February 7, 2023
“You are vile wretches! You have been sent here for violating the just and righteous laws of this colony, and there is no crime which many of you have not perpetrated. Hanging is too good for you!. You are all devils! You are worse than the devils in hell, but I have got you here for punishment and you can’t escape.”
- Sir John Franklin addressing newly transported convicts, 1840
“He had been always escaping, always rebelling, always fighting against authority, and always being flogged. There had been a whole lifetime of torment such as this; forty-two years of it; and there he stood, speaking softly, arguing his case well, and pleading while the tears ran down his face for some kindness, for some mercy in his old age. 'I have tried to escape; always to escape,' he said, 'as a bird does out of a cage. Is that unnatural; is that a great crime?”
― Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia's Founding
This morning we visited the ruins of the Post Arthur penal colony. An UNESCO world heritage site, the ruins are on a scrubby peninsula about 50 km south of Hobart. The European history of the rise of Australia as a nation had ignoble beginnings.
In the late 18th century and early 19th century British justice was undergoing an evolution in thinking. England has long been a place that was infamous for harsh treatments of prisoners. But at this time different concepts emerged. The death penalty had been abolished. Prisons were becoming overcrowded. At the time, it didn’t matter if you were male, female, old or a child you were all placed in hideous prison systems together. The population was bursting and illness and violence was rampant. A member of parliament described the British penal system as “Universities of crime”.
For years the English tried to solve this issue by transporting prisoners off to their colonies, thereby solving two problems; getting rid of undesirable people from the homeland and providing free labor for various projects they envisioned. But, where to send them?
The answer was to send them to us. The British colonies in North America took in thousands of convicts each year. But this practice stopped abruptly in 1783 with The American Revolution. In 1788, they found a new solution - Australia.
January 26th, “Australia Day”, is celebrated here as the equivalent of our 4th of July. It is the date in 1788 when Arthur Phillip sailed into Sidney Harbor and landed at “The Rocks”. (We will visit this area later in the trip). What was Captain Phillips cargo? Convicts, some 7,000 of them. These poor souls were the ‘Founding Fathers’ of this nation. The whole expedition nearly fell to calamity. None of the group possessed any skillsets one might need to carve out a new world in a strange land. Many died of starvation.
It should be noted that these convicts were not violent offenders. Most had been swept up for petty crimes. One famous convict stole a cucumber and was transported here for a seven year sentence. There are many stories like this one. But they had no money and even if they completed their sentence, they would have no way of returning home.
So how does Port Arthur fit into this story? As you can imagine, with having no skill set and no resources many of the convicts would get into trouble again. Port Arthur was built for repeat offenders. It was considered especially harsh and the ‘end of hope”.
It was also a booming factory for timber and shipbuilding due to the endless supply of “free labor’. For the government it was a double win. They could punish people they considered deplorable and make a handsome profit from their broken bodies. They built 20-30 large ships here. and had a thriving timber business.
You would do back breaking work all day then be brought back to your tiny cell, placed in heavy leg irons to sleep. The next morning - rinse and repeat, day after day until you died or were somehow released. You had no where to go in your bright yellow prison clothes. There was no escape.
If you think of Victor Hugo’s seminal novel “Les Miserables” you get the idea.
Here they also tried a new form of prisoner “reform”. They employed psychological stress to the convicts by not allowing communication, no speaking, no using your actual name - just the number and frequent solitary confinement with no light or sound. The idea they felt was to force the criminal to contemplate the error of their ways and seek to be reformed. Remember most of these people and only committed petty crimes to survive.
The result of this reform? Many convicts suffered severe mental trauma and were often driven mad. It was indeed the end of all hope.
Across the bay was a juvenile camp for boys as young as 9 years old. Most were 12-15 years of age. They were sent here from England in chains for crimes like pick pocketing. Here they were taught to read and write and taught a trade if they were compliant. Then released at age 16. If they offended again, they were taken to the adult side of the bay.
The age of consent at that time in England was 7 years old!
None of Point Puer, the boys camp, remains. It was made of wood and fell to run or was looted when the camp closed.
Much of the original Port Arthur camp is gone. In the late 1850’s the era of “Transporting” prisoners to Australia was coming to a close and local civilian timber businesses and ship yards complained of the unfair advantage Port Arthur had with its slave labor. The camp was closed. Looting and bushfires left it in the state it is today, just a shell of the original.
Today 20% of the population of Tasmania can trace its heritage to the convicts of Port Arthur.
It is a little haunting walking through these old walls. The idea that a place that was known for so much misery is now the number one tourist attraction in Tasmania is more than a little ironic.
Postscript -
April 28, 1996 was a bright mild afternoon similar to our visit today at the Port Arthur Park. The attraction, like always, was busy with visitors. At that time there was a cafe below the visitor center we entered across the lawn from the ruins.
A 29 year old thin white man with long blond hair entered the cafe. It was full of guests. He produced two AR-15 style rifles with large ammunition clips. In less than two minutes he murdered 20 people.
People ran from the cafe out onto the large lawn above. The assailant left the cafe and went hunting. He would kill 15 more and injure scores before finally being stopped.
He was captured before he could take his life hours later by police. The motive is still a subject for debate. Mental illness certainly played a role but it seemed he was aware of and planned his deed. True mental illness rarely, if ever, manifests as violence. Not like this. No, he showed sociopathic forethought and unrepentant malice. He claimed he wanted to be notorious.
As is the custom here, I will not write his name or show his picture. He is currently serving 35 consecutive life sentences in prison.
Why tell this story? Because of what happened next . It all sounds so familiar to us. But it was not 'normal' to the Aussies. They, along with the rest of the world, were appalled and their leaders took action.
“Within two weeks of the massacre, the then conservative prime minister John Howard had brokered a National Firearms Agreement law limiting licensing and ownership controls of guns. Australia banned all semi-automatic rifles and all semi-automatic and pump-action shotguns and thousands of unlicensed firearms were surrendered under a gun amnesty.
"We took hundreds of thousands of guns out of the community and the evidence since ... is that there have been no mass shootings since then, and the country is a much safer place," Howard told the Australian Broadcasting Corp on Wednesday.:
- Reuters
It is important to keep in mind that Australia, like us, had a conservative prime Minister at the time. Aussies are generally conservative and more like American culture than any other nation on earth. They like guns too. They strongly share our value system on freedom and personal rights..
But this kind of travesty had to be answered. And they did.
Since Australia passed its common sense gun laws they have had not further mass shootings since the 1996 incident.
The United States has had 25 mass shootings since January 1, 2023 alone.
As of this writing, thirty-four Americans are dead in those first 39 days of this year.
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