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Published: August 6th 2007
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I was convinced that Gina’s blood curdling scream would have made even Helen Keller run for the door. The subsequent stares and eventual laughter from the crowd came as no surprise. Typically strong willed and not easily scared, my wife had the unfortunate pleasure of being the target of a practical joke. As the guide on our flashlight-lit tour of Fremantle prison explained how the chain link mesh was installed above the main floor where we were standing to protect guards from prisoners’ aerial assaults, a life-sized cotton dummy hurtled from the darkness and landed directly above Gina. She had spotted the projectile mere milliseconds before its impact and reacted with the agility of a deer caught in an 18-wheeler’s headlights.
En route to Cervantes the morning prior, Gina determined that we should overnight in Fremantle, a coastal suburb of Perth, to explore the city’s rich architecture and history. Besides the typical assortment of sightseeing activities that we’d come to expect in most of Australia’s tourist locales, the
Lonely Planet also highlighted Fremantle’s jaded past as home of Western Australia’s only maximum security prison, now open to tourists. Good fortune on our side, we would be staying in Fremantle on
one of the two days per week that night tours were offered.
Excited and marveled by our time at the Pinnacles, we rose early and headed back south towards Perth and Fremantle. A few hours passed before we entered the picturesque town, reminiscent of New Orleans. While the cities of Western Australia are relatively new in comparison to the major metropolises dotting Australia’s East Coast, the port city of Fremantle roots its history in the mid to late 1800s as a whaling community of European settlers, not convicts. We wound our way through the narrow streets on a hunt for lunch and immediately felt the pulse of the population and visiting tourists. People were everywhere.
Not wanting to miss out on an opportunity to people watch and soak up some sun, we sought refuge from our hunger pangs at the waterfront brewery, Little Creatures. Gina and I deposited ourselves at a makeshift table made of a tree trunk and began scoping out our company while analyzing the menu. Satisfied with the food choices, we decided to stay and ordered a mixture of fare. While consuming our food and helping ourselves to the free WiFi offered by the brewery,
a group of brawny looking guys struck up conversation, asking where we were from. We responded with the typical “California” and “Chicago,” as I still cannot come to grips with my geographic displacement, only to be met with puzzled eyes. An explanation ensued and everyone had a good laugh. Not surprisingly, the crew of guys all worked on an oil platform and had a one week furlough due to an approaching cyclone. We politely excused ourselves after our bellies were filled and Internet withdrawals satiated.
Using the simple map in our guidebook, Gina and I set off on a walking tour towards Fremantle’s oldest standing structure, the Round House. The building was the original colony’s first permanent structure and served as a gaol (prison) for the few misfits born out of the whaling industry and local community. Unfortunately, as the community grew, so did the crime. As a result, the simply crafted 8-cell facility was almost insufficient at its time of completion and the local government sent off to England for assistance in erecting a larger structure. In a quid pro quo move, the Victorian government pledged assistance if Fremantle’s governor would accept and eventually intern prison laborers. That
is, England would send prisoners and money to erect a new prison if Fremantle would house the prisoners upon completion of the new structure, the now infamous Fremantle Prison.
By the time we concluded our inspection of the Round House and surrounding area, the time was nearing 4 P.M. Deciding to pack-it-in, we returned to the car and drove the short distance to our bed and breakfast, conveniently located a few hundred meters from Fremantle Prison.
A frumpy looking woman answered the door and led us to our room. The high ceilings and large size of the 1800s-era home came as a surprise, as did the parlor bathroom neatly tucked in one corner of our room. The look on Gina’s face was priceless as she came to grips with the lack of privacy to do her girly things. We settled in and consumed the next few hours blogging before departing on our night tour of the prison.
We gathered in the prison courtyard with a throng of other tourists, waiting for the guide to summon us. A bell rang and a creepy voice announced, “eight twenty.”
Like lambs to slaughter, we filed into the old prison’s
processing room as the guide handed out miniature flashlights. The guide began explaining how prisoners were processed, stripped of their belongings, interviewed and cavity searched prior to their release into the general population of the prison. He continued by explaining that Fremantle Prison had been in use as a maximum security penitentiary from its time of completion in the 1850s until 1991, when it was decommissioned due to the antiquity of its facilities. After answering a few questions and cutting the random dry-humored joke, the guide drew a skeleton key from his pocket and unlocked an adjacent door.
The group paraded through the showers before emerging in the prison courtyard, where we were told stories of prisoner escape attempts and how guards could not shoot to kill. The guide, fancying himself the comedian, tried to be scary and funny at the same time - often losing his jokes on the crowd. Sensing the lack of playfulness and knowing what lay ahead, the guide motioned us towards the first prison block. Inside the structure, we were told of how the age of the buildings meant that no modern plumbing capacity was ever installed. Prisoners instead had buckets assigned to “do
their duty” in and at times of heavy capacity would have to share their bucket with another inmate.
Imagine the stench. Moments later, as Gina fell victim to the guide’s planned joke, I thought she’d need one of those buckets.
Carrying on through several more cell blocks and courtyards, we eventually came upon the flogging post where prisoners would be lashed to the point of unconsciousness, sent to the hospital for recuperation, only to return for the balance of lashes sentenced. The guide assumed the flogging position and handed a mock lash to one of the tourists. Everyone snapped a few photos and laughed as the guide joked that he liked it and wanted more. As the pièce de résistance, we were led to the prison gallows, where 16 inmates lost their lives at the hands of a hangman. The sight was met with shock and awe, some visitors amused with others appalled.
Our tour concluded in the prison chapel, oddly the only part of the structure without bars on the windows, somehow conveying a sense of freedom to God-fearing prisoners.
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darby
non-member comment
conjugal visits?
why would prisoners get anymore action than free men?