This morning I managed to wake up at a sensible time and decide to take a little walk along the Swan Estuary (near the house) before being picked up to go to Fremantle Gaol.The estuary (some of it is also called the Foreshaw, but I have yet to work out exactly what that means…). Even relatively early, the sun is searing and hot, and I can barely see without sunglasses. Not sure how I coped without them before… Hat goes on after a few moments, as even my wet hair is now roasting… Dries quickly though!
I potter along the sandy beach at the water’s edge. It’s clearly not a full-on beach, but still very pleasant, and the views all along are very pretty. It’s evidently a body of salt water as there are hundreds of jellyfish glopping about in the water, mostly brown with a simple looped star on their backs and lots of small cream dots around the outer edge of the jelly. They’re quite pretty. Some of them bobble about at the water’s edge, one or two are beached and dead. One poor, stupid creature is stuck in the sand, pulled down by its own liquid weight. It tries valiantly and hopelessly to swim itself free of the clinging sand, despite the fact it is a good foot and a half above the water line. I, feeling for the creature despite it potentially being a ‘stinger’, try to prod it the foot or so to the tideline with the tip of my flip-flop. Sadly, it is just too floppy, too inert, and falls totally prone again, splat, like a poorly-made blancmange. I suppose it’s not my responsibility, but I still feel bad leaving the poor thing, pulsing feebly and forlornly on the sand under that fierce sun. Maybe I’ll try again on my way back.
I walk along the pathway a bit further. Above my head in a pine tree something goes ‘wark!’. This isn’t an English ‘Waaarck!’, this is an attenuated Aussie ‘weark’ that sounds like a rejected sound effect from ET or Wall-E. Some of the local birds take this a step further and tend to sound like a cat that’s been sat on…
I make my way back, and the poor stupid Jelly is still there, flapping still. I remove my shoe and heft the jelly a few inches with the toe... And again. He's surprisingly heavy for a blob of goo... He ends up back in the water eventually, a little flatter than he ought to be, and evidently tired, but even if he doesn't make it at least he's not frying any more!
Fremantle Gaol is a forbidding building, looming high over the City of Fremantle, with thick, bright, limestone walls rising high.
[Those of you not interested in history, look away now… ;) ]
Our tourguide (you can’t get in without one) is called Brendan and he’s a lovely Irish chap. He is extremely evasive around questions regarding his job and status at the Gaol, given that he knows so much. I suspect it’s to keep us interested, but there’s a possibility he may have been a prisoner there – it’s possible!
The Gaol was a maximum security prison until 1991, when it was closed. The entire place was built by convicts; the enormous courtyard surrounded by various sturdy wings would have been hewed out of the local rock by men who had only just arrived in this inhospitable land.
The reason for this was partly that the Governor of Fremantle had realised they were short of manpower, there being only a few hundred people there trying to scratch a living out of the red earth. He sent a note to England asking for nice, educated convicts like carpenters to be sent (which may be one of the reasons there were so many people sent over for stealing apples and suchlike). The extra 150 convicts arrived among the 400 or so people in Freo and the building of the prison was supervised by Captain Henderson who captained the ship. The now-five-star Esplanade Hotel was originally used as somewhere for the convicts to stay while the prison was being built!
In the Gaol, on arrival, you would have all your things taken from you and stored in a canvas clothes bag. You’d be pushed through the shower and issued with green jumper and trousers (or white shorts in summer), a transparent bag to keep your belongings with you, and also containing toiletries, pants, razor and rule book, and then you’d have shoes and belt (made by inmates in workshops). You’d be given a mugshot – not allowed to smile, just like passport photos today! Your existing smalls would be taken away and washed in an enormous washing machine, made by a concrete mixer company… At risk prisoners would be segregated at entry for their own protection. The view was that if you were well enough for court, you were well enough for prison, although there was a medical facility like a hospital on site.
Every door here is good and solid, and therefore slams… Which is where the term, the ’slammer’ comes from.
There are different sections within this complex for different crimes and times inside, also a separate wing for the women; they very rarely mixed. There were a few amenities in this vision of hell, a vegetable plot, a C of E church, aviaries, even soccer once or twice a week if you were very good.
The building is built into the side of a hill, from local limestone, hewn from the same hill, local Jarra wood (very strong and coloured like mahogany), and iron bars and suchlike salvaged from the boats they arrived on. It was, after all, a one way trip… It took seven years to build and 9 convicts died in the building of it.
Very little has changed over the years, oil lamps have been replaced with electricity and the cells have been knocked together in twos as people have grown larger since the days when we all ate spuds and only grew to 5’3”, but apart from that, they’re pretty much the same as they were when they were built. This is NOT a cushy, five-star modern prison with Sky and the latest Wii games, this is a good, solid, fearsome place of punishment, as it should be. Following an increased demand in 1970s, the rooms were changed again, remaining the same size, but allocated a bunk bed for two to share, instead of a single one. They were originally fed in their rooms with metal cutlery, but after the riots in 1980, they were given plastic knives and forks instead. No running water was available in the cells; buckets were issued - the only difference between earlier and more modern facilities was that they were made of metal instead of wood! Each morning, a line up would be taken, requiring all the inmates to be neat and tidy and to present themselves with their toes on a white painted line on the floor – hence the expression ‘toe the line’. I hadn’t realised so much of our English imagery was actually prison related! The regime was very strict – they weren’t out long, and were fed and locked in for the night by 4pm or so. While they were out and about they could go into the yard, make two ten minute phonecalls in a weekend, check out the library or write one of their ten free letters home a month.
Half the convicts tended to be Aborigines and in the yards there were plenty of gangs and lots of trouble, like drugs. The toilets in the yards were open to the sky and overlooked by the guards on the ground and in the lookout tower above, armed with guns. Razor wire prevented any other kind of escape… Apparently, if it gets stuck into you, you have to be cut free with an acetylene torch – ouch! There was a single TV in the yard, though it was switched off from inside on the dot of 4pm, so if there was a match on and it was stopped part-way through… tough! There was the odd way around the boredom of course; sometime those playing tennis would slice open tennis balls and pass notes to one another over the walls into different yards, until they were caught smuggling drugs that way to each other and in over the external wall from mates, and tennis was abandoned. There was even one incidence of a dead pigeon being found that had been hollowed out, cleaned and filled with drugs… Urrr…
The chapel is a little oasis of cool, calm and civilisation in this institution. The large, high windows were sent from England and were the larges in any of the buildings. The bars on the doors and windows were salvage from the ships and there was even a small old harmonium. Even here patients were segregated, though the women occasionally saw the men if services coincided. The floor and ceiling here are also jarra – shaped and built with more patience than anyone would have today.
Despite its location, the Chapel is still used for a round 5 weddings every year – how cool is that! J
During the 1980s, there was a riot. The prisoners had had enough, tipped boiling water over one unlucky officer and held five further ones hostage with sharpened knives. Police officers arrived and a fire engine was called, only to find that they couldn’t get it in through the gate as they were built in the 1850s and it was too big! They found a smaller one, but a lot of the roof had already burnt by the time they got to it. They rebuilt it, then shortly afterwards, moved everyone to a new gaol and closed this one down. Suggested subsequent uses have been to house juvenile troublemakers or as a backpackers’ hostel…
In the next yard, it all seems to bright as we follow our guide. If you managed to cope with being blinded by the sun, and get out, where would you go? Besides which, should you escape, the prison had a bell to ring and a team of Aboriginal trackers to find you… (and even then you’d be lucky if they got to you before the redbacks!). Should you be caught following such a monumental misdemeanour, you would be spread-eagled over an enormous a-frame, and flogged by a Flagellator. No single whip was this that he used, but a cat-o’-nine-tails with nine evil thongs set into a hefty handle. You would be flogged until your skin split and you bled. The surgeon would be on hand, and if he thought you could take no more, you would be taken away for some medical TLC and when you had recovered, you would receive the balance of your whipping.
In the unit reserved for extra-specially naughty people, there were windowless cells with no beds. You had a mattress on the floor and were fed. That was it. The double doors meant that noone even had to open the cell to feed you. It must have been utterly grim. Of course, if you were in one of those, it did at least mean you weren’t in cell number 1, which was reserved for those to be executed. The last meal would be tea and toast and you’d be led away to another room in body belt, handcuffs and shackles, not far away, where you would stand on a special floor (or sit if you fainted – no escape) with an officer at each corner of the dais. One would be a priest and one the superintendent. The whole place would go silent the day of an execution. An executioner from Melbourne would have come up and measured the prisoner for size and weight and would have already practiced several times with a sandbag to avoid strangulation or decapitation. The last thing you would hear would be the ‘clang, clang’ of the lever being pulled and it would all be over in a matter of seconds. There the prisoner would hang for a few minutes, and he’d (only one woman was ever executed here) be taken down and put on a stretcher and taken to the mortuary. No friends or family allowed here, just professionals. There would be notice of the execution being carried out posted on the gates that day.
Of course, in the days before all this, when people were hung in droves, there was no testing of the knit and the term ‘hangers-on’ was used to refer to people who were employed to hang onto the ankles of executees to ensure they had enough weight to be effectively hanged.
Sarah, Zach and I emerge from the Gaol feeling suitably interested and impressed by the tour and the guide, which is nice, and we find some lunch in Fremantle in a little café. Sarah kindly drops me off in Cottesloe as the weather is warmer and far less windy today and I find that it is incredibly hot! I succumb to temptation and buy myself a new bikini.
I spread so much sunscreen on myself that I feel as though I’ve been basted and can barely see my skin, but it still feels awfully powerful, despite the factor 50+! I mooch happily along the beach, glistening in the sun, and find shells, footprints, seagulls and ocean views. The shells I like the best are the tiny flat round ‘door’ shells, used by the snail-type sea creatures, to keep themselves safe. They must be related to the bi-valves and clearly hold on very tight, but the little coin-shaped shells are quite beautiful. Curly one side and flat and spiral-patterned the other.
Today seems to be a day for rescuing idiot marine creatures. I spot a small octopus, about the size of my hand, gasping its last on the beach, just above the tideline. He must have been thrown there after a particularly vigorous wave, but he looks quite tired, hot and forlorn, doing to octopus equivalent of panting in the hot sun. I shade him with my flip-flop while I think what to do. I’m fairly sure he’d bite or sting me if I tried to pick him up, besides, he looks very squishy, sticky and droppable. I decide to dig my shoe, without my foot in it, under him and fling him back into the waves as they approach. This is less successful than it sounds. His little brown and blue freckled body is tired, hot and floppy and all I do is ping him onto his huge head in a bigger pile of sand. Oops.
I try again, successfully, and while he doesn’t look the happiest little creature on his return to the briny, he may survive, which is better than his chances would have been if I hadn’t turfed him over on his head…
I am sickened and made jealous by the bronzed goddesses I walk past on my hurried way to find shelter. I think I’m more chilly English Goth than bronzed Aussie Goddess. Ah well. Right now, I just have the feeling of being far too hot, despite all I have drunk and the sunscreen and the hat. Sometimes you just gotta give in, even if you’re enjoying it! So I head off for an ice cream, blissfully anticipating its cool refreshment down my hot throat.
Enjoying my sorbet, I admire the blue of the sea, and the little twinkles in it, only really visible from shade lest you scorch your eyes! The sorbet is a little puddle of lemon heaven… I sit under a tree and admire the view, dreading the sweltering, paved walk to the station. My water, deep in my black bag, is actually hot… I could just snooze here, under this tree in the shade and the warm breeze. I suppose I ought to find the station before too long; there isn’t much point staying here, the beach is still too hot for anything longer than a few minutes! I do however, spot so many of the bronzed beach goddesses going past that even I find myself checking out the local buns and beach totty – sorry Andrew! ;) One can appreciate beauty wherever it may be, and here it is eminently appropriate.
I’m tired and I’ve rambled on far too long… I’m going to finish this tomorrow…
‘Night!
;)
Fremantle Gaol is a forbidding building, looming high over the City of Fremantle, with thick, bright, limestone walls rising high.
[Those of you not interested in history, look away now… ;) ]
Our tourguide (you can’t get in without one) is called Brendan and he’s a lovely Irish chap. He is extremely evasive around questions regarding his job and status at the Gaol, given that he knows so much. I suspect it’s to keep us interested, but there’s a possibility he may have been a prisoner there – it’s possible!
The Gaol was a maximum security prison until 1991, when it was closed. The entire place was built by convicts; the enormous courtyard surrounded by various sturdy wings would have been hewed out of the local rock by men who had only just arrived in this inhospitable land.
The reason for this was partly that the Governor of Fremantle had realised they were short of manpower, there being only a few hundred people there trying to scratch a living out of the red earth. He sent a note to England asking for nice, educated convicts like carpenters to be sent (which may be one of the reasons there were so many people sent over for stealing apples and suchlike). The extra 150 convicts arrived among the 400 or so people in Freo and the building of the prison was supervised by Captain Henderson who captained the ship. The now-five-star Esplanade Hotel was originally used as somewhere for the convicts to stay while the prison was being built!
In the Gaol, on arrival, you would have all your things taken from you and stored in a canvas clothes bag. You’d be pushed through the shower and issued with green jumper and trousers (or white shorts in summer), a transparent bag to keep your belongings with you, and also containing toiletries, pants, razor and rule book, and then you’d have shoes and belt (made by inmates in workshops). You’d be given a mugshot – not allowed to smile, just like passport photos today! Your existing smalls would be taken away and washed in an enormous washing machine, made by a concrete mixer company… At risk prisoners would be segregated at entry for their own protection. The view was that if you were well enough for court, you were well enough for prison, although there was a medical facility like a hospital on site.
Every door here is good and solid, and therefore slams… Which is where the term, the ’slammer’ comes from.
There are different sections within this complex for different crimes and times inside, also a separate wing for the women; they very rarely mixed. There were a few amenities in this vision of hell, a vegetable plot, a C of E church, aviaries, even soccer once or twice a week if you were very good.
The building is built into the side of a hill, from local limestone, hewn from the same hill, local Jarra wood (very strong and coloured like mahogany), and iron bars and suchlike salvaged from the boats they arrived on. It was, after all, a one way trip… It took seven years to build and 9 convicts died in the building of it.
Very little has changed over the years, oil lamps have been replaced with electricity and the cells have been knocked together in twos as people have grown larger since the days when we all ate spuds and only grew to 5’3”, but apart from that, they’re pretty much the same as they were when they were built. This is NOT a cushy, five-star modern prison with Sky and the latest Wii games, this is a good, solid, fearsome place of punishment, as it should be. Following an increased demand in 1970s, the rooms were changed again, remaining the same size, but allocated a bunk bed for two to share, instead of a single one. They were originally fed in their rooms with metal cutlery, but after the riots in 1980, they were given plastic knives and forks instead. No running water was available in the cells; buckets were issued - the only difference between earlier and more modern facilities was that they were made of metal instead of wood! Each morning, a line up would be taken, requiring all the inmates to be neat and tidy and to present themselves with their toes on a white painted line on the floor – hence the expression ‘toe the line’. I hadn’t realised so much of our English imagery was actually prison related! The regime was very strict – they weren’t out long, and were fed and locked in for the night by 4pm or so. While they were out and about they could go into the yard, make two ten minute phonecalls in a weekend, check out the library or write one of their ten free letters home a month.
Half the convicts tended to be Aborigines and in the yards there were plenty of gangs and lots of trouble, like drugs. The toilets in the yards were open to the sky and overlooked by the guards on the ground and in the lookout tower above, armed with guns. Razor wire prevented any other kind of escape… Apparently, if it gets stuck into you, you have to be cut free with an acetylene torch – ouch! There was a single TV in the yard, though it was switched off from inside on the dot of 4pm, so if there was a match on and it was stopped part-way through… tough! There was the odd way around the boredom of course; sometime those playing tennis would slice open tennis balls and pass notes to one another over the walls into different yards, until they were caught smuggling drugs that way to each other and in over the external wall from mates, and tennis was abandoned. There was even one incidence of a dead pigeon being found that had been hollowed out, cleaned and filled with drugs… Urrr…
The chapel is a little oasis of cool, calm and civilisation in this institution. The large, high windows were sent from England and were the larges in any of the buildings. The bars on the doors and windows were salvage from the ships and there was even a small old harmonium. Even here patients were segregated, though the women occasionally saw the men if services coincided. The floor and ceiling here are also jarra – shaped and built with more patience than anyone would have today.
Despite its location, the Chapel is still used for a round 5 weddings every year – how cool is that! J
During the 1980s, there was a riot. The prisoners had had enough, tipped boiling water over one unlucky officer and held five further ones hostage with sharpened knives. Police officers arrived and a fire engine was called, only to find that they couldn’t get it in through the gate as they were built in the 1850s and it was too big! They found a smaller one, but a lot of the roof had already burnt by the time they got to it. They rebuilt it, then shortly afterwards, moved everyone to a new gaol and closed this one down. Suggested subsequent uses have been to house juvenile troublemakers or as a backpackers’ hostel…
In the next yard, it all seems to bright as we follow our guide. If you managed to cope with being blinded by the sun, and get out, where would you go? Besides which, should you escape, the prison had a bell to ring and a team of Aboriginal trackers to find you… (and even then you’d be lucky if they got to you before the redbacks!). Should you be caught following such a monumental misdemeanour, you would be spread-eagled over an enormous a-frame, and flogged by a Flagellator. No single whip was this that he used, but a cat-o’-nine-tails with nine evil thongs set into a hefty handle. You would be flogged until your skin split and you bled. The surgeon would be on hand, and if he thought you could take no more, you would be taken away for some medical TLC and when you had recovered, you would receive the balance of your whipping.
In the unit reserved for extra-specially naughty people, there were windowless cells with no beds. You had a mattress on the floor and were fed. That was it. The double doors meant that noone even had to open the cell to feed you. It must have been utterly grim. Of course, if you were in one of those, it did at least mean you weren’t in cell number 1, which was reserved for those to be executed. The last meal would be tea and toast and you’d be led away to another room in body belt, handcuffs and shackles, not far away, where you would stand on a special floor (or sit if you fainted – no escape) with an officer at each corner of the dais. One would be a priest and one the superintendent. The whole place would go silent the day of an execution. An executioner from Melbourne would have come up and measured the prisoner for size and weight and would have already practiced several times with a sandbag to avoid strangulation or decapitation. The last thing you would hear would be the ‘clang, clang’ of the lever being pulled and it would all be over in a matter of seconds. There the prisoner would hang for a few minutes, and he’d (only one woman was ever executed here) be taken down and put on a stretcher and taken to the mortuary. No friends or family allowed here, just professionals. There would be notice of the execution being carried out posted on the gates that day.
Of course, in the days before all this, when people were hung in droves, there was no testing of the knit and the term ‘hangers-on’ was used to refer to people who were employed to hang onto the ankles of executees to ensure they had enough weight to be effectively hanged.
Sarah, Zach and I emerge from the Gaol feeling suitably interested and impressed by the tour and the guide, which is nice, and we find some lunch in Fremantle in a little café. Sarah kindly drops me off in Cottesloe as the weather is warmer and far less windy today and I find that it is incredibly hot! I succumb to temptation and buy myself a new bikini.
I spread so much sunscreen on myself that I feel as though I’ve been basted and can barely see my skin, but it still feels awfully powerful, despite the factor 50+! I mooch happily along the beach, glistening in the sun, and find shells, footprints, seagulls and ocean views. The shells I like the best are the tiny flat round ‘door’ shells, used by the snail-type sea creatures, to keep themselves safe. They must be related to the bi-valves and clearly hold on very tight, but the little coin-shaped shells are quite beautiful. Curly one side and flat and spiral-patterned the other.Today seems to be a day for rescuing idiot marine creatures. I spot a small octopus, about the size of my hand, gasping its last on the beach, just above the tideline. He must have been thrown there after a particularly vigorous wave, but he looks quite tired, hot and forlorn, doing to octopus equivalent of panting in the hot sun. I shade him with my flip-flop while I think what to do. I’m fairly sure he’d bite or sting me if I tried to pick him up, besides, he looks very squishy, sticky and droppable. I decide to dig my shoe, without my foot in it, under him and fling him back into the waves as they approach. This is less successful than it sounds. His little brown and blue freckled body is tired, hot and floppy and all I do is ping him onto his huge head in a bigger pile of sand. Oops.
I try again, successfully, and while he doesn’t look the happiest little creature on his return to the briny, he may survive, which is better than his chances would have been if I hadn’t turfed him over on his head…
I am sickened and made jealous by the bronzed goddesses I walk past on my hurried way to find shelter. I think I’m more chilly English Goth than bronzed Aussie Goddess. Ah well. Right now, I just have the feeling of being far too hot, despite all I have drunk and the sunscreen and the hat. Sometimes you just gotta give in, even if you’re enjoying it! So I head off for an ice cream, blissfully anticipating its cool refreshment down my hot throat.
Enjoying my sorbet, I admire the blue of the sea, and the little twinkles in it, only really visible from shade lest you scorch your eyes! The sorbet is a little puddle of lemon heaven… I sit under a tree and admire the view, dreading the sweltering, paved walk to the station. My water, deep in my black bag, is actually hot… I could just snooze here, under this tree in the shade and the warm breeze. I suppose I ought to find the station before too long; there isn’t much point staying here, the beach is still too hot for anything longer than a few minutes! I do however, spot so many of the bronzed beach goddesses going past that even I find myself checking out the local buns and beach totty – sorry Andrew! ;) One can appreciate beauty wherever it may be, and here it is eminently appropriate.
I’m tired and I’ve rambled on far too long… I’m going to finish this tomorrow…
‘Night!
;)
This makes me feel hot just reading it. Mind you don't fry too. The octapus looks quite blotto, poor thing.
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