Macquarie Harbour Penal Station

Cartographic Name

Identifier

SITE-MQ

Contained in place

Sarah Island

category

Penal Settlement

temporalCoverage

1822- 1833

sourceOrganization

Transportation Act of 1717 and the Executive Authority of Lieutenant-Governor William Sorell, Secondary Punishment Settlements (1822)
Transportation system and Assignment Regulations
Governor George Arthur’s Penal Code (1824-1830s)

text

"Sarah Island, situate at the south-east corner of the harbour, is long and low. The commandant's house was built in the centre, having the chaplain's house and barracks between it and the gaol .The hospital was on the west shore, and in a line with it lay the two penitentiaries. Lines of loft palisades round the settlement, giving it the appearance of a fortified town. These palisades were built for the purpose of warding off the terrific blasts of wind, which, shrieking through the long and narrow bay as through the keyhole of a door, had in former times tore off roofs and levelled boat-sheds. The little town was set, as it were, in defiance of Nature, at the very extreme of civilization, and its inhabitants maintained a perpetual war with the winds and waves. But the gaol of Sarah Island was not the only prison in this desolate region.” Marcus Clarke. His Natural Life. George Robertson, 1874, p. 93.

"Capois Death felt his unquenchable rage and determination to not remain enslaved diminish like a guttering candle flame … Only the taste of a guava stolen from his mouth and grafted back onto a tree redeemed that long time that ended, finally, when the black overseer dragged a weeping black woman forward … he felt the first spear like the blow of a sledgehammer; felt himself staggering, then a second blow even more powerful than the first. He spun like a skewered blackbird and fell clumsily to his knees. As he tried to crawl away, he felt their waddies begin to drum his body and he felt language starting to drift
away,
words tendingto fall intooneanother an dlittlemade
sen se & thenthes centos aguavareturned …" Historical Fiction. Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish. Grove Press, 2001, p.320-321.

"Some dim ideas we may have about the sweetness of liberty and the loathing that evil company inspires; but that is all. We know that were we chained and degraded, fed like dogs, employed as beasts of burden, driven to our daily toil with threats and blows, and herded with wretches among whom all that savoured of decency and manliness was an open mock and scorn, we would - what? Die, perhaps, or go mad. But we do not know, and can never know, how unutterably loathsome life must become when shared with such beings as those who ragged the tree trunks to the banks of the Gordon, and toiled, blaspheming, in their irons, in the dismal sandspit of Sarah Island. No human creature could describe to what depth of personal abasement and self-loathing one week of such a life would plunge him. Even if he had the power to write, he dared not. As one who, in a desert, seeking for a face, comes to a pool of lbood, and, seeing his own reflection, flies-so would such a one hasten from the contemplation of his own degrading agony. Imagine such an agony endured for six years!" Historical Fiction. Clarke, Marcus. For the Term of His Natural Life. The Floating Press, 2014, p.163.

"The prisoners who are banished to this settlement are generally of the worst description, and such only as can scarcely be trusted with safety in the main colony, or whose offences have deserved the signal punishment which this place is intended to inflict" Journalistic Article. Hobart Town Courier. “The Penal Settlements.” Van Diemen’s Land Anniversary and Hobart-Town Almanack for 1831, 15 Jan. 1831, p.4.

"A succession of murders and attempted escapes had called public attention to the place, and its distance from Hobart Town rendered it inconvenient and expensive. " Historical Fiction. Clarke, Marcus. For the Term of His Natural Life. The Floating Press, 2014, p.136.

Source

Libraries Tasmania, Convict Records: Convict Heritage: Libraries Tasmania
Linguistic Archive: Yale DHLab - ChirilaDB
National Library of Australia
APCA
Bowern Claire 2012 The riddle of Tasmanian languages, Proc. R. Soc. B.2794590–4595
Weep in silence, Hobart, 1987
Julen, Hans. The Penal Settlement of Macquarie Harbour. Launceston (Tasmania), Regal Publications, 1988
Flanagan, Richard. Gould’s Book of Fish. Grove Press, 2001.
McGowan, Andrew. “Sarah Island: Archaeology and the Penal Settlement.” 2007.

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