Sunday, June 19, tour of Port Arthur the Tasmanian prison colony for Britain's prisoners.  It's on a Peninsula, not the most southern, but close to being the most southern point of Australia , and as close as I'm gonna get to the most southern part of Australia, like I was at Cape Horn and Cape of Good Hope.  the  first prisoners arrived shortly after the conclusion of Americas war for its independence, about 1787.  Britain's goel's were full to the brim, so when Britain's inability to send prisoners to America, she began to send them to Australia.  And Port Arthur was the equivalent of  today's maximum security prison, a goel(jail) for second offenders, or third and fourth offenders too.  These were the worst of the dredges of humanity as perceived by British court system, some were murders, but many stole a loaf of bread when they, or their family was hungry, and off they went to Australia.  Sometime after WWll, Australia's image of its history changed from being ashamed of their criminal heritage to being cocky and proud of their rebel ancestors, so that was the time that the Australian government began to save, and reclaim it's true history and rehabilitate it's remaining prisons of the nineteenth century goel's.  So that is what I visited all day today, including about four hours of driving to and from.  The buildings are partial structures, no roof, maybe not even four walls were left standing, but enough was still intact to be able to see what had been there.  For those prisoners in solitary confinement, they had to attend church, hell fire and domination sermons, were an integral part of the then modern prison theory.  So if in solitary confinement, when they went  to hear the preacher in church, they still had to be in solitary confinement, so the pews were six foot tall boxes, with about eighteen inches of floor space, and the back and sides the boxes were enclosed to the top with a wooden ceiling, but the front of the boxes had an opening just big enough so each prisoner could see the expressions and gestures of the preacher giving the prisoners the weekly Christian hellfire and domination scare therapy session in his sermon, but the prisoners in the tiered boxes could only see the preacher and not one another, thus maintaining their solitary confinement, even when in church. The prisoners were smaller than are men today, but these boxes were so small there was no way I could even attempt to enter one of them.  A smaller, thin woman in the tour tried to enter one box, but she failed to get in either.  They were coffin sized with an opening at head level to see the preacher, if that big.  Took a boat trip to the Isle of the Dead, a cemetery island, where these men, the lowest of the low, would be buried in unmarked graves so they would be unidentified in death, as they had been in jail life being prisoner number 43875 not John or Jim.  Such bleakness was also the most modern prison reform theory of the day, at that time.  However the governor of the colony prison lived in a then mansion built by the prisoners.  Also the governor had a beautiful garden for the various civilian and ranking military officers, so that these privileged folk's morale would be improved, for themselves and their families.  A happy worker is a better worker, was the governor's theory.  Sure makes a guy relieved today that he was never caught in stealing a candy bar, and eligible for such justice.