The Port Arthur Massacre

Tasmania’s Port Arthur massacre in April 1996 will go down in history as one of Australia’s, and the world’s, worst peacetime atrocities. That a single act of madness by a lone gunman took place at a former penal settlement, where brutality was once a daily part of life, should not be lost on us as a nation. On 28 April 1966, Martin Bryant – a 27-year-old described as ‘intellectually stunted’ with ‘poor social skills’ – took a small arsenal of high-powered semi-automatic weapons to the Tasmanian heritage site and killed 35 people, as well as wounding another 28. The crime shocked the nation, and the world, and led to the banning of such weapons in Australia.