Ararat Part 2: The J Ward Tour

This week’s blog is a bit of a twist on the usual, Jarrod, because the J Ward Tour is something YOU recommended that we do whilst up in Ararat! So it feels strangely anticlimactic writing this up… There’s nothing to sell to you. No convincing to be done. The answer as to whether you’d go there is inevitably… well….yes.

Anyway, as we established in the last blog, we headed up to Ararat for a full weekend, and did the ghost tour of the Aradale Asylum on the Saturday night, which was a pretty harrowing affair for all of us. I slept particularly poorly afterwards, and truth be told I woke up on Sunday ready to give the J Ward a miss. I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit for more tales of woe. I needed something mindless and upbeat to counter the misery. Amsterdam have it right, for example. You can go to Anne Frank’s house (very sobering), then round off your day with a visit to the Heineken brewery (exact opposite of sobering).

Sunday morning dawned bright and chilly.  Stu cooked us up a fortifying breakfast of Huevos Rancheros. I would have taken an Instagram worthy photo, but I basically inhaled and it was gone. So damn good. We packed up, rugged up, locked up (country Victoria style: lock the door and put the keys in the meter box–right beside the front door) and drove Lynda’s trusty little Hyundai excel up to J Ward.

1861 Grand Designs

Brief background for you: J Ward was initially your garden variety prison when it opened in 1861, but once the gold rush tapered off, Victoria didn’t need as many prisons and the gaol was acquired by the Lunacy Department. They were the government department responsible for that bad workplace joke ‘you don’t have to be crazy to work here…but it helps’

From 1887 to 1991 the gaol operated as a ward of the Aradale Asylum, where the “most depraved and most dangerous men in Victoria were housed under the highest security.”

The tours of J Ward cost $16 per adult and run every day at 11, 12, 1 and 2. They also have lantern ghost tours that run at night. Sidenote: I had a  Facebook message from a physio friend who informs me that she actually had her 21ST BIRTHDAY PARTY at J Ward.  I still can’t quite wrap my brain around the notion of people dancing earnestly to Grease Mega Mix in the exact same space where prisoners dosed up on Olanzepine shuffled about in restraints, but there you go.

While we waited for the tour to start we had a look around some of the historical photos. Being a warder was apparently a very serious business back in 1900 and the dress code was ‘Dapper. Carnations encouraged, but not mandatory’

Desirable criteria: Excellent posture, abundant moustache

By 1910 things were clearly more relaxed. The team photo even incorporated some casual reclining on the lawn, some standing on chairs for no apparent reason, and–hold the phone: is that one guy at the back wearing TWO hats?

Out. Of. Control.

The Less Uptight Sepia Era.

I guess it’s a testament to just how grim the Asylum tour was that we started off in the minimum security wing and were like “oh, this is quite nice, really.” The rooms are painted your classic Institutional Green. You’ve got a mattress on the floor, a suicide blanket that can’t be knotted or torn, and a bucket for a toilet. Spartan, by normal standards, but by Ararat Asylum Standards, it’s 5 star.

Creature comforts abound.

From there we head into the maximum security section. The heating is on but it’s still so cold that everyone’s jackets and gloves remain firmly in situ. It’s stark and echoey in the main hall but the rooms themselves are small, dark and oppressive. Stories of the more infamous prisoners adorn placards outside cells, including one boy who was committed there as a 13 year old, and one prisoner who lived there till his death at 106.

The decapitated mannequin in the straightjacket adds to the warmth and general ambience.

Adventures through the looking glass….

Occupied as recently as 1991.

Upstairs is a mock up of the gallows that were used to hang prisoners back when J Ward operated as a prison. How they render that festive for birthday parties on site I have no idea. Fairy lights and tinsel can only do so much.

Any final song requests?

As you wander about there’s information on the crimes and sentences for various prisoners in the 1860’s. I can only surmise that the judges were whimsical sorts, accountable to absolutely bloody nobody, because the sentencing just seems wildly inconsistent. My TV brain visualises the judge as a curmudgeonly grump, possibly played by Tommy Lee Jones. He has a sassy clerk of courts, mid fifties named Rhonda, or Brenda– and she gives the defence lawyers the inside info on what sort of moooooood the judge is in today.

Case in point: John Thompson got the judge on a bad day. Thomas Ogden on the other hand, much luckier.

Hmmm. So, stealing a horse from a Chinaman gets you what?

Case in Point 2: Stealing an animal is bad. Very, very, very bad. Screwing an animal on the other hand….well, that gets you a slap on the wrist and a knowing wink.

The defence will show that the sheep concerned not only consented, but also had a rollicking good time.

We had a look at the various restraints that were utilised at one point or another to control prisoners. Big leather mitts if you were an eye gouger or a prolific masturbator. ‘Kicker’ pants that rendered you unable to kick other inmates or guards. Old fashioned strait jackets, and more modern leather belts with special loops built in to bind your wrists to your sides.

Utterly undesirable accessories.

The tour then heads outside for some time in the exercise yard, which is not ONE bit like the prison exercise yards you see in TV and movies. There was no basketball court for a vigorous ball game between guys in singlets, and no outdoor weights station/gym either. Just a quadrangle of concrete to amble about on.

Head outdoors for some fresh air and flat out dreariness.

We get taken up the guard tower in the far corner for a look from the guards perspective and it’s so windy and cold the bravest of us only lasts about 3 minutes up there before retreating inside for the relative warmth that cold stone on every side of you affords.

Barbed wire and Bluestone. Cosy.

Back inside, we’re taken downstairs through the old kitchen

Proper Hell’s Kitchen Material

And then we head towards this doorway– which frankly looks like it leads to the kill room. Truly, who WOULDN’T walk towards this room assuming those stains on the wall were blood mist, and that you were going to be faced with hooks on the walls, short lengths of chain and rusty torture devices, and maybe a little plaque explaining the soundproofing that was ‘remarkable, truly ahead of it’s time?’

Disembowelling and miscellaneous torture wing

Spoiler alert! It’s not a torture room.

IT’S THE BATHROOM. Well, phew!

FYI, I’m totally keeping this picture, may come in handy to wield every now and then as a threat that *cough* might end up on my Tripadvisor review of your hotel if I don’t get that sea view…

Maybe some candles and bubble bath will distract from the… no. Just. No.

You’re probably wondering about the stains on the walls? I wasn’t, because my standards are ridiculously low (I had actually already worked out the least filthy places to put my clothes, towel and toiletry bag were I to shower in this bathroom) but some others on the tour wanted to know what they were. Turns out that for a few years they used the bathroom to smoke meat. That got some Ewwww’s and some mutterings about it being ‘disgusting doing that in an old bathroom’ but hell, I’ve eaten cheese and bacon balls in the bath on more than one occasion, so it sounded perfectly reasonable to me.

Anyway Jarrod, we know YOU’D go there, frankly I can say with 100% certainty that you would want to make two nights of it and do the J Ward tour and sleepover one night, and the Asylum sleepover the following night.

So I guess this week, I’m more throwing it over to the readers. JWYGT friends–the J Ward tour: would you go there?

The only view of Ararat from inside.