Charlie Lewis attended the Port Arthur memorial service. Here, he reflects on the anniversary of Australia’s worst-ever mass shooting.
If Australia has one place where ghosts should walk it is Port Arthur. There are ruins enough here; an atmosphere of violence and decay; almost too many remembrances of human suffering.
George Farwell, 1965
The tradition of literature that qualifies as Tasmanian Gothic goes back to Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life in 1874, and continues to this day. Taking the Arthur Highway south east, it seems absurd. As the road curls through the endless rolling hills that frequently swoop down — as in Eaglehawk Neck, or Dunalley — into a glowing, mirror-like bay, or past the dense, dark forests that knit it all together, the thought of setting horror in such gentle and dreamy beauty seems like the kind of cheap juxtaposition a first-year film student would come up with.
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