Old Melbourne Gaol
Bluestone nineteenth-century prison and gallows where a notorious bushranger met his end, now a museum of death masks and cells.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to the Old Melbourne Gaol centers on the morning of November 11, 1880, when bushranger Ned Kelly, cornered at Glenrowan in homemade armor, walked through this yard to become the 101st person executed here, as a crowd of thousands gathered outside hoping for a reprieve. You'll hear about his last night in the cells, the hangman who carried it out, and the Victorian practice of casting death masks from the condemned, part of an era's obsession with reading criminality in the shape of a skull. Stand in the yard itself, where a death mask from that morning is still on display.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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