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Prison Life In Fremantle, Australia | Tony Robinson
Apr 4, 2025
Comedian and Historian Tony Robinson visits Fremantle, known historically as a place of punishment. Tony expores the history of the Round House, the oldest surviving building of Western Australia, and Fremantle Prison, which was home to a "prank call" escape.
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0:00
I'm starting my walk as I mean to end it, in the nick
0:05
And what a magnificent prison it was. This is, in fact, the oldest surviving building in Western Australia
0:12
It's called the Roundhouse, but it's not round at all. It's actually a dodecagon
0:17
Great word that, isn't it? It means a 12-sided figure, like the size of an Australian 50-cent piece
0:23
And looking at it here, you'd think this would be something you'd find in Renaissance Italy
0:28
not colonial Australia. The reason for that is that it was designed by an architect called Henry Reveille
0:34
who trained in Italy and gone on to be very successful in Europe and in South Africa
0:41
But then something had gone terribly wrong with his career. No one quite knows what, but he came out here for a new start
0:50
The reason that it's this extraordinary shape isn't just because it makes it look pretty
0:55
but it's a very efficient method of managing the prison population. It's called the panopticon method, which basically means you can see all the way around
1:04
And the warders used to stand in the middle and they could observe the prisoners in their cells all the way around here
1:11
It's a method of looking after prisoners that reached its zenith in the horrors at Port Arthur
1:16
even though this is no longer a working prison they still perform an extraordinary time keeping
1:26
ritual here and it's one that started over a hundred years ago good afternoon ladies and
1:32
gentlemen girls and boys welcome to the gun deck in the roundhouse precinct one o'clock every day
1:38
a very important person fired a cannon and lowered a time ball so ships in port could
1:44
to check their chronometers were accurate. In the ship's log for the day
1:48
the captain would write Fremantle, January the 14th, on the ball. And that's where that old saying, on the ball, comes from
1:58
Now, Tony, would you like to come up and be our honorary gunnery officer today
2:03
Yes I love to Now we have the firing mechanism here and when the red light comes on it armed and ready to go Yep Okay everybody let start the countdown now
2:15
Three, two, one, bang! That was some sound! My ears are really ringing
2:26
Wow, I didn't expect it to be as loud as that. I did warn you it was loud
2:32
So let's give Tony a clap. If I could hear the applause, I'd be really satisfied
2:40
I can't hear a thing. Thank you very much. Thank you. Cheers, guys. Thanks a lot
2:52
For a small town, this place does very nicely for jails. Fremantle Prison isn't far from the Roundhouse
2:58
and as it's my last stop, I thought I'd spend a bit of time here. Well, it's what you do in prison, isn't it
3:06
There are about 520 cells here, but one is very different from the others
3:12
It was occupied by a bloke called Walsh, and after he left it became a store cupboard
3:18
and stayed pretty much the same for 100 years. And then one day a cleaner was cleaning away at the plaster
3:25
and a little bit fell off and a drawing was revealed. Actually, we're not going to both be able to get in here
3:33
You go in first and I'll talk you through. Go in and turn left
3:39
Can you see that frieze there? Like something that you might find on a Greek or Roman building, isn't it
3:46
Drawings go all the way around. That one there, that dark one. Now, these were created with lead and little fine brushes
3:54
Although, where he got the lead and brushes from, I've no idea. And this one here, this is fairly obvious
3:59
That is St. John the Divine on the Greek island of Patmos
4:03
And you can tell that. Can you see he's writing on a parchment
4:07
And below that there's this rolled up manuscript. That would be the book of Revelation that he wrote on Patmos And down here you got Walsh himself when he was a little boy praying to God It rather cute
4:22
And this one is magnificent. What I find so extraordinary about this stuff is that presumably he didn't have any books to copy from
4:30
So all of these were coming from his head. So elaborate, so well executed
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Come out now, come on. We're all getting a bit claustrophobic. what intrigues me is why on earth did he do all these drawings there's a theory that he did them
4:47
in order to sort of suck up to the warders that they think he was not only a really good artist
4:52
but that he'd become a real born again christian and deserved to be let free i don't know whether
4:59
that's true or not but what we do know is that once he got out he never went inside again in fact
5:06
he became a colonial artist. So you see, prison works. Bang them up, I see
5:18
I've heard a few prison escape stories in my time, but never one that involves an electronics whiz
5:24
a phone made of spare parts, and a rather gullible guard. Luke, it's 1972
5:32
Tell me all about the great prank call escape. OK, so there was a man called Owen Hooper, and he was a radio technician
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And he had two friends, one called William Cabolt and another one called Stanley Stone
5:46
And those three guys ran the radio station, the prison radio station, from the corner cell of New Division here
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So they were DJs, really, weren't they? Yeah, that's right. And they played music for the prisoners
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Prisoners could request their favourite songs and so on. Owen Hooper was a very, very smart guy
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And the prison officials asked him to help with electronic repairs around the site
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This was a terrible mistake on that part. Yes, exactly right. Because what he did was they asked him to fix up a telephone line in the hospital in the corner up here
6:15
And when he did that he also somehow managed to run a line down to his radio cell in Udivision And tapping into that telephone line he was able to make phone calls outside the prison Right right So now we come to the night in question Okay so on the night
6:31
they broke up through the ceiling of their cell into about a two-foot ceiling space between the
6:37
ceiling and the roof. So this is right where we can see now, along this green guttering here
6:42
That's right. And so they crawled along through this ceiling space to this point here
6:48
and then they punched a hole up through the roof and they climbed out onto the top here
6:52
So now they're stuck in the corner of the roof and they've got to get onto this wall. How did they do that
6:57
They had to distract the guard who was up in the gun tower on the corner of the prison complex up here
7:02
Which is much further away than this little hut here. That's right. So Owen Hooper, he had a field phone
7:08
He used his field phone to tap into the prison phone line
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and he called the guard in this gun tower. Pretending to be a prison officer
7:16
That's right. And he said, he said, he said, gate officer here, I've seen suspicious activity down in the southern area of the prison
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Could you keep an eye on it for me for a few moments? So the bloke on the wall starts looking in that direction
7:30
He obligingly looks down that way. And then while he's distracted, these three guys, they had made a ladder out of pipes and metal hooks
7:39
And telephone cables. That's right. And they flipped it down onto the top of the perimeter wall here
7:44
Yeah. Shimmied across. Which must have been incredibly dangerous. Yes, you'd think so
7:49
And it's a long, it's a nine metre drop down to the bottom. And they ran a line, a rope down to the road
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We're telling about an escape that happened here in 1972. Just where you are now, there was the getaway car
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Except it was a woman, not a bloke. See ya. Cheers. Yeah, and you're right, there was a getaway car waiting for them
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They jumped into the car and off they went. The only problem was, though, they were caught again three months later
8:17
So, brilliant escape, but really all that hard work was wasted, rather, wasn't it
8:22
Absolutely. Superb story. You're welcome. Ta-da
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