Gaol Break

Fri 16^th May   

Today we had only a short distance to travel to our next expected stopover at Murray Town.  It was a most scenic drive along secondary roads through an old crater that was covered in a patchwork of the different browns of paddocks under cultivation, strong greens of crops already growing, patchy brown and green of crops just striking, golden stubble from crops that have been harvested with new green grass coming through and sheep grazing. All along the tops of the hills were wind turbines – hundreds of them.  We stopped at Gladstone and went through the old gaol. It had to be closed in 1975 because the prisoners thought they should have toilets rather than buckets and it would have been almost impossible to put them in through the huge stone floors and thick walls.  The cells were small and dingy and certainly would have deterred me from spending involuntary time in them.  Nowadays you can bring your own bedding and stay in a cell overnight should you choose – not for me! Some of the outside paths were made of huge slabs of slate.  The gaol was constructed between 1879 and 1881. During World War 2 it was used as an internment camp for Italians and Germans and for a short while was under the command of the Army and used as a military prison.  In 1979 the gaol was used in the movie Stir which starred Bryan Brown.