CITY OF SHADOWS - PART I
An exhibition of Sydney Police photographs from 1912-1948 held at the
Justice and Police Museum, Circular Quay, Sydney, 2006
All photographs of exhibition materials are copyright Historic Houses
Trust
I tried my hand at picking pockets when I got out. Anything was better than
living on rice and water, and that was all I could afford with the kind of jobs
I got.
My parole officer, Harold Ellis, caught me at it one day. He was a good
bloke, so he let me off cause I'd been good ... most of the time. But he had one condition: I had to learn something. He had this idea about lessons from the
past, figuring if I got educated I'd go clean.
Yeah, right.
The day of the exhibition was bright, hot, humid. A typical January in Sydney.
I hate that weather, not a patch on old Melbourne.
We walked up the stairs, me yawning, Ellis smiling his face off. I was waiting
for it to be over; he was
so excited he wouldn't shut up.
 
 When
we got inside and he paid for our tickets, I felt a chill, probably the air-con,
but there was something about those stone walls that put me on edge. Ellis made
us sit through this movie, and it was bloody boring if you ask me. I mean it was
just photos and this guy talking. Some of it was funny though, like when he
talked about cockroaches at this murder scene.
I got to yawning, and Ellis took the hint, cause I saw him yawning
too, so we went to the other rooms, where there were all these stupid antiques on
display. You know they used to take photos on glass? I swear it's true. And
did you know how long they've been fingerprinting us for? Maybe they weren't all
that stupid, back then.
 
We turned the corner, and Ellis had to push me down the corridor we came to. I
wanted to run back outside, but I got myself together and told him not to touch
me.
The corridor had three rooms coming off it, the first filled with bushranger
crap and the second with weird tools for measuring bodies. It said that's what
they used before fingerprints.
When I walked in the next room, I knew right off what it was.
A cell.
I froze up. Couldn't move. Just looked at the bed and the
walls and the bucket in the corner. Ellis looked like he was going to yell, but
then he led me into the next room without saying a word.
 
>> go to Part II
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