Tasmania - Port Arthur, Australia

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Port Arthur is one of the premier tourist attractions in Tasmania, the island state of Australia. A magnificent site preserving that country's rich convict heritage, Port Arthur is today an amazing assemblage of colonial ruins and restored buildings, set amid 40 hectares (100 acres) of English oaks and open space.

Port Arthur was first established as a timber station in 1830, supporting the infant colony of Van Diemen's Land. It became the site of a major penal (prison) colony for male convicts from 1833, a place of secondary punishment for re-offenders, in the 19th century era of convict transportation to Van Diemen's Land (the former name of Tasmania). It very quickly gained a reputation as a "hell on earth". At its peak in the late 1840s, Port Arthur became a near self-sufficient settlement, driven by the labour of its tormented inmates. Ultimately, after a couple of decades of decline in the 1850s and 1860s, Port Arthur finally ended its days as a penal settlement in 1877.

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