Sarah Island Historic Site

Langerrarerouna/Sarah Island
Interpetation for Sarah Island Historic Site

Client: Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service
Concept, writing and project coordination: Fiona Rice
Design: Alex Miles
Collaborators: Trish Hodge (Aboriginal content)

The first inhabitants of this remote island called it Langerrarerouna. It wasn’t until the early 1800s when the British established a penal settlement here that it became known as Sarah Island. Here, convicts laboured under the harshest conditions in the rainforest, felling Huon pines for boat building. It also served in the 1830s as a holding place for Aboriginal people being forcibly removed from their homelands by the government and transported to islands in the Bass Strait.

Today, The Round Earth Company performs tours amongst the convict ruins that give insight into the cruelties of life on the island. A walking track links important sites, with interpretation panels supporting face-to-face tour guides, and providing background when private visitors arrive on the island. Stories are told across the island by site function (ie blacksmith, baker, muster yard etc), with historic illustrations and accounts incorporated into weathered steel panels. Steel ‘corners’ also assist in locating former building sites, where there is no longer a structure.