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Well to the poor people who entertained me at 1, 2, 3 and even 4 am the other morning I apologise. Sarah and I went to bed at around 11 pm cause we had to get up at 4.30am to catch a flight to Tasmania. Unfortunately while Sarah snored her pretty little head off, I was wide awake - just couldn't sleep. So I got up, read every old newspaper in their apartment and had a shower at 4am. We headed for the airport at 5am to catch our flight to Hobart.
Sarah slept again the whole way over on the flight, which was a little less than an hour. We arrived just before 8 & poor little Hobart airport makes Cork airport look like JFK! While I waited for the bags Sarah went and enquired about car hire. We got one (much much more to say about that later!!). Anyhow we got our little Yaris and headed off in the direction of Port Arthur. We stopped off at various look out points to admire the scenery, was so beautiful. There was lots of unusual rock formations to look at, but after seeing one or two we figured we'd
seen enough. We passed through a little place called Dootown on our way back, where all the houses had doo in their names. Quite funny, so you can see a couple of them below in pics.
Next we went to see Tasmanian devils in a conservation centre. In our innocence we thought we might be able to hold them and get photos taken, don't think we realised how vicious they really are. The conservation centre is very important cause a huge number of them have been wiped out over the past few years because of facial cancer. After feeding time for the devils (during which they ate bits of kangaroo etc complete with fur!) we saw a bird show. Am petrified of birds and he had them flying right over our heads, nearly passed out once or twice!
We left there and drove on out to Port Arthur. Port Arthur is a small town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula. It is one of Australia's most significant heritage areas and officially Tasmania's top tourist attraction. Known for its harsh conditions, dark history and stark beauty. Port Arthur was named after Van Diemen's Land lieutenant governor George
Arthur. The settlement started as a timber station in 1830; it is best known for being a penal colony. From 1833, until 1850s, it was a destination for the hardest of convicted British criminals, those who were secondary offenders having re-offended after their arrival in Australia. Rebellious personalities from other convict stations were also sent here, a quite undesirable punishment.
It's a beautiful place to see but when you think about what happened there it's all very sad. We decided to bite the bullet to see if any of our family were transported there, fortunately we can now claim not to have any involvement in Oz's criminal past!
An irish political prisoner called William Smith O'Brien (who neither of us had ever hear of) was kept there but he had his own little house. He planned a rising in 1848 along with some others, but it never came to pass. He was sent there with a few other Irish men.
There was a little island off Port Arthur where they kept young boys, who could be as young as 8 who were picked up in the slums in England. They tried to keep them seperate from the older
men in the hope that they'd remain uncorrupted. There was also an island which was used as the graveyard.
Sadly there's also a more recent event in the troubled history of Port Arthur. This explains it:
"The Port Arthur massacre of 28 April 1996 was a killing spree which claimed 35 lives and 37 wounded mainly at the historic Port Arthur prison colony, a popular tourist site in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia. Martin Bryant, a 28-year-old from New Town, eventually pleaded guilty to the crimes and was given 35 life sentences without possibility of parole. He is now interned in HM Prison Risdon. The Port Arthur tourist site reopened a few weeks later, and since then a new restaurant has been built. The former Broad Arrow Cafe has been converted into a "place for quiet reflection", and the surrounding grounds converted into a memorial garden. The staff of Port Arthur do not like to talk about the event and prefer to concentrate on the site's rich cultural history. The massacre at Port Arthur created a kinship with the Scottish town of Dunblane, which had suffered a similar event, the Dunblane massacre, only weeks previously. The two communities exchanged items
to place at their respective memorials."
We walked around the gardens and it did feel a little eerie to be there, so sad. We'd never heard anything of it, which is wierd because Dunblane happened the same year and we all remember that. It was a very tragic note to leave Port Arthur on.
We drove back to Hobart and checked into our hostel.
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