Culture and convicts.

A little bit of culture - the Mona Gallery in Hobart - was the order of the day on Sunday, a museum of old and new art.
Never having been an Art Buff, I was not looking forward to it, but it was quite different.As we arrived we came across a car that had been crushed between two walls, well - is it art??
Built by a multi billionaire who made his money from gambling,( he owns casinos), the building itself was quite fascinating. The lower floors were dug from solid rock, with suspended staircases and walkways.


We had heard there was a vagina wall, (but that wasn't of interest to us of course!) but as it turned out it had proved too popular and they had taken it out. Funny?

Anyway, a lot of the art seemed to be about death, or sex, some quite interesting, others over the top, but all unexpected and different.
This one is a pile of gravestones, obviously someone has raided a cemetery, and the one below is a number of dustbins with bubbles coming out of them. This is the least morbid and sexual exhibit in the whole place!


By the time we left there it was lunchtime, and the place was absolutely packed, with dozens queuing to get in, and the car parks overflowing. There must be something about the place I suppose!
Hobart and the surrounding suburbs are built on many sea inlets, almost all the houses overlook water on one or more sides, and there are thousands of boats and marinas. Everywhere there are bridges to join the various suburbs together.

Towering over all of this is Mount Wellington, which protects the city from the westerlies of the roaring forties.
There is a pop festival going on about twenty kms to the east of the city, not far from where we are staying, and a Taste Festival in the city itself. So the place is heaving, not only the locals by many from the mainland too.

 But today we visited Port Arthur, a penal colony on the Tasman Peninsula, almost as far south as you can go in this state. The penal station was established in 1830 as a timber cutting camp, using convict labour to produce sawn logs for government projects.But from 1833 it was used as a punishment station for repeat offenders from all the Australian colonies.
Reformers designed a radical new system to "grind rogues into honest men" which became the model for Port Arthur. This included discipline and punishment, religious and moral instruction, separation, training and education. Many were broken, but some left with trades such as shipbuilders, shoemakers or blacksmiths.
The main building, on the right of the picture, housed over 500 convicts, many in chains, whose individual quarters were about six foot by four, and about six foot high. One side was open to the corridor, where the warders watched over them night and day.
On the left is the commanders house, very plush, and between that and the penitentiary were the officers quarters, the guardhouse and the courthouse.

In a "Separate Prison" were the punishment cells, tiny locked cells with high windows where prisoners lived in total silence, only allowed out for one hour a day when they could exercise on their own under strict surveillance. If they transgressed in there they were thrown into the hole, a room about four foot by six with no light, behind no less than four doors. Many came out of there with their minds gone.

Church was compulsory on a Sunday, but even in there they had individual cubicles, from which the only person they could see was the pastor, not even the head of the man in front. Ingenious! And punishment in the separate prison could mean years, not days, so one could imagine by the time they got out they were completely broken.
The peninsula was reached by a 100mtr wide causeway, but in those days all prisoners, supplies and guards were brought from Hobart by sea.
However as the causeway was almost the only place that any escapees could get off the peninsula it was guarded night and day by fierce digs. Not many prisoners got away, only 12 in 50 years that the prison was in use, and most were recaptured soon after.

But Port Arthur is also infamous for one other matter. On Sunday 28th April 1996 a single gunman killed 35 people and injured dozens more. Twenty people died inside this building, which was a cafe at that time, and now remains roofless as a shrine to those who died. There were many acts of bravery that day as rescuers tended the injured, not knowing where the gunman was.
He was captured close by the next day, and is now serving life elsewhere without parole.

The whole site overlooks a lovely bay which would be the prisoner's first sighting of the colony where they would serve their sentences, many for the whole of the rest of their lives. I could think of worse places, but not of worse conditions!