Part 4 Swansea to Hobart (long post and lots of pic’s)

Like everywhere else in Tassie the weather was having a cold snap…even the Avan Caravan Club people staying at the same park (all 4 of them) said it was cold for here in Tassie.

We left Swansea and followed the coastline south checking out the points of interest on the way through. The Spikey Bridge was built by convicts in the mid 1800s without mortar or cement, and the top of the bridge has stones sitting upright as a railing – nobody knows why! The road has shifted away from the bridge these days but the Bridge is still in use. We continued and followed the coast as much as possible (staying away from the main road) checking out the small communities and cemeteries. Lunch was at the marina at Orford (braving the wind).

Onto the Tasman Peninsula and into the caravan park at Port Arthur – the weather was getting windier we managed to get onto the ghost tour at Port Arthur that night. The tour ran for about 2 hours and was excellent, the best part was seeing parts of the buildings at night with limited numbers of people. The tour guide was very good and had plenty of stories about the people (about 12000) who lived/worked there during the “bad years”. Many of the stories had a ghostly background to them as you would expect. 

We were asked to be the last in the group to herd the strays along, and Jo got to hold the light we wandered around – being at the back  made for some great photo opportunities. Along with the other buildings, the specialist Solitary Confinement building was interesting, and as the guide was talking about some of the experiences here, Jo and I were last to leave one of the rooms and she was getting to the end of her story, I closed the big heavy door slowly which of course creaked and had a light thump…it stopped the show for a moment or two….😁

The weather was getting worse and luckily the caravan park was deep in a gully and had plenty of protection. The wind had gusts of 120k’s overhead and it rained heavily overnight. The next day the wind had eased slightly and most of the rain had gone apart from a few squalls. Going back to Port Arthur the next day we checked out the convict names through their database, and found only 1 Drew listed.

We walked around the Port Arthur complex during the day reading the stories and being amazed at the workmanship still standing – the bushfires of 1895 and 1897 had burnt much of the place down and while there has been some restoration over the years, much has gone. Seeing the Chapel in the Solitary Confinement building during the day was also sad, no speaking and the photo doesn’t show it, but there are cubicles in there where men could not see who was in front of you, beside or behind you – solitary meant solitary in all ways.

Quite a few of the convict stories included the repeat offenders activities, and the fact that some men would simply murder another man (who was seemingly picked at random) to be tried and sentenced to death themselves to get out. Other stories included kids as young as 7 being deported to here as well. Unfortunately there are not too many stories of successful rehabilitation and seeing the difference in conditions between the government people and families and the convict life was not unexpected but sad nonetheless.

From Port Arthur we went to the coal mining location on the other side of the peninsula. Coal was found by a surveyor who simply stumbled across coal in a gully.  This place was about the same time as Port Arthur and during the convict time it had around 600 convicts working there supervised by 120 military men and their families. The convicts who came for the mining apparently were the worst of the worst and were there for hard labour. If they got into trouble they were locked away in solitary confinement underground. The government gave up on the idea after a while because the coal was (apparently) poor quality and they closed it down for that reason, plus the excessive immorality amongst the convicts (many of the them were convicted of murders and rape, and there were no women around…)

We headed into Hobart, and with the weather still windy and showery decided to give ourselves a break from the camper and booked into a caravan park cabin for a few nights. Checking in and parking the camper we headed to Richmond to check out the oldest bridge in Australia – 200 years this year. In the middle of town this bridge is two lanes wide plus walkways and still carries the full load of traffic on it today. It doesn’t need much maintenance  – even today!

Still here? leave a smile so I know someone reads them!