We spend our lives trying to avoid going to jail, for the most part, until we’re on holiday.
Then we’re lining up to get inside.
Prominent tourist destinations often have many attractions in common, such as zoos and theme parks, entertainment venues and sporting precincts, galleries and museums, beaches and waterfalls, and so on.
And one of the things we’ve always been drawn to on family holidays (or maybe it’s just the one who decides all our itineraries) is historic prisons.
It might be the photographer in me who loves the earthy colours and textures of the big old stones and bricks used to construct gaols in the old days — they’re far more aesthetically pleasing than the solid concrete walls or 5m high chain mesh fences of today’s pens.
But it’s probably the history that’s the real star of the show.
I sometimes read stories at these sites that feel like they’re straight from a movie script set in a land far away, not something that actually happened on our soil in our fairly recent history.
One such tale is of the potentially innocent Elizabeth Woolcock, the only woman ever to be executed in South Australia, whose grave exists between the inner and outer walls of the Old Adelaide Gaol.
In less than half an hour, she was convicted by a jury of murdering (by way of poisoning) her violent husband.
The jury recommended leniency because of her age, but it was ignored, and she was hanged to death at the tender age of 25.
Many visitors to the site still lay flowers at her grave to honour her suspected innocence.
Further north in Fannie Bay Gaol still sit the gallows that were purpose-built in 1952 to hang the last two prisoners ever executed in Darwin: Jerry Coci and Jonus Novotny, a pair of Czechoslovakian immigrants found guilty of murdering a taxi driver (simply to steal his vehicle).
South again and across the strait in Tasmania, Port Arthur’s walls house many a shocking historical tale, including the one of William Riley, a 14-year-old orphan who was transported to Van Diemen’s Land in 1821 for attempted murder, where he successfully assumed his title of actual murderer at age 29 when he suddenly killed fellow convict Joseph Shuttleworth with a pickaxe while they were building the church at the site.
Port Arthur also has a dark recent history, given what took place on the grounds there in 1996 during the Port Arthur massacre (a heart-breaking day in history, but a pivotal one that led to significant changes to our country’s gun laws).
The memorials are touching and, while it’s a terribly emotional place to visit, the grounds are just beautiful, the buildings as impressive to the eye as any Roman ruins, pyramid of Egypt or Parisian tower, and the backdrops of wilderness and water are as pretty as a postcard.
The history is almost too plentiful to absorb in a single visit (if you plan to visit, I suggest setting aside an entire day for it).
Back in Victoria, the Old Melbourne Gaol held a hugely diverse mix of prisoners, from petty offenders to dangerous criminals and the mentally ill to the homeless.
In less than 100 years, 133 prisoners met their fate at the gallows there (including the infamous Ned Kelly).
Besides the unnerving energy within their walls that often forced me out of these places before I’d read or seen everything there is to see there, all these former prisons have another thing in common.
They all have a good ghost story or two (or 683) attached to them.
And how could they not, with so many troubled people spending much of their lives there before dying there, so many untimely deaths by illness, infighting and execution, so much sorrow and anger, fear, distress and remorse — how could all those souls rest peacefully?
Many of the sites also offer after-dark ghost tours, so if you’re not spooked enough by the grisly history during the daylight wandering through dimly lit, echoing cells, creepy infirmaries and spine-chilling prison hospitals with their torturous-looking contraptions on display, you’re certain to be after that.
Especially if a transparent pick-axe-wielding inmate taps you on the shoulder.