Description of the attraction
Fremantle Prison is located in the urban area of Terrace. On an area of 60,000 square meters, there is a prison building, a security booth, small one-story living quarters and an exhibition of works by prisoners. All this is surrounded by walls around the perimeter. Fremantle Prison is listed as a World Heritage Site as one of 11 places in Australia where prisoners were held.
In fact, the prisoners themselves built this prison in the 1850s. In 1886, the building came under the control of the colonial government, which used it as a detention center for criminals. Only a century later - in 1991 - the prison was closed, and the building was turned into a historical monument. Today it is a museum run by the Western Australian State Government and offers day and night tours. Some excursions introduce legends about the ghosts supposedly living within these walls. Others lead to a flooded tunnel and underground aqueducts.
Construction of the prison began shortly after the arrival of the Scindian in 1850 with 75 prisoners on board, and was completed in 1859.
In 1868, the exile to hard labor in Western Australia ended and the number of prisoners arriving fell sharply. But Fremantle Prison has transferred many of the men and women convicted in Perth, and the prison retained its status as the largest in the state.
In 1896, a series of tunnels were built 20 meters below the prison in order to create additional drainage area. The tunnels stretched for a kilometer, but by 1910 the need for them disappeared, and they were closed, later becoming objects of urban legends.
In 1907, with the onset of the gold rush in Western Australia and the rapid growth of the local population, the prison had to be enlarged due to the completion of a new sector. There are death row cells.
From 1939 to 1946, part of the prison was used by the AIF to hold war criminals. The last person to be hanged here was serial killer Eric Edgar Cook. The execution took place in 1964.
It is interesting that for almost a century and a half of its history, only one mutiny took place in the prison - it took place on January 4, 1988, when the temperature inside the building rose to a record 52.2 ºС. 70 prisoners took 15 officers hostage. There was a fire in the building, causing damage to the amount of 1.8 million Australian dollars!
Probably, this rebellion played an important role in the fact that the authorities decided to close the prison - on November 8, 1991, the prisoners were transported to Perth, and the building was turned into a kind of museum. In June 2005, a network of underground tunnels was opened to the public. Today, Fremantle Prison is considered the best-preserved building in the country that housed inmates. Up to 130 thousand people visit it a year. The Anglican Chapel often hosts wedding ceremonies, the former hospital houses the Children's Literature Club, and the women's prison houses a college of arts. There is a gift shop and a restaurant on site.
Of particular interest to visitors is the art gallery, which houses the works of former prisoners. Art therapy has been used for the education and rehabilitation of criminals for many years, and today you can even buy your favorite works. Decent works can be seen on the walls of some cells, for example, the works of the 19th century fraudster James Walsh, which for many years were hidden under a layer of plaster. Another well-known prisoner artist is Dennis Nozworthy, who claims to have understood art on death row. Some of his work is today in the collections of Curtin University, Perth and the Department of Justice of Western Australia. There are among the prison works and the creations of aboriginal prisoners.
