Trial Bay Gaol
Trial Bay Gaol (also called Trial Bay Prison ) is the name of a former prison and internment camp located on Trial Bay near the town of South West Rocks in New South Wales . The prison building was used to house convicts from 1866 to 1903 and during the First World War from August 1915 to 1918 as an internment camp for German marines, Australians of German descent and Austrians. Today it is a ruin in Arakoon National Park that is used as a museum.
Surname
The prison was named after Trial Bay , which in turn was named after the Trial brig , which convicts stole from Sydney in 1816 when Australia was a convict colony . Their attempt to escape ended when the ship sank in the bay.
location
The buildings are located on the headland Laggers Point , to which Trial Bay connects. At the top of Laggers Point , a remnant of the breakwater that the convicts had to build can be seen. At the time the prison was founded, the main arm of the Macleay River flowed into Trial Bay .
jail
The yellow sandstone prison building was built using convict labor. Construction of the prison building began in 1853, but it was only after thirteen years of construction that it could be completed and convicted in 1866. In 1861, the New South Wales Parliament passed a reform of the prison system that paid convicts wages for their hard work. You should build the prison first and then continue building the granite breakwater.
To protect ships that could not anchor safely in the mouth of the Macleay River from storms, the convicts were asked to build a 1,500-meter-long breakwater from blocks of granite that they quarried in a nearby quarry . About 90 shipwrecks are said to lie in front of this bay. When about 300 meters of the breakwater were completed, the river shifted its course and no longer flowed near the breakwater. This made the construction of the breakwater obsolete and the prison was abandoned in 1903.
The building complex is surrounded by a stone wall made of sandstone blocks. There are four elongated cell blocks in the prison area. The four blocks with the individual cells, two of which are positioned close to each other as cell blocks A and B, are arranged in a V shape behind the communal dining area. The prison kitchen was built in the free space between the blocks. There was also an infirmary, bathhouse, kitchen, and other small buildings on the prison grounds. Today there is a museum in the gatehouse.
Laggers Point with the rest of the breakwater visible
Breakwater (1991)
The interior of the dining room, behind it the two two-story cell blocks branch off (1991)
Cell block A can be seen on the left, behind it is the prison kitchen (roofed over). (2010)
entrance
Internment camp
During the First World War , the prison served as an internment camp for captured officers and soldiers of the Imperial Navy from the war zones in the Pacific , China and Southeast Asia . But there were also business people among them who had been captured on ships, as well as wealthy and socially superior Germans and Austrians who lived in Australia and who were believed to sympathize with the war opponents. The internment camp was first occupied in August 1915. At peak times, up to 580 men were in custody.
Most of the internees were kept in solitary cells in the prison. Those of high social or military rank were held in huts by the bay. People in the prison were able to swim, fish, sunbathe on the beach or play tennis in the prison yard. They built the tennis court themselves. In 1916 they organized a theatrical performance of the comedy " Minna von Barnhelm " by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing . They had their own orchestra and from 1917 onwards they published their own weekly newspaper “Welt am Montag”.
Some Australians considered the treatment too good. However, the internees were under constant surveillance, their mail was censored and external contacts were not allowed, as was no contact with internees in other camps. A total of 6,890 people were interned in various camps in Australia.
The internees erected a monument on the hill at Trial Bay for three interned Germans who died in the camp . Two died of illness and one was washed up from Laggers Point and drowned, and two more died in Sydney. In 1918 the internees were relocated because it was feared that German warships might land and free the internees. They were taken to the Holsworthy Detention Center near Sydney . The monument was destroyed in 1919 after it became known in Australia that graves of the Allied forces in Germany had been vandalized. The monument was rebuilt in 1960. A path leads to the memorial on the hill.
Todays situation
Today the prison structure is a ruin in the Arakoon National Park. There are still about 50 meters from the breakwater. The historic prison is now a museum with sculptures on the outer walls.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Trial Bay, South West Rocks Detention Barracks 1914-1918 , on auspostalhistory.com. Retrieved August 26, 2017
- ↑ Arakoon State Recreation Area. Plan of Management , on environment.nsw.goa.au. Retrieved April 19, 2018
- ↑ South West Rocks, NSW 2432 , on southwestrocks.org.au. Retrieved August 28, 2017
- ^ Trial Bay, New South Wales , at naa.gov.au. Retrieved August 28, 2017
- ^ German Monument , on monumentaustralia.org. Retrieved September 22, 2017
- ↑ Liz Keen: The history of a gaol , on open.abc.net.au. Retrieved August 28, 2017
- ↑ Trial Bay Goal , on nationalparks.nw.gov.au. Retrieved August 28, 2017
Coordinates: 30 ° 52 ′ 37.8 ″ S , 153 ° 4 ′ 12.9 ″ E