Address & Contact
Frenchs Farm Coastal Route TAS 7190
Phone: 03 6257 1420
Email: N/A
Web: https://parks.tas.gov.au/explore-our-parks/maria-island-national-park
Located on Maria Island, Darlington Probation Station was a convict penal settlement from 1825 to 1832, then later a convict probation station during the last phase of convict management in eastern Australia (1842–1850).
The site contains several relatively intact buildings and structures from this earlier era and of the 78 convict probation stations once built in Tasmania, the buildings and structures at Maria Island are regarded as the most outstanding representative example.
Maria Island was an ideal location for a probation station as it was away from the free
population and had natural resources for the convicts to labour on. As
well as this, its island location made prisoner escapes difficult. At its peak, the number of convicts totalled 492.