- Starting our Tasmanian trip in Launceston
- The Tamar River Valley
- On the road to Freycinet National Park
- Traveling in the steps of convicts — on the road to Port Arthur
- Hobart and the search for lumber!
- The road to Cradle Mountain — Russell Falls, Lake St. Clair, Queenstown, and Strahan
- Cradle Mountain
- The road back to civilization — Woolnorth, Stanley, Table Cape, Sheffield and trip end
As we continued south along the East Coast of Tasmania towards Port Arthur, we made a brief stop at the Sandspit Forest Preserve. this is part of the Wielangta Forest which covers over 90,000 acres. We just had time for a short walk on the Robertson’s Bridge trail that had some really nice examples of rainforest flora and fauna. We also stopped in the historic town of Richmond, a wheat growing region that is famous for its famous bridge. It was built not only to help get the harvested wheat to market in Hobart, but also to ship prisoners down the Tasman Peninsula to the penal colony at Port Arthur. As has been the trend on this trip so far, there are a couple of “firsts” here as well — the Richmond Bridge is the oldest existing stone arch bridge in Australia and nearby St. James Church, the oldest existing Catholic Church in Australia! By the way, both the bridge and church are made of sandstone that was quarried by convicts from a nearby quarry.
From there, it was off to Port Arthur. This was a town and former convict settlement on the Tasman Peninsula. Today, the property consists of 11 remnant penal sites originally built as a British Empire penal colony for the most hardened of convicted offenders. As such, some of the strictest security measures of the British penal system. Here they conceived of the model prison, where there was a shift from corporal punishment that included food rewards/deprivation and the “silent system” where prisoners were hooded for long periods of time and made to stay silent. There was even a separate boys prison where inmates as young as 9 were held. It was eerie through the ruins of the prison as well as the restored sections of the model prison, the tower, and the model church. We even went on a ghost tour at night and Deb swears she got a picture of a ghost. Time to move on!
I am a traveler and sometimes clay sculptor, following a long career working in consulting. My work allowed me to travel the world extensively and I was hooked. Today, I travel with my wife/best friend to explore new places, meet new people, and learn new things.
