Australia, Tasmania, Port Arthur, Island of the Dead; Convicts from Dorset and Somerset; Edward Spicer; Henry Savery

Edward Spicer, from Poole, Dorset; died Port Arthur, 1854, aged 47:

Photo Jack Thwaites

"Affliction sore

Long time I bore

Physicians were in vain

Till God did please

That death should ease

Me from my pain"

Henry Savery, born Butcombe, Somerset,
died Port Arthur, Feb. 1842

Port Arthur: Island of the Dead

The first two stones we're shown

When we've been transported

To the Island of the Dead-

They stand alone on the lower ground-

Commemorate two convicts

Who had creative flair.

From Poole in Dorset,

Edward Spicer,

Who penned his moving epitaph,

Soon to disappear,

By erosion of the sandstone face;

Henry Savery,

A Somerset man,

Inveterate forger -

Remembered by a modern stone,

A forgery itself,

As befits the maker

Of Australia's first novel;

He cut his own throat,

And died of a "stroke".

They are part of a long tradition,

Death in custody, dishonourable graves;

From Rottnest Island

To Tasman Peninsula

The story's much the same.

The stones of soldiers, officers, guards

(Those on higher ground, along with wives and children),

Face North, not East:

Face not the rising sun, but Home. The convicts' headstones do not mark their graves.

But somewhere hereabouts, a few paces more or less,

Two sons of Somerset and Dorset share

A common plot

Of broadly

British Earth.

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Henry Savery biography

Wikipedia