Convicts are a subject which children seem to find endlessly fascinating. They are enthralled by the places where convicts lived and worked, and love to see personal items which reflect who the convicts were. Yet most of the children Roy knows have never had the oppotunity to see one of the most personal remants of convicts, the graffiti they left behind them. There are several places where this graffiti can be found, but Roy is particularly fond of the amazing graffiti to be found in Little Hartley's Courthouse Cells.
If you would like to visit the courthouse at Little Hartley, it is the striking stone building as you enter the town. Little Hartley itself is located on Old Bathurst Road, Hartley and is just off the Great Western Highway. Not far from Jenolan Caves, it is a great place to take a break before heading down to the Caves, and it has plenty of room for a picnic. To see inside the Courthouse you will need to take a tour and these are conducted every day on the hour between 10am and 3pm. Tours are run for a minimum of 4 people.
Graffiti is something which most of the children Roy knows assume is bad. They hear so many stories in the news about why graffiti is a terrible thing to do, and how it is so expensive to clean up. Yet there is graffiti which is interesting, useful and even historically significant. Historic graffiti can be found in hundreds of sites around the world and can tell us a huge amount about the people who wrote it. Some graffiti dates back to ancient times, and some of the most famous examples of this sort of historic graffiti are found in Pompeii. Other examples are much more recent, like the graffiti found in the cells at Hartley Courthouse.
The graffiti in Hartley Courthouse was created by two distinct groups of people. One group were tourists to the courthouse, but the most interesting and important dates back to the time when the Courthouse was used to try convicts and was made in the cells by these convicts. These convicts had a good reason to want to make their mark on the world. Those convicts who were tried at Hartley were not 'first offenders', but people who had committed some other crime in Australia and they could be sentenced to hang! They were making their mark on the world and recording something personal about themselves, whether they recognised it or not. Some of the graffiti is quite beautiful and very well written which children might find surprising. The general view they have of convicts is uncouth, uneducated and unruly, yet many were actually quite well educated as their graffiti shows. Some of the 'penmanship' is very high quality and some of the images rendered on the walls are beautiful! Some of these images, like the boat above, might even give us hints to things which influenced the convicts lives. Boats were popular subjects for convict graffiti - after all a boat journey was the start of their lives in Australia! If you would like to learn more about the Courthouse itself, visit Roys post from last week by clicking here.
