{"id":1673,"date":"2018-02-19T15:51:04","date_gmt":"2018-02-19T04:51:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/?p=1673"},"modified":"2019-04-02T23:45:14","modified_gmt":"2019-04-02T12:45:14","slug":"mona-and-port-arthur-penal-colony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/mona-and-port-arthur-penal-colony\/","title":{"rendered":"MONA and Port Arthur penal colony"},"content":{"rendered":"

Firstly, a few more photos from Bruny Island where we enjoyed a further week. It really is a lovely part of Australia.<\/p>\n

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‘The Neck’ – a narrow strip of land joining North Bruny & South Bruny Island<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A ‘sub’ bay off the larger Cloudy bay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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MrsTea at Cloudy Bay<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Finally – proof that I can catch fish. We caught 4 times this amount but most were legally too small to keep. Lovely eating!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The boat made all the difference in catching fish. We didn’t need to go far off shore, but further than a rod could cast. Here we are on our way out.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Having taken the ferry from Bruny back to mainland Tasmania, we drove like old hands through Hobart city, across the Derwent heading eastward a short distance to the town of Sorell, a route taking us across long causeways, giving rise to the sense that we were island hopping, when in fact we were just crossing bays.<\/p>\n

Our phone app told us we could get a cheap gas refill part way at Cambridge, a few kilometres out of the city & so we did, finding yet another example of Tasmanian friendly hospitality. This time at a large franchised camping store in the middle of a big shopping centre. We have paid up to $29 to get our 3.7kg bottles refilled so finding somewhere to get one filled for $15 along our route seemed like good fortune. The young fella, who no doubt was getting paid peanuts, often a good enough reason to hold an indifferent attitude toward customer service, couldn\u2019t have been more engaging. Having confirmed with him that a refill would be $15 & told him it\u2019d take me a short time to remove the bottle from it\u2019s holder he offered to accompany me back across the car park to \u2018give me a hand\u2019. It seemed he had spotted our vehicle & was interested in chatting about our Tassie travels. Whilst I was removing the empty bottle he enquired if I had any more I needed topping up, saying the $15 \u2019special\u2019 was actually for a 9Kg bottle, so if we had another smaller bottle he would top it up for no aditional charge as it would still be less than 9kg. One of the 3 kg bottles in the Patrol was getting pretty low, so for $15 we had both filled, how good was that! What was better though was the fact that the young fella had landed himself some extra work to give us the best service he could. I hope the organisation he works for recognise his value.<\/p>\n

At Sorell we turned north for about 6kms to the small highway community of Orielton where we were made welcome at the home of an internet forum friend Dave & his wife Tammy. (Thanks guys). Their backyard, cleared of the sheep for our benefit, was home for a few days, a convenient base for some necessary \u2018housekeeping plus day tripping to both the City & the Tasman Peninsula prior to our journey northward up the east coast.<\/p>\n

Two day trips were on our agenda – a visit to MONA & a visit to Port Arthur. Two places which as it turned out had quite a lot in common \u2026. rather unexpectedly.<\/p>\n

Firstly MONA – The Museum of Old & New Art. We were unsure of what to expect, opinions from others who have visited had tended to be extremely polarised, from those who loved it & felt it was a \u2018must visit\u2019 to those who hated it & thought it a complete waste of time. There were no \u2018in between\u2019 views expressed! Of course with contrasting views like that what can one do other than \u2018go to check it out for oneself\u2019?<\/p>\n

Essentially I do not intend to describe much of what we saw, save for a couple of exhibits. These are primarily the \u2018headline acts\u2019 which everyone who told us about Mona mentioned. These headline acts are in our opinion clever drawcards, intended to be confronting & to create controversy. Together with the \u2018O\u2019, an iphone programmed for use as an audiovisual guide for each visitor, on which the user can vote for \u201cLove or Hate\u2019 for each exhibit it seemed to us that the controversy was \u2018manufactured\u2019. We did not feel that the exhibition was particularly controversial, nor confronting.<\/p>\n

Prior to our visit, everyone who told us about Mona, without exception, spoke of two exhibits. One, the digestion machine (also referred to as the poo machine), the other the \u2018Wall of Vaginas\u2019. Nothing was mentioned about a huge body of work which we found wonderful, enchanting, uplifting, & nostalgic.<\/p>\n

The digestion machine, a series of glass containers in which the human digestion process is simulated was a bit smelly, scientifically clever & interesting in the sense that most folk have an interest in bodily functions whether they like to acknowledge it or not. It seemed (to us) like an idea produced by primary school children but executed by skilled university students as a bit of a joke. Other than attempted controversiality it didn\u2019t, for us at least, hold any artistic value, but I guess it had done it\u2019s job by getting us there.<\/p>\n

Likewise the Wall of Vaginas seemed a little ho hum, an exercise in trying to shock, much as nude performances in theatres did back in the \u201970\u2019s. A long dark corridor with individually lit plaster casts of women\u2019s parts, ostensibly to demonstrate difference & acceptablity of difference among 50% of the population, but with audio interview with the artist where the word c*nt was used gratuitously all screamed \u2019shock value\u2019. Seeing the variety of shapes & sizes certainly held some interest, but neither of us felt either shocked nor offended. Perhaps we may have felt a tad less disingenuous toward the artist had he not been male.<\/p>\n

The gallery building itself is both interesting & impressive, situated jutting out of rock faces in the middle of the Derwent River, most of the \u2018building\u2019 unseen as it has been created underground, a subterranean cave of treasures, a cross between Dr Who\u2019s Tardis & a conglomeration of baddies extravagant lairs from James Bond movies, brought to life in Hobart, & attracting art lovers from around the world who like to compare it to the Tate in London & the Guggenheim in New York.<\/p>\n

There are 3 main floors, with several sub floors reached through a variety of tunnels. Just finding our way & seeing what was around the next corner was an exercise in intrigue & anticipation. We spent over 5 hours working our way around the exhibition, but 4 hours of that was on the lowest floor. For us the exhibits on the upper floors were, with several exceptions,\u00a0 \u2019interesting but of questionable artistic value\u2019 with a few which had us asking \u2018what is the point\u2019 & \u2018why would you bother\u2019. I did enjoy looking at my first Brett Whitely painting though.<\/p>\n

BUT, & it really is a huge BUT, what we both absolutely loved was what we found on the lowest floor. The Museum of Everything.<\/p>\n

Only at MONA until early April 2018. In the visitor guide it is described as \u201cAn astonishing exhibition of art objects selected & curated by The Museum of Everything – the world\u2019s first wandering institution for the untrained, unintentional, undiscovered & unclassifiable artists of the nineteenth, twentieth & twenty-first centuries.<\/p>\n

Here was an exhibition of work by the institutionalised, homeless, insane, savants, eccentrics, abused, intellectually disabled, sightless, speechless & religious. Work, some of which has been previously rejected by prestigious galleries around the world because the artists had no training.
\nMrsTea & I met in an Asylum where we trained & worked in a period of great change. Many of the folk we cared for were products of the institution, & of institutional abuse. Folk who had survived the horrors of terrible physical treatments & surgeries, or inappropriate & extensive use of drugs, folk who if they were not insane when committed to the institution had been made so, and\/or had learned to be totally reliant upon a system which had either deliberately or inadvertantenly\u00a0 stripped them of their individuality.<\/p>\n

Ha! Or thought that it had!<\/p>\n

Men & women who had their own private & secret worlds, safe from the institution which dismissed their paintings, their sculptures & their writings as worthless evidence of madness. Thrown in the rubbish when found by the matron. Here at Mona was an exhibition which honoured such folk, which respected art which was of high standard, all in a way, made clear with the help of audio commentary, which did not seek to \u2018parade\u2019 the work of these folk \u2018circus style\u2019, like the bearded woman or the siamese twins, but instead to give them the voice they were never previously afforded. No high faluting commentary, but rather information about the artists & their lives, of meetings with them or with their families, of understanding, & of recognition. We were struck by the parallels between what was known as the anti-psychiatry movement & what here was clearly the \u2018anti-art movement\u2019. Everything we looked at brought forth stories of folk we had known. This is a truly an exceptional exhibition. Most on show is in our view clearly identifiable as art, & that which isn\u2019t is important enough to warrant a place in a worldwide exhibition.<\/p>\n

Tasmanians get free entry to MONA. Exhibitions change a couple of times each year. Although not \u2018arty farty gallery goers\u2019, if we lived here there is no doubt that we would want to make the effort to check out the place a couple of times each year.<\/p>\n

Photos of exhibits in galleries rarely do them justice & so out of respect to the artists I have chosen not to include any.<\/p>\n

We drove back to Dave & Tammy\u2019s place via the historic town of Richmond where we wandered around a variety of tourist focused businesses, including the one which sold us a couple of delicious home made ice creams we enjoyed sitting on the lush village green alongside the river looking at the convict built town bridge.<\/p>\n

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Richmond Bridge. Perhaps not old by European standards , but as old as white architecture gets in Australia.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Could almost be an English village!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And so to Port Arthur.
\nAnother day trip.
\nPort Arthur is a place all Australians know. It isone of the the most infamous penal settlements where English convicts were sent to in the late 19th century, a remote place of order & brutality, of severity & punishment, of pain & breaking of spirit. From young boys to old lags this was a place of horror. We have grown up knowing of this terrible history, tales of the lash, the cat \u2018o\u2019 nine tails, pain, the ankle irons worn whilst undertaking forced labour, the system of pitting prisoner against prisoner, the deliberate starvation, but mostly the intentionally gross physical hardships & often short lives.<\/p>\n

BUT<\/p>\n

On our visit to the physical remains of this place of fear & desperation did we hear about all of the above? \u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026\u2026 hardly!
\nOccasional reference was made to the \u2018Brutal regime\u2019 but no description as to what this entailed. Instead we were told about how Port Arthur had been a place ahead of it\u2019s time. Where it was a place of opportunity where prisoners could learn a trade to set them on the straight & narrow. Where physical punishment was replaced with something far more \u2018humane\u2019. It was this more \u2018humane\u2019 treatment of convicts which filled the dominant commentary for visitors to the ruins. That this more \u2018humane\u2019 treatment was equally horrendous to the brutality was acknowledged. What wasn\u2019t acknowledged was the reasoning behind the decision to omit a significant part of the story. It felt to us like an attempt to re-write history, but we were puzzled as to why this might be. Talking with someone some time later it was suggested that detail about the physical horrors is now seen as inappropriate material to share with many, particularly school aged visitors. Whether this is indeed the reason or not, we were left feeling that our experience of Port Arthur had been somewhat tainted. We had gone there not only wanting to learn more of Australia\u2019s convict history, but to really *feel* the lives of the men & boys incarcerated there.<\/p>\n

The regime which replaced physical brutality (if indeed it did) nevertheless remained focused upon breaking the spirit to encourage conformity. Work with the machine or be crushed by it. No ifs, no buts. Now however psychological brutality reigned supreme. The model was referred to as \u2018Separation\u2019. In modern terminology \u2018Sensory deprivation\u2019, but here it was combined with rules to ensure compliance \u2026. totally. The lengths the regime went to to achieve this were incredible – every minute detail of a man\u2019s life was prescribed, & failure to adhere punished with ever increasing periods of solitary confinement \u2026\u2026. often broken only by the weekly attendance at the chapel where each prisoner was separated from all others, physically & visually, to listen to the hellfire & brimstone rantings of a resident preacher. It was said that those administering the regime believed they were helping those incarcerated. Religion was a necessary part of the programme. Imagine seeing & hearing no other person\u2019s voice, being covered from head to toe (no recognition of you as a person) for weeks or months on end except for the vicar who screamed hellfire & damnation at you for an hour each week. It\u2019d have to drive a man mad \u2026\u2026\u2026. & so it did, often. So much so that eventually an asylum was built next door to house those men who\u2019s minds had been destroyed by \u2019separation\u2019. This in the early days of lunatic asylums \u2026\u2026\u2026 but before the days when a man might have been able to retain even an inkling of private space \u2026\u2026\u2026 let alone any material with which he may have expressed himself.<\/p>\n

And yet we were led to believe that for those men who \u2018worked with the machine\u2019 that the outcome here in the colony was far better than those back in the English slums where abuse & addiction to gin saw boys & men leading far more miserable & shorter lives.<\/p>\n

Phew! Were it not for the history, including the terrible mass shooting which occurred there in 1995, Port Arthur would be a lovely place. It is a naturally beautiful setting, but like the holocaust has a story which must never be forgotten. I hope that sense will prevail & that it might not be too long before visitors are once again given the whole story, not just part of it.<\/p>\n

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The remains of Port Arthur penal colony.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The memorial to those killed by a lone gunman at the site of the Penal colony in 1995<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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MrsTea models the ‘convict fashion. Thes were relatively lightweight at around 6kgs. Back in the day there were a variety of weights designed to be more or less punishing. Some up to 18kgs<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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A familiar face rants & raves hellfire & brimstone to convicts at the separation chapel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And a familiar looking convict keeps his thoughts about the threats of damnation to himself. Prisoners were brought in one by one, and kept separated and out of sight from their fellow prisoners by virtue of the timber work.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The 150km return trip made for a long day out, made longer by a few side trips on the Tasman Peninsula to look at some \u2018speccy\u2019 coastal scenery, a few photos of this below.<\/p>\n

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Tesselated rocks, which slightly amusingly the Tasmanian sign writer had mistakenly called Tasselated.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Firstly, a few more photos from Bruny Island where we enjoyed a further week. It really is a lovely part of Australia. Having taken the ferry from Bruny back to mainland Tasmania, we drove like old hands through Hobart city, across the Derwent heading eastward a short distance to the town of Sorell, a route … Continue reading MONA and Port Arthur penal colony<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[13],"tags":[15],"class_list":["post-1673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tasmania","tag-australian-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8PHoJ-qZ","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1673"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1698,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1673\/revisions\/1698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cuppa500.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}