The Archive

Gaolhouse rocked

Well, it finally happened. I went to prison.

But as a tourist. Ha!

Melbourne is home to Victoria's oldest gaol (that's pronounced 'jail' kids) which is now a museum. And it's really cool.

I know, I just said a museum is cool, which probably means that, in fact, I am a nerd. Nevertheless, some highlights:

Death masks: a number of the cells contain castings of the death masks of various ne'er do wells who were hanged in the prison, along with a little plaque telling their story. These included such gems as...

George Melville: He was hanged and the body returned to his wife. She then hung the corpse in her oyster bar for people to view. Apparently newspapers reported 'A brisk trade'.

Basilia Bendietto: He was an Italian man who spoke no English. So imagine his surprise when he was tried and convicted without an interpreter present. According to the museum, he didn't know what was going on until he was actually on the steps of the gallows. But come on museum, surely he must have noticed he'd been thrown in prison at some point eh?

Fred Jordan: Whose last words were about the most inspiring I've ever come across...

"I have nothing to say. It's no use now."

Ned Kelly: The Robin Hood of Australia. He robbed from the rich and, well, ran off with the money. I'm not clear on why he's so celebrated as he was undoubtedly a thief and murderer and didn't seem to do anything actually good for anyone.

Still, he's famous for fashioning armour out of metal plates, but was brought down when he was in a shootout with the cops who shot him in his unarmoured legs. Imagine the scene...

"Er, Ned. The armour is very cool. But don't you think you should do some, you know, metal trousers or something."
"No worries mate, the police will never think of shooting me in the legs."
BANG!
"Oh balls."

The flagellator: Sounds like a supervillain from the 1970's doesn't it. "Your puny weapons are useless against me. Nobody can stop The Flagellator." Actually it's the title given to the man whose job it was to whip recalcitrant prisoners (including one deviant who was caught whistling in his cell. The whole prison was supposed to be silent you see, no talking, no whistling and they had big leather mittens locked on to stop them wanking too.)

There's more, but I don't want to come off sounding like a museum geek, and I'm sure there's a website you can visit if you're that bothered.

So, after the prison it was off to Queen Victoria market which is, well it's a market, obviously, but it's huge and famous and, more importantly, I split a pair of trousers and needed to replace them.

The best thing about the market was the changing rooms. Imagine a market stall. Not just a table, but one of those box-like structures with clothes hanging one each wall.

Now string a thin bedsheet across one corner of this structure. Voila, a changing room. Frankly, I might as well have been pulling my trousers off in the middle of the town square.

But I got the trousers though. And a small fine for public indecency.

Ok, so what's next? Oh what the hell, I know you're all waiting for it... the brothel.

The state of Victoria has legalised prostitution, on the theory that it's easier to control if it's open and licensed. There are currently about 100 licensed brothels operating in Melbourne and the debate is still raging as to whether this has improved the city's prostitution issues or simply attracted sex tourists and increased the number of illegal establishments as a result.

So, I figured that all this meant that a brothel was, technically, a sight.

Small problem though. Believe it or not, I didn't actually want to do anything. I really just wanted to have a look around and find out a bit more about how it can be if you let these things come out from the dark corners.

So armed with a paper-thin story about researching places for a friend's stag party, I decided to visit the best brothel in town,
The Boardroom.

How do I know it's the best? Why, it was the winner of the recent Australian Adult Industry Awards best overall brothel gong, that's how.

I dread to think what the trophy looked like.

So, I wandered into what was essentially an industrial estate just outside the centre of town until I came across a doorway which looked like the right place.

I wandered in and explained to the very nice receptionist that I wasn't buying but I'd like to just have a look.

She was lovely. She took me on a tour of the rooms, including the private meeting rooms where you can meet the girls one by one if you choose, the bar area where you can lounge with all of them at once whilst making your choice, and a couple of the bedrooms.

And I have to say the whole thing was absolutely lovely. I guess at 250 bucks an hour it would have to be, but it was really lavish but tasteful at the same time. It was quite beautiful.

As were the girls, who I chatted with very briefly as I had a glass of water in an effort to replace some of the moisture I'd sweated out in the longer-than-expected walk from town.

So after the tour, the lady gave me a brochure and a calendar which would be proud to grace any mechanic's garage and I was on my way.

Verdict: Fantastic. Had I been in the mood and made of money, I wouldn't have hesitated to spend the rest of the day there. So if you find yourself in Melbourne, it's 53 Market Street. Just so you know.

However, I wasn't and I'm not, so I went back into town for a drink.

It was bar crawl time by this point, so I headed to a nice place near the station where I attempted to meet some Melbourne natives.

So who did I talk to? A French girl from Stockwell who drives the 53 bus near my house and a country girl from out of town

Her: "I'm not a Melbournite."
My friend: "Obviously not. The term is Melbournian. Melbournite sounds like something you might freeze a Sydneysider in."

Anyway, I continued hopping, going next to Chaise Lounge, a bar I found at world's best bars a rich, plush, velvety sort of bar which was all deep reds and glitter balls. So basically I had gone from a brothel that looked like a 5 star hotel to a 5 star bar that looked like a brothel.

Nice.

So after that and another bar where I spent most of the night earwigging (or 'stickybeaking' as they say here) on a conversation between a man and a woman behind me that began with an absolute classic line...

"Why do you think I'm attracted to your sister. Because I'm not."
He then tried to get out of explaining why on the grounds that he didn't want to offend his girl by being mean about his sister. She then insisted that he explain exactly why he was not hot for her sister.

So he reluctantly began pointing out all the annoying things about the sister, right up until his girl started crying and said:

"Why are you being so mean about my sister?"
You can't win can you?

Which is why, on that note, I went home.

posted by Peter The Great @ 10:21 PM