richmond

After we left the Bonorong wildlife park we headed over to a small tourist town called Richmond, famous for it's old bridge.

There it is. The oldest bridge in Tasmania. And that's about all you can do in Richmond. You can go over it, and if you're feeling REALLY adventurous you can go over it the other way!

Ok, so Richmond isn't all that boring, near the bridge is a stuffed animal house and sitting there are these guys. I don't really know what to think of them, but there they are.

Hey, another prison in Australia! Well how about that. For some reason in the olden days they spelled Jail as Gaol, and so this particular prison is the Richmond Gaol.

As humiliation, all prisoners were dressed to look like bad court jesters from medievil times. It's true look it up.

Here are some tools of the trade. The infamous cat-o-nine tails, which you all probably know about, and then this human-trap which is modeled after the bear-trap. Yeah, pretty sick isn't it. I guess these were loaded all around the prison to catch escapees, but for people who lived nearby I guess they just had to be careful where they went walking.

This model shows the layout of the prison. It's pretty dinky as far as prisons go, but it does have a colourful past.

Ok, this is sick and hilarious. Mary Milligan was sentenced to 2 days in solitary confinement (pictured) for BEING IN A DISORDERLY HOUSE! These guys meant business. Clean the dishes Mary or I will have you thrown in gaol! Oh the eighteen hundreds, good times.

A quick story: at this particular prison there was a particular man who did the whipping for all the prisoners. If you were caught doing anything bad (or keeping an untidy abode) this guy would whip you with that cat-o-nine tails, up to 100 times per offence in some cases.
Side note: whipping was done with a doctor on hand for safety reasons. If the person being whipped would pass out from lack of blood or if too much of their back skin was removed they would stop the whipper. Now this seems nice, but after you were healed from your wounds you were made to FINISH the lashes you were given. There's no winning with these guys.
Back to the story: so anyways, this particular lasher man. This guy was hated by the whole town because a) he was an ex-inmate who would give lashes to current inmates. and b) he would purposely get prisoners into trouble just so he could whip them. So, one night he was getting drunk in town and someone who didn't like his methods actually pushed him off the Richmond bridge and killed him. Justice served I think.

If you're stuck in Richmond and don't particularly like Gaols or Bridjes, then you may enjoy this maze. Holy crap is it hard! It took 4 of us about an hour to get through the thing. And when you get out of it, tired hungry and cold you get a piece of candy :)

Richmond church

Richmond graveyard

A lake/dam I can't remember whats its called.


and that's all folks. Not the most exciting blog post, but still an awesome day for me. Hope all you Canadians are doing fine, miss you all.