December 30, 2025 Port Arthur, Tasmania

We anchored at Mason Cove to visit Port Arthur, Tasmania, arriving shortly before 8 a.m. As the crow flies it is only 40 kilometres from Hobart.

The skies were overcast all day. At 7 a.m. temperature was 15°C, humidity 80% and winds NNE 16 kph.

Today’s news there is severe flooding in Queensland including Townsville and Cairns where we visit in a week and a half. They are expecting up to 100 centimetres of rain. On the Australian northwest coast, near Broome, West Australia, Cyclone Hayley was a category 3 strength and has been upgraded to category 4 and it is travelling east. We might feel its effects next week as we travel to the Australian northeast.

After breakfast on Deck 9 in Lido Market, we went to the World Stage to get our stickers for our tour. On the screen in the World Stage, there were ten tours leaving between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m. Our group Red #9 was called to go to the tender platform about 8:45 a.m. The route went past our Deck 1 stateroom and into a crew staircase to get down to Deck A for the tender platform.

The water was fairly calm for the less than 15 minute ride to the pier. After the group of 30 waited 10 minutes, the Shore Excursion manager announced that tendering went smoother than expected and our guide would be leading the group at 9:30 a.m. Another group (#10) was on our tender boat and were met by their guide and immediately started. There was probably a mixup of times with our guide, whose name was Claire. She kept us interested in the history of the Port Arthur Penitentiary during her 90 minute tour. It was a strict prisoner life at the Port Arthur penal colony in the 1800s. Port Arthur Penitentiary predates the Richmond Gaol near Hobart.

Since 2010, Port Arthur Historic Site is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The stone buildings make up one of several UNESCO-designated Australian Convict Sites on Tasmania.

As we approached the ruined penitentiary building there was a line of pine trees. Here after the Great War children came to plant 38 trees in memory of the Port Arthur men who died in the Great War which was 20% of the eligible males. The trees grew to 100 meters and started to die. A few years ago another group of children came to plant 38 more trees for the Memory Lane. There were lovely bird calls throughout our visit.

The first convicts to arrive were made to sleep in the open, their guards and soldiers had tents. The officers had better tents until the buildings were constructed by the convicts. The timber was felled and carried to building sites by the under nourished convicts. The common food for the prisoners was a mixture of heated milk and flour that was called oatmeal porridge. Punishment for breaking rules was severe, including lashings with whips of nine knots made by the convicts or solitary confinement for the slightest misdeed. Some prisoners laboured in the vegetable gardens. The vegetables were consumed by the military officers or the civilians. Scurvy was a problem among the convicts and their guards.

The penitentiary eventually grew to cover 40 hectares (100 acres). The Penitentiary building contained 136 cells about five feet by eight feet. It and the later 1857 addition of a laundry and ablution facilities (toilets & showers) was built using 860,000 handmade bricks.

The commandant’s house and other officers’ houses were built of local sand stone as were the prison walls and other buildings. Port Arthur was a men only prison.

The Separate Prison was dreaded. Men could be sent to solitary confinement for two to 18 months. They and the guards were not allowed to make a sound, communication amongst the guards was by sign language. The most cruel punishment was to be jailed at the Separate Prison in one of two sensory deprivation cells with no light or sound. There were four heavy wooden doors blocking any sound. There was a bed, a bucket with a lid for a lavatory and a bucket of fresh water. Meals were infrequent as was a daily hour of exercise outside, which wasn’t always allotted so convict had no notion of how much of their 30 day punishment had passed.

On a nearby island, Point Puer, a separate building was erected to house and educate young boys ages 8 to 18. They had chores like other prisoners, but after a 10 hour work day, they could learn to read and write. They also could be apprentices for blacksmithing, sawmill worker, brick making, stone mason and other trades during the day. All tools were handmade. The bricks were handmade using seawater. Sea water did not create bricks as strong as using fresh water. All of the heavy labour was done by the convicts. High profile political prisoners received less harsh sentences and some had their own single residences.

The shortest sentence was seven years. Freed prisoners had to make their own way home, but most stayed as free men.

There was a women’s penitentiary in Hobart and other places. Women convicts could be assigned as helpers for the civilians in their homes.

After 1877, the prison facilities declined as no more convicts had arrived since 1853. When the steeple of the church collapsed it was only a year later that the penitentiary closed. The government renamed the area Canarvan, but the locals continued to call the town Port Arthur until 1927 when the old name was reinstated and interest as an historical site began.

Leaving the Separate Prison, we walked to the civilian part of Port Arthur where the free people lived and worked. The Junior Medical Officer’s House was built in 1848 originally for the Commissarial Officer, Thomas Lemprière, to house his wife and 12 children. It was two storeys tall, but over more than 170 years, bit was heavily damaged in a bushfire that spread through the area in 1897 and then it was a hotel in the early 20th century. After 1929, when restoration began, it was reconstructed as a single storey house.

The Convict Church was built in 1836 with handmade bricks and could seat 1,000 people. The eight bells of the carillon were hand forged at the Penitentiary blacksmith shop by an unknown convict. The bells were sent to other parishes in the 1880s, but requested to be returned when the bell tower was restored. Seven of the bells were returned and the eighth has not been found. The bells were played by the bell ringer using a rigging mechanism. Several of the bells were still working so a recording of the quarter hours chimes was made and can be heard through the day. The old bells can be found together in the church.

The church services were for all religions, except during the time of a bigoted parson who hated Catholics. It was mandatory for convicts to attend church on Sundays. They had a separate entrance and sat in a closed off area where they could only see the parson. The parsonage was built in 1842. It was rebuilt in 1897 after almost being destroyed by a bushfire. It then became the Canarvon Post Office.

One convict refused to step inside the church, if the Catholic hating minister was conducting mass. The prisoner was punished for one day until authorities realized that they could not punish him for his beliefs, which caused other Catholic prisoners to refuse to enter the church. Thereafter, the Catholics had to stand outside the church on Sundays and eventually a Catholic priest came. He was continually insulted by the parson who did not like that the priest had the same status as himself, including his own stone house.

We took a path through the Government Gardens from Government Cottage, that housed personal temporary until other accommodation was found, to the modern Visitor Center., with an art gallery, toilets, gift shop and restaurant. We missed seeing the scale model of Port Arthur at its peak. Then we wandered back to the tender pier to go back to the ship on the next tender boat at 12:15 p.m. We had logged 6,513 steps, most of which were amassed on the 5.88 km stroll of Port Arthur.

We spent the afternoon finishing the journal for Hobart and selecting photos.

We went to the Billboard Onboard for Happy Hours drinks then to the dining room. Elizabeth and Colin had dinner in the Pinnacle Grill this evening.

During dinner the anchor was raised and we were on our way to Melbourne in a day and a half. The rain that had threatened during the day finally came. As we departed the choppy protected water of the bay, the sea became even rougher than in the bay, with waves about two meters high. In his announcement before departure, the captain mentioned that conditions would be rougher as we entered the Tasman Sea en-route to Melbourne for New Year’s Day. Claire put on her motion sickness bracelets, just in case the movement in the World Stage, which in the bow of the ship, got too shaky.

After dinner we climbed to Deck 10 Crow’s Nest for our post dinner Caramel Lattes rather than going to the Library Cafe. The entertainer this evening was New Zealand vocalist and pianist, Will Martin.

Total steps today were 9,885.