Hell's Gates: The true Tasmanian story of the escaped convicts who turned to cannibalism to survive

'The majestic beauty of Van Diemen's Land as well as its tendency to foster grotesque violence is effectively captured in this narrative of notorious convict Alexander Pearce.' Sydney Morning Herald For the convicts transported from their homeland, Van Diemen's Land was a feared and dreaded penal settlement at the end of the earth. The worst prisoners were sent to the isolated Sarah Island, accessed through a treacherous channel that the convicts named 'Hell's Gates', a reference to the gates of hell in Dante's Inferno: 'Abandon all hope, ye who enter here'. In 1822, eight convicts escaped in a fateful bid for freedom. This band of escapees with little food or equipment, in a place these immigrants knew little about, battled a merciless enemy - an unforgiving, hostile land - that led to starvation and, ultimately, cannibalism. In Hell's Gates , Paul Collins has fashioned an utterly riveting narrative of physical hardship and pathological behaviour. The terrible journey of Alexander Pearce, Van Dieman's Land cannibal. Pearce and seven other convicts escaped from the prison settlement of Sarah Island in Macquarie Harbour, and nine weeks later he was the sole survivor. On the way five of his companions had been killed and eaten by their fellows.