Tazzie and the convict trail

 I left the mainland and flew to Hobart, Tasmania, or ‘Tazzie’, as some call it.  One the plane ride over, I had a long conversation with a Tazzie native who, naturally, wanted to know about Donald Trump who Australians seemed to think was ‘crazy’.   He was, like some I have met, very knowledgeable about U.S. politics, more so than most Americans.  It was interesting to get his perspective, which was thoughtful, and then, learning I was going to be doing some hiking, stated “You know, we have a lot of deadly snakes in Tasmania.”  What else is new.

 After a short stay in Hobart, I went to Port Arthur on the southern coast and home to an historic convict settlement.  In the mid-19^th century, Tasmania, or Van Dieman’s Land as it was then known, was one of the main outlets for the transportation of convicts and Port Arthur- on an easily guarded peninsula, was where the British sent the most hardcore convicts for very hard labor.  They have preserved there the old convict site which operated from about 1834 to 1873 or so. 

Port Arthur was one of the first places to replace corporal punishment with solitary confinement, though it was originally done to force a prisoner to meditate on his transgressions rather than as punishment.  The ‘Separate Prison’, as they called it, was unsurprisingly something of a grim place-

After the closing of the prison, in the late 19^th century, one fellow bought it and proposed to turn it into a hotel.  I am no Trump as a developer, but I am not completely surprised the place did not take off as a hotel-

Port Arthur did still maintain the convict galley ship for authentic convict tours of the harbor, so I grabbed an oar-

To stay consistent with the theme of the day, I stayed in a B&B which was originally part of the convict trail.  The owner was very nice, tho the accommodations were naturally Spartan (free port and sherry for the inmates)-

 I then departed and headed for the east coast of Tazzie.  I did see some curious things along the way, including these freeloading goats-