Van Diemen's Land - Review - VDL movie a mere appetizer

For me Jonathon auf der Heide's film, Van Diemen’s Land did not go far enough.
The title is somewhat misleading, as cinamagraphiically, the movie did not portray Van Diemen’s Land (VDL) of the 1820s. It only provided a cameo picture of Tasmania’s awesome West Coast wilderness forest which surrounds Macquarie Harbour.

Having known the movie was to be about Alexander Pearce, the cannibal, I was disappointed that the story's plot was no more than Pearce’s first escape attempt along with seven other convicts.
(When he was captured, he admitted his crimes but his story seems too far fetched and he was not believed. The second time Pearce escaped he was found in possession of a human limb and was hung.)
After a few days in the forest, the eight men run out of food, and through frustration and anger begin to feed off each other.
Like the lore of the sea, this seems almost logical under the circumstances.

Apart from the opening scene where the barefoot prisoners patiently await the order to swim to the waiting whaleboat, there is little indication of their festering desperation to escape from the hell-hole that was Sarah Island.

It was disillusioning for me to see convicts who were made to toil twelve hours in deplorable conditions and fed on incredibly meagre rations, looking fit and healthy, with perfect teeth and one at least with a neatly trimmed beard – and tall at that.
In dress and stature, producer Oscar Redding, who played Pearce, presented as the most convincing character.

The wilderness scenery of the Gordon and King Rivers area creates a chillingly haunting atmosphere, though to traverse those areas is even more difficult than depicted in the film. Unfortunatley, some of the scenes filmed in Victoria depict countryside which is foreign to the Macquarie watershed.

Having recently visited the area to learn about VDL’s history and to see first hand the site of the convict settlement (see earlier blog posts), and to cruise the waterways of the King and Gordon Rivers, I wanted more.

The convict history of Van Diemen’s Land, in particular the settlement in Macquarie Harbour, is incredibly rich and disturbing. The movie Van Diemen’s Land is a mere tempting appetizer.

In 1642 Abel Tasman landed in Tasmania

Following the decline of Spain in the 16th century, the Dutch expanded their trading activities in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). They wanted to explore and chart the waters off west coast Australia.
When Abel Tasman sailed with his two armed merchant vessels and crew of 110 men from Batavia, he was instructed to take possession of all continents and islands which he discovered.

On 1642 he sighted a land mass unknown to any European nation and gave it the name of ‘Anthony van Diemens Landt’ in honour of the Governor General of Batavia. A landing party came ashore on November 24 at what is now Blackman Bay and a second party took possession for the Dutch by planting a flag.
The ships then sailed eastward and discovered ‘Staten Landt’ (New Zealand) and other Pacific Islands.
There is no mention of Tasman entering Macquarie Harbour - perhaps like other later navigators he did not realise what was beyound The Gates.
Tasman died in 1659 - almost 150 years before Captain Cook charted the Australian coast.
For many years, Tasmania was known as Van Diemen’s Land and the west coast of Tasmania still reflects the remarkable voyages of those early Dutch navigators.
North of the entrance to Macquarie Harbour though the entrance to ‘Hell’s Gates’ (see later postings) are the peaks which still bear the names of Abel Tasman's ships - Heemskerck and the smaller Fluyt Zeehaen. Other Tasmanian coastal features still retain the Dutch names.
Pics: statue of Abel Tasman and his two ships (Hobart waterfront)

Strahan holiday in search of convict history

My main purpose for heading west was to experience the atmosphere of a place steeped in some of Tasmania's ugliest history and with practices if is not proud of.
Amongst those: the notorious penal settlement on Sarah Island; the treacherous entrance to Macquarie harbour known as Hell’s Gates, and a dead King River – the product of greed and subsequent environmental pollution.
My visit was part of my research on Matthew Brady, the Tasmanian bushranger and convict who was sent to Sarah Island in 1823. Twenty two months later, he escaped in a stolen whaleboat and sailed to Hobart Town to begin his period of infamy.
But what I found on the wild west coast of Tasmania was a huge pristine harbour, a sleepy fishing village whose main industry in the summer season is tourists, stories of piners and miners and convict times, and some of the most unforgettable excursions which you cannot experience elsewhere in Australia.
Including a ride up the King River in a jetboat!

Pic: Strahan Harbour

Hell’s Gates - Macquarie Harbour, Tasmania

In 1642 Abel Tasman explored the west coast of Tasmania for the Dutch East India Company. He charted two of the peaks just north of the inlet to Macquarie Harbour and namedafter his ships, Heemskerck and Zeehaen, but he either did not see or did not venture through 'The Gates' which provide only a narrow entrance and a shallow channel with rocks on one side and dangerous sandy shoals on the other.

This is the name first given to the narrow entrance to Macquarie Harbour and it was James Kelly the captain and explorer who, on his circumnavigation of Tasmania in a whale boat in 1816, noticed an inlet from which a strong channel of water was flowing. He thought he had found the mouth of a river.
Image his surprise when he ventured through The Gates, to find a Harbour as big as Sydney Harbour - 32 kilometres long surrounded by forested mountains and gorges – virtually impenetrable from the land.

It was the nature of the harbour as a place impossible to escape from that the government of the day decided to use an island in the harbour as a convict settlement.
This was to be the harshest place imaginable – a veritable hell on earth. And for that reason the entrance to the harbour and the whole place became synonymous with the name, Hell’s Gates.
My particular interest is in the convicts, including Matthew Brady, who escaped from Sarah Island and became bushrangers.
Pics: Hell’s gates and lighthouse from the beach and the water

Sarah Island – Island hides its penal past.

Today the cruise boats on Macquarie Harbour stop for about an hour at Sarah Island and tourists are given a conducted tour of a portion of the old convict settlement. The commentary is light-hearted and the few ruins which remain give a basic outline of the layout of the buildings dated to around 1820.
I had come to Sarah Island as part of my research into Tasmanian bushranger Matthew Brady so after doing the conventional conducted tour I wanted to visit the other parts of the island and see it for my self – so I returned a few days later.
It’s hard to imagine that the island of 15 acres (the size of my block in Bakers Hill, Western Australia) accommodated several hundred prisoners; that it was devoid of vegetation as it had been clear by the convicts; that it had numerous stone buildings and high wooden fences and that it was a place of incredible hardship, and severe punishment.

Wearing plenty of insulated clothing, I was cold in the wind even though it was a sunny day.
Goodness knows how the men could survive on limited rations, with no heating, no beds, often saturated from head to foot and no change of clothes or extra clothing. And apart from that, any complaint resulted in the prisoner receiving up to 100 lashes from the cat’o’nine tails. Few convicts managed to escape from the island and survive to tell the tale.
Matthew Brady managed to escape in a whaleboat with several other convicts.
It is the story of this 'gentleman' bushranger of Van Diemen's Land that I am proposing to write into a fictionalized novel.
Pics: Sarah Island (centre) and tiny Grummet Island in Macquarie Harbour and the ruins of the Old penitentiary

Grummet Island – hell at Hell’s Gates, Macquarie Harbour

A couple of hundred yards from Sarah Island is the tiny rocky outcrop of Grummet Island. This was indeed a Hell on earth for the convict prisoners of Van Diemen's Land.
It was here in the early 1800s that originally a group of women was housed.
Later it was the place where the worse male convicts, the offenders and troublemakers were sent at night.

As there was no wharf, the men had to wade through chest deep water or swim to get ashore. They would then have to sleep either naked or in wet clothes throughout the night and then wade back to the boat in the morning for another day of hard labour.
Pic: Tiny Grummet Island seen from Sarah Island. Today the rocky outcrop is overgrown by bush and nothing remains of the prison building which existed there

Macquarie Harbour and the Gordon River, Tasmania

If you visit Strahan, on the west coast of Tasmania, a day trip on one of the cruise ships on the harbour is a must. Not only will you enjoy a day of sightseeing and educational commentary but excellent food and comfort aboard the modern vessels.
The pristine river and wilderness area is known not only from its once prolific stand of Huon Pines but for the long running dispute over the building of the Gordon on Franklin Dam.
There are few rivers in Tasmania which have not been damned for hydro electric power and now Tasmania has more power than it requires.
Fortunately the voice of the environmentalists won the battle and secured the free flow of this part of the Gordon River.
But it was the very dense, inhospitable nature of the forests and the rugged terrain that made the Harbour and ideal place to locate a penal settlement way back in the early 1800s. And it was here that the hardened convicts of Van Diemen's Land were sent. It was a place they regarded it as Hell on earth.
Pic: Gordon river World Heritage cruise ship
Pics: World Hertitage cruise ship
Mountain ranges flanked in wilderness forest surround Macquarie Harbour