The TRAVELER'S JOURNAL: October twenty-third doing time in Tasmania.

Last time, we toured Lizard Island, an exclusive getaway off Australia's northeast coast. Some 200 miles off its southeast coast is another island famous for a different kind of getaway.

For a century, Tasmania was the last stop in the British penal system, the Alcatraz of the Empire. In that time 160,000 prisoners were transported to Australia. Between 1830 and 1877, more than 12,000 of the most incorrigible wound up in Port Arthur, the so-called model prison, set on a narrow spit of land jutting out into the shark-infested waters of the Tasmanian Sea.

Port Arthur prisoners were kept in perpetual solitary confinement, locked in dark, tiny cells 23 hours a day. The last inmate left 140 years ago, but the Port Arthur historic site still ranks as Tasmania's most popular tourist attraction, even despite a murderous incident which took place there several years ago.

It is an imaginative restoration. Rather than rebuilding the entire penitentiary, the renovators left off the roof and many walls, so the building appears to be cut away in cross section. Wooden scaffolding lets visitors explore at will. Well-informed guides provide perspective, as does a prison museum's display of instruments of physical torture.

Port Arthur is located 40 miles from Hobart, the island's capital. It's an hour's drive though a green and rolling landscape that must have reminded those prisoners of home in England. Along the way, visit Tasmanian Devil Park, a zoo devoted to the fierce, carnivorous marsupials that are the island's other primary claim to fame.

FMI For information on Port Arthur Historic Site www.portarthur.org.au Tasmania www.discovertasmania.com.au or Australian Tourism at 800-333-0262

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