The Phoenix Tour

Set out this morning early after a pretty ordinary sleep…

Headed to Port Arthur area.

This ride took me through the central midlands. Lots of lovely old towns surrounded by mostly grazing lands.

Dropped into the historic town of Ross.

This is a gorgeous town of wide, leafy streets and stunning stone buildings.

I followed signs to the Ross Female Factory site. 

Not much remains at the site except for a few indistinct foundations and an original administration building.

Unfortunately, due to my early start, the building wasn’t open yet but I did get to walk the grounds and read the plaques with the history of the site. Pretty harrowing stuff.

Headed out, stopping for a cheeky pastry from the only place open, the bakery.

Continued on past more of the same kind of scenery for some time, broken up from time to time by little pockets of forest.

Through some more cute little towns, Colebrook and Campania. 

Coming into Sorell, had my first glimpse of the sea for a while.

Kept the sea to my right moving through Lots of little villages, nestling along the shoreline of pretty bays and inlets.

Stopped in at the Tessellated pavement, a rare, naturally occurring phenomenon where rocks have fractured into polygonal blocks. This is only found in a few places on earth.

It looks as if it has been man made. Straight lines and perfect precision are attributes usually associated with humankind. Sometimes we forget that nature did it first.

Rode onto Eaglehawk Neck. This is a natural isthmus of less than 100 metres in width which joins the Forestier and Tasman Peninsulas. 

It was here in the days of Port Arthur Penal Settlement that a military station was set up to keep watch for escaping convicts. Savage dogs were chained across the narrow strip of land and even out on the water on platforms to deter any attempted escape from the Peninsula.

This became known as the Doglines. The dogs were selected for their ferocity and then deprived of any kindness and kept separate for their entire lives, to ensure they stayed ferocious. What a miserable existence for those dogs.

Further along was a turnoff to Tasman Arch and Devils Kitchen. Two incredible formations in the cliffs caused by constant pummelling from powerful seas.

The Tasman Arch was formed when the roof of a cave collapsed. You can see where there are fractures in the Arch which will eventually cause the rest to collapse one day in the future.

The Devils Kitchen is another example of nature creating lines and patterns that look man made in their sharp edged perfection. A deep 60 metre trench carved from the cliff by years of pounding waves. Now a canal of water rushes into a ‘gulch’ with square blocks that look like they were purposely placed there. This gulch will eventually erode away into a larger cave which will continue to change, collapse and become something different.

It was almost hypnotic watching the waves crash and disperse through all the channels and caves.

Time to move on to Port Arthur.

This was one of my must sees for the trip.

I knew this place would have a profound effect on me.

Knowing its dark history over 190 years ago and recent history of only 27 years ago, I was expecting to be moved by this place.

I was.

My first stop was to the memorial garden. 

The Broad Arrow Cafe, the site where 29 of the 35 people killed in a horrendous massacre in 1996 now stands as just a shell. They began to demolish it soon after the massacre but decided that it would have more meaning to leave a ‘version’ of it as part of the memorial. It stands, hauntingly, as part of a serene memorial garden with a pool and beautiful native plantings. A rustic wooden cross sits at the centre of the garden.

It had a huge effect on me. Why? I didn’t know any of those people. I didn’t even really know much about Port Arthur back then.

I think it has to do with the end of a nation’s innocence or was it complacency? We had never seen that kind of mass violence in our lifetimes. Sure, our history is riddled with mass violence, but not in our time. Not that we witnessed. This wasn’t a page in a dusty history book, with hand drawn illustrations. This happened, we watched it unfold on television and in newspapers. There were photos and grainy film and physical evidence.

It was very real and very scary.

Standing in that garden reminded me how I felt watching it on the news. How we all couldn’t believe it had happened, in AUSTRALIA. 

Some screaming kids ran through and it was time to move on.

Part of the entry fee includes a cruise in the bay.

This showed us the Isle of the Dead, where convicts were buried in unmarked graves on the low side and freemen and officers and their families were buried on the high side with ornate, carved headstones. 

Back on land and I started to look around. This place is HUGE.

An entire Penninsula given over to create a Penal colony.

Buildings made of beautiful honey and golden brown coloured stone, most stained black where they were ravaged by bushfire in 1895.

I checked out as much as I could. From the penitentiary, the largest remaining building and the most recognisable, to the Asylum and the ‘Seperate’ prison, where prisoners were kept completely separate and were forbidden to speak. Ever. They even had to wear masks when moving from their cells to their separate exercise yards or to chapel where they were separated from each other in the pews with little sliding doors.

There was opulence amongst the obvious cruelty. The Governor and Commandant both had beautiful homes and there was the most glorious central garden created for the wives of officials to walk and entertain dignitaries. Only a couple of hundred metres away hundreds of convicts lived in dark deprivation. 

Rolling green lawns, massive leafy trees and manicured hedges spread out between the ruins. It is a truly spectacular place.

No doubt, those rolling green lawns and manicured hedges were not part of the landscape 190 years ago. More likely, mud and filth. Chaos and despair.

It was hard to imagine while looking at people basking in the sunshine on the lush green grass….

There was so much to see. I didn’t see it all.

Terrible and beautiful all at once.