As you probably know, Australia was used as a penal colony, the punishment being that you were sent halfway around the world to a hot, dry, beautiful country (notice how we all pay lots to do that now?). So what happens if you get sent all this way and commit yet more crimes? Port Arthur happens, where prisoners were reformed, or broken in the process (they had to build a lunatic asylum to house those broken men). The worst form of punishment was to be sent to the Separate Prison, which gives solitary confinement a new meaning; the prisoners could not make any noise, nor hear any, even footsteps had to be muffled by grass mats. They were locked up 23 hours a day, and hooded when out of their cell. When we returned late at night for a ghost tour (fortunately no cheesy people dressed in bed sheets jumping out), it was the Separate Prison that was the eeriest, with tales of women being grabbed and pulled into cells as they walked out, a woman who felt a suffocating coldness over her head and shoulders, and women seeing convict ghosts chase them down the corridor. For some reason Caroline held on a little bit tighter as we walked out of there…