Up the road in the old prison in Coburg are some new high-rise flats and shops with bits of old bluestone buildings and walls scattered around; a compromise of capitalist real estate and community heritage. Business boosters and property developers ;are getting maximum yield, and in turn there are some old buildings retained, some landscaping and heritage interpretation.
The interiors of gaol cells, exercise yards, workshops, stone breaking yards at Her Majesty's Prison Pentridge, were regularly painted with whitewash . Whitewashing covered the filth, blood, excrement and marks of brutality. It didn't hide the horror though.
Mark Holsworth has already made the point that Aboriginal lives have been omitted from the story of Pentridge, with no mention in the interpretation master plan. Despite the significant Ronald Bull mural locked away on F Division, and the impressive uncredited multipanel mural (possibly from the demolished Jika Jika) tucked in the nondescript apartment car park access lane, there has been a concerted effort to avoid truth telling for both the black and white damaged lives.
Mysterious mural at Pentridge.
Sawn through walls are everywhere. Incremental incursions have removed any sense of a place of punishment. Harshness is softenen by new lawns, street furniture and sandblasting the shit ad grime away.
remnants of prison
The back of supermarket has some giant graphics of building plans and context free cut steel letters spelling out random all caps 'CELL' 'ROBALD RYAN' 'NED KELLY' 'PANOPTICON'. Elsewhere, Dadaist cut outs of equally random but now referenced quotations about the 'neatly trimmed borders' form patterns in walls, stair risers' and sawn stone infills and pavers.
Selective quotation puts the best light
Corporate developer greed, indifferent and hobbled heritage regulators and complicit consultants have moved the site of misery and horrific acts of inhuman cruelty towards a Disneyland of battlement-crowned castle walls and stone ramparts that fits with the marketable fairy story.
Ritchies IGA Dadaist poetry wall
