Taphophile Tragics # 12 - The Isle of the Dead

In September 2009, I spent two days walking the ruins of Port Arthur and reading every sign and listening to every audio. I was mesmerised. I am not usually one for being glued to headphones and traipsing meekly behind a tour guide, but just this once I relented, and took the ferry out to The Isle of the Dead. I have book-ended this 'In Memoriam' with two shots of 'the penitentiary', the public face of the penal settlement. This opening image is from within the penitentiary, looking across to the wharf from which the ferry departed. The final image is the scene from the ferry as we returned from our sojourn on the island.


William Mansfield, died 28th February 1858, aged 32 years.


Port Arthur is at the end of the earth. It must have felt like that in 1830, as it still feels like that today. See this rugged coastline. It winds down and down and down ... past the furthest point you can see. Past your own imagining. This is where you were sent as further punishment if you stole a loaf of bread, were sentenced to transportation, and became recalcitrant. They would teach you your place!


The Revd George Eastman, for 26 years the faithful chaplin of Tasman's Peninsula and at other institutions, died 25th April 1870, aged 51 years.

Benjamin Horne, Esq., Headmaster, School Point Puer, died 27 December 1843, aged 33 years. Sincerely regretted by all who knew him.


It is a small island, just a couple of hundred metres off the settlement, but surrounded by the Southern Ocean and its roaring gales, or the impenetrable bush of southern Van Diemen's Land, as Tasmania was known for many years. It was used as a burial ground, and retains that sole purpose to this day. Between 1833 and 1877 approximately one thousand souls were laid to rest here. As you can imagine, a reverential hush descends upon even garrulous tourists, the instant they step onto the island, a reverence for human endurance under the most trying of hells-on-earth.

Social distinctions were observed, and the free were interred in the north-western corner. Several memorials are still evident in this section, but most of the island is bare of headstones as it was forbidden for markers to be placed on convict graves. With one thousand sites on such a small island, no matter where you tread is sacred ground.


In memory of Ann, wife of Michael Gibbons of 21st Royal North British Fusiliers, died 20th June 1838, aged 27 years. Leaving an affectionate husband and two children to lament her loss.

Private Robert Young, 51st King's Own Light Infantry, who was accidently drowned at Port Arthur in the performance of his military duties, 9th March 1840, aged 20 years. This stone was erected by his comrades as a memorial of their respect and esteem.


And so we return, leaving this isle of sorrowing dead to their bleak eternity.

This is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community.

Outmoded GPS

The lantern from the Tasman Island light, now at the National Maritime Museum, Darling Harbour

Skywatch: Frederick Henry Bay, Tasmania

The view from the Arthur Highway on the Tasman Peninsula just south of Dunalley as the sun sets over Frederick Henry Bay.

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Hands

Bitten to the tender quick concave convex curves torn straight unable to spring back; forever branded - a scarlet letter.

A tale of two states: rainfall

Hooves squelching sodden soil lush growth pasturing from Collinsville through New Norfolk while rich loam swirls beneath old Richmond Bridge.

Across Bass Strait - 240kms (150 miles) - lies the state of Victoria .

Ground down by drought for 10 years. Ravaged by bushfires in February. September saw the best spring rains since 2000. Melbourne's catchment area rising to 31% capacity.

Copenhagen must be a mix of both talk and action.

Skywatch: washed from Pedra Branca

Pedra Branca is one of a pair of of white-tipped outcrops 22 nautical miles to the south-west of the Cape Bruny light-house - to which I introduced you via last week's Skywatch. The white tips are the droppings of generations of sea-birds. It was this barrenness, this isolation, this very bleak communing with nature at its most elemental that attracted Hamish Saunders during Easter 2003.


Come! Sit on this bench and ponder the immensity of the natural world. Squint toward the horizon. Unshackle your mind. Imagine that you see distant ragged outcrops betwixt the swell. Feel the sharp southern squalls burrow into your exposed cheeks. Then, rejoice!

Hamish Saunders June 1976 - April 2003

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A cachophony of islanders

... take a warm blast of pipers droning ...


... to that add a wee dramm of fiddlers sawing ...


... confound with a thunder of drums a quivering ...


... harmonise with a swing of lads a lilting ...

... and our couple goes a slinking ...

Visit Arthur's Circus in the Hobart suburb of Battery Point or allow the colour of Australia's island state to wash over you.

Within the Arthur Wall

George Arthur is a puzzlement: the instigator of the dreaded convict settlement that forever bears his name; the administrator of the early colony (from when he was 40 until 52) that saw a tight control wrought upon the police, the government and the criminal classes; and, the banishing of the last of the island aborigines to Flinders Island.


Yet he also oversaw the erection of a hollow wall around the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens that had three furnaces heat the bricks to enable the espalier of exotic fruits such as apricots. He would have been better served learning the weather patterns of his island home and realising that botanical necessities of the north of England were unnecessary in the Antipodes.


The RTBG was carved out of what would eventually be declared, in 1860, to be the Queen's Domain and is tucked in between the Tasman Bridge and the central docks of the city of Hobart.


God was in his heaven on the day of my visit which turned out to be the first day of the Spring Tulip Festival, when the gardens were dressed and looking in their prime, children rolled down grassy slopes and kicked up their heels to brass bands, taiko drumming troupes, flamenco guitarists and the slinkiest couple dancing the tango!


Read this post in conjunction with A Spray from Tassie up on my gardening blog.

The Glebe: a tale of two cities

As one walks across the Tasman Bridge, deep in the commanding background rises Mount Wellington which on my first day was blowing a blizzard and covered with a foot of snow!


However, lowering my eyes there is a ridge running N-S on the Derwent side of which rises the glory of the Royal Tasmanian Botanic Gardens. In the lee of the ridge, on the western or Hobart side of this ridge rises the quaint suburb of The Glebe. Imagine my immense delight ...


This suburb is a hash of about a dozen streets that tumble down the side of the Queen's Domain (1860). However, judging from their Federation styling, I take the suburb to have been settled in the very early years of the 20th century.


Most of the houses (the ones that interest me, at any rate!) are made of weatherboard, but this is not surprising in a state renown for its timber industry. Here for your pleasure is a selection from the 20 or so photographs that I took as I floated around the gorgeous houses.