Australian Convict Sites

Site information

• Official name: Australian Convict Sites
• Locations: Western Australia; New South Wales; Tasmania
• Type: Cultural
• Year of inscription: 2010

The Australian Convict Sites include eleven locations spread across the continent of Australia. These protected sites represent building and infrastructure relics created by the British colonial practice of sending convicts to Australia from 1788 to 1855. The Australian Convict Sites are part of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) list of World Heritage sites, as well as part of the Australian National Heritage list, due to their representation as the best remaining examples of the forced migration of Europeans under imperial policies.

History

The former convict site locations include Fremantle in Western Australia, Kingston and Arthurs Vale on Norfolk Island in the east, four sites in New South Wales, and five areas as far south as Tasmania. Fremantle Prison was built to house overseas convicts beginning in 1851, using convict labor in its construction, and completed in 1859. In 1886 the prison shifted from housing convicts transferred from Europe to locally sentenced prisoners. It remained in operation until 1991.

The Kingston and Arthurs Vale Historical Area is located on Norfolk Island, 877 miles east of Australia, between Australia and New Zealand. As the island was deemed too remote and costly to maintain as a colonial settlement, in 1824 its barren and remote status led to the belief that the island made an ideal location to house chronic recidivists, convicted criminals who had committed subsequent crimes after arriving in the Australian colony and who were spared the death penalty through internment at Norfolk Island. Similarly, Cockatoo Island, located in Sydney Harbor, acted as a penal internment facility from 1839 to 1869 for convicts who committed subsequent crimes in Australia. Convict labor was also used to turn Cockatoo Island into one of Australia's largest ship building sites, which operated from 1857 until 1991.

The Great North Road, a stretch of road linking colonial Sydney with the agriculturally rich Hunter Valley also used prison labor to carve through 162 miles of rocky terrain. The project took eleven years to be completed, beginning in 1825 and finishing in 1836; it was considered an engineering marvel in its design but lacked practical components, such as water and feed stops for the horse-drawn vehicles. Thus, the Great North Road fell into disuse as new routes were used to reach Hunter Valley from Sydney. Convict rock carvings made during the road's construction are still visible, and the site is actively preserved using maintenance crews of prisoners from local correctional institutions.

Francis Howard Greenway, himself a convict transported to Australia in 1814, designed the Hyde Park Barracks located in Sydney. Built by convict labor just four years after Greenway's arrival in the New South Wales colony, the barracks was constructed and used to house the convict men and male children who made up the Sydney convict labor force until 1848, when the barracks closed, only to reopen as housing for female immigrants until 1882, and as a female asylum until 1886. From 1887 to 1979, the Hyde Park Barracks served as the local court and government office.

The Old Government House, located in the rural outskirts of Sydney, was the country residence for the governors of New South Wales from 1800 until 1847. Like the Great North Road site, the governor's rural secondary residence was created as the Sydney colony expanded in search of agricultural production to feed the growing population. The Old Government House is Australia's oldest public building, unique for its incorporation of aboriginal shell mounds, which were ground into the mortar used in its construction.

In addition to being World Heritage and Australian National Heritage listed sites, the Tasmanian convict sites are also listed under the Tasmanian Heritage Register. These sites include the Brickendon and Woolmer Estates, former farming estates owned by the prominent Archer family, which used convict cottages to house the prison laborers who worked the Archer estate. The Cascades Female Factory, located Hobart, housed the female convicts sent to Van Diemen's Land (colonial Tasmania) in order to separate and protect the female factory workers from the perceived corrupting influences of urban life and the mixing of genders in social spheres.

Like the Norfolk and Cockatoo Islands, Port Arthur housed repeat offenders, convicts who, after forced migration to Australia, continued to commit crimes, as well as individuals considered to have shown rebellious inclinations. With some of the strictest disciplinary and most sophisticated security measures, the Port Arthur prison used the panoptic design of British economist and prison reformer Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) to create symmetrically shaped prison wings that could be placed under surveillance from central hubs. Psychological punishment practices, such as the withholding or reward of food, light, and sound, were used in the belief that physical punishment only hardened the already seasoned prisoners. Corporal punishment and hard labor were instead reserved for the Coal Mines Historical Site, located in Little Norfolk Bay, which housed the most severe criminals in Port Arthur.

Tasmanian convicts deemed suitable for release were sent to the Darlington Probation Station on Maria Island. Here convicts were withdrawn from pressed private service and used to work the island's four hundred acres of agricultural cultivation. Originally housed in outdoor tents and huts, during the last phase of convict management in Van Diemen's Land (1842–50) permanent structures were built by and for the prisoners, with the convict housing at the Darlington Probation Station remaining the most intact and representational example of convict housing in all of Tasmania.

Significance

The convict sites remain an example of colonial expansion undertaken by the forced deportation of "undesirable" European citizens to the Empire's periphery. World Heritage listing was given to these eleven sites as they represent "the best surviving examples of large-scale convict transportation and the colonial expansion of European powers through the presence and labour of convicts". These eleven sites were chosen as they represent the multiple experiences across gender, age, and class divisions, with prison internment being a shared aspect in global penal, political, and colonial dimensions. Yet, the preservation of these sites has generated controversy in the commemoration of colonial history and its relationship to the indigenous communities of Australia.

Bibliography

"Australian Convict Sites." Australia's World Heritage List. Department of the Environment and Energy, www.environment.gov.au/heritage/places/world/convict-sites. Accessed 15 Nov. 2016.

Australian Convict Sites. World Heritage List. World Heritage Cultural Centre, UNESCO, 2016. www.whc.unesco.org/en/list/1306.

Eklund, Erik, and David Andrew Roberts. "Australian Convict Sites and the Heritage of Adaptation: The Case of Newcastle's Coal River Heritage Precinct." Australian Historical Studies, vol. 43, no. 3, Sept. 2012, pp. 363–80.

Gojak, Denis. "Convict Archaeology in New South Wales: An Overview of the Investigation, Analysis and Conservation of Convict Heritage Sites." Australasian Historical Archaeology, vol. 19, special issue, 2001, pp. 73–83.

Hazzard, Margaret. Punishment Short of Death: A History of the Penal Settlement at Norfolk Island. Hyland House, 1984.

Logan, William Stewart, and Keir Reeves, editors. Places of Pain and Shame: Dealing with "Difficult Heritage." Routledge, 2009.

Maxwell-Stewart, Hamish. "'The Lottery of Life': Convict Tourism at Port Arthur Historical Site, Australia." Prison Service Journal, no. 210, Nov. 2013, pp. 24–28.

Witcomb, Andrea. "Tensions between World Heritage and Local Values: The Case of Fremantle Prison (Australia). Community Development through World Heritage, edited by M. T. Albert et al., UNESCO, 2014, pp. 62–68.