Old Melbourne Gaol

You are standing outside the place where Ned Kelly was hanged. On the eleventh of November, eighteen eighty, the most famous bushranger in Australian history dropped through the trapdoor at the Old Melbourne Gaol and reportedly said his last words: Such is life. He was twenty-five years old. His death mask, made from a plaster cast of his face immediately after execution, is on display inside, along with the rough suit of homemade armour he wore at his last stand in Glenrowan.

Between eighteen forty-two and nineteen twenty-nine, one hundred and thirty-three people were executed within these bluestone walls. Their death masks were also made, part of a grim Victorian obsession with phrenology, the pseudo-science that claimed you could read criminal tendencies from the shape of a person's skull. The collection of death masks inside is one of the most extensive in the world, rows of plaster faces staring out from the walls, each one belonging to someone who took their last breath in this building.

The gaol was built in stages from eighteen forty-one, and at its peak held over three hundred prisoners in conditions that were deliberately harsh. The cells are tiny. The walls are thick bluestone that holds the cold. The exercise yard is a small, featureless space designed to crush the spirit. One of the more disturbing features is the set of winding metal stairs that lead up to the gallows platform. You can climb them yourself during a visit. At the top, you stand on the same boards where the condemned stood, looking down at the trapdoor beneath your feet. It is one of the most viscerally confronting experiences you can have in any Australian museum.