Old Melbourne Gaol
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A historical prison in central Melbourne, Australia, in fact the oldest prison in the state of Victoria, and now a prime tourist attraction. Much is made of the executed prisoners, in particular the legendary “bushranger” Ned Kelly. You can visit either on a self-guided basis or join one of the various special guided-tour offers or more theatrical activities like “hangman tours” at night or “immersive” mock arrests and trial set-ups.
More background info: The beginnings of this gaol actually predate the formation of the state of Victoria (it separated from New South Wales in 1851): the first prison was constructed at the site from 1839, a second prison building followed in the 1840s; a new wing was constructed in 1852-54, and expanded a few years later, yet another new wing came in 1860, and in 1862-64 a mirror image of the new wing was added to the west to serve as a women’s prison. At the same time the perimeter wall was completed.
Over the decades of its operation the prison housed some of the most notorious criminals, but not only those. Even children ended up here too for the smallest of offences. The regime was such that those convicted of the most serious crimes were held in solitary confinement on the ground floor. Any transgressions could result in brutal corporal punishment (e.g. lashes with a cat-o’-nine-tails type of whip). Well-behaved prisoners could be upgraded to the cells on the tier a floor above, and the top-tier was for privileged inmates nearing the end of their prison terms – and these had communal cells (six inmates per cell).
From the beginning executions of Melbourne Gaol prisoners were conducted. The two very first ones from this prison to be executed were two Tasmanian Aboriginal men, who were resistance fighters against the colonization of their land, first in Tasmania, then in and around Melbourne. Captured in 1841 and sent to Melbourne Gaol, they were tried and sentenced to death for the murder of two British sailors and publicly hanged in January 1842 (a monument marks the spot today – see below).
Later executions took place inside the prison itself. In total 133 prisoners were hanged here. The last one, Angus Murray, in 1924, i.e. just before the prison closed. The executions also included that of an innocent man, Colin Ross, in 1922. He had pleaded not guilty of the crime of murder and had always protested his innocence. Still he was sentenced to death under controversial circumstances. After modern forensic investigations in the 1990s provided proof of Ross’s innocence he was “posthumously pardoned”, the first executed Australian thus “rehabilitated”.
The most prominent case in the history of Old Melbourne Gaol was certainly that of Ned Kelly, an outlaw and “bushranger”, who has become a prime Australian folk legend, even “hero” (a bit like an Australian Robin Hood). After armed robberies by him and his gang and the killing of some police officers, he was finally cornered and apprehended at the end of a siege in 1880. In the shoot-out Kelly was wearing a home-made suit of armour, which has become quite an icon of his legacy. Incarcerated in Melbourne Gaol he was tried and sentenced to death. The announcement of his death sentence resulted in street protests and a petition. But the hanging went ahead on 11 November. His death mask was taken and as usual he was buried in an unmarked grave within the prison compound.
The prison was closed in 1924 and finally decommissioned in 1929. Parts of the structure were demolished, including the entire women’s cell block. Also affected were the grave sites so that the bodies, including Ned Kelly’s, were disinterred and transferred to a mass grave at another prison. What was believed to be Ned Kelly’s skull, however, was handed over to the police and later put on display inside Old Melbourne Gaol when it opened as a museum in 1972. In 1978 this skull was stolen and had been missing until it was handed back in 2009 for forensic examination. This concluded that the skull was not actually Kelly’s (but possibly that of another executed man buried in the prison who also had the initials “E. K.”, like the legendary bushranger’s full name Edward Kelly). But the whereabouts of Kelly’s real skull could not be determined – it may have been stolen at the time the original graves at the prison were dug up in 1929; the cranium fragment on his skeleton did indeed show saw marks. The rest of his skeletal remains were handed back to his relatives for a proper burial in 2013.
The legacy of Ned Kelly and his gang have spawned numerous depictions in the arts, including a very early feature-length silent movie about Kelly shot in 1906 entitled “The Story of the Kelly Gang”. He’s sometimes described as a mere criminal, sometimes glorified as a hero and freedom fighter. The real Ned Kelly will never really be known and understood, but his legend lives on, distorted as it may be.
But back to Old Melbourne Gaol. The closed prison building was briefly revived by the military during WWII to house POWs as well as Allied soldiers who had been charged with having gone AWOL or had committed other transgressions. After the war the prison was used only as a storage facility for the nearby police station on Russell Street (see below).
Parts of the surviving prison structures are occupied by departments of the RMIT University that had grown out of the adjacent Emily McPherson College. They also occupy the old courtroom, the east wing with the chapel and former administrative buildings.
The remaining cell block that has been preserved was listed as a historical landmark in 1957, and the idea of turning it into a museum developed in the 1960s. The museum prison opened its doors to the public in 1972. Since then the spaces inside have gradually been filled with museum exhibitions, the latest addition being an exhibition entitled “Women & Children of the Gaol” that since 2020 has been housed in a series of cells on the second floor.
What there is to see: It is recommended that you first have a good look at the old prison building from the outside to get a feel for its dimensions.
Once you’re behind the outer entrance door and have bought your ticket from the counter in the anteroom, which also doubles up as the museum shop, you proceed directly into the cell block’s ground floor.
There’s a glass display case with a scale model of the prison as it would have looked at the end of the 19th century. This is the only exhibit out in the corridor here, until you get to its far end (see below).
The cell doors on either side of the ground-floor main corridor are mostly wide open and inside are various exhibits. A couple of cells are bare or have a recreation of the sparse “furnishings” these cells would have had when in use. In one is a pair of shackles, another contains one of the “silence masks” that prisoners had to wear whenever they were not in their cells (e.g. when being led to the exercise yard or the bathhouse). That way prisoners were kept anonymous and faceless to other prisoners (with whom they were also not allowed to speak).
Most of the cells contain text-and-photo/document panels about particular people who had gone through Melbourne Gaol during the course of its history (see above for a few examples), and especially about those prisoners who were executed.
Often there is a death mask of the executed person on display too. In one cell it’s a whole cluster of death masks plus one artificial skull with phrenology markings on it. That was the pseudo-scientific study of skull shapes under the (now long debunked) assumption that this can illuminate why some people become criminals – in the same way as it was assumed that the brain had completely distinct departments for different mental activities and character traits. We now know that’s all nonsense, but back in the 19th century such thinking was en vogue and had many followers. Hence taking death masks of those executed was also a common thing, the norm even.
At the end of the ground-floor corridor you come to the Ned Kelly section, which includes his death mask. No longer on display is the skull that was long erroneously believed to be Kelly’s and that was stolen in 1978. Where the non-Kelly skull is now is unclear (see above).
A second room focused on Kelly tells his story and also has two revolvers on display, one being the last one used by Kelly, the other one a Colt used by the police sergeant responsible for capturing the legendary “bushranger”.
Also on the ground floor at the end of the corridor stand a few larger exhibits, one being a flogging rack. There’s also a replica of Ned Kelly’s suit of armour that he was wearing when he was captured (see above). The original, by the way, is on display at the nearby State Library of Victoria.
At the rear wall is a pit where excavations have been made. This revealed a space that was the entrance to the lower level of the women’s cell block, where the windowless “punishment cells” used to be that deprived the prisoner of all sensory input (no sound, no light, no human contact ...).
A large painting on one wall depicts life in the cell block and the arrival of new prisoners, another shows a prisoner’s flogging with a cat-o’-nine-tails, together with the display of one such object.
There are furthermore sections about the various hangmen who did their job here, about a “flagellator”, about the prison staff including the sheriff, the governor and the chaplain.
Up a flight of stairs you come to the gallows of the prison: a beam with a single rope hanging from it (but sans noose). Next to it is a large display case with a life-size hooded dummy with a noose round his neck, his face towards the wall and with the rope hanging down his back. Next to him is a large crate containing a hangman’s kit. This is probably the grimmest of all the displays here. A panel on a wall nearby lists all the names of the people executed in Victoria between 1842 and 1967, the majority of them here in Melbourne.
More text-and-photo-panel-filled cells focus on aspects such as the role of the Salvation Army in charity work including prison visits; there’s a section about juvenile offenders, about “baby farmers” (destitute women looking after infants without a licence in order to make a little money) and about women and crime and prison life in general. Again individual particular cases are picked out and their stories told, including that of Ellen Kelly, Ned’s mother who was incarcerated here at the time of her son’s capture and execution.
Another section covers the death penalty and the history of the calls for its abolition. The state of Victoria abolished capital punishment in 1975. In Western Australia and New South Wales it took until 1984 and 1985, respectively, for those states to follow suit. But since 1967 none of the death sentences still meted out were actually carried out. Instead sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
Finally you get to the third tier on the top floor. Here many cells are larger (they were communal cells) but most are bare. Some cells have yet more panels, now mostly about the prison’s use during WWII, when it held POWs and Allied soldiers who were punished for going AWOL (absent without leave). The coverage of POWs also includes the case of the German naval officer Anton Detmers, whose vessel played a role in the sinking of the Australian cruiser “Sydney” in 1941 with the loss of all on board. Detmers and several of his crew who abandoned ship managed to reach the coast. He was quickly captured but escaped from his first place of imprisonment before being recaptured and brought to Melbourne’s Old Gaol. Here he complained in writing about his imprisonment contravening aspects of the Geneva Convention.
Back on the ground floor I noticed a piece of rock that I hadn’t previously taken note of. It’s one of those “bluestone” markers used in the prison’s burial ground with the date of the execution and just the initials of the executed, in this case “E.K.” … but it wasn’t Edward (Ned) Kelly’s but marked the grave of one Ernest Knox, executed on 19 March 1894. Like the other marker stones it ended up being used for a sea wall after the part of the prison with the burial ground had been demolished in 1929/1930. But it was later donated to the National Trust of Australia who run this prison museum.
After a look around the shop and the outside you could also explore other dark spots in this area – see below.
All in all, I found the Old Melbourne Gaol suitably grim looking and the exhibition parts illuminating and interesting, and while some may find it’s a lot of reading I thought the text panels struck a good balance. I was a bit surprised to find only one single cell block – not having realized that so much of the original complex has been demolished or given over to other uses. That may make the admission price a little bit on the steep side, perhaps.
Since I only went on a self-guided visit, without an audio guide or a live guide, I cannot comment on the quality of those. Some of the tours offered would definitely not be for me, such as the ghost tours at night or those where actors dress up and pretend to be prison warders. But others may well enjoy such things, and the surcharges for some of these tours are a real bargain (see below).
Location: in the north-eastern corner of Melbourne’s CBD (Central Business District) and just north of Chinatown. Address: 377 Russell Street.
Google Maps locator: [-37.8078, 144.9653]
Access and costs: quite centrally located and easy enough to find; not the cheapest.
Details: getting to Old Melbourne Gaol is possible on foot from more or less anywhere in the centre of Melbourne, but there is also a bus stop almost directly by the entrance (lines 200/207); tram (line 35) and local train stops (Central) are just a short walk away too.
Opening times: daily from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., last recommended entry is 3.30 p.m.; closed on Good Friday and Christmas Day, and on occasions when there is a private event. Better check ahead of time.
General admission: AUD 38 (AUD 30 concession, children aged 5-15 AUD 22, plus family packages; National Trust members free). Tickets are valid all day, so you could start in the morning, go for lunch somewhere and come back without having to pay again – but it has to be on the same day.
The general admission includes self-guided visiting with or without an audio guide (English or Mandarin only – but not essential given the substantial text panels and I declined the offer, as I find audio guides get in the way of photography); the more recent “Women & Children in the Gaol” exhibition is also included.
Extra charges apply to some of the add-on guided tours on offer, e.g. the “Escape Artist” Tour (open-air, outside the prison building) or the “Life in the City Watch House” interactive tour (see below), which both cost an additional AUD 5.
Further special tours offered include a “Hangman’s Night Tour” emphasizing the spooky elements after dark, and the “Ghosts? What Ghosts? Tour”, also conducted at night and delving deeper into the alleged “supernatural”. Both tours cost AUD 45 and last one hour (each). They run only on selected dates and spaces have to be booked online in advance.
Time required: The site itself recommends 1½ to 2 hours for a visit. That seems just about right, but if you want to read absolutely everything and savour the cell block’s dark atmosphere to the max you may need longer. Tickets are valid all day.
Combinations with other dark destinations: When at this site also walk round the back to the north to see those original prison buildings now occupied by the RMIT University, including the old prison chapel. The insides are not accessible, though.
Adjacent and associated with Old Melbourne Gaol is the so-called City Watch House, located just to the south of the Gaol and the university’s “alumni courtyard” at 345/355 Russell Street. This institution operated as a “holding centre” for people arrested or awaiting their court trial next door. It was erected on the patch of land where the first Melbourne Gaol building had stood. This was demolished in 1909 and replaced by the City Watch House, which remained in operation until as late as 1994 (so for 70 years longer than the Gaol). The official Old Melbourne Gaol website’s information about visiting this extra cell block is not quite clear. At one point it talks about using QR codes dotted around the site to get audio information on a smartphone through headphones (you have to bring your own!). This would suggest self-guided visits are an option, but no opening times are given for that. At another point the site advertises a “Life in the City Watch House Interactive Tour”, i.e. with an actor slipping into the role of a “Charge Sergeant” and visitors are to assume the roles of people arrested being charged and locked up. If such theatrical add-ons are your thing (they’re not mine) you can have this for an extra AUD 5. Such tours run at three fixed times per day (11.30 a.m., 12.30 and 2.45 p.m.). Spaces on these tours should best be booked in advance online. I was not made aware of this other site when I visited Old Melbourne Gaol, otherwise I would have checked whether it’s also possible to visit without such “immersive” elements for “show”, and if that would have been included in the general admission price. I’ll try to find out … bear with me.
Old Melbourne Gaol is also associated with the former Old Magistrates’ Court, itself a successor of the Supreme Court of Victoria, where e.g. the notorious Ned Kelly (see above) was tried and sentenced to death. The court operated from 1911 to 1994 and the building has now also been incorporated into the surrounding university (now labelled RMIT Building 20). It’s on the corner of Russell Street and La Trobe Street. The old courtroom is still in situ, but access is very restricted. In fact from what I gather from the official website, it’s only for school groups as part of their special education programmes. Individual access does not seem to be possible.
Easily accessible at any time is the monument commemorating the two Aboriginal men who were the first Melbourne Gaol prisoners to be executed (see above), called Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner. The monument, unveiled in 2016, can be found on a patch of land just north of the RMIT campus opposite the corner of Victoria Street and Cardigan Street.
Formerly also associated with the Gaol was the Russell Street police station just across the road. Victoria Police moved out of this fine Art Deco tower in 1995 and it now houses private apartments. But it’s still relevant for dark tourism because of the plaque by the front door. This commemorates a car bomb attack on the police station on March 1986 as a result of which Angela Rose Taylor, a Police Constable, died a short while after the attack. Shrapnel scars from the bombing can allegedly also be seen on the front facade of the former Magistrates’ Court building on the opposite side of the street.
See also under Melbourne in general.
Combinations with non-dark destinations: see under Melbourne.
