Eaglehawk Neck
Eaglehawk Neck marks the start of the Tasman Peninsula, sitting around 20km south-east of Dunally and in the 2016 Census had around 385 residents.
Prior to European settlement, the area around Eaglehawk Neck was occupied by people from the Nuenonne Aboriginal language group.
Eaglehawk Neck is a bar made of sand carried by currents and waves from the floors of Pirate’s Bay to the east and Norfolk Bay to the west.
It ties Tasman to Forestier Peninsula in a narrow run of land which is less than 100 metres wide.
This quiet fishing village comprises clusters of tiny holiday retreats which are surrounded by spectacular coastal cliffs.
The waters around the coast are some of the finest temperate dive waters in the world.
Forming a natural gateway between the Tasman and Forestier Peninsulas, it was used by the British in the 1830s, when a line of dogs was chained to posts across the neck to warn of any convicts attempting to escape the Port Arthur prison.
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| A sketch of the Eaglehawk Neck Dog Line |
The area was heavily patrolled by soldiers, and the guards' quarters still remain as a museum.
Doo Town
Beyond Eaglehawk Neck, on the way to Tasman's Arch and the Devil's Kitchen, is the holiday village of Doo Town - comprising mostly of huts, shacks and holiday homes.
The locals have named their houses often with clever puns on "Doo", including Doodle Doo, Doo Nothing, Love Me Doo, Doo Us, Doo Me, Doo Nix, Wee Doo, Xanadu, This'll Doo Me, Rum Doo and, the house which reputedly started the fashion, Doo Little.
Tasman's Arch
Tasman's Arch is a natural arch which was produced in the sandstone cliff by waves action.
It is an enlarged tunnel which runs from the coast along a zone of closely spaced cracks and extends inland to a zone which is perpendicular to the first.
The roof at the end of the tunnel has collapsed, forming the arch.
Devil's Kitchen
The Devil's Kitchen is a gash in the coastline which has been formed by a similar process to Tasman's Arch.
The sandstone rocks are Permian in age (about 250 million years old) and were deposited as silt and sand on the floor of a shallow sea.
Geologists believe that ice probably floated on the surface and that the pebbles caught in the ice floes dropped into the silt and sand as the ice melted.
The Dog Line
"These out of the way pretenders to dogship were actually rationed and borne in the government's books and rejoiced in such soubriquets as Caesar, Pompey, Ajax, Achilles, Ugly Mug, Jowler, Tear'em, Muzzle'em ... There were the black, the white, the brindle, the grey and the grisly, the rough and the smooth, the crop-eared and lop-eared, the gaunt and the grim. Every four-footed black-fanged individual among them would have taken first prize in his own class for ugliness and ferocity at any show." wrote Harden S. Melville in 1837.
These dogs were part of the Dog line, a line of eighteen dogs which stretched across the narrow isthmus at Eaglehawk Neck and was designed to stop convicts escaping from Port Arthur and the other convict settlements on the Tasman Peninsula.
Lieutenant John Peyton Jones, from the 63rd Regiment, devised the "natural" prison wall.
He later wrote "It occurred to me that the only way to prevent escape of prisoners from Port Arthur in consequence of the noise occasioned by the continual roar of the sea breaking on the beach and the peculiar formation of the land which rendered sentries comparatively useless, was to establish a line of lamps and dogs."So, in 1832, a cutting was dug through the full width of the dunes to form a broad passage from one side of the Neck to the other.
The floor of the cutting was covered with white cockle shells which, with the light from the lamps, illuminated the site at night.
Initially, nine dogs were chained along the length of the cutting, creating an impenetrable, ferocious blockade.
Anyone approaching Eaglehawk Neck by land or water would activate the alarm - a cordon of vicious, barking mongrels ...
The system worked.
Throughout its 45 years [it was not abandoned until Port Arthur closed down in 1877] of operation, only a few prisoners succeeded in passing through the barrier."
The system was greatly assisted by a series of 22 semaphores.
Once a convict escaped the soldiers on duty at Eaglehawk Neck could be alerted in a matter of minutes.
A report recalls one unsuccessful escape attempt at Eaglehawk Neck that became famous as follows:
"Only now and then did a touch of macabre comedy come to Eaglehawk.
A convict named William Hunt, listed on the records as a former strolling actor, attempted to escape in the skin of a kangaroo.
Two guards on picket duty saw what seemed to be a 'boomer', a big old man kangaroo, hopping determinedly across the Neck and heading for the scrubland on Forestier's Peninsula.
One for the pot, they reckoned, but as they raised their muskets the kangaroo stopped in its tracks and in the impeccable accents of Drury Lane called out, 'Don't shoot! It's only me - Billy Hunt!''
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