Old Adelaide Gaol

Today we enjoyed a visit to the Old Adelaide Gaol and a self guided tour. Our friend Rodney asked if we would be interested and we had been saying we should do this for years, so we left our other jobs undone and went to have a look.

We were surprised by the size of the area. We hadn’t really realised how much space there was hidden away down the back of Bonython Park there. We followed the map on the guide, taking ourselves in and out of the various areas and reading the informative signage.

Here you can see Rodney counselling Trevor in the visiting area.

This three storey building was a female quarters.

Many of the older blocks were like this – two storey with mostly single cells. YOU can see the stacked bricks on top of the walls. If prisoners tried to get over , they dislodged these bricks and the noise called attention to the breakout attempt.

We thought that this recording device was interesting… record the number of prisoners in each space and it adds them up.

Erica admitting to her guilt in the witness box and looking penitent… penitent… penitent .

The white painted section on this block was for condemned prisoners. They went from here to the tower (behind) for execution.

The bell was a gift to the colony of SA.

This tower is the only completed one of the four. This one has all the planned parapets etc (including ghastly faces – aptly called grotesques). The colony overspent on the jail and almost went bankrupt paying for the job.

Fancy tower – they built a high building right in front of it so it could never be used as a guards tower!!

The one below was completed except for the fancy stuff. It still has the hangman’s hook, trapdoor and room where the hangman stood to pull the lever and perform the execution. Strange to stand right there and see it.

There were a lot of warnings about graffiti (Heritage listed buildings) , but there was also some heritage listed graffiti. This is one of the fancier examples- carved into a wall.

Despite the macabre situation the birds were going crazy in the trees just outside of the walls, and I couldn’t help but wonder if those prisoners so long ago found joy in the same sounds of bird song.

The “new block” was completed in 1879 and is another impressive build which added a large capacity. It is more modern in layout (grill floor on top level so you can see through from below). Still would have been a terrible place to be.