Doing time in Maitland Gaol
The gate through which prisoners arrived
October 2020 (2 min read)
My family of five share a sense of foreboding as we arrive at Maitland Gaol on a sunny school-holiday afternoon. The jail was open from 1848 to 1998, which makes it the oldest working prison in Australia. The notorious prisoners who did their time here include the backpacker murderer Ivan Milat, and the Murphy brothers who murdered Anita Cobby in 1986, a terrible event I recall clearly.
But nowadays the exercise yard is tranquil. The juicy mulberries of the huge tree near the kitchen lie thick on the ground. The wind whips round the empty sandstone buildings and the fat coils of barbed wire atop the walls glint in the sun. A magpie warbles and hops across the grass.
Pre-Covid there were daily guided tours but, for the time being, visitors must download the Maitland Gaol App and follow the 28 stages at their own pace.
It’s a comprehensive 90-minute audio tour with sound effects. Doors are bolted, wind whistles, alarm bells ring and haunting music plays. A baritone-voiced Hamish Hughes narrates each section, and former prisoners and guards add their own memories of the place. It is a great App that you can listen to when you get home if you want to learn more.
We have the place to ourselves and the kids wander around wide-eyed, listening with varying degrees of intent to the commentary. The 16-year old really “gets” the whole experience, the 14-year old tries to follow the stages in strict order and the 9-year old is a little subdued, as he tries to comprehend what it might be like to be locked in the dingy cells for years.
The nineteenth-century cells are the most eye-poppingly grim. Stone walls two-feet thick divide each solitary cell and only a high-up slit provides natural light. They are tiny, dank, dark and cold. The iron beds and filthy sponge mattresses make us shudder. How did anyone sleep on those? By the twentieth century, overcrowding was a big problem and these cells fitted two or three inmates at a time.
In the “safe cell” for prisoners on suicide watch there isn’t much to see, but we hear that prisoners were kept naked in here and the loo could only be flushed from the outside. It’s the one heated cell in the Gaol. Prisoners suspected of swallowing drugs brought in by visitors were isolated here, too, and eventually had to poop them out.
The shower block was added in the 1970s. With no cameras permitted inside, it was a “security blind spot” and so a place of violence, fear and rape. One inmate remembered the scar-faced, tattooed “heavy” occupying the only bath and “his boy” scrubbing his back. Best not to focus on this during a family visit, and instead marvel at how 7 prisoners escaped through a 12-inch air ventilator using knotted bed sheets in 1977. We look at the ventilator and it would be a tight squeeze even for our skinny 9-year-old.
“Does anyone think this place would help criminals to reform?” I ask. The kids think not. Where else but jail to discuss such matters. As Hamish the narrator says, the world you enter is not pretty but it’s pretty fascinating.
EXTRA
Self-guided audio tours of Maitland Gaol cost $19 per adult and $13 per child over 5. Under 5 are free. www.maitlandgaol.com.au
Only guided night tours are operating during Covid. These include Crimes of Passion and 150 years under Lock and Key, but most of them exclude kids under 15.
Bread and Water café is adjacent to the prison and offers 100% gluten free food and home-made condiments. It has a pretty leafy courtyard.
READ
The Girl in the Painting. The sixth novel from author Tea Cooper, who lives in Wollombi and visits Maitland often. Her intriguing story is set in Maitland town in 1913. Established in 1820, it grew, she says, in the nineteenth century in to “the second largest town in NSW. Many of the old buildings have been beautifully restored.” The Maitland Regional Art Gallery, built in 1910 as a Technical College and designed by the Government architect Walter Liberty Vernon, would be great to see if you have time.
The Long Prospect by Elizabeth Harrower. While not actually set in Maitland, I’ve included Harrower’s second novel as her town of “Ballowra” is based on nearby Newcastle, also one of the oldest industrial centres in NSW. And besides anything by Harrower is worth a read.
By the way…
We stayed at the Mercure Resort Hunter Valley Gardens for the night in a double queen-bed room that is not pictured on their website https//www.mercurehuntervalley.com.au These rooms have a balcony, but beware of the ferocious mosquitoes. Do not bother eating in the restaurant. Book a table at the Oishii Japanese and Thai restaurant in the adjacent Roche Estate https://www.oishii.com.au and bring your own wine.