This is another "I could kick myself in retrospect" moment.

This is a model showing the layout of Old Melbourne Gaol at its peak, when it occupied the greater part of a city block.

The model is located on the ground floor. (You can see it in image 13273.) I suspect that I shot it from the first floor since I'm looking straight down on it. However I must have been over-optimistic about the 24-105 lens' detail resolution ability since I can't read the text at all.

Also, and this annoys me slightly, the gaol is now administered by the National Trust. Would it actually kill them to provide guides to the buildings that they run, giving maps, layouts, histories? There is nothing like that anywhere on the web.

In any case... most of this is gone. The buildings that remain are the ones with the gold coloured roofs. The cellblock building that we're in is the horizontal one in the middle. Most of the rest of the block is now occupied by the RMIT University. The short building jutting up from the cellblock is now building 11 of RMIT University. The inverted U shape building is now also part of RMIT University.

The circular building on the right has long since been demolished, but I saw something similar at Port Arthur prison. If it's what I think it is, it was the exercise yard for solitary prisoners. They would be allowed into their "wedge" to walk around like caged animals. The walls were too high and solid to communicate through. The light would come through the top and there would be no windows to look through.

That side faces Russell Street, the northern end of which was quite the law and order district in its day. In addition to the gaol, there was the City Watch House. It's still there; it's another place that you can visit for an experience, which indeed I did during another visit, though at the time of writing I can't find any photos of that. A Magistrates' Court also operated here for a time. Opposite the gaol was the old Russell Street Police Headquarters, which was constructed in the 1940s. It was well known to a generation of Australian TV viewers who saw it feature in the opening credits of the series Homicide (1964-1977).

In any case, this is what you would have seen back in the early 1920s. If I ever get back there, I'll be sure to be a little more assiduous about shooting the location... including this model.

On the upside, it's far more likely that I'll get back there than to some other places I've visited.