1 October 2005 (Day 26)

While we had been at Port Arthur the night before another 5 people arrived at the dive accommodation – they were sharing the two 4-bunk rooms in the downstairs section. In the morning we waited to let them head off for their dive then went downstairs to cook up cheesy scrambled eggs and bacon and to use the showers in the downstairs rooms as we didn’t have one in our upstairs double. Then it was time to pack again, luckily not to get on a plane yet as our still-wet diving gear made our bags heavier.
We headed back to Port Arthur to see what it looked like when it wasn’t raining. We joined a walking tour, which gave us some background information on some of the buildings and history of the settlement. The tour ended next to the museum which has a couple of computer terminals where you can search to see if any of your family had been on the records at Port Arthur. Daniel had tried to search the previous night but, just as he’d managed to get a terminal to work they all shut down automatically as it was 5pm. This morning they all seemed to still be off and there was no-one to assist – maybe the service is only available in business hours. There were a number of books in the room which listed all the names of the people who had come to Port Arthur, so we looked briefly through those but couldn’t see any familiar names.
We had cauliflower soup for lunch in the Museum Café before heading back down the hill to the wharf to join a brief cruise in the port of Port Arthur. The boat dropped us off at the Isle of the Dead, used as the cemetery for the prison where we had bought tickets for a tour of the island.
The Isle of the Dead is a tiny brushy hill jutting out of the water a short distance from shore. It looks small enough to walk around the entire island in 5 minutes if it wasn’t for the bush, yet, disturbingly, it has well over 1000 bodies buried on it. Tours of the island are strictly by guide only, and you must stay on the roped off path so you aren’t walking over dead people. The guide showed us a sketch from the time when the island was in full use – the area for convicts was just row upon row upon row of body-sized mounds of earth, all jammed up close to one another. It must have absolutely stunk.
Life at Port Arthur had observed a strict hierarchy between prisoners, guards and officers and their families, and this was maintained in death. The convicts were buried on the lowest part of the island, the soldiers higher up, and the highest ground was reserved for the officers and highest ranking civilians at the peninsula. Until the year or so before the prison was closed in 1877, prisoners were not allowed to have a headstone or other marking on their grave. Even if they were allowed to have a headstone, they would have needed to have family or someone else to know and care that they had died and to have had enough money to have paid for a stone to be engraved and erected. Consequently, on the entire Isle of the Dead only about nine convict graves are marked by headstones.
The highest part of the island, on the other hand, is marked with a double row of headstones across the width of the hill, including some crypts. A number of the headstones had been carved by one of the convicts, who had learnt stone masonry at Norfolk Island. His signature was an edging of rope-work around his headstones.
One of the punishments at Port Arthur was to be assigned to be the grave digger on the Isle of the Dead. This was a live-in job, with supplies delivered weekly by boat – some even grew vegetables on the island, although we read about at least one who refused to eat any of them. Given how close together the burial mounds were this must have been a foul and miserable existence.
One of the reasons we had decided to take the tour of the Isle of the Dead was in the hope that Daniel could get some good photos from the island looking back at the Port Arthur settlement, but, despite the island being so small the tour moved slowly and had quite a lot of people and we couldn’t get a good shot clear of trees before we were all hustled back down to the wooden jetty where the boat was already pulling in to take us back to shore.
On the way back in we saw a seal off the stern, but despite Daniel standing poised with the camera we didn’t see it again so he had to settle for a few shots of the ruined Penitentiary building from the boat.
Once back on land we went to look over the Commissioner’s quarters. This rambling building had originally been a four-room house which underwent a number of additions to accommodate the needs of the various prison Commissioners and their growing families, then more additions when the prison closed and the building became a hotel. The rooms were furnished according to the period in which they had been added.
We went on to look over the Penitentiary then up the hill to look over the Silent Prison in daylight. We looked into the chapel, with its rows of boxes –this was the only place in the silent prison where prisoners were allowed to make any noise, as they were allowed to lift their masks to sing hymns. Helen is just mystified at the mind that could conceive of the Silent Prison and its rules. We found the Punishment Cell, with the 1m thick walls and four doors to enter. Whilst Daniel was in the cell Helen also found the light switch, to give Daniel a genuine experience of what it was like to be locked up in here. Of course this meant that Daniel had to return the favour.
We left Port Arthur towards the end of the afternoon, finding it hard to connect the convict history with the serene, park-like grounds and sandstone ruins.
We headed back towards Eaglehawk Neck to take in some of the geographic sights. First stop was Tasman Arch, where a cave in the cliff face had eroded away until the roof on the landward side had collapsed in leaving an archway looking out to sea. Scenic, although not too photogenic as it was difficult to get enough distance to get a good shot. We walked to Devil’s Kitchen, which was a similar formation except that the archway had also collapsed, leaving just a gouge in the cliff face. At high tide we guessed it would be spectacular, with waves gushing in and roiling through the rocks, but as it was currently low tide there wasn’t much to see.
We jumped into the car for the brief drive to the Blowhole. A brief walk first to the lookout then to the blowhole but this one really needed high tide to show what it could do, so we left pretty quickly.
Back into the car again and we drove to the narrow neck of land at Eaglehawk Neck itself and walked out to the Constable’s Cottage and then on to the Dog Line. At its narrowest point, Eaglehawk Neck is only 160m wide. This connects the Southern part of the Tasman Peninsula with the rest of Tasmania. The year after Port Arthur commenced being used as a prison they dug out a shallow trench at the narrowest point, laid it with white gravel and chained vicious guard dogs along the trench. The dogs were to act as a warning system to alert guards of any escapees trying to get past Eaglehawk Neck and out to freedom. The dogs were said to be chained in such a way that two could eat out of the same bowl but they couldn’t get close enough to fight. Eventually the line of dogs was even extended out into the water, with dogs set on platforms in the bays.
Once more back at the car we drove down the road to the Tessellated Pavement at the North side of Pirate’s Bay. This is formed by the action of salt expanding in the cracks of the rocks along the shoreline, causing the cracks to expand and form a cobblestone effect. Finally a formation that needed low tide to show off!
We said goodbye to the Tasman Peninsula and headed for Hobart as the sun started to set. As this was the last night of our honeymoon we had decided to splash out and had booked a spa room at the Hotel Grand Chancellor (using the Entertainment Book!) and a table at Mures, billed as Hobart’s premier seafood restaurant. After the day walking around Port Arthur and the Tasman Peninsular cliff formations we were really looking forward to that spa!
Within an hour we were crossing the Tasman Bridge and headed for the hotel. Soon the spa was running and the bubbles from the complimentary bath gel massing up. As we waited for our last night Brandy Alexanders to be delivered by room service we caught a brief news story on the new terrorist bombing in Bali. There wasn’t much detail broadcast on the Hobart news.
After a relaxing spa and cocktail we made our way across the road to the wharf area and to the restaurant. A quick perusal of the menu found what we were looking for – a seafood platter of course! The seafood platters were individual ones, and we also noticed that there was a seafood tasting entrée on the menu. We ordered a tasting entrée to share and a seafood platter each. Our stomachs probably would have preferred a tasting entrée each and a seafood platter to share! We also ordered a bottle of Peter Lehman Semillon – it was a nice feeling to order from somewhere where we had visited at the cellar door.
The entrée had six bite-sized pieces, which we shared with the exception of the oyster. They were interesting – octopus with a chilli plum sauce, creamy prawn wonton, fish pate with cream and dill – although not exceptional. Then it was time for the platters: chilled whole prawns mounted on skewers (stuck into a hidden apple so the prawns were standing upright); natural Bruni Island oysters with sour cream and caviar; peeled prawns (watery and flavourless compared to the unpeeled ones on the skewers); and some beautiful blue gum smoked salmon; then a small basket of crumbed deep fried scallops, calamari (only 2 rings!), prawns and fish pieces; two seared scallops on half shells and a small piece of chargrilled blue eye which was nice. The rating? Well, there was plenty of seafood, but it simply couldn’t compare with the quality of seafood, imaginative and varied flavouring and perfection of cooking of the best three platters from Coffs Harbour, Hamilton Is and Fremantle. Unfortunately Hobart’s premier seafood restaurant left us unimpressed.
One of our normal rules on a seafood platter night is not to have an entrée, which we had broken tonight with the result that Helen couldn’t finish her platter. Our other rule is no dessert. We decided to break this one too and ordered a trio of icecream to share, purely because we were too full to want to move yet! The icecream was a nice surprise, good quality, creamy and good flavours, and slipped down very nicely.
We slowly made our way back over the road and up to our room on the 19th floor and decided that a warm spa would be a good way to soothe over taxed stomachs before falling into bed.