My Year with Bluestone: On the Street Where You Live

Poor old bluestone project has had to take a back seat for a bit, while I taught this semester, and wrote and delivered papers on other projects.

Today I walked home through Carlton, keeping an eye out for initials carved in the long bluestone edges to the pavement. We had walked this area a few weeks ago, but I wasn't feeling so well that day and had no energy to stop and take photos. Today I was already laden with a heavy backpack, and also stopped to buy bread and apples on the way, but I was determined to photograph these initials. I walked along Canning St in Carlton, and all along, from around Princes St and all the way up to Richardson, where I headed east across to St Georges Rd, there are many many carved initials and arrows. There is one, I realise, about fifty metres from my front door.

The arrows are signs of convict work; and the stones themselves were probably dug out of the bluestone quarry under what is now the park in Rathdowne St near the Kent Hotel, and the stones were probably dug by the prisoners in the "Collingwood Stockade" where the Lee St primary school currently sits.

The most common initial is a big square letter T. It's amazing to me that after a while I began to be able to distinguish T's signature cutting from other Ts made less securely and less squarely. Was T a prisoner boss who had his minions working on his team and cutting his letter? There were a few Vs. And a few E.s, perhaps. Some of the stones have both a big T and the arrow.

These long rectangular stones are expertly cut, for the most part. They are much flatter than the smaller and rounded cobblestones that fill up the gutters or the lanes: these are firm edges to the street. I had to step carefully, sometimes, between folks sipping coffee in little cafes, or parked cars, or the bikes whizzing home along the long north-south stretch of Canning St.

After twenty or so minutes, I was feeling a bit dizzy from walking along looking down, but was getting a bit mesmerised by the contrast between the straight lines of arrows, Ts and Vs, and the long lines of air bubbles in the stones, the wear and tear of the occasional smashed edge, the cuts and patches where driveways have been cut in to the path, the metal rings to hold shades and chains on shopfronts, and the leaves and dust and stones scattered across the street. Towards the end of my walk it began to rain, so the last few images are also speckled with rain.  (There may be a way to process my images a bit better than this video: but for now I just wanted to capture the sense of how many initials there are.)

So, about 150 years ago, a man with the initial T had to cut long rectangular pieces of bluestone into sharp-edged flat planes. But he took the extra time to make two more neat cuts on lots of his blocks. I wonder if anyone knows anything about T. He is all over Carlton and Fitzroy, it seems. Keep an eye out for him, you locals, and let me know if you see him, or V, or anyone, anywhere else. 

My Year with Bluestone: The Collingwood Stockade and writing.

I've just come from giving a short talk to PhD students approaching the confirmation hurdle after about 9 months candidature. I spoke about how important social media was to my writing life. For all that, I am taking a break from Facebook for a month while I establish a writing pattern for this book. I'm setting myself an ambitious target of about 2000 words a week this month. So far so good, though I reached the target last week by writing 1000 words on Saturday; many of which, I will admit, were transcriptions from texts I'll use, but probably cut down later. 

I also mentioned this book: How We Write  — http://punctumbooks.com/tag/writing/ — which is not yet out, but which draws on the inspiring posts at In the Medieval Middle. "How Do We Write: Academic Dysfunctional Writings," by Suzanne Conklin Akbari and Alex Gillespie. http://www.inthemedievalmiddle.com/2015/05/how-do-we-write-dysfunctional-academic.html  The basic message here is: there is no single way to write, but let's embrace the way we do.

For me, this blog is part of that process; it's also a way of testing out, as I do with family and friends, the emotional and affective resonances of the things I am finding out about bluestone. 

On Saturday I was reading about the Collingwood Stockade, in what we now call Carlton, on the site of what became the Lee St Primary School in 1873. As this article by Peter Barrett explains, the prisoners quarried bluestone on the site that is now Curtain Square. There are only a few traces of the bluestone that remains: the footings of the school, and a stone table from the former Governor's house fixed to the wall of the school. I will go and check this out. 

Several decades ago, excavations discovered the traces of ten bluestone solitary confinement cells, completed in mid 1859. They were built underground, so there was no light. A former warder described the experience as like being 'buried alive'. It would have cold and dark in these solitary cells, even in summer: very different to the cheerfully lit bluestone wine cellars with which I am more familiar.

I am thinking of subtitling this chapter "the penitentiary affect" as I am looking at the discourse around the establishment and perpetual reform of the prison system, especially in the second half of the nineteenth century. These cells are the scariest thing I have come across so far.

My Year with Bluestone: breaking out with Winifred Johnson

I'm slowly finding my feet and my way into the writing of this book. My fabulous research assistants Helen and Anne have located a terrific mass of materials, and the evidence is often irresistible: the voices of the past are crowding in thick and fast.

At the moment I'm working through a report to the Legislative Assembly and a series of interviews dating from 1857. There are two accounts of a woman breaking out, and I am guessing it is the same woman.

The first report comes from Claud Farie, the sheriff in charge of the Melbourne gaol: 

There is one most unruly woman there now [i.e. the Eastern Hill gaol]: I cannot keep her in the western gaol from which she broke away; I have had her in the main gaol ever since she got her last sentence. She tried to break through the cell into one of the other prisoner’s cells, by means of a spoon; she got out the whole of the lime and mortar round one of the large stones; she took an immense stone out of one side of the cell…. Last Sunday afternoon her language during Divine service was most horrible; the clergyman was obliged to stop; and without gagging her, it is almost impossible to keep her quiet.

The second longer interview is with John Price, a settler who became Inspector of Penal Establishments, after working at Norfolk Island and Van Dieman's land. He was eventually murdered  [more to come later on him, I hope].

It is not long ago that Winifred Johnson broke out of the female gaol. At the time they were putting up a portion of that building I said any woman who know how to go about it will break out of it. [ ... ] That woman was removed up to the western gaol, which I look upon as a strong building, and she made a hole there the size of this fire-place, through those heavy stone walls.

I'm presuming this is the same woman. Winifred Johnson was unruly in every sense; breaking out of the prison both physically and verbally.

I have come across several stories about prisoners removing a single large bluestone block, which would have given enough space for a person to climb through. I like the comparison with the fire-place, though it's not all that helpful in this context: how big was the fireplace?

There is a great deal of discussion about the quality of workmanship; Price also describes some walls for another building that looked great till the roof was put on, and the walls collapsed.

So bluestone looks strong and hard, but there are human skills involved in assembling walls, and also in disassembling them, with a humble spoon.

My Year with Bluestone: Fashionable Atmospherics

I don't know if this stylistic choice is particularly motivated, but it was hard not to be struck by David Jones's new ad for their autumn/winter collections: two women stride purposely toward one another in various sets of clothes. Bluestone features pretty heavily in the background (at .07 Jessica Gomes appears in front of a building that looks like a bluestone, and at .44 the two women run in their floaty blues and greys across a similar bluestone background). At least it looks like bluestone to me.



One of the things that strikes me here is the scale of this building. It's obviously large, to have such deep foundations and footings, but at this point (thanks to Joel for suggesting the screen shot), there is a beautiful mixture of night time, dark hair, pale skin, dark stone, dark blue dress, fluidity and movement against monumentality, with the human scale and the size and movement of body echoed with the lovely bike with basket and leather saddle.

I went looking on line and also found a clip from their runway show: fake bluestone arches, like a prison (Melbourne gaol), and fake bluestone for the runway. No cobblestones here: high heels need a stable surface to prevent falling over.



I found a write-up that suggested the show was evocative of New York street style. Maybe. Maybe it's just the preoccupations of the researcher with their own research, but this sure looks like penal bluestone to me.

My Year with Bluestone: Pentridge Piazza: "it's like being someone special"

Pentridge prison was decommissioned  in 1997, and in the rush to privatisation that characterised his government, Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett sold nearly 30 hectares of crown land to private developers.

One of these, Peter Chiavaroli, whose family comes from Abruzzo, envisaged his housing development along the lines of Italian walled towns. The discourse is determinedly Italianate, with the "Centrale Chiara" rose garden and "Aurora" fountain, as well as the central concept of "Pentridge Piazza." 

It's a clever way to re-code a prison coded as grim and severe into a welcoming housing community. Architect and co-developer Luciano Crema cites the northern Italian town of Treviso as his inspiration.

There was also a local model too. One of the developer's early newsletters, from 2005, cited Carlton's Lygon St, another Italianate community of shops, bars and restaurants close to the University, as a model.

One article in the newsletter is headed, "Village is a must for strong family values," and features an interview with a woman, Cathy, who is now moving up to a larger house in the development (possible because the value of the first has gone up, naturally).

"You see," she says with the kind of passion reminiscent of her Lebanese heritage, "living in Pentridge means something very special. "We love it because it is our home, but we love it even more because it is like living with a great big family.

"And, you know, when you tell people you live in Pentridge Village, it's like being someone special."

She smiles at the thought and then, hugging herself as if to emphasise her point, she says, "It is difficult to explain, but we all feel so safe and happy here. We really are part of something special." 

Brilliant interviewing/copy-writing!  Demonstrates precisely the symbolic force of Pentridge as heritage site: nothing specific about ghastly haunted prisons, but simply something "special."

One of the first couples to buy were a policeman and his partner, who bought a two-bedroom warehouse shell in the old prison mill.



Interviewed in The Age, Mr Hinton was "not concerned about its violent history."

"If these walls could talk they would certainly have a bit to say, but I'm not bothered at all," Mr Hinton said.

Ms Shields thought the retention of the bluestone perimeter would provide a strong sense of community. 

The development has not been uncontroversial, stylistically, or in heritage terms. Here are a few pics I've found on the web, showing first, an attempt to build the apartments on top of the walls, over an archway that as Vaughn showed us yesterday, leads down to the old laundry, one of the oldest parts of the estate.

 

and here, a reminder that for all the "safety" and "community" of a walled village, that "safety" depended on making sure you didn't escape.

 I particularly like the way they have kept the interesting feature of the tower, but made steps up/down to it on the wall, to reduce the oppressive "prison affect" of the walls.

My Year with Bluestone: Pentridge

Where to begin??

It's a bright and sunny Melbourne day with the promise of a dry south-westerly wind change later in the afternoon. Deirdre picks me up and we meet Helen and Anne at the café for our tour of Pentridge's D Division.

We are lucky with our guide, Vaughn. We four are the only ones on the tour, so we can choose whether to focus on architecture and the bluestone, or gruesome stories about the prisoners. Some of the state's most notorious criminals lived here: Ned Kelly, Chopper Read, Carl Williams, Jean Lee, Ronald Ryan (the last two hanged here). Vaughn was a warden here in 1978, but is also a lover of history, and a brilliant story-teller. And in spite of our declared interest in stone, we did certainly veer back to the stories about the inmates. It's a human place, after all.

One thing that became abundantly clear is how huge the whole complex is. Much of the land has been sold for private development, and there are numerous of wings of rather ugly-looking apartments, making awkward attempts to integrate the existing bluestone walls. The newly discovered panopticon exercise yards are in another area altogether and we will have to make a separate time to visit them, if we can.

I also had a proper camera with me, though I haven't yet worked out how to zoom, and haven't yet connected it to the computer, but here are two shots I took with the phone after we had driven around the whole area: these are the main gates...

With notes, photos, and four people asking questions and taking notes, I have enough material for a week's blog posts, to say nothing of a chapter for the book. Helen has already done a lot of work on Pentridge, and of course, there are many publications to read.

The main thing I learned today was how to start reading bluestone construction a little better. How the outer walls of Pentridge are formed by two layers of thinner bluestone, filled in with rubble and bricks. How a wooden frame was used to shape the really long slabs used in the cell walls. How the blocks were cemented together with lime and sand, with great precision. But that precision made it easy (relatively) to ease out a large stone; and one was big enough to allow a body to squeeze through. Vaughn had found a prisoner in exactly that act, with the stone half out of his cell wall. Prisoners used to escape all the time, but the cops would tell the guards, 'don't shoot them': i.e., don't ruin your own lives; as we'll catch them and bring them back. There was a distinctive chiselled effect on lots of the stones: something to look out for. I'm learning to tell the difference between (relatively) earlier and later work on a particular site, between high status and less important walls. The floors of D division were large squares: also bluestone, though smooth as slate. And you could also see dips and wear in the heavily used areas near doorways. We noticed that the windows on many of the cells were painted over. The prisoners would do it, to give themselves more darkness, to be able to sleep better during the day. This was one of the saddest things.

Helen or Deirdre asked about the prisoners breaking the bluestones, "It was a torture," Vaughn said. I had always thought there was a very precise connection between Pentridge and the bluestone dug out of what became the Coburg lake but that connection wasn't in the foreground of the discourse today.

And finally -- there'll be more, once  I write up my notes, and unload my photos -- the great irony was that bluestone made it very hard to see escaping prisoners. So many of the corners of the buildings were whitewashed, to make it easier to see the silhouettes of escapees as they broke out.

I thought our visit might tell us a lot about the prison's origins and construction; and so it did. But what I feel most is the weight of all these stories, from one guard's experience, at the time of my own adolescence.

UPDATE:  I was telling my friend over drinks this evening about this project and the day's excursion, and she told me that her ex-husband had once arrested Ronald Ryan and had admired him for his agility as he raced over the rootftops: it sounded like something out of Oliver Twist. Anyway they developed a bit of a relationship, and Ryan even invited Bryan to his hanging. Bryan declined the invitation...

My Year with Bluestone: "a bleak and scary building"

I was going to devote this week's blogs in preparation for my trip to Pentridge tomorrow, delving a little into its history, but instead it is turning into a series on other regional gaols: Parramatta, Bendigo, and today Geelong. Kerryn Goldsworthy reminded me about the Geelong gaol, which is indeed a true bluestone beauty. I love the way the photographer here has tried to get under the imposing bluestone gateway. This is becoming a common theme: the way dark bluestone walls tend to loom forbiddingly....

Like Pentridge, this gaol was built by prisoners, between 1849 and 1864. In the meantime, they slept on "high security barges" on Corio Bay. The gaol seems to be a mixture of basalt (bluestone) and brickwork. In this photograph, it doesn't seem so dark and grey...

I will certainly go and visit this gaol but in the meantime, here is the article Kerryn sent me. It is full of the evocative language that is one of the subjects of my study. The gaol is a "bleak and scary building", and I particularly love this sentence: "In today's terms the prisoners lived in appalling conditions with freezing blue stone walls and iron bars." There's a real awkwardness here in trying to translate emotional affects from present to past and back again. 

You can do a normal tourism tour, but there is also, of course, the haunted ghost tour, with very scary picture:

I've never been a zombie or horror buff of any kind, and have never been on a scary ghost tour (though there were moments under Edinburgh Hill that felt distinctly creepy), but maybe in the interests of research I'm going to have to change my ways. Yikes!

My Year with Bluestone: The Penitentiary Affect

Like all engrossing research projects, this bluestone malarkey is everywhere. Just checking the news online, and of course my attention is caught by this article on the ABC site about the Sandhurst Gaol in Bendigo being converted to a new theatre, the Ulumbarra Theatre. Hot on the heels of the concert in Parramatta Gaol, I scanned quickly to see, first, if the gaol was a  bluestone one. Alas, no: it's made of granite and brick, though bluestone is never far away, as I'll explain in a minute.

The Gaol is an odd mix of architectural styles. As one website explains, "The essential architectural character of the building is generally classical, with walls and towers resembling the embattlements of a medieval castle." So, too, as we will see on Thursday, Melbourne's Pentridge is also medievalist in style. 

But Sandhurst was also built, 1861-64, on the modern panoptical design. Bentham's Pentonville prison was built in 1842. Only two of Sandhurst's projected five wings were ever built.

The new theatre looks as if it will be fantastic. They are going to preserve some of the original features and fittings, and some of the original narrow cells.

But here's the bluestone moment:
The corridor will be carpeted at the edges, but the main walkway will be paved with bluestone; as theatre patrons enter, their footsteps will echo, creating what Mr Lloyd calls an "aural echo" of what prisoners would have heard.

I'm not sure if it's possible to get any more of the original "Harcourt granite", but the choice of bluestone is a stunning indicator of its importance as a heritage stone. Needing something to evoke the prisoner experience as your high heels click, or your rubber soles scoot along from the foyer into the performance space, carrying your glass of champagne or  icecream, you'll be able to "hear" an echo of the past. It will literally be an echo of your own feet but the bluestone will help you imagine the past. The choice of bluestone perhaps also echoes the most common experience most Melbourners have with bluestone, of actually walking on it, on our kilometres of laneways and the edges of our footpaths. Wonder if bluestone laneways are also a feature of Bendigo: is it a local reference?  And isn't there something a little odd about that phrase "aural echo"? Doesn't quite do the work Mr Lloyd wants it to do, I fear.

But even where a heritage building is not made of bluestone, bluestone is charged with affective work. 

My Year with Bluestone: Prison Blues -- or Golds. Tex Perkins at Parramatta

On Saturday night, we went to hear Tex Perkins doing his Johnny Cash show -- Far from Folsum -- at the old Parramatta Gaol.  I'm sure I know more about Cash from Joaquin Phoenix in Walk the Line than any deep musical understanding, though I knew some of the songs, and remembered my childhood horror at A Boy Named Sue, and its anarchic rhythms ("My Name is Sue!  How Do You Do??). But the show was great. Perkins was fabulous and his deep growly voice hardly faltered. Rachael Tidd as June Carter was underwhelming, I felt, but the band was tight and the atmosphere pretty good.

We were seated towards the back. Little white plastic chairs in rows in the enormous old exercise yard of the gaol. As if at a festival, rather than a concert, people went up and back to the bar at the back all through the 70 minutes set, and a man next to me kept up an irritating mansplaining commentary to his almost silent partner for the first half hour, till he went back to the bar for a good twenty minutes.

The amplified acoustics were good; and the big screen helped with visibility. But something about the human acoustics was absolutely chilling. A flat plane, surrounded by four high square walls, has the effect of killing sound around you. We could hear people clapping maybe twenty rows ahead, but from our back corner, there was no acoustic connection with people over the other side or down the front.

It was prison architecture, after all, and the last thing you would want would be a group of exercising prisoners banding together. (I am going to visit the solitary panoptical exercise yards at Pentridge on Thursday, designed for the opposite effect.)

The other thing I couldn't help notice was the difference made by sandstone as the building's stone. Of course it was lit up by floodlights for the festival, but even so, walking around the elegant main block to the huge yard behind, all open to the warm summer skies, just ... felt ... very different from the bluestone effect, particularly in a prison context.

Cash's songs, at least those from the Folsom event, that Perkins sang, were gruesome enough: songs of desperation, suicide, murder, gambling, prison blues, woman-killing. And Perkins made a few jokes and told a few stories about the Parramatta gaol. But in the golden light of those stones, you had to work pretty hard to feel much of a chill.