"[3] In 1996, the town was the scene of the Port Arthur massacre, the worst instance of mass murder in post-colonial Australian history.

The Port Arthur convict settlement was established in September 1830 as a timber-getting camp, producing sawn logs for government projects.

From 1833 until 1877, it was the destination for those deemed the most hardened of transported convicts ― so-called "secondary offenders" ― who had persistently re-offended during their time in Australia.

The recalcitrant offenders were sent to Port Arthur, which had some of the strictest security measures in the British penal system but was, nevertheless, also based on the idea that prisoners could be reformed while still being punished.

The hard corporal punishment, such as whippings, used in other penal stations, was thought to only serve to harden criminals, and did nothing to turn them from their immoral ways.

As a reward, a prisoner could receive larger amounts of food or even luxury items such as tea, sugar, and tobacco.

In many ways, Port Arthur was the model for the penal reform movement, despite the shipping, housing, and use of convicts as slave-labour being as harsh, or worse, than other institutions around the nation.

These workshops, situated on the original waterfront since 1830, housed the trades-focussed activities undertaken at the penal station including shoemakers, blacksmiths, tailors, turners and wheelwrights.

[10] A journal of the ongoing excavation and conservation work at Port Arthur is documented online by Dr Richard Tuffin.

GIS mapping of location and offence data compiled by Dr Richard Tuffin uses the buildings, work sites, products and life outcomes to understand the convicts’ lives and labours whilst under sentence.

[14] The peninsula on which Port Arthur is located is a naturally secure site by being surrounded by water (rumoured by the administration to be shark-infested).

[15] Smooth Island in Norfolk Bay was most likely used to grow fresh vegetables for the Port Arthur penal settlement.

Despite its reputation as a pioneering institution for the new, enlightened view of imprisonment, Port Arthur was still in reality as harsh and brutal as other penal settlements.

Some tales suggest that prisoners committed murder (an offence punishable by death) just to escape the desolation of life at the camp.

For example, Anthony Trollope in 1872 declared that no man desired to see the "strange ruins" of Port Arthur.

As the Hobart Mercury proclaimed, "the buildings themselves are fast going to decay, and in a few years will attract nobody; for they will be ruins without anything to make them worthy of respect, or even remembrance.

Those who bought Port Arthur property began tearing down the buildings,[19] the destruction was furthered by the fires of 1895 and 1897, which destroyed the old prison house, and earth tremors.

This was helped by the popular novels For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) by Marcus Clarke and The Broad Arrow (1859) by Caroline Leakey, which concerned themselves about convicts in Port Arthur.

Volunteer groups have been working at the building sites of Point Puer to help researchers gain a better understanding of the history of the boys' prison.

The 28-year-old perpetrator was subsequently convicted and is currently serving 35 life sentences plus 135 years without parole in the psychiatric wing of Risdon Prison in Hobart, Tasmania.