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Published: December 7th 2007
The processing room
The bench is where all the men sat waiting for their turn to be humiliated!Today we have decided to visit Freemantle, which is a small town just 20 minutes away from Perth.
Kim (one of the girls on the Western Xposure tour) is in Perth until tomorrow so is going to come with us.
We buy our tickets for the train and sneakly get the concession tickets from the machine, Kim says she had not been asked to show proof of concessions yet and it's only half the price so we give it a go!
We arrive in Freo (as the locals call it) and after a few minutes of wandering idle we become proper tourists again and head for the Tourist Centre to get some free maps!
We decide to have a wander to the Freemantle Prison, this was one of the main Jail's they used to house all the convicts and criminals here in Western Australia right up until 1991 when it closed.
We wasn't that bothered about going inside and taking a tour but when we get there we realise there isn't much to see from the outside, plus as we have now purchased our backpacker VIP cards (a type of discount card over here) and we can save 8 dollars
with it on the tours (and it only costs 18 dollars) we plunge right in - and are sooooo glad we did!
The prison closed mainly due to the condtions but it's still amazing to think that that was only 15 years ago that this place was full of criminals! As you are going around the building you can see the paint peeling from the walls but the guide tells us that when they re-opened the prison for tours, they did not touch or update anything inside (apart from anything that was dangerous of course) so that we can see exactly what it was like when it closed. We are told that there is no hot running water, infact i think in a few of the areas there is no running water at all and very little areas in the yards with shade or shelter.
The tour starts in the room where the inmates were first taken to be processed. We are told that upto 20 men were taken into this room, searched, strip searched and also subjected to a full body cavity search right in front of all the other men by the guards. This was to show
them that the guards at the the power right from the beginning - it must have been soo humiliating.
We were then walked through the shower rooms into the main courtyard and the guide shows us the windows of the chapel and points out a particular window that looks stained. The guide explains that they have (apparently) had experts in to try and clean the window but the stain will not move and on closer inspection it actually has an image of a face (which eeirly enough it does!) Legend has it that when the only women to be hanged in the prison (Martha somebody, sentenced to death for killing 3 of her step-children with acid) was executed, this image appeared on the window of the chapel the next day and has remained there ever since, which was over 60 years ago, spooky!
We are then taken inside to the cells, there are 4 different divisons where they housed the prisoners, Divison one for the petty crimes upto Divison 4 where the hard men and murders where. The cells are quite tiny and we're told that the men were kept in their cells for approximatley 14 hours a day. They
The courtyard
The building jutting out on the left is where the Chapel is - and that spooky face! were given 2 buckets every night, one with fresh water and one to use as their toilet, obvioulsy they didn't want to get them confused in the middle of the night!
As you look up onto the different levels, there is a net separating the first floor from the ground floor. This was put up mainly to stop buckets being thrown and landing on people heads but also to stop bodies landing on the floor should any prisoner fall or be thrown over! You can actually see dents in the net when you look up!
We taken through the kitchens and into the excerise yards, there had to be one guard inside the yard with the prisoners and he stayed in a little cage at the end of the wall for his protection! It was easy to see how the Top Dog culture was ran as with a guard in the cage there was very little they had control over.
From there we are taken back inside to Divison 3 and shown where there was a major fire in this block and 20 years ago. As the men were working in temperatures of upto 50 degrees with no shelter and
then looked up in the stone rooms with no fan, they staged a riot by throwing hot water on the guard when they were being locked up for the night and then set the whole place on fire! There were no casualties for quite a few people were burned.
We can also look into some of the cells and notice a few of them have writting and one or two have really fantastic artistic drawings on the walls. The guide tells us that when the Governors learned that the jail was being closed down, they let some of the prisoners graffiti the walls as a way of leaving a peice of themselves behind. Some of the drawings and writings were obviously very rude (of course we didn't get to see these) but others were just amazing! There was one cell that had scripts from the bible written on the walls, by a Forger who couldn't even read or write! He learnt how to forge by just copying things he saw and was really good at it.
They also showed us the Solitary confinement area (the cells were dark, soundproofed and smaller than the normal cells - which were tiny!) and
the gallows aswell - where 44 people where executed. All the executions were taken place on a Monday morning at exactly 8am, apparently the job of an executioner was passed down from father to son in the same family - the reasoning was it was easier to keep the identity of the one family secret. Imagine inheriting that living from your dad!
We were also given a 'Great escapes' tour where they showed us the places where people actually managed to escape from the prison. One of the favourites (and most well known) is Moondyke Joe, a convict that was sent over from Wales and managed to escape from Freemantle over 3 times and made a mockery of the governor!
We also saw the Women's section, which only housed twelve women. Four women actually managed to escape one time and they were actually caught in the pubs down by the river a couple of hours later!
The prison was definatley worth going to see, it was really amazing to see how it all worked and surreal that there were people there not that long ago.
After this we decided to have a look at what other delights freemantle held
- to discover there weren't that many really!
We visited the Martine Shipwreck Museum which was quite interesting, it had the remains of a ship called the Bativia which was massive!
We also noticed that labelled on the Freemantle map was a memorial fountain that we thought would be interesting, which when we got there looked just like a drinking tap outside a public toilets - how nice!
We headed back to the train station for our train back to Perth, we tried the concession trick again but got stopped by the guards and had to buy another ticket (proves cheating doesn't work!)
When we got back to our hostel and was looking at the notice board, we saw that lots of different bars actually have free BBQ nights Monday through to Thursday, so if you wanted to you could actually eat for free every week night!
We saw that a place called the Eurobar was having a free BBQ night and a backpackers special, which meant a midi (half) of beer was only 2 dollars - bargain!
So me, di and Kim decided to give it a try and were very pleasantly suprised to find that the
BBQ had steaks on offer - belting!
After filling our shoes, a live band came on who were really good (and were giving out free prizes - I got a Heineken Travel Backgammon game) so we ended up rocking it up till midnight (we were only going for the free food - whoopsies!). Kim spotted some people who were at her hostel and this Italian guy (who couldn't speak much English) kept buying our drinks for us - sweet! However it had started when he gave the bar staff 50 dollars for a 10 dollar round, and got 90 dollars change! Still it was good of him to share his good fortune with us.
The only problem here is all the pubs ID you and then stamp you to show you've been checked (should you nip outside for a smoke). This pub gave us a stamp with 'Legal' on it and I've a feeling its going to be on my arm for a while - its very hard to get off!
At chucking out time we said goodbye to Kim (hopefully we'll meet her again in Sydney) and back to our hostel where our roommate was still snoring
Graffiti on the wall
With the guards permission of course! away from when we left him at 7pm!
All part of the fun I suppose.
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