The Separate Prison at Port Arthur: Transforming a Convict Site into a Memorial Museum with Digital Technology

Memorial museums provide society with a vital service - the education and illumination of cultural heritage and historical events; and are often popular tourism destinations. Within Australia, the memorialising of convicts is an important part of our national identity and convict sites are popular tourist destinations in Australia. In particular, the Separate Prison, situated in the wider Port Arthur penal settlement (located on the southern tip of the Tasmanian peninsula) provides a collective social memory of the importance of the convict past in establishing Australian history, which has ensured that it is now one of Australia's main tourism sites.

While tourism to Port Arthur has existed since its time as an active convict settlement - where tourists would visit to experience both pleasure and thrills - it has a relatively recent history as a memorial museum. The focus of this chapter is exploring the introduction of digital technologies between the early 2000s to mid 2010s1 that has transformed the Separate Prison at Port Arthur from a place of entertainment and merriment into a memorial museum encouraging visitors to reflect and mourn for those who endured its silence. The first section discusses Port Arthur, and in particular the Separate Prison, as a memorial museum. The second section offers a brief explanation of the establishment of the prison, conditions experienced by convicts within the system and early forms of tourism at the site. In the final section, the implementation of digital technologies within the Separate System to foster a memorial museum environment are discussed and evaluated.