This morning after breakfast we rang and booked on the second part of our Fremantle Gaol tour which was called behind bars. We booked on the 10:30 which I thought was the first one that was available which actually worked out quite well timing wise. We walked up to the Gaol via the Market which was actually open today, It is a mix of individual stalls that you find in any market plus a massive fruit and veg section which had some lovely looking fruit. We walked round then went up to the gaol to join our tour. I forgot to mention yesterday that the star gazing we did the other night was really good, basically the observatory progressively lost funding over the years until the local authority planned to close it down at which point the volunteers offered to take it over and run it to see if it could become self funding, they were initially given a one year contract with a view that if they didn’t succeed then it would be taken off them, if it was sort of working but not covering all costs then the local authority would assist and they would be given another year to prove themselves, or if it was failing it would be taken over by the authority again and probably closed, after the first year they were given a five year contract to run the telescopes which is fantastic as it gives the public a chance to actually look through the massive telescopes that the ‘professionals’ use. The tour lasted just over two hours and we looked through a number of telescopes at a clear night sky despite the cloud there had been earlier by the time we got to the observatory the sky’s had cleared and we had a fantastic view of the milky way as well as a couple of clouds and star clusters. Anyway back to today! This tour focuses on the modern gaol, from 1890 to 1991, from a structural point of view very little changed in the gaol but the approach to confinement did. We entered through the reception area where the men were stripped, searched and given a shower. There was a segregated area where the most dangerous prisoners went through the same process and slightly surprisingly the showers were individual cubicles rather than the school shower approach of a long wall with shower heads on it, there was also one cubical with a bath in it and when I asked why I was told that some were just so dirty they needed to be soaked to get them clean the shower just wasn’t enough. We went into the same prison building as we had gone into on Thursday but to a different wing, we were shown the way that the cells were ‘improved’ over time from a single cell with a hammock to a double cell with a bed. The prison closed in 1991 and they still didn’t have flushing toilets, apparently at one point they did put chemical toilets in the cells but the inmates worked out how to make alcohol out of the chemicals used so they basically dismantled the toilet to turn it into a still so they were removed! We also went into the room where the gallows are still in place. This was very close to the condemned cell we saw on Thursday and apparently it took one minute to walk from the cell and they painted the walls light blue to try and make it relaxing which seems strange considering you were basically walking along a corridor to be killed! It would seem that if you were capable of standing four guards all stood to the side and put a hand on your shoulder to stop you struggling until the floor was removed and you were hung, thoughtfully if you were panicking so much that you couldn’t stand they provided a chair for you to sit on while they hung you! There was one cell that had some wonderful paintings in it and this was the cell of a very violent criminal who they couldn’t control but he calmed down in art classes so they actually allowed him to paint the walls of his cell. We went through the kitchens and looked at where the various workshops were then looked at the cells where the most violent criminals were held, they had a cell and an exercise yard connected to their cell so they never interacted with other prisoners as they couldn’t be trusted not to attack them, it was the only cell that had a flushing toilet as they couldn’t even be trusted to empty their overnight bucket. We also went round the women prison which was a lot smaller than the mens there was an average of about 60 women in the gaol at any one time whereas there was an average of 1500 men, which is slightly surprising as women seemed to be sent to prison for pretty much anything, swearing in public, loitering as well as more traditional crimes such as theft and prostitution. Once we finished the tour we walked back down to the market and had lunch at one of the food stalls then decided we would jump on the Fremantle Tram tour, we walked to the Town hall but had just missed it so we walked back up to the prison and only had a couple of minutes to wait before it arrived. Ross was our guide and it rather felt that wherever you wanted to go he would take you regardless of whether it was on the route or not! We did pretty much a whole circuit out to the port and around the old buildings then we were ‘dropped’ off on cappuccino strip which is where all the restaurants and bars are, we walked back up to the market for another walk round and we had intended to have an ice cream but none took our fancy so we brought a wrap for our lunch tomorrow then walked round to the bottle shop to buy some more beer and went back to the apartment to sit on the balcony and watch the world go by with a cold beer in hand, it is going to be so tough when we get back to the UK!
