Williamstown
Historic bayside waterfront town where prison hulks once anchored offshore for the colony's worst offenders.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Williamstown centers on Wednesday the twenty-sixth of March, 1857, at the bluestone quarry near Point Gellibrand, where John Price, Victoria's Inspector-General of prisons and the hated overseer of the convict hulks moored offshore, makes his usual morning rounds questioning convicts about their rations. It traces his brutal record running Norfolk Island and the resentment he carried with him to Williamstown. Walk the waterfront past the yacht masts and picture the quarry pits that once stood where the cafe tables are now.
This audio guide was created using AI.
Similar places
Old Melbourne Gaol
Bluestone nineteenth-century prison and gallows where a notorious bushranger met his end, now a museum of death masks and cells.
Abbotsford Convent
Riverside heritage precinct of nineteenth-century convent buildings turned artists' studios, galleries and gardens.
Polly Woodside
Restored eighteen-eighties iron barque that rounded Cape Horn sixteen times, moored in a dry dock.
St Kilda
Bayside beach suburb of sandy foreshore, Victorian-era architecture and a historic seaside amusement park.
Collingwood Children's Farm
Working farm on former convent land, with paddock animals and river-side paths for city children.
Queen Victoria Market
Sprawling nineteenth-century produce market built directly over Melbourne's first cemetery, its thousands of graves still underfoot.