Darlington Probation Station

The historic Darlington Probation Station ( German: Darlington probation camp ) is located on Maria Iceland off the east coast of Tasmania, Australia. The camp is situated in the northwest of the island on the Bay in Darling Maria Iceland National Park, where the former settlement Darlington was. Already since 1825, there were on the island a camp for prisoners who had committed serious criminal offenses and in the time from 1842 to 1850 it was operated as one of two British prison camps, in addition to the Cascades Female Factory, as a re-education camp.

Prehistory

1825, the second penal colony in Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania ) built by Governor George Arthur, 50 convicts and some soldiers to Mary Iceland that has already been closed after a short time in 1832. Despite the small time, several buildings were constructed, one of which called the Commissariat Store and the buildings of the convict camp, Penitentiary, have been preserved.

The convicts built a wooden, shoe and clothes maker factory and tannery. Noteworthy was the establishment of a mechanized driven by water power Kleidermanufaktur. Because of several escape attempts and disciplinary problems, these penal colony was closed in 1832. Also played a role in the meantime built prison of Port Arthur, in which a larger number could be accommodated by convicts.

Darlington Probation Station

Ten years later, the penal colony was reopened again as a warehouse for parole of convicts on the initiative of the Lieutenant Governor Franklin 1842, after repair of existing buildings. As a second station at the point Leseur had been opened, was attended by over 800 convicts on the island and other buildings it was built. Overcrowding has led to numerous problems and the stations were closed in 1850.

Among the convicts was the Irish nationalist movement of the Young Ireland William Smith O'Brien, two Khoikhoi and five Maori that were fixed there because of national conflicts over borders.

The installation of the camp is August 1, 2007 in the Australian National Heritage List and registered since 1 August 2010, one of eleven Australian Convict Sites, which are recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.

Accommodation Station is one of the best preserved buildings of the convict camp from the early days of the penal colony of Australia dar. In Tasmania, there were 78 such camps. On Maria Iceland is 13 buildings, some of which receive some ruins.

The scale on the island buildings reflect the system of labor discipline of convicts in the early British colonial period. In the convict camp was dominated by strict rules and discipline with division into groups and after training, exercise of religious coercion and methods of rigid punishment. The Darlington Probation Station with this form of Sträflingsdiziplinierung with public work goes back to Franklin ( 1837-1843 ).

In the camp there was a canteen and a school room, a chapel and buildings for the accommodation of the priest and religion teacher. The barracks and ruins of the convicts were divided into different rooms for wohlverhaltende and unruly convicts, where the well -behaved convicts were housed in dormitories and the other in separate rooms. The individual cells bear witness to the punishment practiced method of isolation.