Eagle Hawkes Neck and Port Arthur

Cloud free, clear days are hard to come by in Hobart, but today we were blessed. So up and early we go into the cars and drove in convoy to Eagle Hawkes Neck first, then Port Arthur.

The roads were all windy and twisty as per Tasmanian roads and roadkill plentiful. Sadly, we were the contributors to roadkill today. :( The girls and I were "slightly" traumatise with me running over a poor innocent Bluetounge lizard who thought it prudent to cross a super busy highway...in the middle of the day! The crunch under wheels was NOT a pleasant sound ! We prayed that Heavenly Father and the lizard would forgive us for the little oops.

Eagle Hawkes Neck

Eagle Hawkes Neck was full of tourists like us. In fact, we were "stalked" by no less than FOUR buses full of tourists. The "neck" was truly spectacular! The "neck" is a narrow spit of land that in the convict days, a string of dogs were tied - to ravage the prisoners if they chose to escape. We jostled with the tourists to get into a good position for photos and we giggled over some of their silly behaviours.

Silly tourist !



The Blowholes..in action!

 Mother nature is so clever. The blowholes were so cleverly created and although the swell was not huge enough to produce significant "woosh" it was still fun to see.

Around the corner was a place called "The Devil's Kitchen". Wow factor! Around from that was a tiny little "suburb" of sorts (population was less than 100 so do I call it a suburb?) that was called Doo. Every house in the area was given a "Doo" name like : Doo-Little, Doo-I-Give-A-Doo?, XanaDoo, Just Doo It, She'll Doo, Rum Doo, Doo-lishus (cafe)...Cute.


Devil's Kitchen



Port Arthur was bustling. People poured out of the numerous buses and cars rolled in. We estimated at its peak, there would have been close to 1500 people ! Thankfully it was a huge place and so it wasn't really a big issue. It made my heart smile knowing that so many people were interested in our history. :)

Our tour guide was an elderly gentleman called Tom. He had a HUGE BOOMING VOICE and he eloquently gave us some very interesting facts and figures of some of the more prominent buildings as well as an overview of the convicts and their lives. He was a very knowledgeable man.

Once were were "let loose" we walked, and walked and walked around each building reading the interesting placards and noting the more notorious bits of history. One of the children's favourite places to visit is the penitentiary where NO one was able to see or speak to another prisoner. Even at church, the prisoners were in tiny little cubicles where they could not even see the person on their other sides. Talk about deprivation! SO tragic. The prisoners were only allowed out for one hour a day to exercise and the rest of the time, they were locked into their teeny-tiny cell and expected to work. I think I would have just gone loopy with no one allowed to talk to me !

The corrals the prisoners were put in so they could not see or speak to another prisoner.

Included with our tour was a half hour boat cruise around the bay that makes up Port Arthur. In the centre of the port was a little island no bigger than 2 acres. It was called "The Isle of the Dead" and where many convicts were buried in unmarked graves. It is estimated that over 2500 convicts or the people who were their captours were buried. Spooky tours were being run but we had too much other stuff to see and experience to do that.

I was pleased to see that largely, everything in Port Arthur was kept in its original form. Apart from some "shoring up" of buildings to make them safe for tourists, the majority of the buildings were as the convicts built them. The bricks were not all uniform  because they were hand made. Some buildings were totally eroded because the convicts unwittingly used salt water to make the bricks and over time, the salt crystals in the bricks expanded and contracted which made the bricks unstable.

Some of the history was unbelievably sad. A lot of the "soldiers" who were to keep the convicts in line were quite cruel. Boys as young as nine were sent to "Van Diemen's Land" to do hard labour. It is their stories that were the saddest. It sure made our children appreciate how lucky they are to be living in this century with their luxurious lives.

After a big day out, we straggled home to a yummy dinner and into bed for an early night.