Port Arthur

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November 11th 2012

Published: November 11th 2012

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potterdc

Tasmania

Blue water, blue sky, green rolling hills. The view driving out of Hobart.

Saying farewell to Hobart (and wishing we could stay an extra day or so), we drove the rental car to Port Arthur, one of the original penal colonies in Tasmania (or, in Van Deeman’s Land as it was called at the time). Now, when I say “penal colony,” bleak, Dickinsonian images may come to mind. But no. The Port Arthur penal colony sits on a beautiful clear bay surrounded by forested hills. Only repeat offenders were sent here (so the story of prisoners being sent away for stealing a loaf of bread is actually a myth), and there was a very heavy emphasis on reform. Out of 9000 prisoners, 8000 were returned into society. There was a hospital and medical staff to care for the sick and injured, there were classes (most prisoners arrived illiterate, most left literate), a church, trade schools, and a place to care for the mentally ill. Astounding to discover that in the mid 1800’s, there was an understanding that no one chooses a life a crime – they were thrust into by external circumstances such as poverty and desperation. If you could teach the criminal a skill and give him/her an option to earn a living,

Country Side

Eye candy everywhere. Every day. I clicked this from the car window as we drove to Port Arthur.

it was believed that that would be the natural choice. And it seemed to work.

Another innovation at this prison was to separate the boys from the men. For the first time in British penal history, young boys were no longer thrown in with adult men. Instead, they had their own facilities, across the bay from the adults, called Point Puer. The boys were schooled, taught a trade, and most were released to work successfully in society.

But then there is a section called the New Prison. It was for the prisoners considered intransigent, and begun with the best of intentions: if you are not going to flog a prisoner into submission (which didn’t seem to work), how do you reform them? The idea was that you would give the prisoner opportunity to reflect on their actions and work with their own mind. All prisoners at the New Prison were placed in solitary confinement. Utter silence was the rule; they were never referred to by name, nor allowed to speak. They were allowed solitary exercise, and went to church for Sunday services – but even in church the pews were constructed in such a way that the prisoners

First view of the prison

This was our first view of the prison, a converted flour mill, as we walked down from the visitor's center.

could not see each other – only hear each other when they sang hymns.

The idea was that through contemplation, the prisoners would reform, and to this writer who practices meditation, the whole set up had a sort of retreat-like setting. However – these prisoners were just thrown into silence without any tools for working with their minds, and sadly, many of them lost their minds there. Out of all the penal buildings at Port Arthur, it seemed the most haunted to me, and the cruelest, despite its initial intention.

The natural beauty of the place is astounding – definitely seems to be one of those natural “power spots” where the natural world comes together in such a way that just being there feels energizing. Not only was the penal colony mostly a success in the annals of prison reform, as soon as it closed in the 1870’s, it became a huge tourist attraction. Three months after closing, a boat arrived carrying 600 tourists. The demand proved to be so high that a lottery had to be formed to limit the visitors. Since that time, it has seen many lives, and is now a “World Historical Site.”

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