Advertisement
Published: December 14th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Port Arthur was a convict settlment in from 1830 to 1877. Most of the convicts were sent to the Island from England, some were sent from Ireland, even north America. Some were sent for suspision of theft, others for more serious crimes. Some were very young, and some very old.
The historic site of Port Arthur contains 30 or more buildings that made up the original settlement. There was a hospital, church, officers quarters, and insane asylm, a guard tower and more. All the structures except for the insane aslym (built later) was constructed by convict labor. There were many very sad stories about the fate of many prisoners. Prisoners that diobeyed officers were tied to a triangle shaped post and given up to 100 lashes with a cat-o-nine, which was a whip with nine strips of leather weathered to make it stiff. If someone were to go unconsious while recieving their lashes, they were put in a bath of salt water until they woke and punishment would resume. All lashings were made in front of the rest of the prisoners to serve as an example.
Many tried to escape over the years, but only two were sucessful.
The museum contained letter and "love tokens" from prisoners that hoped to see their families again. Not many were ever able to return to England.
The museum itself is very impressive. State of the art, and really interactive. For people here in Tasmania, can look up your heritage to see if a relative passed through the prison. At the entrance when you buy your ticket, they give you a card which maches a convict and when you go through the museum you can look for his story to find out his sentance and what happened to him. Mine was 23 year old John Ashton who was sent to the Island from England on charges of theft. He tried to escape but was not sucessful, and was made to work in iron chains for one year. I never did find out what happened to him after...
anyway, the buildings were very cool, most of them are in ruins, however, because they used salt water when constructing the bricks And most of the buildings lost their roofs in a bushfire.
There is a boat that will take you out to Isle of the Dead, which is the cemetary where
many prisoners were burried, along with officers and their wives.
All in all about 30,000 prisoners past through Port Arthur and when it was closed down many had been there so long they could not adjust to life outside the collony so they came back to work in the town. The prison was converted to a school house. Many people wanted to burn all the buildings down because of the sad history of the place and all the terrible things that happened there, but since the 1920s it has been Tasmania's main tourist attraction.
Anyway, So this was my last day exploring. It nice to have cell service, internet, a shower, and a bed again.
oh and The critter in the picture below is an echidna and it is very rare to see one of these in the wild, so I was so stoked about this one! Tomorrow I fly to Melbourne just a day ahead of Ryan!!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.099s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 51; dbt: 0.047s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
denise
non-member comment
just me
It looks absolutely beautiful there.