Old Melbourne Gaol
The Old Melbourne Gaol is Victoria’s oldest surviving prison and until it closed in 1929, housed Victoria’s most hardened criminals. It’s also where Victoria’s infamous bushranger Ned Kelly finally met his match.
Built between 1841-64, Old Melbourne Gaol was used to accommodate short-term prisoners, ‘lunatics’ and some of the colony’s most notorious criminals, including the outlaw Ned Kelly, who was hanged here on 11 November 1880. During World War II, the gaol was briefly reopened as a military detention barracks, and visitors can read about the experiences of Australian, German, Italian and American military prisoners at the time.
Visitors can also examine grisly yet fascinating case studies of murderers and their victims. Other things to see and do include wandering through rooms and corridors filled with macabre death masks (used in the study of phrenology to predict criminal behaviour), lashing triangles, cat-of-nine tails, armour and the scaffold on which Ned Kelly was hanged. If that’s not enough, you can go on a candlelit ‘Night Tour’, which uses the eerie atmosphere of the gaol to great effect.
