Port Arthur

Port Arthur is located 90 kilometers southeast of Hobart on the Tasman Peninsula and is designated as a UNESCO World Heritage site.

The Dunalley Hotel was established in 1866 and is at the gateway to the Tasman Peninsular.

We stayed at the NRMA Caravan Park in Port Arthur while we were there. Stewart Bay was just a five-minute walk from our campsite.

The convicts sent to Van Diemen's Land were often convicted of minor offenses, such as stealing a loaf of bread. One in five convicts were women, many accompanied by their children.

Port Arthur was an ideal prison location, surrounded by water and accessible by only one narrow land connection known as 'The Neck.' This made it easy to defend with a small garrison and fierce dogs chained closely together.

The community at Port Arthur comprised convicts, soldiers, police officers, civil officials, free migrants, and their families.

We took a guided tour of the Isle of the Dead, where over 1,000 individuals are buried. Although I still struggle to understand hectares, the island spans just over 2.5 acres. The burials include a mix of officials, soldiers and their families, seamen, and convicts. Convicts were not given headstones as a further punishment for their crimes, while the others had headstones and were buried in the upper section of the island. A convict worked as a gravedigger and lived permanently on the island in a small shack, with food and water delivered twice a week. The island's sandy soil made it unsuitable for agriculture, making it ideal as a cemetery, as digging graves was relatively easy.

We enjoyed a 90-minute guided boat trip to Cape Raoul. While photographing seals and the dolomite stacks, we were thrilled to be surrounded by hundreds of dolphins. Of course, our photos don't do justice to the dolphins as they move quickly. We were lucky to glimpse two whales and watch albatrosses soar overhead. Our tour ran overtime because we were captivated by the dolphins.