Ghosts of Sorrow, Sin and Crime: Dark Tourism and Convict Heritage in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia
Int J Histor Archaeol
Ghosts of Sorrow, Sin and Crime: Dark Tourism and Convict Heritage in Van Diemen's Land, Australia
Eleanor Conlin Casella 0 1
Katherine Fennelly 0 1
Eleanor Conlin Casella 0 1
0 Department of Archaeology, University of Sheffield , Sheffield , UK
1 Department of Archaeology, University of Manchester , Manchester , UK
Established as a British imperial penal colony, Van Diemen's Land received approximately 75,000 convicts before cessation of convict transportation in 1853. A vast network of penal stations and institutions were created to accommodate, employ, administer, and discipline these exiled felons. Popular interpretations of Australia's convict past highlight dynamics of shame, avoidance and active obliteration that characterized Australia's relationship to its recent convict past. Yet, closer examination of these colonial institutions suggests a far more ambivalent relationship with this Bdark heritage,^ evidenced by continuous tourism and visitation to these places of pain and shame from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.
Institutions; Dark tourism; Penal; Colonial archaeology; Australia
Introduction
Tourism to sites and institutions for convict transportation in Tasmania tells a complex
story of simultaneous repulsion and attraction, and suggests a broader acceptance of the
origins of colonial-period history in Australia than has previously been acknowledged.
In 1853, the transportation of convicts to the penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land was
formally ceased, and 3 years later, the island was renamed Tasmania. Nevertheless, the
colony maintained a notorious reputation, its past inexorably linked to enduring
legacies of the Bconvict stain.^ The dominant historical narrative throughout the latter
half of the twentieth century claims that Australia’s convict origins were not publically
*
embraced until the early 1960s. Closer examination reveals that Australians retained a
far more ambiguous relationship with their problematic colonial heritage. Indeed,
tourism and heritage associated with convict institutions is a significant contributor to
the Tasmanian state economy today
(Lawrence and Davies 2011, p. 19)
.
The enduring popularity of tourism on the Sarah Island penal establishment is apparent
in the infrastructure that supports visits, and local engagement with this infamous site.
Providing the focal case study for this paper, both Sarah Island and its unique surrounding
environment, sit within the broader imperial and institutional history of the Van Diemen’s
Land penal colony, evolving narratives of convict heritage, and the persistent (if
ambivalent) relationship of dark tourism
(Lennon and Foley 2000)
to these grim places.
Not Very Uncomfortable: Sarah Island and Tourism Over the Convict Era
The ruins of the penal establishment on Sarah Island are the most substantial material
remains of what was once a busy colonial institutional landscape. The island is dotted
with the overgrown remnants of service buildings such as a bakehouse and tannery, as
well as accommodation buildings for both officers and convicts. These ruined buildings
signify a colonial imposition on the otherwise pristine rainforest landscape.
Anthropologist Ann Laura
Stoler (2008
, p. 202) has found large-scale ruination an
organized undertaking, typically state-sponsored and politically motivated
(see also
Pétursdóttir and Olsen 2014)
. Indeed, the ruination of Sarah Island began during the
island’s use as a convict settlement, the structural decay itself reflecting a process of
concerted, if not intentional, neglect born through a combination of government
bureaucratic austerity and inefficiencies, the ambivalent role of this infamously grim
establishment within this highly self-conscious British penal colony, and relentless
encroachments by the surrounding damp rainforest. Nevertheless, constant tourism to
this site from the nineteenth century to the present day also demonstrates a simultaneous
interest and concern amongst the public with Australia’s colonial origins and darker
institutional history. The enduring public interest in sites of colonial settlement
articulates with increasingly formalized tourism to sites with Bdark^ and difficult histories.
Commemoration of places associated with the tragic facets of human experience
immediately begs complex questions of ethics, representation, testimony, personal
identification, and collective memory
(Smith 2006)
. Drawing from the influential work
of John Lennon and Malcolm Foley (2000), Laura
McAtackney (2014
, p. 226) observed
that the term dark heritage Bspecifically links the growing tourist appetite for consuming
sites of death and destruction as manifestations of western, global consumerism—and
therefore recent vintage—reflecting the circumstances of the late modern world.^ Strong
antecedents of this lurid appetite can be traced back through the nineteenth and
eighteenth centuries—arguably even into the seventeenth century— (...truncated)