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Port Arthur is located approximately 60 km south east of the state capital, Hobart, on the Tasman Peninsula. The scenic drive from Hobart, via the Tasman Highway to Sorell and the Arthur Highway to Port Arthur, takes around 90 minutes and covers approximately 100 km. Transport from Hobart to the site is also available via ferry or sea plane .
The population of Port Arthur is around 200, with the entire Tasman Peninsula area home to about 1600 people.
Although it 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. Rebellious personalities from other convict stations were also sent here, a quite undesireable punishment. It contains one of the best examples of a working panopticonMorals reformed health preserved industry invigorated instruction diffused public burthens lightened Economy seated, as it were, upon a rock the gordian knot of the Poor-Laws are not cut, but untied all by a simple idea in Architecture! :: Jeremy Bentham based on the Pentonville Gaol model, which signaled a shift from physical punishmentIn society, punishment is the practice of imposing something unpleasant on a wrongdoer. Most often, criminals are punished by fines or prison. Children are also punished by their parents, guardians, or teachers. Michel Foucault describes in detail the evo to psychological punishment. It was thought that the hard corporal punishmentCorporal punishment is the deliberate infliction of pain to someone as correction or punishment. When used for the punishment of criminals or slaves, it is usually applied using an instrument such as a cane or a whip such as the cat-o-nine-tails' once use, such as whippings, used in other penal stations only served to harden criminals, and did nothing to turn them from their immoral ways. Under this system of punishment the "Silent System" was implemented in the "Model Prison" building. Here prisoners were hooded and made to stay silent, this was supposed to allow time for the prisoner to reflect upon the actions which had brought him there. In many ways Port Arthur was the pin-up for many of the penal reform movement, despite shipping, housing and slave-labour use of convicts being as harsh, or worse, than others tations around the nation.
In addition Port Arthur had some of the newest and strictest securitySecurity is being free from danger. In absolute sense this is hardly possible, it is a relative matter. The term can be used with reference to crime, accidents of all kinds, etc. Note that Security should not be confused with Safety. In some languages (e. measures of the Australian penal system. Port Arthur was secured naturally by sharksee text Sharks are a group (superorder Selachimorpha of fish, with a full cartilaginous skeleton, a streamlined body plan with between 5 and 7 gill slits along the sides (most often) or side of the head (the first modified slit is behind the eye and call infested waters on three sides and the 30m wide peninsula of Eaglehawk Neck that connected it to the mainland was crossed by fences and guarded by prison guards and dogs. Contact between visting seamen and prisoners was barred. Ships had to check in their sails and oars upon landing to prevent any unnotified leavings.
Port Arthur was sold as an unescapeable prison, much like the later Alcatraz Island in the United States. Some prisoners were not discouraged by this, and tried to escape. One of the most infamous incidents being Billy Hunt , simply for its bizzarity. Hunt disguised himself using a kangaroo hide and tried to flee across the Neck. For the half-starved guards on duty, the disguise was so convincing that they tried to shoot him to supplement their meagre rations. When he noticed them sighting him up, Hunt threw off his disguise and surrendered.
Port Arthur wad also the destination for juvenile convicts , receiving many boys, some as young as nine arrested for stealing toys. Like the adult population, the boys were used in hard labour such as stone cutting and construction. One of the buildings constructed was one of Australia's first non-denominational churches, built in a gothic style. Attendance of the weekly Sunday service was compulsory for the prison population, critics of the new system noted that this and other measures seemed to have neglible impact on reformation.
Despite its badge as a pioneer in the new nicer age of imprisonment, Port Arthur was still as harsh and brutal as other penal settlements. Some critics might even suggest that its use of psychological punishment, compounded with no hope of excape, made it one of the worst. Some tales suggest that prisoners committed murder (an offence punishable by death) just to escape the desolation of life at the camp. The Island of the Dead was the destination for all who died inside the prison camps. Of the 1646 graves recorded to exist there, only 180, those of prison staff and military personnel, are marked. The prison closed in 1877.
Today Port Arthur is home to many reputed cases of haunting and ghosts - particularly of convict origin. These include cases of cells with ghostly screams and empty rocking chairs that move.