 Sarah Island was the first penal colony in Van
Diemen’s Land, and established in 1822 to punish transported convicts
who had further misbehaved. It lasted until 1833, when the difficulty of
supply forced its abandonment. It saw 15 acres of misery -
the convicts worked in the surrounding forest,
cutting trees for boat-building and treatment was harsh and escape
was nearly impossible. In 1830 the larger, more
accessible Port Arthur facility opened. For more than 40 years the
settlement was deserted until the harbour later saw
activity.
 Our guide brought the past alive with her
sprirted and theatrical account of the about 1200 men and women who were
sentenced or who worked there and their living conditions.
Convicts were supervised by military detachments of several
regiments (up to 90 soldiers at one time), and by a variety of Civilian
Officers, Supervisors and Constables, some of whom were
ex-convicts.
  The convicts endured hard labour to
produce a harvest of Huon used mainly for shipbuilding for at
the time, Sarah Island was the largest shipbuilding yard in Australia.
However it was more than just a prison sited on a wind swept outcrop
of rock. It was also an industrial village: had gardeners, timber cutters,
sawmen, boatmen, tanners, bootmakers, blacksmiths, tinsmiths, carpenters,
boat builders and shipwrights, fencers, bakers, cooks, medical orderlies,
quarrymen and stonemasons, brick makers, lime-burners, coal miners,
clerks, accountants, artists and draughtsmen.
   We looked at all that
is left - a few ruins of the structures built by the first convicts
remnants of narrow cells, heard tales of murder and mutiny and left
with the haunting feel of a place abandoned and of
abandoned lives -for a prisoner's treatment was harsh and
those who tried to escape were to die attempting to cross the
sea, or were murdered by their fellow escapees. Our guide
skillfully re-constructed a picture of the misery and
of absence of hope.
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