May 11, 2012 Port Arthur

Took a day trip to Port Arthur historic site - past convict era and early Australian settlement heritage.

Trip takes about 90 minute by bus and the cost is is good value for your money.  Out over the Tasman bridge over the Pitwater causeway onto Forestier Peninsula,  past Pirates Bay and Eaglehawk Neck , skirt Norfolk Bay on the Tasman Peninsula, find what is unique about Doo Town and on to Port Arthur - the historic Convict Site. Doo Town is a small village where all the cabins or small homes have a name such as Doo Little, Doo Time, Doo Not and so on, quite unique.  On the way there we stopped at Tasman National Park  viewing the rugged coastline, Tasman Arch and Devil's Kitchen.  Then off to Port Arthur with a walking our of the site and a cruise on Carnarvon Bay  and walking tour of the Isle of the Dead, this is where approximately 1700 convicts were buried but the graves are not marked and those that are marked are other persons in the settlement that were free persons, soldiers or clergy etc.

There was also a boys convict site which housed boys as young as seven, the living conditions were very harsh and although they did learn a trade such as carpentry, shoe making or tin smith, the justice that was handed out for minor infractions of the rules was very severe.  In actuality the whole of Tasmania was a  convict prison with other areas also housing prisoners.  Once their time was served and they became free persons they could settle in the area, this way they populated the area because the British government of the time could not get people to immigrate to Tasmania. 

Marked graves on the Island of the dead - most of the 1700 persons buried here are in unmarked graves

View from the Harbor

Commandant's House

 

Shipwright's House

Point Puer Boy's Prison

Rugged Tasman coast

Tasman coast

Tasman Arch

Tasman arch

Devils Kitchen

Devil's Kitchen

Main convict area of Port Arthur.

the asylum

Devil's Kitchen

devils Kitchen

Cubicles in the Church

The Asylum

ruins of Hospital

Pauper's Depot

The Church

the church - was destroyed by fire.

The Separate Prison- was designed to deliver a new method of punishment of reforming the convicts through isolation and contemptation. convicts were locked up for 23 hours each day in single cells.  Here they ate, slept and worked with just one hour a day allowed to exercise alone in a high walled yard and had to wear a hood when in the exercise yard and on the way to church where they were put in separate cubicles.                                                                                                               

some of the rules for the convicts

Parsonage

Clerk of works House 

    

Island of the Dead