Ghosts of Sorrow, Sin and Crime: Dark Tourism and Convict Heritage in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia

International Journal of Historical Archaeology, Aug 2016

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 “dark heritage,” evidenced by continuous tourism and visitation to these places of pain and shame from the mid-nineteenth century to the present.

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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)


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Eleanor Conlin Casella, Katherine Fennelly. Ghosts of Sorrow, Sin and Crime: Dark Tourism and Convict Heritage in Van Diemen’s Land, Australia, International Journal of Historical Archaeology, 2016, pp. 506-520, Volume 20, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1007/s10761-016-0354-5