We're off further down the east coast of Tasmania to Port Arthur and Stormy Bay. It's a long drive and stops offs are mandatory--at Orford, for example, for a coffee and to switch drivers. Incidentally, so far this drive through Tasmania has taken us through the counties of Devon, Westmoreland, Dorset, Cornwall, Somerset, Glamorgan, Pembroke, Monmouth and Buckingham. Sound familiar? We make it down to our destination at Port Arthur by lunchtime. Not another convict museum, I hear Glenna say. She is getting convict-fatigue, from hearing of all this brutality by the ancestors of her newly adopted country. No, this one is different, I say confidently.

Port Arthur was established in the 1830's for the hardened criminals; a sort of maximum security penitentiary for repeat offenders from the Old Country, as well as transfers from the more liberal work details in others parts of the colonies. Named after the first governor of the nearby capital, Hobart Town, it was built around a completely isolated bay on a peninsula that is attached to a further peninsula, a day's sail from Hobart Town. It was built as a fully functioning industrial complex using convict labour for the coal mining, timber, ship building, brick making, shoemaking and stone cutting industries—once the convicts had built all of the infrastructure needed for their prison itself.

When we got there, it was a beautiful sunny afternoon and this 19th century town, all tucked away in a sheltered cove, was a splendid sight, from the smartly apportioned Governor's House to the Officers' Quarters, the massive Church capable of seating 1,100, the hospital, shipyard, guardhouse, workhouses, bakery. The buildings sit amidst gardens and great swathes of perfectly mown lawns, lined with avenues of tall gum trees. One of the oddities about the place is that there were two sets of parallel societies living and overlapping in this extremely isolated and lonely place. On the one hand, the prisoners were quite severely treated, with very few rights or privileges, and performing unbelievably hard labour. At the same time, living amongst them were the families of their jailers (English military officers and men who in some cases brought wives and children with them to live in this town). Throughout the Victorian decades the women, and their husbands, tried to carry on with the type of lives they had led in England: calling on each other at home, giving dinners, gardening, card parties, using the reading library, and so forth. Meanwhile, their domestic servants were taken from the ranks of prisoners.

Of the original 80 buildings some 35 still survive, some in picturesque ruins, but we could clearly see how this town got nominated as a World Heritage site. It's a really outstanding museum. So much so that we had to return the next morning to finish off the tour. Glenna admitted that convict tours can be a lot of interesting, if not necessarily a lot of fun. I'm planning some more next year.

We're staying about 6 miles from Port Arthur in the town of Nubeena which sits on Stormy Bay, at an imaginatively named B&B called Stormy Bay. The views from the house, halfway up the hillside looking across the estuary are stunning. We take cocktails (Tasmanian Sauvignon Blanc, of course) on the deck watching the sunset across the bay with Bruny Island and the Southern Mountains in the distance. A long way below us are the small yachts at moorings, the oyster and mussel beds and in the distance the large cages of a salmon fishery. It is amusing to reflect that we are at the far side of the world.

Dinner in Nubeena wasn't difficult to find as there was only one place open- the pub. The mysteriously named Thirsty Camel was vast, and could probably seat the whole town easily. We took a table in the corner expecting a view, which turned out to be the car park. There was only one other couple in the restaurant, plus another couple in the bar watching an Australian soap on the TV. It was not in any way a good dining experience, the meal was just about passable as we both opted for the fish, figuring that it only had to get from a boat no more than a hundred yards away to the pub. But we did not enjoy the outrageously priced catch of the day - Blue Eye Cod-- it was overcooked. We wished they had left it in the sea. Driving back in the dark up to our B&B we caught a wallaby in our headlights, and watched as it looked around and then decided to move out of the car's light, hopping off into the bush. The next morning, our host asked if we were disturbed in the night by sounds on the verandah, as a wallaby or two were apparently roaming around outside our room.