The Old Melbourne Gaol
We walked into the old holding cells of the jail, and then all of a sudden a sergeant started yelling at us. What was happening to me?
A few days ago, my family and I went on a walking tour of the beautiful city of Melbourne. We started at the State Library Victoria, where its founder welcomed EVERYONE into the library, no matter their age, gender, status, identity, or ethnicity. He just asked for one thing — that everyone wash their hands before touching the books.
Our guide's name was Lachie, pronounced Lucky. He was a redhead and SO funny! I knew he was going to be good the moment he started. He said, “What’s up, my name is Lachie, and I am also a bartender, blah, blah, blah, I bet you are all wondering what these sexy statues are, right?” He led us around downtown, talking about bars the whole entire time. We saw so many cool things like stinky laneways, arcades with no games (because they’re actually shopping malls), and so much more.
One of my favorite stops was one of the first – The Old Melbourne Gaol. Or jail, for all you Americans following along. There are many ghosts haunting the place, but Lachie only told us about one — a prisoner who was THREE YEARS OLD! We wanted to hear more after that, so we decided to go on a tour of the gaol the next day.
This is when we got arrested. I know that it sounds weird, but we signed up to do a tour of the Watch House, and this is what was involved. We walked in and he made us stand up against the walls without touching anything. We were in two perfectly straight lines, and then he started to yell. He made us call him “Sergeant” and he was so great. He made a few people step forward. He called me Sally (WHAT?) and said that I was a REGULAR! Apparently I was there for aggressive and violent behavior. Again, WHAT?
After we finished the tour of the Watch House, we downloaded an app so that we could have a self guided tour of the gaol/jail. We heard a few more stories about criminals like Ned Kelly and Henry Howard. These two men were pretty similar, in that they were both despicable. They murdered innocent people for no reason. The cells we entered were all dark and musky and really small. They said that you would just get a little mattress to sleep on, and if you were lucky, a blanket. It was all really awful and so depressing. I hope that no one here goes to jail for real, because it would be horrible.
The stories of the people were awful, but really interesting to hear. It was hard to hear how people were treated here. These criminals must have been really bad because they did really harsh things to them. But you should come, just to learn about the history and everything else.
The End!