Day 145: 25/4/13
I had a few things on the agenda today. First I wanted to go to the Peter Pan travel agency next to the hostel to book the greyhound bus pass as they can guarantee the student price. The girl I spoke to this time was very efficient and convinced me to pick all my trips so she could give me a quote. It ended up at about 100 less than I had planned and it included 2 nights on Whitsundays and 2 nights on Fraser. So I told her to go ahead with it. I paid half today so that she could book the bus and some of the big trips. I'll finalise the details with her next week and pay the rest of the money. The trips all seem good. There were just one or two days that maybe need to be changed- I'll decide by next week!! I only went to buy a bus ticket and ended up spending my weeks wages!! It was going to be all booked soon anyway- and it saves me looking up a million different websites!
After that I went to the Old Melbourne Gaol. The main attraction to this is that it was where Ned Kelly was hanged. Most of the prison buildings are gone or are now used by a Univeristy. So just one wing of the prison is open to tourists. It was opened in the 1850's. Crime was a particular problem then in Victoria because of the goldrush. It stayed open until the 1920's and many people were hanged there. In the cells of the prison there was information about the cells and the prisoners. Many prisoner's stories were of murder- it sounded like it was almost the norm! The prisoners of course weren't the upper class! There were lots of Irish prisoners but overall they were a mix from everywhere. Many women were imprisoned too- usually as their husbands or fathers were off in the gold mines or had died and they had no means of earnig money except from prostitution or vagrancy. Living on the streets seemed to be a crime that you were out in prison for! The cells were absolutely tiny- isolation was the main method of punishment! When the prisoners were sentenced to hanging it was other prisoners that carried out the execution usually. Some women were hung aswell, mostly those convicted of murder. One woman poisoned her husband and her kids and was caught out trying to poison her next beau!! Some women were convicted of killing their babies as they had no way to care for the children if they weren't married. Some survived by minding other peoples kids aswell as their own which was called baby farming- but that was illegal too! One woman served time for not reporting that she had a still born baby. There was a story of one man convicted of murdering a 12 year old girl. A woman who knew the man testified that she saw the girl with him and the police found a strand of hair in his bed and said it belonged to the girl. It was the first case of dna from hair being used in trial in Victoria. He was convicted and hung. He had protested his innocence all along. In later years people researched into the case again and found the hair samples that the police had used in storage. It turns out the hair they had found belonged to the woman who had testified- not the little girl. So he was declared innocent in 2008- that was a lot of good to him and he buried for years!! Obviously it wasn't a good idea to get on the wrong side of that woman!
The whole Ned Kelly story was there to be read and they had a play aswell where two actors acted it out! There was just one woman and one man but they managed to act out all the parts! They had Irish accents for the play but afterwards when they spoke they were Australian. I was guessing the guy was putting his on but the woman sounded very realistic!! Ned's parents were Irish- his father was sent to Tasmania as a convict and his mothers family just moved here. His father died when he was 12 so he learned to support the family by stealing cattle and working with a highway robber. The police had an eye on him because of this. Also, he was Irish. The play very much focused on the fact that the 'English' police were out to get the Irish! One evening a police man called to his house to arrest his brother (also a cattle stealer) who wasn't there. The policeman had an eye for his younger sister and Ned ended up shooting at him. The policeman returned the next day to arrest him but he and the brother had already gone into hiding so he arrested the mother and some friends instead. Ned, the brother and two friends- all Irish spent two years on the run. They robbed some banks in order to survive and decided they should fight against the English. They went to a village called Glenrowan and planned to ambush a train there and kill the police that had been sent after them. They kept the townspeople hostage while they were waiting for the train. The train was delayed so they let some people go and were prepared to give up on the idea. One of the men they let go tipped off the police who came to attack. Ned and the others had made armour over the years but it wasn't enough. Ned was injured badly and the others died. The play alluded to the fact that there were other Irish waiting in the mountain that could have helped and didn't. Anyway, Ned was brought to the gaol where his mother had been serving time all along. They met the evening before he was hung. His time was extremely quick- apparently the judge wanted it rapped up in time for the Melbourne Cup! As you can tell the play was quite biased in favour of Ned Kelly. In the information for reading it said people were quite torn as to whether he was a hero fighting for his people's rights or a terrorist trying to take over the government! It sounds to me like he was a bit of both!!
When someone has died by hanging they cut off their head and make a death mask. Lots were on display and it was amazing how clear their features were- you could tell they had been real people, which made it very freaky. Ned a was on display in a case. His skull though is missing. All the bodies in the prison were moved at some stage and the skull they thought was his wasn't his at all! Interesting!!
After all that I went to Fitzroy gardens in search of Captain Cook's cottage. The bus driver on one of the market tours a few weeks ago had told us about this. Captain James Cook is the man that discovered Australia. In truth, many explorers had sailed near it at the time he discovered it (1770? 1777?) but he was the first to chart the coastline properly and he was the one that claimed the land for England. He explored a lot of the islands in the pacific and he ended up getting killed in Hawaii. Anyway, this cottage was where he grew up in Yorkshire in England. The people that owned it decided to put it up for sale a few years ago and a rich Australian bought it to move it over here. The family allowed it as it was remaining in the Commonwealth. If Australia ever decide to leave the Commonwealth it has to be returned to England. It was taken apart brick by brick, shipped over and rebuilt here. It was nice to see the cottage but I think it's ridiculous to have his cottage over here! They could have just built a replica as a memorial to him and left the original cottage where it was for people to see where he really had lived. The house was much smaller than I expected but it was filled with lots of items from that time- spinning wheel, bed pan, kitchen items, etc. The garden was done to be like a typical garden of the time with lots of herbs. It was nice.
I walke back through the garden then- as you can see from the pictures it is really Autumn at the moment- golden leaves everywhere! It's very pretty. I don't think in Ireland we can appreciate the colour of the leaves as much as you can here, as our sky is much greyer and it is often raining, leaving the leaves all muddy!
I walked back into the city then and walked through Hosier lane. I had heard about this lane but had forgotten to go there so I was lucky I just came upon it! It's full of graffiti. The whole city embraces graffiti. In some areas, like this one, it is legal. In most areas people are commissioned to do the pieces. It's one of the things that gives Melbourne its arty feel. Some of the pictures are really good- you'd wonder how they can creat them with a spray of paint!!
I walked by Flinders Street Station, some of the laneways like Desgraves street, the Block Arcade, the Royal Arcade and Bourke Street. I'd been through all these before but I just wanted to take pictures of them.
I was chatting to Mam and Dad for a little while then. Dad had great news yesterday so he'll be busy working for the next while!! I Skyped Shell then who couldn't stay too long as she had to go spraying thistles!! What else!! She was I good form anyway- she'll be finished school this week, then doing exams, then correcting- busy busy! Her correcting will be all done by the time I get home which is good! I rang Shane for a few minutes but he was visiting his housemates brother and wife who just had a new baby so I didn't spend too long talking to him.
I read for a while and spent a while on the computer uploading pictures and things. You can see from the amount I had to write why I left it an extra day to write all this!!