POSTED: 18 DECEMBER 2010

Destination: Port Arthur

ANN RICKARD steps back in time at Tasmania's most popular tourist attraction

Stand in the pitch blackness of the tiny stone solitary confinement cell in the prison at Tasmania’s Port Arthur and it’s likely you’ll only last a few seconds before rushing out in terror.

So imagine then, being incarcerated for days in the terrible claustrophobic blackness for a misdemeanour as insignificant as talking.

To tour the Port Arthur Historic Site — and read the stories of some of the poor souls sent there for crimes so petty they would not reach the court system today — is chilling.

The World Heritage Listed Port Arthur Historic Site is home to more than 30 historic buildings and extensive ruins set among sprawling picturesque grounds. There is beauty mixed with horror here and both demand equal attention.

Established in the 1830s as a penal settlement, Port Arthur is Tasmania’s biggest tourist drawcard.

“People were transported to Australia for the smallest of crimes,” John, our guide, told us. “When harsh punishments didn’t reform them, a separate prison was designed to deliver a new psychological punishment, silence. Prisoners were hooded and locked up for 23 hours each day, not allowed to speak. If prisoners broke the silence rule they were sent to the solitary confinement cell for a few days.”

I stood it in for only a few minutes and felt terror and panic.

The sense of our harsh and dreadful convict beginnings is embedded in the prison’s damp sandstone walls, and to walk its bleak corridors and look into the small stone cells, sends shivers down the spine.

Surrounded by water, Port Arthur was a natural prison. The only way out, apart from swimming and almost certain drowning, was via Eaglehawk Neck, a narrow strip of land fenced and guarded by soldiers with half-starved dogs.

But today most of Port Arthur is far from bleak. The expansive grounds are filled with graceful willow, chestnut, oak and elm trees grown from seedlings brought over with the convicts. The lovely trees give a distinctive English atmosphere to the grounds and offer a different picture of beauty with each changing season.

You need a full day to fully explore the Port Arthur Historic Site. A 40-minute introductory walking tour will orientate you and leave you plenty of time to explore the grounds and buildings at a leisurely pace on your own. The interactive experiences fascinate. Take a prisoner’s card, find out his name and his crime (could be anything from absconding from work or stealing a neighbour’s cow) and follow his journey and personal story through a series of excellent museum rooms for a real sense of convict life.

A 20-minute cruise takes you past the Isle of the Dead, the graveyard for military and officers and their families as well as convicts. Between 1833 and 1877, 1100 people were buried there. The cruise also passes Point Puer Boy’s Prison, the first juvenile reformatory in the British Empire, housing 800 boys at its peak between 1834 and 1849.

Ghost tours are popular at Port Arthur and guest speakers explore a range of related topics. Dining facilities are good and, of course, there is the inevitable gift shop. It is best to have a plan for your visit to ensure you don’t miss anything as time slips away quickly once you start delving back in time.

Our guide John is a local and knowledgeable, but his knowledge came later in life. “For so long Australians were not taught about their convict history for reasons of shame,” he said. “Now if we find out we had great, great grandfathers who were convicts and we are proud of that. We want to know more about it.”

And knowing more about it comes easily at Port Arthur, where the past is brought so vividly alive.

 “It was not all about cruelty and punishment here,” John said as we strolled beneath an avenue of graceful trees. “Port Arthur was a place of redemption. Skills and trades were taught here. Nearby Hobart was the whaling capital at the time, and there was great need for boat building. Many of the convicts became free men with good trades and skills.”

 Port Arthur’s more recent dark past is still too raw to talk about for many of the staff. “So many visitors get angry when we don’t want to talk about it,” John told us. “But we can’t. It’s still too painful.”

Perhaps it is best to leave the Memorial Garden and the shell of the Broad Arrow Cafe as the last place to visit at Port Arthur and to remain there for a short while to reflect and remember.