The Penitentiary, Port Arthur
Today we toured the ruins at Port Arthur, one of the original convict prisons for transported prisoners in (then) Van Diemen’s Land. It was interesting, though somewhat depressing, to see how badly treated the prisoners were, though the authorities thought that what they were doing was humane. This was especially true in the “Separate Prison” which was solitary confinement in almost total sensory deprivation. Prisoners were locked up in the dark for 23 hours a day, and were referred to only by number. Contact with other prisoners was almost totally eliminated by taking great pains to eliminate noise transferred through the walls and the plumbing. Small wonder that by the end of Port Arthur’s life as a prison it had become only an asylum for insane prisoners. Some of the buildings are restored as museums, but many of the larger ones, including the penitentiary, are just the remnant shell of the stone buildings.
We walked around the site until just before noon when we went on a short cruise of the harbour on a boat (included in the price of the admission). Then we went back to our motorhome and ate lunch. At that point we put on sunscreen, and it’s a good thing we did. Although it was cloudy all day, tonight my face feels rather hot and burned. Even though it was hazy the sun is very powerful.
The biggest problem we had today was trying to recharge our phone. I’m extremely annoyed at Telstra. Their help desk service is appalling and next to useless. For some reason their website would not accept my credit card. They provided a number to call, but that was equally pointless, as it never led to any human contact, just voice recordings that prompted you to enter your card number, which was promptly rejected. Eventually, after almost half an hour on hold, I was able to get to a person, and they told me that Telstra has upgraded their system and they did not have credit card access today. Of course there was no indication of when it will work again. Which effectively means our phone is useless until we can get to a Telstra store and recharge it. On the other hand their mobile Internet service is excellent, and has never caused any problems. But their cell phone service and support are ridiculously poor.