Historical Australian Towns: Port Arthur, TAS: Remarkable Grandeur

Tasmania's most famous convict settlement, port Arthur, is located about 100 km southeast of Hobart, on the island state of Tasmania, Australia.

In 1642, the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman, named Tasmania after Anthony van Diemen, Governor-General of the Dutch East Indies. In 1856, Van Diemen's Land was renamed Tasmania. The name given to Tasmania in the reconstructed language, palawa kani, is lutruwita. (capital letters are optional)

Aboriginal Tasmanians (Palawa)

Australian Aboriginal people left Africa and arrived in Australia about 50,000 years ago. This was an era of lower sea levels and land bridges between Asia and Australia. Though, watercraft of some kind was required for the distances from places like Bali and Timor.

Until about 10,000 years ago, people could walk down Cape York from New Guinea onto mainland Australia. Tasmania was connected by a land bridge between Wilson's Promontory in Victoria and northeast Tasmania.

Native Navigation: East Coast of Schouten Island, Tas. M. Lesueur made drawing of these canoes 1802.

Native Habitations, Diemen's Land, Nicolas-Martin Petit (1777 – 1804) & Charles-Alexandre Lesueur 1802

With the end of the last Ice Age and rising water levels, the Bassian Plain disappeared, and Bass Strait was formed. Tasmania and its Aboriginal people became isolated from the mainland and the rest of humanity until the arrival of Europeans.

Aboriginal Tasmanians did not appear to be culturally or linguistically homogenous and had distinct practices and mythology. Their tools were the most simple of any known group, which may have been sufficient for their needs.

A hunter-gatherer lifestyle, which requires agility and patience, also needs access to large areas of land. It has been estimated that to live this way requires 18 to 1,300 square km of land per capita to survive, depending upon local environmental conditions.

Knowledge and skills were passed down by elders through generations.

Spirituality is animistic. People, plants and animals, landforms and celestial bodies are connected. Aboriginal people observe some places as sacred.

Because Tasmanian Aboriginal languages were oral and lost, remnants of some of the original languages written down by various European recorders, such as James Cook’s visit in 1777, have been used to create palawa kani, a reconstructed language.

The last fluent speaker of the Flinders Island Aboriginal language was Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834 – 1905). Songs sung by Fanny were recorded by Horace Watson in 1899 and 1903 on wax cylinders.

European Exploration

1642: Abel Janszoon Tasman is credited as the first European to land on Tasmania. Tasman, who named it Van Diemen's Land, did not encounter any Aboriginal people. But he “reported hearing human voices and seeing smoke rising from several points on shore..."

Portrait of Abel Tasman

1772: Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne, a French privateer, spent several days in Tasmania, and was the first European to encounter the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Aboriginal people were described as: ordinary height, black, with woolly hair tied in peppercorn knots” and “powdered with red ochre, all equally naked. Rejected gifts of cloth, iron etc.

1773: Commander Tobias Furneaux, English, reported “sighting South West Cape”. Did not record seeing any Aboriginal people.

1777: (The third voyage) Captain James Cook, English. Cook landed at Adventure Bay, Van Diemen’s Land, with the ship’s Master William Bligh. On 28 January, Cook gave presents to "natives, eight men and a boy".The following day, Cook sighted 20 Aboriginal people on the beach and distributed gifts of iron tools, beads, medals, and fishhooks. He later wrote in his journal, "I gave each of them a string of Beads and a Medal, which I thought they received with some satisfaction".

Resolution and Discovery. James Cook's third and final voyage {killed by natives of Hawaii) (12 July 1776 – 4 October 1780)

1788: Captain William Bligh, English. Arrived on HMS Bounty and collected botanical specimens.

1792 and 1793: Rear-Admiral Antoine Bruni d’Entrecasteaux, French. This expedition was a search for the French explorer Jean- Francois de la Perouse, which had mysteriously disappeared. The French spent time with the Aboriginal people. However, they could not understand how the Aboriginal people survived in the cold as they were mostly naked.

1793: Captain (later Sir) John Hayes, may have travelled as far up the river as New Norfolk but made no mention of the Aboriginal people.

1798: Sealers commenced commercial operations. Sealers and whalers were not only ex-convicts but a multi-cultural collection of Maori crews and Americans, both white and black (1.) The whalers and sealers began to trade with the Aboriginal Tasmanians, trading seal skins, dogs and Aboriginal women.

Aboriginal Australians had no immunity to smallpox, syphilis, tuberculosis, influenza, and measles due to being one of the world's last isolated groups. Drastic declines in Aboriginal populations commenced. The Aboriginal way of life for thousands of years became displaced and disrupted.

1802: The French Baudin expedition of 1800 to 1803 reached Tasmania on 13 January 1802. The French made many illustrations which provide insight and knowledge about the lives of Tasmanian Aboriginal people.

Portrait de Parabéri dans l'atlas du Voyage de découvertes aux terres australes

1803: Colonisation of Tasmania by the British began with military outposts along the River Derwent. Between 1803 and 1853, about 75,000 convicts served time in Van Diemen's Land. A place and system of harsh discipline, loneliness and deprivation.

The first convicts arrived in Tasmania in 1804 aboard the Calcutta, carrying 307 male convicts, some with their families. Most convicts had never been to sea before, and the conditions were dirty, overcrowded, and disease-ridden.

The Cascade Female Factory was a place where convict women were sent.

The majority of convicts were transported for petty crimes but those sent to Port Arthur were there for secondary punishment.

1804: Confrontation with Aboriginal people on 3 May 1804 at Risdon Cove. Original records show that when a large group of Aboriginal people arrived at the settlement, the guards mistakenly thought they were under attack and killed some of the Aboriginal people.

1806–7: Drought created competition for game and the first significant violence. Between June 1806 and March 1807, six Europeans were killed or wounded. Violence and distrust escalated.

1910: John Oxley reported that: "From the many atrocious cruelties practiced on them by the Convict Bush Rangers, they avoid as much as possible the appearance of a White Man; they are however (in consequence no doubt of the treatment they receive) very troublesome to the Solitary Hunter."

1820s

In 1823 George Arthur was appointed lieutenant governor of Van Diemen's Land.

Arthur, Sir George (1784–1854)

Aboriginal women were often violated or abducted by hardened convicts.

In a letter to colonial officials in London in April 1828, Governor Arthur stated:
"We are undoubtedly the first aggressors, and the desperate characters amongst the prisoner population, who have from time to time absconded into the woods, have no doubt committed the greatest outrages upon the natives, and these ignorant beings, incapable of discrimination, are now filled with enmity and revenge against the whole body of white inhabitants. It is perhaps at this time in vain to trace the cause of the evil which exists; my duty is plainly to remove its effects; and there does not appear any practicable method of accomplishing this measure, short of entirely prohibiting the Aborigines from entering the settled districts..."

The 1829 declaration of martial law against Tasmania's Aboriginal people.

Governor Davey's Proclamation was first authorised by Lieutenant Governor George Arthur. The proclamation boards were designed to communicate to the Aboriginal Tasmanians that anyone in Van Diemen's Land would be treated equally under colonial law. These boards communicated visually as Aboriginal people and many settlers could not read or write

1830s

In 1831 George Augustus Robinson was travelling across Tasmania to "confer with the hostile tribes and explain the humane and kind disposition of the Government towards them". Head's of clans were offered a choice — go into exile on Flinders Island, or stop fighting.

George Augustus Robinson. Free Settler “Triton”. Protector of the Aboriginals in Tasmania

Port Arthur began as a small timber station in September 1830, a shanty town of huts and tents. However, by 1833, Port Arthur was selected as a prison settlement, as it was isolated, easily guarded, surrounded by shark-infested seas and guarded by chained dogs. Governor Arthur called the area a "natural penitentiary".

In 1834 young boys arrived at Point Puer, near Port Arthur, originally 60 boys (increasing to 700). Some of these boys, as young as nine, had committed petty crimes on the streets of London. Boys learnt trades like boot making, book binding and stone work.

One boy who arrived at Point Puer at age 12 was William Pearson who was constantly in trouble. He was later sent to Norfolk Island and executed there aged 21.

Plaster cast made by a convict, of one of the savage bulldogs which guarded Port Arthur jail, TAS

In addition to the penitentiary, there is a hospital, a mental asylum, a church, and the governor's residence, all of which were built by the convicts.

The Isle of the Dead was used as the graveyard for the penal settlement of Port Arthur from 1833 to 1877. An Aboriginal midden found here contains shells and the remains of campfires.

One known Tasmanian Aboriginal person is likely to have been buried on the Isle of the Dead.

The Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur, TAS

The Convict Tramway opened in 1836.

Lieutenant Governor Arthur wrote in a letter to Lord Glenelg in 1837: "on the first occupation of Tasmania (it was) a great oversight that a treaty was not, at the time, made with the natives and such compensation given to the chiefs as they would have deemed a fair equivalent for what they surrendered."

Bands of Mairremmener (Oyster Bay-Big River tribe) people often fought each other and were responsible for most attacks against settlers. They roamed north of the Derwent River, south of the highland lakes, and east of the Dee River to the coast.

Governor Arthur wrote: "The aboriginal natives of this colony are and ever have been a most treacherous race", on 15 April 1830, "the hope of conciliation cannot be reasonably entertained."

This clash occurred between people culturally and technologically different in so many ways.

The Black Line in Tasmania of 1830 cost £30,000, and concluded in failure.

"The community being called upon to act en masse on the 7th October next, for the purpose of capturing those hostile tribes of the natives which are daily committing renewed atrocities upon the settlers … Active operations will at first be chiefly directed against the tribes which occupy the country south of a line drawn from Waterloo Point east, to Lake Echo west …"
Lieutenant-Governor of Tasmania, George Arthur, September 1830

1842

The Convict Tramway at Port Arthur was described by Mr David Burn who visited the penal settlement in 1842. He describes a tramway, where the waggons are pulled by convicts.

William L. Watson (lithograph based on a sketch by Godfrey Mundy) - Photographs and glass plate negatives collected by E.R. Pretyman in the Tasmanian Archive and Heritage Office

Colonial Times (Hobart, Tas. : 1828 - 1857), Tuesday 9 January 1844

The notorious bushranger, Martin Cash, was born in Enniscorthy, County Wexford, Ireland. He arrived in Sydney in 1828 on a seven-year sentence for housebreaking. After further convictions, he was sent to Tasmania in 1837.

Cash escaped several times and was sent to Port Arthur. In 1842 Cash and two companions, Lawrence Kavenagh and George Jones escaped Port Arthur by swimming across Eaglehawk Bay through shark-infested waters.

Relics of bushranger Martin Cash - Port Arthur, TasmaniaMartin Cash (baptised 10 October 1808 – 26 August 1877) was a notorious convict bushranger known for escaping twice from Port Arthur, Van Diemen's Land.

Seven-year jacket, with black and yellow stripes. leather cap at right was for daily use. Woollen cap was for hospital. Worn at Port Arthur, TAS, PORT ARTHUR TASMANIA’S HISTORIC LINK

Leg irons and 56lb. ball riveted to unruly prisoners in old Tasmania, PORT ARTHUR TASMANIA’S HISTORIC LINK

Port Arthur in Tasmania, Australia, in 1847. The Port Arthur penal settlement began life as a small timber station in 1830 and quickly grew in importance within the colonies. Ship building was introduced on a large scale to Port Arthur as a way of providing selected convicts with a useful skill they could take with them once freed. Aussie~mobs

1848

The Separate Prison was built on a hill at the edge of the settlement, opened in 1848 and operated until the site's closure in 1877. The move from physical punishment to psychological punishment was thought to be superior, making a man contemplate his sinful behaviours.

"... model prison built at Port Arthur in 1848, which emulated in the beautiful rural setting of the Tasman Peninsula the carceral machine that was Pentonville. There the aim was the reformation of the individual through the application of the ideas of the reformers in their most pristine form. The architecture of the model prison transformed observation into surveillance. Separation came to mean isolation, in individual cells and ultimately the dark cell. Hoods worn during exercise, partioned boxes in the chapel and the command of silence were all designed to create anonymity and prevent prisoners from communicating with each other..."
Kay Daniels' book on Convict Women (5.)

CELLS, MODEL PRISON, PORT ARTHUR, TASMANIA, no date . Aussie Mobs

William Smith O'Brien (Liam Mac Gabhann Ó Briain;) was convicted of sedition for being part of the Young Irelander "Famine Rebellion" of 1848, but his sentence of death was commuted to deportation to Van Diemen's Land. He was sent to Port Arthur after trying to escape from Maria Island.

Daguerrotype of Thomas Francis Meagher, William Smith O'Brien with soldier and jailer in Kilmainhaim Gaol, 1848.

1850s

Patrick O'Donoghue (1810–1854), an Irish Nationalist revolutionary and journalist, a member of the Young Ireland movement.

"The Nation has a letter from Mr. O'Donoghue, one of the persons sentenced to death for participating in the Irish Rebellion of 1848, but who, with the other convicted leaders, was transported for life. He received a ticket-of-leave on his arrival in Australia; but, having broken bounds, he was sent for three months to the chain-gangs at Port Arthur. The unhappy man given the following account of his
sufferings while undergoing this punishment:- "The entire number of convicts at this station of Port Arthur was 300. These were divided into gangs of about 60 each, with two overseers over each gang. I was placed in the gang called the " agricultural gang,' at task work. The 300 men slept in a long, narrow, low-roofed shed, called a dormitory, their beds, or berths, or places of sleeping, are called ' bunks.' There are two tiers of them, one over another-the bunks being separated by mere laths-each bunk is merely the length and breadth of a man-you must crawl in on hands and feet, roll yourself in a filthy rug and blanket alive with vermin, and there sleep if you can. A clean pigsty in any part of Ireland is preferable to a Port Arthur bunk. Having crept into this loathsome hovel, nothing but oaths, imprecations, and obscenity met the ear from the wretched companions all around, and between these sounds, the darkness of the den, and the torture of all sorts of vermin, it was truly an earthly boll. It was summer when I was there; nine o'clock was the hour for retiring to this place of rest, and four o'clock in the morning for rising. A bell rung at four, and you were allowed five minutes to dress, fold your rug, and sweep out your bung. The 300 men were marched rank and file two deep, to a cistern to wash : and here men, with inveterate ophthalmia in the eyes, ulcerated legs and arms, and all manner of diseases, performed in discriminately their morning ablutions. This process lasted half an hour; the gangs again mustered rank and file under their overseers' orders, and were marched to their respective places of worship; prayers lasted half an hour, and at five o'clock the gangs again were mustered and marched rank and file, two deep, through the outer gate of the prison, where the superintendent and muster-master stood and called out every man's name, to which an answer should be given, accompanied by a salute. The gangs were then marched to their work, and each man was at his daily labour by half-past five o'clock in the morning. We worked till eight, and were marched in to breakfast, when we got some coarse brown bread and a pint of skilly. Skilly is made of coarse flour and water without salt. After breakfast we mustered again, and were marched back to our work, where we continued till twelve o'clock; then we were marched to dinner, when we got some coarse broth and broad, with a very few ounces of very bad meat-mustered again, and marched to work till six o'clock-brought to prison again, rank and file-general musters-names called over--stood in columns with legs bare and uncovered (this was the most insulting and degrading scene in the vile discipline, it was quite unmanly)-get some, brown bread and skilly-to prayers at half-past six, prayed till seven-then to school-remained at school till eight, listening to atrocious recitals of crimes of ever enormity-_atter school to the ' bunk.'
"This is a short account of one day's life at Port Arthur"

Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser (NSW : 1848 - 1859), Saturday 1 May 1852

Tasmanian Colonist (Hobart Town, Tas. : 1851 - 1855), Monday 18 June 1855

After transportation finished in 1853, the number of convicts at Port Arthur began to decline.

Port Arthur "Separate Prison" (sometimes known as the model prison) was completed in 1853 but extended in 1855. It was modelled on Pentonville penitentiary in London (1842), incorporating Jeremy Bentham's"panopticon" prison where the warders could see all round.

The extreme isolation of the separate prison did quieten even the hardest convicts, but it also reportedly made men mad.

In 1853, Frederick Mackie inspected the separate prison. Here is an extract of his report:

"The strictest silence is maintained, both prisoners and officers walk in slippers, and the officers do not speak to a prisoner. The only sound that is heard is the striking of a clock and occasionally the sound of a bell...

When out of their cells [prisoners] always wear a cloth cap which is furnished with a lappet in front of his visier, which they are required to draw down over their face, it has two eye holes in it; so that should one prisoner see another by chance, he could not recognise him. In case any man is refactory there is a dark dumb cell in which he is confined for a time. Its stone walls are 3ft thick, and the doors are double so that no sound can be heard without."

Port Arthur. THE MOST NOTORIOUS OF TASMANIAN PENAL SETTLEMENTS.

In 1856, Van Diemen's Land was renamed Tasmania.

Robert Dowling - Tasmanian Aborigines, 1856

In 1857 Hobart and Launceston were linked by electric telegraph, allowing rapid communication over distances.

1860s

The number of men detained at Port Arthur in July1860, 5164. During the last twelve months 225 have been discharged with tickets of leave or pardons, and about 216 sent down under judicial or magisterial sentences, of whom 42 are the same individuals. (3.)

The trial of Julius Baker for shooting with intent to murder two convicts at Port Arthur.

Convicts, port Arthur, TAS, Illustrated Sydney News (NSW : 1881 - 1894)

1870s

"For the Term of His Natural Life" is a story written by Marcus Clarke and published in The Australian Journal between 1870 and 1872. The novel was based on research by the author and his visit to the penal settlement of Port Arthur.

Cornwall Advertiser (Launceston, Tas. : 1870 - 1877), Tuesday 8 July 1873

Truganini died on the 8th of May 1876. Truganinni is often referred to as the last Tasmanian of full Aboriginal descent.

Truganini (also known as Lallah Rookh; c. 1812 – 8 May 1876)

1880s

The Penitentiary at Port Arthur, Tasmania - circa 1880s. Port Arthur had some of the strictest security measures of the British penal system. It was abandoned as a prison in 1877. Aussie Mobs

The chapel at Port Arthur convict prison in Tasmania, AUS, - 1880s. From 1833 until 1853, it was the destination for the hardest of convicted British criminals, those who were secondary offenders having reoffended after their arrival in Australia. Aussie Mobs

Interior of the penitentiary at Port Arthur, Tasmania, AUS - circa 1880s, Aussie~mobs

Fountain in Governor's garden, Port Arthur, TAS, no date, The Tasmanian Archives and The State Library

1890s

Timber structures at Port Arthur were destroyed in 1897 when bush fire swept through the region.

COURTHOUSE AND POLICE QUARTERS, PORT ARTHUR. TAS. Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 15 January 1898

1900s

Port Arthur, Tasmania, AUS, 1900, The National Archives UK

Port Arthur, Tasmania, AUS, - very early 1900s. Aussie Mobs

Studio photograph of old William Thompson in convict uniform and leg irons, circa 1901, photographed by John Watt Beattie. William spent twelve months underground, harnessed with three other men to drag loaded coal carts. There he saw things that marked him for life. Read more

View from Commandant's Quarters, Port Arthur, Tasmania, AUS - very early 1900s, Aussie~mobs

Round Tower, Port Arthur, Tasmania, AUS, - 1907. Aussie Mobs

Port Arthur, Tasmania, Advocate (Melbourne, Vic. : 1868 - 1954), Saturday 25 September 1909

Australian Town and Country Journal (Sydney, NSW : 1870 - 1919), Wednesday 10 February 1909

Barrier Miner (Broken Hill, NSW : 1888 - 1954), Tuesday 8 November 1910

Port Arthur, TAS, Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 23 April 1910

Eaglehawk Neck, Port Arthur, TAS, 1913, The Lone Hand

The Island of the Dead, Port Arthur, TAS, 1913, The Lone Hand

The ruins of the Convict Settlement, Port Arthur, TAS, 1913, The Lone Hand

Convict Relics of Port Arthur At the Sydney Royal Hotel.Newsletter: an Australian Paper for Australian People (Sydney, NSW : 1900 - 1919), Saturday 6 March 1915

Port Arthur, TAS, Weekly Times (Melbourne, Vic. : 1869 - 1954), Saturday 27 December 1919

1920s

Graves on the Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur, TAS, Australasian (Melbourne, Vic. : 1864 - 1946), Saturday 9 October 1920

Photograph - Port Arthur - church - during filming of 'For the Term of His Natural Life' - 1926, The Tasmanian Archives and The State Library

Herald (Melbourne, Vic. : 1861 - 1954), Tuesday 31 January 1928

1930s

Historic Port Arthur, TAS, 1935, http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-714121792

1. Model Prison. 2. Powder magazine. Port Arthur, TAS, Australasian Photo Review, 1937

Evening News (Rockhampton, Qld. : 1924 - 1941), Friday 19 May 1939

1940s

Daily News (Perth, WA : 1882 - 1955), Saturday 5 July 1947

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 10 September 1949

William Smith O'Brien's cottage at Port Arthur, TAS. Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 10 September 1949

1950s

ABOVE: Grim relic of prison days - the town hall tower (formerly the asylum building), lt reveals fretted brickwork, and slight subsidence, but is still regarded as safe. Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Tuesday 14 October 1952

Age (Melbourne, Vic. : 1854 - 1954), Saturday 13 June 1953

A Port Arthur relic in the form of a prison bell (pictured here) has been found in a village in Cornwall, where it was used as a door bell. Mercury (Hobart, Tas. : 1860 - 1954), Tuesday 13 July 1954

1970s

Port Arthur, TAS, 1970s, The Tasmanian Archives and The State Library

1996

The Port Arthur massacre of 28–29 April 1996 was a mass shooting at Port Arthur. 35 people were killed and 23 others were wounded. The gunman was given 35 life sentences without the possibility of parole.