Adelaide Gaol with Keith Conlon
It's a national treasure, but until a few years ago, no-one wanted an invitation to spend any time there. That's because you'd be doing time there......at the historic Adelaide Gaol.
It sits in the city parklands just across the railway lines from the weir on the Torrens River. With its medieval embellishments in stone, and local limestone walls dating way back to 1841, it's our oldest major building, along with one end of Government House.
The costs were so huge for such a tiny new city that it nearly sent the place broke, which is why Colonial Engineer George Kingston only scored one grand castle-like tower. He planned for several, around the walls of a penitentiary with yards radiating like slices of half a pie. There is a dark side to a visit to the Adelaide Gaol Museum - it is an early nineteenth century gaol that was still in use until just eleven years ago. Most of the jail is as more than 200 prisoners left it when it closed in 1988.
Entered through the giant wooden doors of the 'front gate', and you're in the 'sally port', an arched carriageway through the old two storey administrative block. If you were visiting a relative in jail you'd stand on one side of the second open barred gate, and there with up to eight or nine others on the other side of the grille was your loved one. According to former 'resident' Trevor's story (available on the audio tour), it sounded like a Saturday morning cattle auction.
Through the gate and into the jail is the 'circle', designed so that a horse drawn prison wagon could pull in, drop off prisoners or supplies and swing round and out again through the 'sally port'. A visitor centre was built in the middle in the 1950's.
Sitting above the high walls in this middle section is a modern 24-hour watchtower. Locked in at night, the on duty officer would look down on the women's prison yard as well. They were incarcerated here until only 30 years ago. The most dramatic and tragic episode is portrayed in one of the cells of the old three storey cellblock in Yard 3.
It shows young Elizabeth Woolcock just before her death. She is the only woman to be executed in South Australia. Found guilty of poisoning her violent husband, but despite a mercy plea from the jury, just after Christmas in 1873, she was led to the portable gallows in the yard, and hanged.
The Adelaide Gaol 1837 bell would have tolled slowly that day. It rang often as it chimed the regimented routine inside. Some can remember, however, that different and ominous tolling as they went past on the train on the way to work. It meant a hanging was in progress.
In the 1840's, authorities erected gallows outside the front of the prison. There were public executions. For the last one, in 1854, a couple of thousand people turned up and had a picnic.
After that, they moved hangings inside, using portable gallows until the 'new building' was erected in 1879. Upstairs in A Block, a beam across the central chamber took the rope, and the trapdoor that was in use for more than half a century is still there in the upper floor. On the wall, there is a list of 21 men who, having taken a life, 'took the drop' here.
Back in the earliest part of the jail, 'between the walls', that is just inside the perimeter in a kind of wide, dry moat, there are more graves, indicated simply by initials stencilled on the wall. The last man hanged was Glen Valance...only 35 years ago. Found guilty of shooting his ex-boss on a South East station property and raping his wife, the 21year old was brought from the condemned cell to the Hanging Tower. The apparatus of state killing is still in place for visitors to see. The hanging beam, the trapdoor, and the thirteen steps down for the doctor to check that the death had occurred...they are the last vestiges of almost 50 acts of capital punishment at Adelaide Gaol.
The Postcards crew watched a class of students ride their bikes up to the entrnace for a visit; mericfully, all of that is, to them at least, ancient history. They certainly got a sense, however, of what it was like to be a prisoner in this ancient prison.
A 130 year old two storey block of cells has several decked out to depict daily life through different eras. Inmates were still sleeping on canvas hammocks till the 1950's, for instance. Beds and side cupboards had arrived by the last decade of its time as a prison, but overcrowding meant that two prisoners would often share a small cell for seventeen hours a day.
Over in the 'new building', it is said some prisoners and officers pleaded to be moved anywhere - away from the shadowing, misty figures seen near the hanging chamber. Such stories seem not to deter student groups from staying overnight in an upstairs dormitory. They might agree with the old saying though... 'the best thing about Adelaide Gaol is getting out'.
It was a model jail in 1841, but it had become a grim embarrassment by the time it closed in 1988. These days, we can all get in and out on a self-guided tour on weekdays (with an audio tour voiced by yours truly), and guided tours on Sundays.
It's grimly fascinating....the Adelaide Gaol.
Volunteers are also needed so feel free to contact the Gaol if you are interested.
ADELAIDE GAOL
18 Gaol Road
Thebarton , South Australia, 5031
Phone: (08) 8231 4062
Email: hanchant-nichols.deanne@saugov.sa.gov.au
Web: www.adelaidegaol.org.au
Opening times are:
Weekdays 11am 3.30pm (last entry) (self-guided tours with an audiotape)
Saturdays by appointment (groups only)
Sundays and selected Public Holidays guided tours 11:00am, noon & 1pm, self-guided
tours to 3.30pm (last entry)
Night Tours, Ghost Tours & Groups by appointment
| Adults | $8 |
| Children | $5.50 |
| Concession | $6.50 |
| Family | $20 |
The Adelaide Gaol is managed by Lands Administration Branch
Department for Environment and Heritage.
Previous Postcards feature on Old Adelaide Gaol
