Port Arthur Penal Settlement

Cartographic Name

Identifier

SITE-PA

Contained in place

Port Arthur

category

Penal Settlement

temporalCoverage

1833-1877

sourceOrganization

British Colonial Authority

text

The Separate Prison embodied Bentham’s panopticon, with radiating wings from a central hall, each cell designed to isolate the prisoner (PAHSMA 33). Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA). Report. Changes & Continuations: Managing Cultural Heritage at Port Arthur. PAHSMA, 2018.

""Emotions aside, I was shocked to see how the architecture and the atmosphere resembled the Manus camp. Like Manus, it was designed as a panopticon, which made the prisoners feel as if they were always under surveillance, no matter whether they were inside their cells or out in the yard, whether they saw the guards or not. Manus followed the same logic, except here the presence of the guards was mostly redundant, and the cameras, which were installed all over the camp, recorded all of us. The technology had advanced, but the idea was the same ... The convict mentality was not merely a 19th-century phenomenon. It has persisted through Australian history, morphed into many forms of imprisoning, each incarnation more sophisticated, more technologically advanced than the previous one. The convict era is not a thing of the past. It is the essence of Australian history and brushing it aside will leave a big void in our understanding of that history. It is important to confront it, to acknowledge it. Grab the rope it offers and follow its lead into the deepest corners of that history." Political essay/ Cultural Criticism. Boochani, Behrouz. “The many incarnations of Australia's convict mentality.” The Saturday Paper, 1 Mar. 2024, www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/03/01/the-australia-prison. n.p.

"The settlement was deliberately constructed on a narrow isthmus (Eaglehawk Neck) so it was geographically carceral, 'a natural prison.' Guard dogs chained across the isthmus created what was known as the 'Dog Line.'" Report. (PAHSMA 22). Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA). Changes & Continuations: Managing Cultural Heritage at Port Arthur. PAHSMA, 2018.

"Arthur had fixed upon Tasman's Peninsula - the earring of which we have spoken - as a future convict depôt, and naming it Port Arthur, in honour of himself, had sent down Lieutenant Maurice Frere with instructions for Vickers to convey the prisoners of Macquarie Harbour thither" Convict Fiction. Clarke, Marcus. For the Term of His Natural Life. The Australian Journal, 1872, p.136 (Note in 2014 version).

Source

Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority (PAHSMA).
University of Tasmania Special Collections.
Tasmanian Archives and Heritage Office (TAHO).
National Library of Australia (NLA).
Gibbs, Martin, and Richard Tuffin. "Carceral Time at Port Arthur and the Tasman Peninsula: An Archaeological View of the Mechanisms of Convict Time Management in a Nineteenth Century Penal Landscape." International Journal of Historical Archaeology, vol. 28, no. 3, 2024, pp. 856-881, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-024-00734-w.
Cameron, P. "Tyereelore and Straitsmen : the true story of Tasmanian Aboriginal survival." Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, vol. 155, no. 1, 2021, pp. 9-18, https://doi.org/10.26749/rstpp.155.1.9.
Cleland, J. Burton. "Morbidity and Mortality in the Convict Settlement at Port Arthur, Tasmania, from 1830 to 1835." Medical Journal of Australia, vol. 2, no. 12, Sept. 1932, pp. 347-350.
Jones, A Benign Institution? Convict Health at Port Arthur (PhD Thesis, 2005). (NB: cannot find this online?)
Port Arthur Historic Site Management Authority. Port Arthur Historic Site Fact Sheet. Port Arthur Historic Sites, 2015.
Birmingham, Archaeologies of Cultural Interaction: Port Arthur and Convict Heritage (2010). (NB: cannot find this online? most similar is: Birmingham, Judy, and Andrew Wilson. “Archaeologies of Cultural Interaction: Wybalenna Settlement and Killalpaninna Mission.” _International Journal of Historical Archaeology_, vol. 14, no. 1, 2010, pp. 15–38. _JSTOR_, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41719775. - but does not mention port arthur)
Petrow, Stefan. “Policing in a Penal Colony: Governor Arthur’s Police System in Van Diemen’s Land, 1826–1836.” Law and History Review, vol. 18, no. 2, Summer 2000, pp. 351-396, https://doi.org/10.2307/744299.
Frederkick, Ursula K. "The Bad and the Beautiful: An artist’s encounter with the image of Port Arthur, Tasmania." Landscape Research, vol. 46, no. 3, 2018, pp. 341-361, https://doi.org/10.1080/01426397.2020.1837090.
Clarke, Marcus. For the Term of His Natural Life. 1874. Floating Press, 2014.
Boochani, Behrouz. “The many incarnations of Australia's convict mentality.” The Saturday Paper, 1 Mar. 2024, www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2024/03/01/the-australia-prison.

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