Port Arthur penal settlement includes an Historic Ghost Tour

The Port Arthur penal settlement began life as a small timber station in 1830. Originally designed as a replacement for the recently closed timber camp at Birches Bay, Port Arthur quickly grew in importance within the penal system of the colonies.

The initial decade of settlement saw a penal station hacked from the bush, and the first manufactures - such as ship building, shoemaking, smithing, timber and brick making - established. The 1840s witnessed a consolidation of the industrial and penal nature of the settlement as the convict population reached over 1100. In 1842 a huge flour mill and granary (later the penitentiary) was begun, as well as the construction of a hospital. 1848 saw the first stone laid for the Separate Prison, the completion of which brought about a shift in punishment philosophy from physical to mental subjugation. Port Arthur also expanded geographically as the convicts pushed further into the encircling hills to extract the valuable timber.

Between 1830 and 1877 about 12,500 transported convicts were imprisoned at Port Arthur, on the shores of a beautiful bay and set against the tranquil hills and forest of the Tasman Peninsula. Many of the sandstone prison buildings remain and have been preserved. Archaeologists and historians have pieced together the history of the prison and the sad story is told in an excellent display in the visitors’ centre.

One in seven convicts at Port Arthur died there.

Port Arthur is the most intact and evocative convict prison in Australia.

Visit the two most impressive buildings on site, the Penitentiary and the Separate Prison and see where convict discipline changed from physical to psychological terror.

Stand as the convicts did in the cubicles of the Chapel or in the total silence and darkness of the punishment cell and imagine their sufferings.

Port Arthur Chapel

In the furnished military and civilian homes you can see where the free community whiled away the long, dark evenings. Hear the Parson and the Commandant squabbling over the best way to reform and punish convicts in the Parsonage. Wander through the newly-reconstructed Government Gardens as the free folk of the settlement once did.

GHOST TOUR

Bring a jacket and a steady nerve for a ghost tour of Port Arthur Historic Site by night. Your guide will lead the way with a lantern and tell the chilling stories of apparitions and strange occurrences that have happened in this prison in a park, where 12,500 convicts languished between 1830 and 1877. But your guide will not be able to explain everything!!!!!!

Port Arthur Ghost Tour

Since the 1870s unusual occurrences and sightings of apparitions have been documented at Port Arthur. Judges, Reverends, Visitors and Staff have all had experiences. Since the Historic Ghost Tours were introduced on a regular basis in 1983, hundreds of experiences have been documented in Port Arthur's Unusual Occurrence registry.

There are no special effects on the Ghost Tour, but the story telling and the atmosphere of the Port Arthur Historic Site at night-time creates a fantastic experience.

Ghost Tour

Have a look at our holiday to Tasmania where we visit Port Arthur and go on an Historic Ghost Tour.

Port Arthur