In the remote reaches of Macquarie Harbour, Sarah Island was established, in 1821, as a penal settlement where convicts laboured under the harshest conditions in the rainforest felling Huon pines for boat building. Of all the sites to be chosen Macquarie Harbour would have been the most windswept and barren but it was also the most secure. Any convict trying to escape Sarah Island had not only to get across the harbour but to try and hack his way through the impenetrable rain forests of the west coast. Today, the convict ruins give chilling insight into the harsh realities of the then convicts lives.