Port Arthur and the spectre of ‘unnatural acts’ in Australia

Heritage penal landscapes are complex sites, dealing with histories of brutality while reassuring the public that criminals can be made safe. In Australia, the terrain is highly complex given the founding of the nation as a penal colony to take the human refuse of Britain. This history, historians argue, raised the spectre of the long-term legacy of the ‘convict stain’, an idea they argue is a legacy of the ‘anti-sodomitical’ hysteria associated with the campaign to end convict transportation. I offer a reading of the ways in which the spectre of ‘anti-sodomitical hysteria’ continues to make itself present at Port Arthur and the Coal Mines Historical Site, through reference to ‘unnatural acts’. The increased social acceptance of same sex relationships, I argue, requires a more explicit engagement with the history of what we now call homophobia, its relationship to the anti-transportation movement and its legacy in the Australian historical consciousness.