Day 4 - In and around Port Arthur

11 March 2023 - Another huge day. I need to slow down or I'm going to collapse very soon! My body is very weary. But not today... Today was my only chance to explore the famous Port Arthur Historic Site. 

I had a slow morning, because my access to the site wasn't until 12:20. I cleaned up the campervan a bit and swept the floors, repacked my messy suitcase, and then cruised to the site. But by the time I had found a park and made my way from the farthest carpark to the entrance, I was close to being late. I had to quickly make my way down to the jetty to catch the boat for the Harbour Cruise and my tour of the Isle of the Dead!

I was among the last to board, but I made it. I'm not very good with boats, but this one was okay. I stood outside, right up the front.

The Port Arthur site was inhabited by both the military and the convicts. One of the trades they trained select members of the penal group in was boat-building, thought to be a good skill for the men to take with them if/when they were released from captivity. In the below photo is a sculpture of one of the hulls that they might have made.

Many of the boys that were transported had often only been arrested and transported for petty theft and similar minor crimes. Some of them were as young as seven years old! If they were put into the general population there was a real risk that they could be inducted into the so-called 'University of Crime'. In order to try and keep them separated from the adult convicts and not be learning worse criminal behaviours, a seperate area was set up for them. Point Puer (below) had a strict routine with harsh punishments, but here they tried to teach the boys trades that they could use in the outside world to earn a living. 

And the below picture is 'The Isle of the Dead. On this tiny island it is said that more than 1100 bodies are buried, most in unmarked graves.

I had booked a tour of the Isle of the Dead. So the boat dropped a few of us off at the jetty and continued on... promising to come back and pick us up before nightfall!

Andrew, our guide, was great. He told stories and anecdotes about some of the people known to be buried here, but also about the graves themselves. Often the convicts that engraved the headstones were illiterate, so the were either copying someone's scrawling handwriting, or even just trying to make the best of a verbal order... There are some excellent 'typos', but too difficult to capture on camera without leaving the path...

And although that trip started the day well, there was a LOT more to explore. Best get going...

The Penitentiary was originally built as a granary and bakery, but was repurposed and reconstructed to house convicts. The hilarious part of it is that it was the convicts that were building their own prisons. Can anyone else see where this might lead? 😂

There are several residences around the site, some beautifully restored cottages. This one housed the Police Officer and his family.

Then I went and explored what is known as the Seperate Prison (the asylum). Here they housed the 'worst of the worst', the criminally insane. Part of it was set up as a museum, some was still in the process of being restored. A lot of archeology also happens around the site with a focus on the colonial/penal past, but also an awareness of Indigenous Australian history.

This bottom photo is apparently a church (I thought it was a courtroom). It allowed the military folk and the convict population to attend services yet remain segregated. It is said of this asylum that if you weren't crazy when you went in, you would be by the time you left! They spent more than 23 hours a day in their small cells, for years at a time. It is where they ate, slept, and defecated (into a bucket... nothing as luxurious as a flush toilet!). They also worked in there, tailoring more convict clothes, making straw brooms, weaving baskets... whatever work they could be given that didn't put a knife in their hands! 😄

I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the site, seeing as much as I could. 

The Commandant's House was particularly nice, and had been set up with period furniture for a glimpse into the life of the other end of Port Arthur society. It wasn't well-lit though, so most of the photos are a little blurry.

And more wandering...

In the evening I had prebooked dinner at the 1890 restaurant on-site, and then a ghost tour. I figured that I had just enough time to race to the abandoned Coal Mines Historic Site, another stop on the Convict Trail. Timing was tight. I had an hour and a half, and it was a 30 minute drive each way, but I figured if I took speed limits as a rough guide rather than an absolute, my trusty camper and I could do it.

So... zooming out of the car park on my speedy way, I came across this guy. He really wasn't in a hurry. In fact, he was barely moving. So I had a bit of a chat with him and explained the urgency of my plight, and he finally ambled off to the side. There was 5 minutes gone already!

Onwards! I got there eventually. My GPS kept trying to send me down gravel roads, and my insurance excess ($0 for an incident on a sealed road) sky-rockets to $9900 on unsealed roads, so I was trying to avoid them. And the site itself lay beyond about a kilometre of unsealed road, but meh... I didn't come this far to not go to the end. I chose the shortest walking circuit which was described as being about a 30 minute walk. Unfortunately, I found the whole place somewhat underwhelming... much of it rubble. Perhaps the longer walks hold more interesting things, but I did the walk in 20 minutes and can say I've done it (or that part of it). If I ever come back I'll take a longer walk and see if it gets better.

I raced back to the main site (no echidna's this time) just in time to get changed into the only set of 'nice' clothes I brought with me, and was only only 5 minutes late for my restaurant booking! I didn't take food photos, but it was a lovely meal. The deal I had paid for allowed 2 courses, chosen from entree, main, and desert, and a glass of wine. The house white was a terrible Chardonnay, but then I ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc to wash it down. I had the Crispy Marion Bay Chicken Breast as a main - yum but too much. I couldn't finish. But of course I had room for a small dessert! None of the dessert options actually appealed wildly, so I just chose a meringue nest filled with whipped cream with a hint of vanilla pod, and fresh mango and berries. I was stuffed full! I was glad I had 45 minutes to recover before the ghost tour!

The ghost tour itself was quite fun. I didn't see any ghosts, and nothing 'other-worldly' appeared on my photos, but our tour guide had a lot of knowledge and told many stories about souls that may still linger following their demise. Some stories were funny, some sad, and many gruesome. The church was particularly photogenic at that time in the evening, as was the Milky Way. We went through one of the houses in the dark (our group had three lanterns between us, but we only took one when we went inside). We explored the asylum, and lastly visited the penitentiary. I actually did get spooked a couple of times, especially in the old Parsonage. I'll let the photos tell the story...

After the tour I headed back to the camp. By then it was after 10pm. I got there without knowingly colliding with any of the local nocturnal creatures thereabouts. If the amount of warning signs and dead animals is anything to go by, it is a very common occurrence. I have never seen so much road-kill anywhere in the world! I'm surprised that there is still remaining populations of kangaroos, wallabies, pademelons, and possums given the amount that had met their demise on the roads! 

My last challenge for the evening was to reverse the van into my site without taking out the tree above, the couple in a tent beside, and the blackberry-covered fence on the other side. I got it in two goes (I made contact with the tree above on the first attempt, not the couple in the tent 😆), but I felt like I woke up the whole bloody camp with my diesel truck chugging away at that hour.

After another huge day I fell (climbed) into bed again, completely knackered.