruins, its spectacular to view and very peaceful.  I'm lucky it's an absolutely lovely day and I'm in my shorts and t-shirt and it's sunny and 23 today.

The site here is absolutely stunning with the ocean and bay views, especially from the Commandant's House.

After sitting and relaxing, I joined the first tour which was the Essential Convict Tour of what you needed to know, basically to get around. The entire site is over 100 acres large, it's massive in size.  The tour was about 35 minutes and it was an all right introduction.  I moved on to self-tour the back part of this Historic Site and I started with the hospital where many a convict tried desperately to earn a bed in the hospital by self-injury can't say that I would blame them.  Life was hard as a convict because you were shackled when you worked and the work was back breaking labor felling or chopping down trees and then carrying them to the site as there were no horses to assist in this endeavor.

The old Hospital is now ruins thanks to the bush fire that ravaged this building and the pilfering of bricks by the townspeople and tourists.

Many of these buildings are completely intact and many are currently ruins that are part of a restoration process. Some of the buildings were closed and some of them were half open to the public. There was a bush fire that went through after the Penitentiary closed in 1877 and it wiped out many of these buildings. The Penitentiary which is the largest building was built by convicts. Even the bricks were made by the convicts and the stone that was hewn by the convicts makes up this pretty building. Now it has a multi-million dollar engineering system holding up the outer facade of the building because anything that was timber was burned in the brush fire and the tour guide told us that this particular building burned for days. 

The Penitentiary is a beautiful building built of sandstone by the Convicts.

Port Arthur is set in a beautiful bay rivaled by Sydney's Bay and it was found mistakenly when a British ship ran ashore in an awful storm. It sailed in to seek refuge and then they realized what a beautiful and safe harbor they had found.  This information quickly got back to the British Kingdom and they sent out soldiers and 30 convicts on a ship.  They started the Timber industry. Tasmania is basically a dense forest of Eucalyptus type trees said to be 'over 150 ft tall at the first branch' a convict was quoted. 

I continued my self tour and there was an audio that you could listen to if you wanted to and I just decided I would do that later back at the hotel.  I walked past the police station which was built after the Penitentiary closed down. The Penitentiary area was shrouded in mystery to the people.  These men were the hardened criminals, the murderers and the rapists. These were bad men. They weren't the petty thieves who stole a loaf of bread.  There was this allure of the place and when it closed down, many people flocked to it as a tourist.  In fact, there was a silent movie made by the Australians, before 1920 and it put Port Arthur Penitentiary on the map for Australians. The Police Station was built to police the tourists that showed up to pilfer souvenirs. Thousands of bricks were stolen further dismantling the buildings.  Later little hotels popped up and many of the outer buildings were actually used as hotels to house wealthy people who were interested in this type of History. 

I continued on to the Law Court which is just the outside facade ruins and the Guard Tower which is quite interesting because there are two turrets.  

The Law Court ruins.  Look at the beautiful carving work in the arch that the Convicts did.

Looking through to the turrets on the Guard Tower.

The Commandants House is a beautiful building that was added onto many times. The first Commandant in charge of the Penitentiary was a single man.  He didn't need much room and actually closed off most of the house. The next Commandant had a wife and 10 children.  He opened the rest of the house up and then actually built more buildings to expand the footprint of his grandiose and beautiful home that he lived in for over 10 years.  

Looking out the gate of the Commandant's House.

Part of the $48 entry ticket into this UNESCO world heritage site includes a 20 minute cruise out on the bay which goes around the Isle of the Dead.  There was a narration on the 20-minute cruise and that was highly interesting and afforded much knowledge and interesting facts about Port Arthur.  The Isle of the Dead has as many as 1,500 people buried there. According to the records 1200 prisoners had died there as well as paupers which would be the older prisoners that could no longer work and had served their term but had nowhere else to go. A Paupers Depot was built for them, which I felt was quite revolutionary at the time. The odd woman would have died in childbirth that were married to any of the men that were employed at the Penitentiary would have been buried there, and of course babies. Mortality rate was high back then and of course soldiers as well. 

The cruise was very nice and it was a chance to sit down, at this point.  I had already been walking around for hours. 

The boat docked and I made my way to the Canadian Cottage called this simply because the modular home was made in Canada and shipped to Tasmania which that makes absolutely no sense why a home was shipped across the world back then, but it was aptly named Canadian Cottage. 

Right next door is the Memorial Garden.  The Broad Arrow Cafe Massacre happened when 35 people were murdered and dozens more injured by a lone gunman on April 28th, 1996.  This horrendous violent crime made international news. They tore down the cafe and put up a memorial garden and pool and have a cross with the 35 names of the murdered. 

The visitor center is quite nice. It contains a cafe and a fancy sit down restaurant, numerous beautiful clean bathrooms and a museum.  I spent 25 minutes before the first tour.  There are quite a few interesting things in that little museum. 

This is scaled down view of the Historic Site of Port Arthur.

This was interesting how all of these pipe fragments were found in the convict sites by the archaeologists but smoking was illegal and not allowed for the convicts.  But contraband will always exist in the prison systems.

This corbel was highly decorative and carved by a Convict and I wondered to myself why wasn't he working and carving stone instead of being a criminal?

All of the Great experiment on Australian territory of forced transportation of criminals from Great Britain to labor and build your new colony.  Tasmania received the most convicts.

I walked through the Government Gardens which are beautiful with a fountain right in the middle which leads up to the Cottage. What is left are the walls and they are still in the restoration process, but a very pretty building indeed. 

Taken from the steps of the Government Cottage.

I continued on to the Convict Church. This church was multi-denominational. This church did not survive the bush fire either and is in full restoration but you were able to walk around in it. It is a beautiful church. There would have been at any time up to 1500 prisoners and 1,200 of them would have attended church standing at the back with leg irons and shackles. There were employee families from the community at church and a drape separated them from the convicts.   It was believed that the only redemption for anyone including convicts was to go to church. 

There were several of these 3 foot statues along the garden of the Convict church and they were highly unusual looking and I have never seen anything like them before?

The hewn sandstone blocks are beautiful and many of them are blackened from the bush fire but it actually gives the church more character.

I continued on to the Junior Medical Officer's House, the Roman Catholic Chaplain's House and the Visiting Magistrates House which were  closed for private functions but very interesting to walk around in the out buildings and gardens of the houses.

These were some of the door frames in the Junior Medical Officer's House.  The door frames were gorgeous carved wood built by the Convicts.

I skipped the Farm Overseers Cottage truthfully because it was up a hill and I was tired and I believed it would not have much detail or beautiful woodwork or stonework in it.

I continued on to the large building called the  Separate Prison which was a round building. When the prisoners first sailed into Port Arthur they were housed there in individual cells, some up to 18 months. If they were exemplary prisoners then they earned their way down into the Penitentiary. In this Separate Prison, it was a silent prison so you could not talk. You couldn't even talk to yourself, if you were caught you were punished and thrown into a pitch black cell of solitary confinement. 

Hundreds of Convict faces are displayed on a large wall in the Separate Prison.

Here is a story and I took a photo of this one because my brother in law has the same name.

One of the wings of the cell blocks.

The Separate Prison had its own Chapel and this was one of the more interesting chapels that I've ever been in. These prisoners came into the chapel in heavy iron leg shackles. Once in the Chapel you were locked in to your wooden stand up cell or wooden locker. It was just big enough for a man to stand up in.  

A photo from up on top so that you can see the lockers that the convicts were locked into.

Coincidentally, if all of the above happened to make you crazy then the Asylum was right next door.  The Asylum was actually one of the newer models back in the 1800's. It was built on the premise that kindness went a lot farther than cruelty with the insane. There was a video that I watched in the

Asylum and the building was actually built in the form of cross. Once again redemption even for the insane was through God.

The Workshops were built to keep the 'crazies' busy and to teach trades to the convicts.  Many things were exported back to Great Britain made from the timber that was felled in this area and women's and men;s boots and other things were made on site.

I skipped the Paupers Depot because I was tired.  This Historic Site is so large, to do it justice one needs 2 days.

 I walked through the Senior Military Officers Quarters which had fireplaces in each room.  I did notice that in the Penitentiary and Separate Prison and Asylum there were fireplaces in an attempt to keep the male prisoners warm. When I was at the Cascades Female Prison, there were no fireplaces to keep the female prisoners nor their babies warm, which I thought was extremely sexist and cruel. Back in the day their was zero compassion for a female convict and her baby, they had the 'Convict Stain'.

 I walked down the hill and walked through the Penitentiary which was the largest building.  The most money has been put into the restoration process with a multi-million dollar engineering feat to hold up the facade of the building.  This was the last building for me to walk through 

The stone and brick in this building is so pretty.

There were other buildings like the Laundry and Smith O'Brien's Cottage and numerous other buildings like the Clerk of Works House and Pat Jones Cottage etc. but I simply ran out of steam and time. 

One of the more interesting facts about Port Arthur was that there were actually female prisoners at Port Arthur but they were only brought there to do women's work like cook and clean and laundry for the Chaplain's, the Commandant etc.  There were quite a few stories to read about the females.  I cannot imagine how vulnerable they must have felt  with thousands of males at Port Arthur and being a handful of female prisoners.

Sarah's Story.

It is very much worth mentioning that the Point Puer Boys Prison was also a part of Port Arthur. The authorities did not want young boys associating with the hardened convicts of Port Arthur so they made a separate prison out on the land point which was almost impossible to get to because of the dense forest. There were buildings here to house the boys and to educate them to read and write and teach them a trade. They believed that these young boys were salvageable. Of course they had a Chapel as well and unfortunately none of those buildings survived the bush fires. The boys were aged 7 to 14. Can you imagine a 7-year-old wee little boy being transported to another country on his own in a ship with hundreds of hardened criminals all on his own?  In the United Kingdom the age of responsibility was 7 years old. If you got caught stealing at 7,  you could be transported to the colonies and they were.  All of these boys as well as prisoners were from extreme poverty so all of them were malnourished, especially in the 1800's.  Most of them were sent from the London area which was full of slums at the time.  It was commented on that most of these convicts young and old were tiny due to undernourishment.  The average adult male convict was 5'3".

It was an exhausting day due to the heat and I was in the sun most of the day walking around from ruin to building to ruin and walking uphill and downhill.  I was exploring on the Port Arthur site for over 4 hours which doesn't seem like much but it was. 

I would highly recommend visiting this site. It undoubtedly is one of the most important sites next to the the Cascades Female Factory that I visited.  Finally the female convict voice has been heard. But the main reason why Port Arthur history is so important is because out of the 140,000 British Kingdom convicts sent to the colonies of Australia and Tasmania over 50% or 70,000 of them were sent to Port Arthur and once again Port Arthur was only sent the hardened criminals.  I had no idea that over half of all men women and children transported to the colonies as convicts were sent to Tasmania. I learned even more about the history of Australia.

A map of the over 100 acres of Historic Port Arthur.