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| The church at
Port Arthur |
Port Arthur
Superbly preserved collection of penal colony
buildings
If there is one place in Tasmania which should
be visited by every Australian it is Port
Arthur. This magnificently preserved penal
colony is a powerful reminder of Australia's
early history. For just a moment forget the
beautiful English trees, the neat paths and the
manicured lawns and try to imagine what it must
have been like to have lived in the teeming
slums of London's East End, to have stolen a
bolt of cotton, or some foodstuffs or been
involved in some petty crime and, having been
sentenced to seven years transportation, to have
found yourself at the other end of the world in
this god-forsaken institution. The scale of the
punishment seems so out of proportion to the
crimes which were committed. It is extraordinary
to contemplate that 12 500 convicts served their
time at Port Arthur between 1830 and 1877.
So here, 100 km from Hobart and isolated from
the rest of the island by that narrow sliver of
land known as Eaglehawk Neck, the hardened
criminals, the recidivists, were sent. Port
Arthur was established in 1830 by
Lieutenant-Governor Arthur (after whom it was
named) to deal with secondary criminals. And,
just to compound the misery in the area, from
1834 - 1849, a special prison for juveniles was
established across the bay at Port Puer.
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| A flowering
gum at Port Arthur |
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of Port
Arthur is that it reflects the changing
attitudes to prisons and transportation. In the
47 years that it operated British notions of
justice and equality went through radical
changes. Port Arthur reflects those changes. In
1830 it was accepted that prisoners could be
thrown together in mass cells. By the 1840s
there was a movement towards separate cells and
by the 1850s there was even a sense of dividing
the prisoners according to a number of criteria
- trustworthiness, health, sanity, and age. The
exciting thing about Port Arthur is that the
astute and careful observer can see the way
treatment of prisoners improved and evolved in
the mid nineteenth century. Here is a lonely and
isolated penal colony with a hospital for the
sick, with single cells, with dormitory
accommodation, and with an asylum for the
insane.
The convicts built simple wooden huts to
protect themselves and their guards against the
harsh, wet weather on the Peninsula. There are
no remains of this early settlement. During
these early years the convicts worked under
appalling conditions. Their main tasks were to
cut timber and to establish brick making and
stone quarrying facilities.
By 1833 the convicts had completed a barracks
on the hill behind where the Guard Tower and
Tower Cottage now stand. This site has been
excavated in recent times and large numbers of
clay pipes, fragments of slate pencils and old
slates (presumably from some kind of convict
school) have been uncovered.
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| The main
prison (Flour Mill/Penitentiary)
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This ruin is the oldest of the buildings at
Port Arthur. The major prison, known as the
Penitentiary, which is located on the waterfront
directly across from the car park, was reputedly
the largest building in Australia when it was
completed in 1844. It was originally built as a
huge granary and flour mill but, after a decade,
was converted to house prisoners transferred
from Norfolk Island. The original construction
of the building was completed by tradesmen
convicts who were supervised by the Royal
Engineers and directed by the millwright
Alexander Clark. The mill was originally powered
by a huge 24 man treadmill - surely one of the
most demeaning and arduous forms of punishment
ever invented.
The conversion to a Penitentiary reflected
the current thinking (see the section on the
Model Prison below) on penal institutions. This
huge building, which is 75 m long and 4 storeys
high, had the two lower storeys converted into
136 single cells. There were also dormitories
which housed 513 prisoners.
When the penal colony was closed down in 1877
the Penitentiary became one of Port Arthur's
major tourist attractions however it became
neglected and a bushfire in 1897 destroyed all
the timber in the building. Today the walkways
in the building offer a fascinating insight into
the lifestyle of the convicts. It is still
possible to see the iron hooks in the walls
where the hammocks were slung each night and the
narrow ventilation ducts which were the only
source of air. It is hard not to marvel at the
inhumanity which would incarcerate a man in a
cell which is only 135 cm across. It is
interesting that official visitors in the 1850s
and 1860s were shown the Penitentiary as a model
of the colony's modernity.
Things to see:
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The Model Prison
Across Settlement Creek and next to the Asylum
is the building known as the Model Prison which
was built in 1848 and reflects the thinking
about penal institutions at the time. In the
early 1840s a sense of radicalism had entered
the building of gaols in England and famous
institutions like Pentonville had been built
with exercise yards and separate cells. There
was a fashionable philosophy which basically
argued that isolation and separation would
produce reflectiveness. This, in turn, it was
argued, would lead the prisoner to think about
his crime and become repentant. There was also a
component which said that a person unable to
communicate to other human beings will be broken
far more quickly by silence than by any other
form of punishment.
The Model Prison, which was designed by the
Royal Engineers and built with convict labour,
is based on the model of Pentonville Gaol in
London. The thinking behind the building is that
of William Crawford and Joshua Jebb who argued
that prisoners should be given separate cells,
that they should be called by number and not by
name, that total silence should be maintained,
that head masks should be worn in the exercise
yards and that when in church they should be
separated by individual boxes. It is said that
even the warders wore slippers and communicated
by hand signals.
The Church and Government Cottage
Another impressive building in the complex is
the church which stands on the hill next to the
Government Cottage looking down across Masons
Cove towards the Isle of the Dead. This famous
landmark was built around 1836-37 and was
probably based on a design by the Deputy
Commissariat Officer, Thomas Lempriere, and the
convict architect, Henry Laing. It was never
named nor consecrated. By the 1840s it was an
elaborate building with a wooden spire
(reputedly painted to look like stones), stone
spinarets, sandstone and timber fittings, a peal
of eight bells, and enough room to hold 1000
convicts and 200 officials. The wooden spire was
blown down the year before the colony was
closed. The church continued to operate for some
years until, in 1884, it was seriously damaged
by fire. The State Government took it over in
1913 and since then the ruins have been
partially rebuilt and stabilised.
Today we can only guess at the opulence which
characterised this section of the colony. We
know from old drawings that the gardens which
stretched down the hill in front of the
Government Cottage were elaborate, laid out with
rococo precision, and tended by convict
gardeners.
Soon after the establishment of Port Arthur
the convicts built a 'neat little cottage' for
the Commandant, Charles O'Hara Booth. Over the
years, due to pressures resulting from the size
of the families of the various Commandants, the
building has been greatly modified. Wings were
added to house the large family of Commandant
William Champ who supervised the colony between
1844-48 and in 1851 an attractive stone gateway
(still in evidence) was added. The 'cottage',
with its superb gardens, its interesting
antiques and its magnificent view over the
harbour is a stark reminder of the differences
which existed between the prisoners and their
guards.
Guard Tower and Military Complex
Next to the Commandant's House is the Guard
Tower and Military Complex, perhaps the most
architecturally sophisticated building at Port
Arthur. This building, now in ruins, was the
third military complex built at the colony. The
first, a timber building, was replaced in 1841
by a brick structure which, in turn, was
replaced by this two storey barracks which was
completed in 1847. The most prominent remnant of
a building is the Guard Tower which was built in
1836 with stones specially shaped by the teenage
convicts at Point Puer.
Tower Cottage and Smith O'Brien's Cottage
On the hill behind the Guard Tower is Tower
Cottage and nearby is Smith O'Brien's Cottage, a
converted stable which takes its name from the
fact that for three months in 1850 the Irish
rebel, William Smith O'Brien, who had been
transported for rebelling against British rule,
was housed here. It is a comment on the politics
of the time that Smith O'Brien, although
sentenced and transported, was recognised as a
'special case' and separated from the other
convicts. He was released as a ticket of leave
man later in 1850 and lived in Tasmania until
1856 when, granted a free pardon, he returned to
Ireland.
On the hill below Smith O'Brien's cottage are
the substantial ruins of the colony's Hospital
which was built in 1842 and once housed up to 80
ill convicts. It is a reminder that Port Arthur
was, for a time, at the forefront of what was
regarded as 'humane' treatment of prisoners.
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| The view from
the Hospital |
The Hospital and the Asylum
From the walls of the Hospital (there are a
number of walkways around the building) the
handsome Asylum building (1867) can be seen
below. It was the last major building at Port
Arthur and as such is radically different from
the buildings constructed in the 1830s and
1840s. It is more 'modern' than the hospital and
was capable of housing 100 mentally ill patients
at a time. It has been converted to the major
museum on the site and has displays which
provide the visitor with additional information
on the penal colony and its inhabitants.
The great challenge for the visitor to Port
Arthur is to try and conceptualise what the
settlement was like in the 1850s and 1860s.
Anthony Trollope has left us a rather glowing
description of a place which has 'the appearance
of a large, well-built, clean village, with
various factories, breweries, and the like'.
This is not an over-romanticised view. There is
a photograph of the settlement which dates from
1860 and shows an extensive wharf in front of
the Penitentiary and the hill where now only the
ruins of the old Hospital, Smith O'Brien's
Cottage and Commandant's House stand, is as
densely housed as Battery Point in Hobart. It is
also hard to imagine that by the 1850s Port
Arthur was a remarkably self-sufficient
settlement and that the convicts were involved
in industries as diverse as ship building,
growing vegetables, making shoes and boots,
manufacturing clothing, making bricks and
cutting and processing timber. It is easy to
forget that this was one of the largest convict
colonies in Australia and that, as such, it
provided all the facilities of a large village.
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| The ferry
from Port Arthur to the Island of the
Dead |
Isle of the Dead
Most visitors to Port Arthur include the ferry
trip across to the Isle of the Dead as part of
their itinerary. The island was originally name
Opossum Island after a vessel, the Opossum,
sought shelter near the island in 1827. It
became the burial place for Port Arthur in 1831
(only months after the establishment of the
settlement) and almost immediately was divided
into free settler and convict burial grounds. At
this time it was known simply as Dead Island.
The first detailed record of the island and
its history was published in 1845 by the Rev
John Manton. Titled The Isle of the Dead: or the
Burial-Place at Port Arthur the pamphlet recalls
how Manton chose and named the place.
'It fell to my lot to be the first Minister
of the Gospel appointed to preach the word of
life to these degraded outcasts. With what
success that word has been declared by the
Ministers of the Wesleyan Connexion, who have
laboured among them from year to year, the great
day alone will unfold. Disease and death soon
made their inroads among us; so it was necessary
some suitable spot should be selected, where to
deposit the earthly remains of the departed. In
the spacious bay, on the verge of which the
settlement is situated, at the distance of a
mile, stands a lovely little island, about half
a mile in circumference at the water's edge.
This, it appeared to me, would be a secure and
undisturbed resting-place, where the departed
prisoners might lie together until the morning
of the resurrection. It was accordingly fixed
upon, and called, 'The Isle of the Dead'.'
Over the years a total of 1769 convicts and
180 free persons (most of them military
personnel) were buried on the island. There was
a plan to leave the convicts graves unmarked but
by 1854 there were headstones on some of the
convict graves.
There is a superb book on the island and its
history titled The Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur
by Richard Lord. It details all the graves on
the island and Lord's assiduous research has
provided marvellous pen portraits of the people
who ended their days at Port Arthur and were
buried on the island.
Perhaps the most interesting story recounted
in this fascinating book (it is available from
the main shop at Port Arthur) is that of John
Barron, who was the island's grave digger for
nearly twenty years. He would be almost
forgotten had he not met the noted English
novelist Anthony Trollope in 1873. In his book
Australia and New Zealand Trollope recounts the
meeting.
'But of all the men the most singular in his
fate was another Irishman, one Barron, who lived
in a little island all alone; and of all the
modes of life into which such a man might fall,
surely his was the most wonderful. To the extent
of the island he was no prisoner at all, but
might wander whither he liked, might go to bed
when he pleased, and get up when he pleased,
might bathe and catch fish or cultivate his
little flower garden - and was in very truth
monarch of all he surveyed. Twice a week his
rations were brought to him, and in his disposal
of them no one interfered with him. He surveyed
nothing but graves. All who died at Port Arthur,
whether convicts or free, are buried there, and
he had the task of burying them. He digs his
graves, not fitfully and by hurried task-work,
but with thoughtful precision - having one
always made for a Roman Catholic, and one for a
Protestant inmate.'
A visit to the Isle of the Dead is an
important part of any detailed visit to Port
Arthur.
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| The Coastline
at Remarkable Cave |
Remarkable Cave
A less essential, but no less fascinating, part
of a visit to Port Arthur is a visit to
Remarkable Cave which lies 6 km beyond the
historic site.
Apart from the interest of Remarkable Cave
the journey out to the cave offers views across
some of the most dramatic coastal scenery in
Tasmania. The view from Safety Cove across Port
Arthur to Budge Head, Resolution Point, Yankee
Rock, Cape Pillar and Tasman Island (with its
lonely lighthouse) is simply breathtaking.
Remarkable Cave itself is not really a cave.
It is actually more like a huge tub which has
been formed by the collapse of the walls of the
cliffs which has produced a situation where the
cave including its sandy floor have been
trapped. The view from Remarkable Cave along the
rugged coastline to Cape Raoul is also
spectacular and dramatic.
