History of Bitterport, Tasmania
Every mystery needs a setting that earns its place. Not just a backdrop, but a world with its own heartbeat — its own wounds, its own long memory.
Bitterport is that world.
It is a fictional town, and you won’t find it on a map of Tasmania. But it is built from the bones of real history and geography. I want to introduce you to it before the first book arrives, because once you understand what Bitterport has survived, you’ll understand why it refuses to let go of its secrets.
It began as a whaling station.
In 1812, on a peninsula jutting into the Southern Ocean, a small settlement took root. At its peak, Bitterport was a proper town with 582 residents, three wharves, a sawmill, a savings bank, the Seacrest Turkish Bath House, accommodation, a church, and a school. The kind of place where people built lives and expected futures.
Nineteen kilometres offshore, visible on clear days, Ada Island loomed over everything. Between 1814 and 1851, that island served as a convict settlement for prisoners transported from Britain who worked in Bitterport’s processing facilities and built many of the town’s early structures.
That history does not simply disappear when the convict era ends.
Then the mine came. Then the mine closed.
By the 1870s, coal had been discovered, and Bitterport boomed again. A railway was built through dense forest. New buildings went up. Doctors and teachers arrived. The Seacrest Bath House thrived.
Then in 1905, an underground fire killed several miners, and the Mount Elbio Coal Mine closed permanently the following year. The people who had come for the work left again. The buildings stayed.
And then came Arthur Carruthers.
I’ll have more to say about Arthur in a future post. Much more, because Arthur deserves careful attention. But for now, suffice it to say that when World War II brought lucrative munitions contracts to this already-weakened town, it also brought Arthur’s own brand of catastrophe. On June 17, 1943, his munitions factory exploded.
Bitterport never recovered.
By the time the stories begin, the population has dwindled to a handful of stubborn souls. The wharves are falling apart. The main street is overgrown. The Seacrest Bath House is boarded up and has been for decades, following a series of accidents that nobody could quite explain. Millmerran House — the grandest of Bitterport’s colonial mansions — has stood empty for eighty years.
And yet. Bitterport persists. Its buildings stand. Its history demands attention.
Something else persists too.
Beneath several of Bitterport’s historic buildings, there are tunnels. Nobody built them for official purposes, or if they did, no official records exist. Smugglers used them once. Others after that. Where they lead, and what they still conceal, is the BIG question.
Someone has recently begun distributing Bitterport’s properties to new owners, anonymously, with specific conditions attached to each transfer.
Someone with a long memory, and a very complicated conscience.
Stay tuned for more from Bitterport …
Murder at Millmerran House — the first Bitterport Mystery — releases 26 June. Subscribe to the newsletter to receive exclusive behind-the-scenes history and character introductions in the weeks before release.
Meet the Authors of Bitterport Mysteries
Raven Corbin 