The former penal station is located on the eight-hectare (twenty-acre) Sarah Island that now operates as a historic site under the direction of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service.

It was separated from the mainland by the wide expanse of river, surrounded by a mountainous wilderness and was hundreds of miles away from the colony's other settled areas.

Strong tidal currents resulted in the deaths of many convicts before they even reached the settlement owing to ships foundering in the narrow rocky channel.

However, this exposed the settlement to the howling gales of the roaring forties, so it was necessary to build a wall from Huon Pine to provide shelter.

Convicts spent most of their waking hours, often up to their necks in water, cutting timber and preparing it for rafting down the river.

He negotiated with the convicts, allowing them rations of rum and tobacco, and more weatherproof sleeping quarters in exchange for their cooperation.

[3] Once the establishment of the penal station at Macquarie Harbour was decided upon, Lieutenant John Cuthbertson of the 48th Regiment was appointed as its commandant, magistrate and justice of the peace on 8 December 1821.

Four days later he left Hobart with Captain James Kelly, harbourmaster, Surveyor George Evans and Surgeon Spence in the Sophia, accompanied by some 16 soldiers, their wives and children and 66 male and 8 female convicts in the Prince Leopold.

[citation needed] In 1824 a prisoner named Trenham stabbed another convict in order to be executed rather than face further imprisonment at Macquarie Harbour Penal Station.

The ruins of the settlement remain today as the Sarah Island Historic Site —part of the larger Tasmanian Wilderness World Heritage Area—though they are not as well preserved as those at better-known Port Arthur.

Sarah Island has been frequently featured in Australian literature and theatre, often representing the worst excesses of the British convict system.