Boggo Road Jail is situated in the south Brisbane suburb of Dutton Park.
It was completed in the early 1900s and was a high security prison until it was closed in 1989 – twenty years ago. The front entrance of Boggo Road Jail is shown below.
The reason I like Boggo Road Jail because it gives a fairly realistic representation of what it must have been like to be locked up in a cage. Since closure, the prison was left pretty much as is, including the graffiti, which I will talk about more in a moment.
The Boggo Road Jail prison cells were fairly primitive, considering it was only closed 20 years ago – no toilets or sewerage system was ever installed, so the prisoners had to use a metal bucket as their toilet. One of these amazing pieces of plumbing at the Boggo Road Jail is shown below:
What I found fascinating about the Boggo Road Jail was the graffiti that had been left behind and had not been covered over for the sake of political correctness.
The graffiti gives an amazing insight into the mind of a maximum security prisoner – and I can tell you that their artistic impressions on the walls hardly included illustrations of flowers or nice things. The lyrics to the AC/DC song, ‘Jailbreak’ were almost unanimously written in every jail cell wall.
Especially, ‘Gonna make a jailbreak, And I’m lookin’ towards the sky, I’m gonna make a jailbreak, Oh, how I wish that I could fly’
From perusing the graffiti, I deduced that there wasn’t much rehabilitation going on in that prison – there’s a lot of hate there. I enjoyed checking out Boggo Road Jail, in my own backyard, more than I did going to Alcatraz in San Francisco. Alcatraz seems pretty sanitised in comparison, as all of the graffiti has been removed, with the biggest attraction is Al Capone’s cell and other stories associated with him.
Anyway, I’ve included a sample of the Boggo Road Jail graffiti below in these photos.
WARNING: Some of these photos contain potentially offensive or explicit content.
For your information: a ‘Screw’ is a Prison Warden.
You can view more information at the Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society.
The Boggo Road Jail is closed at the moment, but will probably reopen sometime in the future. I know previously, there were ghost tours of the jail at night, and if you really wanted to, one could experience being locked up in a cell overnight.
Maybe not for me.
To find out more about Brisbane, check out Australia’s Brisbane & Queensland.
Other things to do in Australia after visiting Boggo Road Jail – visit The Saint or drive the Mitsubishi Pajero.
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
July 24th, 2009 at 8:49 am
I’m surprised that they weren’t made to clean the graffiti off the walls.
Dan´s last blog ..Five ways to increase your travel fund
[Reply]
January 13th, 2010 at 4:12 pm
Facinating post – unbelievable they had to use buckets.
tempo dulu´s last blog ..Who has the best prison cell in Indonesia – Schapelle Corby or Artalyta Suryani?
[Reply]
January 17th, 2010 at 12:14 am
Memories of this place come back to me as an inmate (NOT PROUD OF IT)
back in 1978 aged 18,and this place was indeed full of hard men with no
hope of rehabilitation, bashings rapings stabbings and guards with filthy
attitudes,cells without windows the ever smelly sh-t bucket washed in 3A yard every morning,no work.there was no graffitting wall and doors because if you were court drawing it was 1 day in the hole (black hole)-a place to scare the tuffest villans.
Still one day when it opens again I plan to go have a look at E36 and maybe leave a message on the wall.
[Reply]
anthony Reply:
January 18th, 2010 at 9:06 am
Hi E36, thanks for your comment. I thought the graffitti provided a valuable insight to jail life, that was until you left your comment! It definitely adds to the post. Hope things are good for you now.
[Reply]
January 23rd, 2010 at 8:24 am
Hi anthony,all good,I think the graffitti would have only been possible close to when the jail was closeing down because there are no dates attatched to the images,
[Reply]
May 17th, 2010 at 6:50 pm
hi anthony and e36 my name is willy and i was at bogga during the late 80s and early 90s when it was mainly a remand centre they had sentence imates there but they all had the jobs i was there when darren jeffers and shane ryan and others escape from k wing in 1991 and scaled down the wall wif a sheet if i wasnt in jwing i would hav escape 2 i was also mates wif nathan jones and remember wen he kicked his whole cell door off wen he was up in c wing i lso met wally lewis there and athur beetson and sam backo was the aboriginal and torris str8 islander social worker my cousin was also the 1 who went thru the main gates steve witana harry and jason meet them all up maxi sir david longlands where in friends wif them all aurtur currie stewy dawson horse ryan neil ashton gentlemen joe just 2 name a few the 2 deaf mutes who killed the taxi driver the sulivans father and son who did all the arm rob on the coast and his dad played league 4 australia im back in new zealand now deported happy memories made me who i am.
[Reply]