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Heading north from Kettering and back through Hobart and east via Sorell, we reached the Tasman Peninsula in the early evening of our second day. Our stop for the night was to be Port Arthur Holiday Park. a stone's throw from the historical site itself. We took in some of the famous local coastal attractions; Tasman Arch, Devil's Kitchen, the Blow hole and the only food establishment open on that Sunday night for miles around, infact the only food establishment for miles around - a seafood van permanently parked, temporarliy in the Blow hole's car park. They had a variety of seafood creatures on the menu that I'm sure were very fresh, given the location but we wanted to put our own little kitchen to the test that night with some local seafood and so settled for a poke of chips. Yum!
We passed through a little village on our scenic coastal tour called, Doo Town. A village deserved of the 'most humourous town award' I'm sure. Every house was named something with 'Doo' in it.....Wattle-I-Doo, Doodle Doo, Just Doo It, Didgeri-Doo, Sheil Doo...it goes on. Classic! It was started by a Hobart architect in 1935 naming his weekend shack 'Doo I 99', a neighbour followed suit and so it caught on.
The campsite was one of the best in terms of facilities, that we stayed in all week and provided a short trail down to the beach which we got to see just before dark. The plan the next day was to take in as much of the historic site as possible before leaving the peninsula and heading northwards. The ticket we bought allowed us entry into the site for 2 days, a 40min guided walking tour and a 30min harbour cruise, well worth the $35. A former penal colony, noted for its groundbreaking attempts to deal with crime and punishment in its day and said to be Tasmania's top tourist attraction, it was a day well spent. I was most struck by it's beauty, the old stone buildings, open green spaces and the blue harbour, glorious on a sunny day such as we had. It was hard to imagine how it would have looked and felt for the convicts.
The tour guide told us about who lived where, what the inmates duties involved and about an attempted escape where a prisioner made it into surrounding forest, killed a kangaroo, dressed in its skin and attempted to hop to freedom past the guards and watch dogs manning the narrow neck of land connecting the southern part of the peninsula to northern part. As the guards lifted their guns to bring down the large marsupial the convict came clean and survived to awake another morning in his cell. Points for creativity though!
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