Discover the strange story of Port Arthur's elk this weekend
Port Arthur's agricultural heritage generally takes a back seat
to its history of crime and punishment. But in the early 1870s
Port Arthur was a productive agricultural settlement, with crops
and livestock. That livestock included, for a few months in
1871, an elk! Port Arthur's farming heritage is being celebrated
the 2011 Tasmanian Heritage Festival in line with its theme
'Lamingtons to Lasers' with a focus on food, fruit and farming.
One part of the site which often goes unnoticed is Government
Farm. The farm first appeared in official documentation on a
plan of the settlement sent to London in January of 1854. The
map showed a farmyard and a piggery. By late 1859 dairy cattle
were housed at the farm, their milk being supplied to patients
in the hospital. During the next ten years, farming operations
grew to include a machine to thresh grain more effectively and a
new dairy was built, all of this done in the hope of making Port
Arthur a self-supp