We went on the ghost tour at 20:45 (8:45pm), just on sunset at Port Arthur, though there was still a touch of light in the sky. Port Arthur is a former penal settlement described in my gallery of it which will be found here, though at the time of writing it contained only two images of something… apparently ghostly. It's the place for such apparitions, being a singularly beautiful place with a singularly ugly past.

Here we see the church (built 1836-1837), or the remains of it. It was never consecrated because it was intended to serve all of the residents of the settlement regardless of denomination. Accommodating some 1100 people, it was almost a cathedral rather than a church by some standards. Sadly the building was gutted and its roof destroyed by the bushfires of 1884. A lot of conservation effort has been put into it and although the floor is now grass and the windows empty sockets, it's pretty easy to imagine how awe inspiring it must have been in its time.

As night falls, however, with the belfry the only part illuminated aside from the lanterns of the ghost tourers, it can certainly play with the imagination a little.

The church is still a popular venue for weddings which means, as the tour guide said, it's the one place in Port Arthur where you can still get a life sentence.

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