How Doo…?!

That will make sense, well sort of, if you read on! The day dawned dry and clear, and I began the day by sitting for a few minutes and enjoying the beach accessed from the property where I stayed the night.

En route to my main destination for the day, I stopped to take in some scenic views and coastline formations. These included a lookout over Pirate’s Bay, which was stunning, but alas the double-recommended coffee van was not there!

Next stop was to see a large blowhole, but the tide wasn’t high enough for it to be very active, a huge natural rock arch, the Tasman Arch, and something named. The Devil’s Kitchen, which is an enormous gulch in the huge sea cliffs.

So, coming back to the slightly odd title for this post ~ I went through a tiny settlement with the rather odd name, ‘Doo Town’. Mind you there are lots of odd and no-missing place names. Yesterday I saw these two road signs, “break-me-neck hill” and “bust-me-gall hill”. Pretty clear!

Anyway, Doo Town has become infamous for the fact each home has been named with ‘Doo’ in it, although it’s not clear where this came from. But just for your amusement, here are some of those I saw:

~ Love Me Doo

~ Dr Doolittle

~ Much-A-Doo

~ Doo Leave Me A Drop

~ Doo-N-Time

~ Doo Drop Inn

~ Wattle I Doo

~ Thisle Doo Me

~ Doo Me (?!)

~ Make Doo

~ Didgeri-Doo

And so many more!!

So that was an amusing few minutes… and the end of amusement for the day/ My main destination, and where I spent the next 6 hours, was Port Arthur. How do I summarise this evocative place? It is the remains of huge male penal colony. 

It’s an enormous museum to this place where thousands of convicts spent time. It was a secondary prison, for convicts who’d been transported from the UK and had then  committed further crimes. It was a pretty terrible place to be, harsh conditions, minimal food, horrendous punishments; and lots of hard work. Depending on the man’s crime class they were allocated different work ~ some really hard labour, sometimes in leg irons; others learning and working hard at trades.

The entrance fee included a short introductory walking tour and a 30 minute harbour cruise to see parts of the site. There are still about 30 buildings to visit, over a large area, so I spent the day wandering around. 

It was interesting, I didn’t find this place nearly as emotional and tough as the Cascades Female Factory. I’m not sure if that because that was a woman’s prison ~ certainly that’s part of it. But actually I think it was also because the Port Arthur site is very attractive, with gardens and landscaping. It doesn’t feel bleak and terrible, though no doubt the men’s experience would’ve been. 

I’ll include photos below of some of the buildings, gardens, church, semaphore mast… and here is the chapel from within the ‘Separate Prison’. This was quite moving ~ the additional prison for those who continued to commit crimes: total solitary confinement; reduced to a number not a name; with over 100 rules including that there must be total silence at all times. The chapel was designed to ensure prisoners couldn’t see each other, each stood in a tiny vertical box…

One other thing which struck me was the beautiful gardens and properties on the site for the Commandant, his family and other military and civilian staff which are in such stark contrast to the convicts’ conditions,; all so close together and sort of  ‘in-your-face’ for the convicts.

The other place that struck me was a memorial to more recent history… after the colony closed, the site became a small town, renamed Canarvon, with homes, shops, etc. Then tourists began to come to see the notorious site, and in time its name reverted and the state slowly bought back the remaining properties. Then tragedy stuck again in 1996 when a gunman murdered 35 people, tourists and staff, at the site, and injured many more. The memorial to these victims was very poignant.

It was good to visit, and after 6 hours, managed to see most of it, and was totally shattered! It was good only to have to drive 15 minutes’ to Storm Bay B&B ~ aptly named as the wind is getting up and there’s apparently an extreme weather warning for the wind tonight! But when I arrived, and was chatting to the wonder, the view as the light faded was beautiful.