From 1844 to 1850, female convicts arriving in Van Diemen's Land under the Probation System were sent to a Probation Station to undergo six months probation before being hired as probation pass-holders.
The Anson was the main Probation Station, used from 1844 to 1849, and was the only designated Probation Station especially for women.
Prior to the Anson being fitted out and ready to receive prisoners, New Town Farm operated temporarily as a station for female convicts in early 1844. New Town Farm was again used temporarily as a probation station in 1850 after the Anson was dismantled.
Prior to the fitting out of the Anson, it was planned to build a probation station for female convicts at Oyster Cove. An article in the Hobart Town Advertiser on 2 February 1844 (p.3 c.2), an account of a voyage down the channel, recounted that:
Lower down is Oyster Cove, the seat of the new factory for the control of female prisoners, and which exhibits a small piece of rich cultivation in its recess ...
This probation station, however, was never built. The site was later used to house Tasmanian Aboriginal people removed from Wybalenna on Flinders Island.
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