Fremantle Prison

[caskur™]

Yesterday I went to Fremantle Prison which became a tourist attraction in the early 1990’s. TAFE college rented the workshops and The Surgeon Quarters of the prison for their art students of which I was one for 2 yrs full time 1993 and 1994 and the happiest 2 yrs of my adult life.

Fremantle Prison was built by convict labour. It now has world heritage status

 http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/08/01/2970125.htm


… I will be making some artworks from the site and my first one today is this picture below. Like all prisons, it has some truly fascinating stories…. The cells were unbelievably small. It’s a wonder it was allowed to still be used in the 1980s. The prisoners rioted and burned it out… I actually can’t blame them… I am against inhumane cages for both animals and humans. I am not against enclosures, just inhumane ones.

[caskur™]

The first picture is one of the “Surgeons quarters” a stately home for the time, and used in 1993-95 by TAFE college as the administration building and the bottom floor for drawing and upstairs for Art theory and Visual Literacy….it was bloody awesome to go to college there… and use the workshops of the actual prison for painting and various other activities related to that…



To left of that is main entrance which is what you see in tourist brochures and the net…





Through these big locked doors were the prison’s work shops… from memory about 5 large areas.. I couldn’t get inside them to take photos… we used to have pay for parking too which was a drag. … at the time is was about $1.20 for 3 hours and if didn’t pay, you got fined $50.00… I never got caught not paying but my cousin who also attended got busted a couple of times…lol




When you turn around in that spot, you get a view of Fremantle town centre… note the Prison is high up on a very steep hill.



This is a close-up of the entrance..





And this is driving out…..on the south side of the prison.