Especially as the group, busy tightening roadside fencing wire and clearing rubbish-strewn verges, will be wearing vertically-striped black and yellow trouserings, similarly-hued jackets and caps replete with convict-era ‘‘broad arrow’’ motifs.

For these distinctively uniformed  fellows will not only be performing a worthwhile public service in tidying up the state’s country lanes (the delightful and scenic back road between Nile and Conara comes to mind) but are also prisoners of the Crown who have opted to assist the state’s tourism industry by re-enacting various historic tableaux based on this sceptred isle’s rich colonial past.

Indeed, the entire scenario will be part ofapractical and robust application of an ambitious plan to keep the state’s lags occupied by undertaking civic duty rather than languishing in their airless cells watching truly appalling television game shows between consuming sumptuous meals, including duck with orange sauce followed by sticky date pudding, at the taxpayers’ expense.

Oh yes, and as far as the historic aspect of this scenario goes, expect Her Majesty’s guests to be ‘‘supervised’’ by warders appropriately dressed as red-coated , and blunderbuss-equipped, soldiers.

The gentle reader may well have to forgive this columnist’s fever-browed enthusiasm for such a concept but we are merely broadening a quite sensible suggestion made last week by Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers’ Association chief executive officer Jan Davis.

Ms Davis has called for serving prisoners to be allowed to work on public projects. 

She has called for them to be allowed to ‘‘get out into the bush, fix up some fences, clean up some fire hazards, do some exercise, get some vitamin D and pick up a life skill all at the same time’’.

Last year’s Dunalley fires were cited by Ms Davis as an example of where newly sun-tanned prisoners offered ‘‘invaluable assistance’’ to those who had lost property and livelihoods.

Ms Davis suggested that only ‘‘low risk’’ prisoners would be employed, thus obviating the need for chain gangs.

For some reason we are nevertheless reminded here of the scene in the Woody Allen mocumentary movie Take The Money And Run where Woody, as inept bank robber Virgil Starkwell, escapes even though working in a chain gang work party.

The shackled group is eventually recaptured despite passing itself off as a giant good luck  charm bracelet. 

Meanwhile, back here in Tassie, surely there has not been such an innovative penology-themed move since the state government in 2002 invited so-called ‘‘stakeholders’’ to provide input into mooted major improvements at Risdon.

A ministerial release of the time pointed out that this not only included staff and so on, but also what sharing and caring human rights bodies at the time would have referred to as the ‘‘the incarcerated community’’.

Your correspondent recalls suggesting to the temporarily jailed that they may want to consider recommending to architects and builders such lifestyle moves as providing French doors from cells through to the prison’s outside walls if not to have the rather intimidating tall concrete outer walls replaced with bark.

And a taxi rank at the gates. 

Alas, no such brilliant ideas were adopted. 

We can only hope that allowing persons jailed at Her Majesty’s pleasure (do we still use that term?) to not only feel the fresh wind of freedom on their faces but also aid the burgeoning tourism industry are taken on board.

And should any lags decide to excuse themselves from a work detail they will be quickly captured.

Even should they pass themselves off as colonial-era actors taking a smoke break. 

Or a bunch a chaps claiming to be a giant good-luck charm bracelet.