ABSTRACT
Location: On the Tasman Peninsula in southeastern Tasmania, about sixty miles southeast of Hobart.
Description: As a result of the British convict transportation system in the early to mid-nineteenth century, Port Arthur became the jail for an empire. Beginning in 1830 as a secondary penal settlement, it became a prison town that received about 12,700 convicts during the fifty years of its active service. This isolated penal establishment symbolizes the image in Australia of the transportation of convicts and is often referred to as "hell on earth."
