Today we planned to visit a couple of museum’s then do a walk, the first museum was Adelaide Gaol which is on the outskirts of the city so we decided to take the tram out there. Unfortunately the information we had been given in tourist information was a little incorrect as we were told there were only two trams one that went up and one that came back down but it turns out that there is one that goes up and down King William street and on Saturday’s it alternates between heading out to the Entertainment area – the oval and the hospital which was on the way to where we wanted to go but not quite far enough for the Gaol. There is actually another tram that goes to the port area which is the route we wanted. It took us a little while to work out but we finally got to the stop that we had been told to get off at, and it turns out that this was the wrong stop which meant that we had a little further to walk, on the plus side the walk was through a park along the river and it was a really nice walk! We finally found the entrance to the Gaol and went in. It was worth the effort as it was a really interested Adelaide was never a penal colony so they hadn’t planned to build a prison as they believed the ‘freemen that settled in the area would be of a higher character than those that had been transported to Australia’. Unfortunately for them they soon found out that actually that wasn’t the case so they had to build a gaol. It opened in 1841 and operated until 1988 and approximately 300,000 prisoners passed through the gaol over the years and 45 were executed. It was a requirement of the time that prisoners that were executed were buried in the prison, however if you died while serving your sentence your body could be claimed and buried by the family. It is one of the oldest remaining colonial public buildings in Adelaide. There is a suggested walking route that takes you around each of the areas through from the original 1841 cell block through the women’s and mens cell blocks and finally through to the condemned cells. Originally the hangings took place outside the walls of the gaol so that the public could come and watch but they were soon moved inside and took place ‘between the walls and finally one of the towers was converted to what was called the hanging tower in 1952. The final hanging took pace in 1964 and Australia no longer have a death penalty, each of the hangings took place at 8.00 and as the condemned man was taken to the gallows a bell was sounded. There were some interesting stories about the people that died at the prison, and in a couple of cases questions about the guilt or innocence of some of those condemned to death. At the entrance the way that visitors were handled over the years became obvious, at the start the families stood one side of the gate while prisoners stood the other out in the open in all weathers and they shouted at each other over what looked time about a six foot gap, some of the reports from the time suggested that it was almost impossible to talk to your loved ones as each visitor tended to arrive with a number of family members, adults and children and there could be as many as 9 prisoners receiving visitors at the same time, all of this in a space that is probably not much bigger than a double garage door. Over time this changed to a visitor room where prisoners and visitors could talk to each other through a grill but at least they were slightly separated from other prisoners and their visitors. By the time we finished walking round we had actually spent over 2.5 hours so we started walking back to town to visit the migration museum. This is a museum dedicated to the people that migrated to Australia from those that came voluntarily in the 1800s mostly from England, Scotland and Wales to escape poverty to the £10 immigrants in the 1960s and the children that were sent to Australia to be provided with a better life. It was interesting but it seemed to be more about policies and numbers than the individual stories of people that migrated and why. It is interesting that right up to the 60’s there was a very discriminatory policy to immigration and basically if you weren’t white and European you were given ‘dictation tests’ in a language you didn’t speak which was grounds to refuse you entry. By the time we had finished walking round this museum we started heading back to the main shopping area to get something to eat, then decided we would leave it a bit longer so we didn’t try and eat twice so went back to the room for a bit of a relax and went out for something to eat early so that we could come back, have a relaxing evening before packing up and hitting the road again tomorrow. I will be sorry to leave here as I have really enjoyed Adelaide.
