The pier at Sarah Island. This isolated island was a Penal Settlement between 1822 and 1833, established, before the more well-known Port Arthur, as a place of 'secondary' punishment, an attempt to control the uncontrollable. Over time Sarah Island has gained a reputation as a place of unspeakable horrors and a living hell, largely due to the exploits of one of the island's 'colourful' characters, Alexander Pearce, the Cannibal Convict, and a novel For the Term of His Natural Life written about 1860 by Marcus Clark. Altogether about 1200 men and women were sentenced or sent to Sarah Island. The early work of the Settlement was timber-cutting and hauling, work that could be done largely by unskilled gangs. But shipping out the valued Huon Pine proved more of a problem than expected: one solution was to build ships at the Settlement to transport the timber.
Soon Sarah Island was more than just a prison. It was also an industrial village that included amongst other gardeners, timber cutters, sawmen, boatmen, tanners, blacksmiths, carpenters, boat builders and shipwrights. There are few obvious ruins on the Island today. Most of the buildings were of timber construction which has been removed or rotted. Some deliberate damage many years ago was also carried out by those who wanted the island's history forgotten.