Day 11: Kingston to Port Arthur

We checked out of the cabin and made our way to Richmond, just north east of Hobart. Richmond is by no means the oldest settlement in Australia, but it is the most well preserved, and markets itself based on the age of its buildings. For instance, Richmond boasts the oldest usable bridge in the country.

The bridge was built by convicts, and the pick marks from shaping the stones are still evident. After checking out the bridge, the girls and I tried the Maze, while Kath chilled with a coffee.

The maze has two parts, and the second has no dead-ends. It’s actually a simple maze, just very windey and disorientating.

After that, we checked out the 1:16 scale model of Hobart from 1840. This was much more interesting than it sounded, and thoroughly recommended.

After lunch at the bakery, we headed off for Port Arthur. On the way to Port Arthur, you must cross Eaglehawk Neck.

Port Arthur, for non-Australians, is famous as the most well-preserved Convict settlement, and preserved as a tourist attraction. It was only a small part of a quite large system – over 150,000 convicts were shipped to Australia. Port Arthur became famous because it was a secondary destination – where re-offending or troublesome convicts were sent. As such, it was known throughout the system, and featured fairly harsh treatment of the convicts. Really bad ones that Port Arthur couldn’t “reform” were sent on to either Norfolk Island or Sarah Island, truly terrifying places. So Port Arthur kind of become the hub of the system. One reason was because it was hard to escape from – a day’s travel from the prison camp was a small neck of land, less than 100m wide, which had dogs across it – they could touch but not fight, but there was no way through.

We checked out several interesting features of the shore around Eaglehawk Neck:

The tessellated rocks

The blow hole

The Tasman Arch

And the devil’s kitchen

The last 3 represent 3 consecutive stages of the sea wearing the cliff face away. First it tunnels under the rock, then a big section falls out, and finally the whole lot falls in.

Finally, we checked into our cabin, and discovered that we had been allocated an “exploding” stove. Each time we tried to use it, after a minute or so, there’d be a loud woof, and the circuit breakers for either the stove or the cabin – or both – would go.

This brings up a consistent pattern that we observed – the better the place is to stay at, the less good the camping ground is. Somerset was just the best by far, but as the places get more attractive, the quality or features of the camping ground go off. The best place to stay by far was Lake St Clair, but here the camping ground was very basic (not low quality, just missing features due to being in a national park).