Tag:tasmania

Peter Dombrovskis – Tasmanian Wilderness Photographer

Peter Dombrovskis, an acclaimed photographer of Australian landscapes, became well-known for his ability to capture the rugged and unspoiled terrains of Tasmania. His work played a vital part in the movement to protect the Tasmanian wilderness, and his artistic vision helped raise awareness about the significance of preserving Australia’s natural heritage. Sadly, he passed away in 1996 while photographing the remote Southwest National Park.

Early Years

Dombrovskis was born Pieter Herberts Dombrovski on 2nd March 1945 in a displaced persons camp in Wiesbaden, Germany, to Latvian parents. When Pieter was five, he and his widowed mother were resettled in Australia. Firstly at the Bonegilla migrant reception and training centre, Victoria, followed by Wollongong, New South Wales, before moving to Hobart, Tasmania.  In Hobart, they settled into the suburb of Fern Tree on the slopes of Mount Wellington.

Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, southwest Tasmania, 1988 by Peter Dombrovskis, courtesy of Trove
Lake Oberon, Western Arthur Range, southwest Tasmania, 1988/Peter Dombrovskis, courtesy of Trove

His mother worked various jobs in a factory, a hospital, and a domestic. Peter, as he was by now known, attended South Hobart Primary and Hobart High Schools.  He and his mother shared a mutual love of bushwalking on Mount Wellington. On these walks, he would record what he saw with the 35 mm Zeiss camera his mother had given him at age six.  After leaving high school, he studied botany and zoology at the University of Tasmania. However, he left without completing a degree and never formally studied photography. In November 1963, he and his mother became naturalised Australian citizens.

When he was seventeen,  Dombrovskis attended an adventure camp led by Olegas Truchanas, a Lithuanian-Australian photographer and conservationist.  Truchanas took a particular interest in the fatherless boy from a neighbouring Baltic country. He became his mentor and taught him bush survival skills, encouraging him to consider photography as a career and not merely as a hobby.

Myrtle tree in rainforest at Mount Anne, southwest Tasmania, 1984 / Peter Dombrovskis, courtesy of Trove
Myrtle tree in the rainforest at Mount Anne, southwest Tasmania, 1984/ Peter Dombrovskis. Courtesy of Trove
The fight for Lake Pedder

In 1967 the Tasmanian government revoked the status of Lake Pedder National Park.  Despite strong local and international opposition to the flooding of Lake Pedder, it was all in vain.  In 1971, just before the planned inundation, over two thousand people travelled to Pedder to see the lake before it was gone forever.  One particular weekend in March 1971, so many visited it became known as the Pedder Pilgrimage. The concerns over the dam’s construction revolved around the loss of the irreplaceable pink quartzite beach of the Lake Pedder, coupled with an increased awareness of the unique wilderness area of the southwest of Tasmania.

Macrocystis and Hormosira seaweed, Tasmania, 1987/ Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove
Macrocystis and Hormosira seaweed, Tasmania, 1987/ Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove

Truchanas’ fight to save Lake Pedder from flooding for hydroelectric power generation inspired Dombrovskis. In 1972, Truchanas tragically drowned, aged forty-nine, while canoeing the Gordon River, and sadly, it was Dombrovskis who found his body. From then on, he vowed to continue his mentor’s conservationist role by creating powerful images of Tasmania’s landscape and flora. His first publication, a calendar of photographs for 1973, sold out on release.

Giant kelp, Hasselborough Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, 1984 / Peter Dombrovskis courtesy of Trove
Giant kelp, Hasselborough Bay, Macquarie Island, Tasmania, 1984 / Peter Dombrovskis
Wild Wind Press

In 1974 Dombrovskis married Gabrielle Joan Teakle, a nurse. Together they had five children before the marriage broke down. With encouragement from his wife, he left his job as a draftsman at the federal Department Of Works to concentrate on publishing his photography full-time.  To this end, he founded West Wind Press, publishing his first wilderness diary (1976). This was followed by a calendar and a book, The Quiet Land (1977), with poems by Ellen Miller.

‘I took photographs … because the discipline of photography increased my awareness of Tasmania’s beauty and made me appreciate more clearly the value of the wilderness.’ 

Peter Dombrovskis
Equipment

In 1976 Dombrovskis began using a large format Linhof Master Technika flatbed camera with three lenses. A 90mm Nikkor F4.5, a 150mm Schneider Symar-S (standard lens), a 300mm Nikkor MF9 and sometimes, a polarising filter.

Evening at Louisa Bay, south coast, southwest Tasmania, 1983 / Peter Dombrovskis. Courtesy of Trove
Evening at Louisa Bay, south coast, southwest Tasmania, 1983 / Peter Dombrovskis. Courtesy of Trove

The large camera required a sturdy tripod. However, the downside was the camera and tripod were cumbersome, particularly in mountainous terrain.  On the other hand, its considerable depth of field allowed him to achieve crystal-clear images in full resolution from foreground to far distance. Furthermore, Dombrovskis favoured low light and misty air to intensify colours and developed a unique photographic style that captured the spiritual essence of the wilderness.

He perfected long exposures, whereby the flowing water became milky streams. Dombrovskis would also frequently focus on the detail of a single plant, evoking the concept of the wilderness as a pristine landscape.

Saving the Franklin River

Dombrovskis was happy spending weeks at a time, several times a year, alone in remote parts of Tasmania. In the late 70s and early 80s, he rafted down the Gordon and Franklin Rivers in the gorge country, recording images at the request of Bob Brown, director of the Tasmanian Wilderness Society.  His photographs were a compelling statement on the unique beauty of these endangered rivers threatened by the program to build dams for hydroelectric power.

Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania, 1979 / Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove
Morning mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Tasmania, 1979 / Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove

Brown selected Dombrovskis’s photograph Morning Mist, Rock Island Bend, Franklin River, Southwest Tasmania, showing the heavily wooded banks of the Newland Cascades as the face of their campaign.  While its isolation meant it was a location that few would ever visit, in March 1983, the image appeared as a full-page colour advertisement in newspapers with the slogan ‘Could you vote for a party that will destroy this?’

The message proved extraordinarily effective and prompted a groundswell of support. Additionally, the image was pivotal to the ‘No Dams’ campaign to halt the dam’s construction, being reproduced a million times.  The Tasmanian government wanted the dam.  Bob Hawkes’s labour party opposed it. In 1983 the High Court of Australia brought down a ruling that the Commonwealth Government was entitled to prevent the dam’s construction.  Many believe that Hawkes’s support for the campaign played a large part in Hawkes’s party winning the federal election in 1983.

Morning light on Little Horn, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania, 1995 / Peter Dombrovskis courtesy of Trove
Morning light on Little Horn, Cradle Mountain-Lake St. Clair National Park, Tasmania, 1995 / Peter Dombrovskis courtesy of Trove
Second Marriage

Apart from Tasmania, Dombrovskis would also make photographic trips to other parts of Australia. These trips took him to the Snowy Mountains, New South Wales, the Daintree rainforest and Hinchinbrook Island, Queensland.  Internationally he visited Fiji and Borneo. 

In 1989 he married Elizabeth Grace Cairns Coombe, whom he had known since childhood. Coombe was also an active partner in West Wind Press. Despite being diagnosed with a heart operation in the early 1990s, he continued travelling to remote locations for photography. While his wife or a fellow photographer sometimes accompanied him, he was alone in 1996 when he died of a heart attack, aged fifty-one, near Mount Hayes in the Western Arthur Range. 

Mount Hesperus, Western Arthur Range, southwest Tasmania, 1982 / Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove
Mount Hesperus, Western Arthur Range, southwest Tasmania, 1982 / Peter Dombrovskis Courtesy of Trove

He was survived by the two daughters and three sons of his first marriage, his wife, and his stepdaughter and stepson. The memorial service was held on the slopes of Mount Wellington. 

In 2003 Dombrovskis was posthumously inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame. Significantly, he became the first Australian to receive the honour. Also, in 2003, Scott Millwood made a documentary film, Wildness, tracing the legacy of Dombrovskis and Truchanas. In addition, the National Library of Australia (NLA) acquired his archive of over three thousand colour transparencies. In 2017, the NLA mounted an exhibition of seventy prints titled Journeys Into The Wild.  

Isle Of The Dead - Port Arthur

Isle Of The Dead – Port Arthur

The Isle of the Dead is a small island located in the harbour of Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia. It was used as a cemetery for convicts and civilians during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when Port Arthur was a penal settlement. The island is now a popular tourist destination and historical site, featuring a number of graves and a ruined chapel. Visitors can take guided tours to learn more about the island’s history and the people buried there.

At just one hectare (2.5 acres), the Isle of the Dead is very small in size. Significantly, however, it is part of the Port Arthur Historical Settlement, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The Isle has two distinctly separate burial areas based on class. Convicts, young inmates from Point Puer boys prison, paupers and lunatics were laid to rest in primarily unmarked graves at the lower southern end. The higher ground at the northern end was reserved for free men, the military and their families.

Port Arthur settlement

These graves, numbering around one hundred and eighty, are marked by headstones. Among them are one government official, seven soldiers, seven seamen, an officer’s wife and nine children. However, while those graves are marked, it wasn’t until the 1850s that some convict graves were given headstones. Before then, marking the convict graves with headstones was forbidden. As a result, it is estimated that less than 10% of graves on the Isle are marked with headstones or footstones.

The Cemetary

The first chaplain for the Port Arthur settlement was the Reverend John Allen Manton, who arrived in 1833.  Manton selected the Isle as the colony’s cemetery, as it was close to but separate from the colony. Manton then renamed it Isle of the Dead. 

‘This, it appeared to me, would be a secure and
undisturbed resting-place where the prisoners might lie together until the morning
of the resurrection’

Reverend John Allen Manton

Burials took place on the Isle of the Dead from September 1833 to 1877.  Internees came from Point Puer boys’ prison, soldiers from Eaglehawk Neck, and convicts from the Coal Mines at Norfolk Bay.  Following the closure of Point Puer boys’ prison in 1849 and the end of convict transportation to Tasmania in 1853, the military departed in 1863.

The cemetery, however, remained in use. Burials continued for the destitute, aged and infirm men, mainly convicts and ex-convicts. These men continued to reside in Port Arthur’s welfare institutions, such as the hospital, Paupers’ (invalid) Depot and Lunatic Asylum.  When they had all closed by 1877, the cemetery was abandoned.

Burial Records

The exact number of people buried on Tasmania’s Isle of the Dead is unknown due to poor record keeping and the destruction of or incomplete burial records. However, from the documents that have survived, we know that most burials on the Isle of the Dead resulted from a death caused by disease.

Convicts arriving in the colony came in unsanitary and overcrowded conditions of the hulks and gaols and suffered nutritional deficiencies.  In the colony’s early years, illnesses such as dysentery, enteritis and fever were the primary causes of death. The secondary reason was respiratory disease and epidemics that swept through the colony. A significant number of deaths also resulted from accidents, such as drowning, as all transport was by water. Children died from whooping cough and scarlet fever, and women often died during childbirth. Murder and suicide were also common.

David Little (2006). Port Arthur (Isle of the Dead) graves.
Courtesy of David Little (2006). Port Arthur (Isle of the Dead) graves.
Graves

Three Isle of the Dead graves recorded are:

Collins, Dennis. ( 1775 – 1833)

An English convict, disabled pauper and retired sailor. Collins had served in the British navy. Tragically, his leg was severely injured in a sea battle during Britain’s war with France. This led to him becoming an amputee. Unable to work, he was granted a pension from the government; this was subsequently taken away without explanation. Collins tried all available channels to have his pension restored but was denied. Finally, as a last-ditch attempt, he wrote to the King pleading his case, but this too was turned down without explanation.

Frustrated and angry, he attended Ascot races and threw a stone at the King, knocking his hat off. As a result, he was arrested and convicted of high treason and sentenced to be hung, drawn (disembowelled), and then beheaded and quartered (body cut into pieces). However, the sentence was commuted to transportation for life. He arrived at the colony on August 12, 1833, and died on November 30, 1833.  The cause of death was listed as suicide due to the refusal of food. He had lasted just three months at Port Arthur.

Eastman, Reverend George. (? – April 25 1870).

Eastman was the Church of England chaplain for the penal colony from January 1855 to April 1870 and was known as “the Good Parson”. In April 1870, while unwell with a cold, he visited an ill convict at an outstation. Eastman himself then died two days later.  He was interred in a raised sandstone vault on April 28 1870. The inscription on the tomb marked his age as 51. However, the Port Arthur burial register recorded his age as 50. Following his death, the local diocese ran an appeal to aid his wife and ten children

Reverend Eastmans Vault on Isle of the Dead, Port Arthur
Reverend Eastmans Vault
Savery, Henry. (1791–1842)

Savery was a businessman, forger, convict and Australia’s first novelist. He was arrested in Bristol, charged with forgery, and condemned to death in April 1825.  However, the day before he was due to be hung, his sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Arriving in the colony, he worked as a clerk for the colonial treasurer.  In 1828, deeply in debt, he attempted suicide by cutting his own throat but was saved by Dr William Crowther.

Back in prison for debt, he wrote his first book, a volume of Australian essays under the title of The Hermit of Van Dieman’s Land.  The book was published under the pseudonym Simon Stukeley.  He followed this with Quintus Servinton, the first Australian novel, in 1830. Unfortunately, he again fell into debt and was sent to Port Authur, where he died of a stroke in February 1842. Following his death, he was buried on the Isle of the Dead. 

Isle of the Dead, 2022, courtesy of Wikipedia
Gravediggers

Two gravediggers are known to have lived and worked on Tasmania’s Isle of the Dead. They were John Barron, an Irish convict, and Mark Jeffrey, an English convict.  Barron lived and worked on the island for more than ten years until pardoned in 1874.  

Mark Jeffrey, Gravedigger (Public Domain)

Jeffrey was known for his quick temper and violent rages and, by 1859, had nineteen convictions for assault and abusive language. In 1872 he received his second life sentence for manslaughter and accrued another twenty-four charges over the next four years. Finally, he was sent to the Isle of the Dead as a gravedigger to separate him from the other men. He remained a gravedigger on the isle until the penal colony closed in April 1877, when he was transferred to Hobart Town prison. He died in the Paupers Depot, Launceston, in 1903, aged 78.

While on the Isle, the two gravediggers lived in the gravedigger’s residence, a weatherboard hut with a wood-shingled roof and brick chimney.  A second shelter was used for funeral parties; this was a latticework-sided shed located near the jetty.

Tourism

Surprisingly, tourism began within six months of Port Arthurs’s closure as a penal settlement in 1877.  By 1880 a tourist centre was running organised tours. It gradually grew to include local people and arrivals from Melbourne and Sydney.   By the 1890s, steamship companies ran tourist excursions in the summer. The ships departed from Hobart, Melbourne and Sydney as inland infrastructure was not fully developed. While Port Arthur experienced tourism growth, visits to the Isle of the Dead were minimal due to a lack of accessibility.

(1890). Photograph - Port Arthur - Isle of the Dead - Headstones. Libraries Tasmania
(1890). Photograph – Port Arthur – Isle of the Dead – Headstones. Libraries Tasmania

In 1887 Isle of the Dead and Point Puer were sold to Thomas White. The Tasmanian government required it in 1971 and, in 1916, listed the Isle of the Dead as a scenic reserve. They then cleared overgrowth and planted new trees.

Conservation

 In 1971 the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) took over management of the Isle. The NPWS introduced conservation methods to minimise further erosion. For example, they removed exotic species and replaced them with native trees. Additionally, they also began to restore the monuments with concrete and mortar.

In the 1970s, tourism continued to increase, and a new jetty was built. A boat would take tourists from Mason Cove at Port Arthur to the Isle.  However, tourists were allowed to wander unsupervised once on the Isle, and many removed relics as souvenirs.

Since the late 1980s, tourism is now on guided tours. This protects the relics and avoids erosion by keeping tourists on designated walkways.  In 1995 the Isle of the Dead was included as part of the Port Arthur Historic site and placed on the Tasmanian Heritage Register.  It was added to the Australian National Heritage list in 2005 and the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2010. Thus becoming the eleventh Australian convict site added to the list.

Conservation continues

In 2021 a 5-year, $1.3 million project was completed to improve access by replacing stairs with ramps. In addition, the project built above-ground walkways and viewing platforms, ensuring visitors no longer walk over unmarked gravesites. The walkways also work to preserve the moments by stopping the acceleration of erosion of the headstones by people touching them.

Pre-bookings for all tickets and tours are essential at Port Arthur Historic Site – Isle of the Dead tickets are purchased at additional cost.

© Bevlea Ross