A trip round Port Arthur

I had assumed that Port Arthur was a town, but its a village,  a tiny one, known more for its historical reference as a former penal settlement turned heritage site. A little place with a torrid past, nestling in the depths of rural Tasmania. 

But incredibly, something else put it on the world map; the 1996 massacre in which a gunman shot 35 people dead. He is still in prison and has never spoken about why killed people who were on a day out like we were today.

But without demeaning what happened, the massacre is not what the place is about.  Port Arthur the penal station started as a timber felling camp in 1830, using convict labour to saw logs for various official projects. In 1833, it became a punishment station for repeat offenders. 

The deal was anybody who was found guilty of a crime anywhere in the British Empire could get sent to Australia, but offend again and get caught, and you got packed off down here.

Between 1830 and 1877 when it closed, it was a complete settlement, made up of military personnel, civilians, free settlers and of course convicts. It was self sufficient, making or growing what it needed and generating a third of the economy of the whole colony at its peak.

It produced just under a million bricks a year, all made by hand and used to build the place. They founded bells - and the church bells here are thought to be the oldest in Australia.

It also had an island just off the coast, Puer Island, puer being latin for 'boy', so a youth offender prison, and the first of its kind any where in the world.The idea was to separate boys from adult criminal influence.

Port Arthur was an experimental prison in that rather than just punish inmates: it tried to reform them by educating them and training them in skills for their eventual release. It worked to some extent but also backfired a bit as they did such a good job that they actually flooded the market with men trained in key skills, making jobs had to get in some cases which led to reoffending and fights. Thus they developed a voluntary readmission programme for former older lags, helping them rehabilitate. And that’s what eventually became the welfare department in Australia - the beginning of the welfare state.

But Port Arthur also used mind games over pure physical punishment to break really difficult men who just would not behave; total sensory deprivation (solitary confinement in total silence without any contact at all with, guards or inmates. 

The guards wore slippers - but not because it was a cosy place - used sign language to communicate, the floors were padded and during the one hour a day inmates were let out to exercise, they had to wear masks. No human contact and total sensory deprivation. 

Again, it worked on some, failed on others, and was an early attempt at prison reform, pioneered in the UK at Pentonville on an American model. But when Pentonville experienced a 1000% increase in insanity cases linked to this treatment, the idea was dropped in the UK but still used in port Arthur but dropped before it closed, and was still used in Pentridge Prison in Victoria until 1980 - over a hundred years later. Some US prisons still use it.

The idea was meant to provide quiet contemplation of former crimes but it turned into a sort of mind torture that had worse effects than the physical beatings it was supposed to replace.

Transportation to Van Diemen’s Land ended in 1853 so it was home to aging or ill convicts until it finally closed. When the site was abandoned,many buildings became derelict or sold, and the local community renamed the place Carnarvon for a fresh start. But old lags started to tell their stories, hamming them up to earn a few quid and the place became a bit of a voyueristic tourist attraction in the early 1900s. 

So they called it Port Arthur again, renovated many of the buildings as hotels or private residences, and eventually made it a heritage site, a tangible reference to how this country became what it is now. 

It's still the same voyeurism of course, but the passage of time and the potential for revenue overrides the weird factor. 

Much convictism has been romanticised in popular culture too, with convicts’ punishment and treatment being questioned and abhorred for its harshness and seeming pettiness; theft of a sheep, a loaf of bread to feed the kids, a bit of silk etc, all resulting in transportation. 

And it was brutal and cruel to our modern ideas, but these crimes also had victims, most of whom never get a mention. How did you feed your kids when your bread got nicked, or what happened to your family when your sheep - your only means of income or living  - was stolen? And how could you make neckerchiefs to sell if your only bit of silk was pinched?  Not everybody could bounce back, and in that context, it doesn’t seem so OK to champion the convicts and talk up the ancestors.

They weren’t all poor souls trying desperately to support their families; London was pretty lawless back then    (arguably still is) and many if not most would have been feral thieves who would nick anything and slit anybody’s that to do so, if it benefitted them in any way. Add to that Port Arthur being a repeat offender institution, and it takes on a new concept, albeit still harsh and brutal.

It also shedded it down again today, really heavy rain, which seems to be Tasmania at the moment. But being bikers, we have wet weather and cold weather gear and use it, so we are fine.

We went back into Port Arthur again this evening for the ghost tour round the old prison buildings. I was a bit sceptical but we were lucky enough to get Caitlin again, the same bird who'd taken us around this morning. She took us to some of the buildings, explained their uses and related stories, then went over things that had happened there on previous ghost tours. It was very realistic and quite unnerving, and now I'm back in my tent and its dark, I'm scared to go to sleep. Never mind the animals, its escaped 250 year old convicts that I'm now worried about.