I definitely earned my “tourist license” today! My car was ready at the airport at 6:30am, so that a forty-five minute drive to the Cadbury Chocolate factory could be made with enough time to make the 8:00am tour. This little Hyundai could fly and it was especially fun to shift left handed while driving on the opposite side of the road.
The tour was fairly pedestrian, but watching production in action has always fascinated. The amazing bit is how much human labor goes into making these chocolate candies. I felt guilty calculating the possible automation savings. (Damn that Del Monte training…haaa.)
After the tour, the seaside and Port Arthur was the target. There are so many natural wonders in Australia, and Tasmania in particular. First on the agenda was the Tessellated Pavement, which is a naturally occurring erosion event that leaves loaves of free standing bricklike rock.
Blowholes in various stages of development line the coast. Some have fully formed and then collapsed to form “kitchens”, while others still spout sea spray when the seas are rough. Generally, geologically what happens is that the rock shoreline is eroded into sea caves, which then eventually develop holes in the ceiling.
When the waves crash into the cave, this forces water through the holes in the ceiling forming blowholes. Eventually, the ceiling collapses, leaving either an arch in the front of the cave or a completely collapsed sea trench of sorts. The timing of these events is millennial in scale so not immediate worries while viewing or walking across the cave roofs or arches.
Port Arthur is a former penal colony of the British Empire settled in an absolutely picturesque cove. Thankfully, it is tactfully maintained without turning the area into a Disney event. There is so much to learn from this isolated historical site.
Of greatest interest or marvel is that Port Arthur Penal Institution was the first to implement the concept of “solitary confinement”. The colonial instilment was far different than what is implemented today, but this is still the genesis of the punishment. The ideal was that when man is left with his own inklings and given constructive solitary tasks to complete, he would naturally shed his evil tendency and through self immolation adopt a reformed disposition. So, as prisoners were indoctrinated into this reform system, solitary confinement was the first step in their scheduled reform. This was even taken to the extreme that when attending services each individual had a personal walled box, which allowed viewing of the parson but no one else.
Structurally, Port Arthur is magnificent. As efforts are underway to reconstruct what is not naturally understood, e.g. reestablishing lapsed gardens vs. rebuilding the church that in its hollow burned skeleton is still understood, the prison colony comes to life. It is a shame that so much of the colony fell victim to inadvertent brush fires or seemingly preventable events such as someone burning leaves that then caught the church on fire.
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