Guided Tours

 Woolmers Experience – Guided Buggy Tour

Led by an experienced and passionate volunteer guide, you will be driven by buggy across the estate, stopping at key buildings and locations that tell the complete story of Woolmers.

Your guide will take you through the homestead and farm precinct in detail, exploring the lives of six generations of the Archer family, from Thomas Archer’s arrival in Van Diemen’s Land in 1817 to the last family member leaving in 1994.

You will discover how the convict Assignment System operated at Woolmers, where over 700 convicts were assigned across 35 years. This is the untold story of Australia’s convict history. Not punishment and chains, but a system where convicts gained skills, earned freedom and often chose to stay. Your guide brings these individual stories to life in the very buildings where they unfolded.

Unlike almost any other historic house in Tasmania, everything you see at Woolmers belongs here. Every piece of furniture, every portrait, every personal belonging has been in this homestead for generations. Nothing has been brought in for display. This is not a recreation. It is one of the finest intact colonial heritage estates in Australia, and your guide will reveal the significance behind what you are seeing in a way that transforms your understanding of the property.

With a maximum of seven guests per session, the experience is intimate and tailored. Your guide can follow your interests, answer your questions and share the details that bring each room and building to life.

Convict Walking Tour 

Where the buggy tour tells the full story of Woolmers, the Convict Walking Tour goes deep into one chapter: the Assignment System and the real lives of the men and women who lived and worked on this estate.

Over two hours, your guide takes you inside the buildings where convicts and free settlers actually spent their days, the Store, Woolshed, Cider House, Farm Stable, Blacksmith’s Shop and Chapel, bringing individual names and stories into the rooms where they unfolded. You will meet Mary Stewart, James Roberts, Maria Worrall, Henry Whatley and others whose lives reveal how the Assignment System worked in practice: its opportunities, its cruelties, and the complexity that Port Arthur’s story rarely has room for.

With a maximum of twelve guests, there is space to ask questions, sit with difficult truths and leave with a genuine understanding of what the assigned life looked like.