Prisoner Locations Review

No trip to the city where Prisoner was filmed would be complete without an exploration of the external locations that featured throughout the series. Blockade were fortunate enough to secure the services of one of Melbourne's most erudite Priz fans, Robert Myall, who was happy to give us the guided tour. Renting out a pair of minibuses, we fearlessly took to the Melbourne streets to trace the footsteps of Karen Travers, Margo Gaffney, and even the wheelchair tracks of Yorkshire's very own Dennis Cruickshank...

One location that most of us had already taken in during a routine trawl through the delights of Melbourne city centre was Flinders Street Railway Station. This was briefly used in the opening sequence of the first three episodes, with Karen Travers walking past. As such, it was intended to contrast the urban freedom of her previous life with her future incarceration. Located at the corner of Flinders and Swanston Streets, the station is in fact only a stone’s throw from the Forum Theatre, where the reunion was to take place.

As part of our quest to understand the inner-core of Prisoner’s dynamic examination of the penal tradition, we first had to see where justice was so rigorously (?) dispensed. So our first major port of call was the Prahran Courthouse on Greville Street, Prahran, one of the few locations where the interior of the building was used as well as the exterior. Prahran is one of Melbourne’s more upmarket areas, but the street itself was surprisingly narrow – not the sort of setting one would imagine for such a seminal location. Familiar throughout the early years of the show, the courthouse was used in a host of storylines, including:

• Pat O’Connell’s trial and her subsequent appeal, with Greg Miller as a witness.

• The trial of Toni McNally. It was outside the court on Macquarie Street where vigilante Roslyn Coulsen fatally shot Toni.

• The trial of daddy-killer Caroline Simpson and living vegetable Vivienne Williams, with Lizzie and Doreen as witnesses.

• The early trials of Doreen and Lizzie after stealing liquor.

• The trials of Sharon Gilmour and Tony Reid on drug-related charges, with Judy Bryant and Paul Reid in attendance.

• Geoff Butler’s trial for his laudable attack on Meg, with Jim Fletcher and Meg as witnesses. Michael Simpson and Geoff butler met up in Macquarie Street after the trial.

• ‘Mum’ and Bea’s trial following Bea’s amnesia/’escape’. ‘Mum’ and Bea say their final goodbyes in Macquarie Street.

• Thieving athlete Michelle Parkes’ trial (she thanks her ‘witness’ Amelia in Macquarie street).

• The front of the building (Greville Street) was used to represent
  the police station when Meg bailed out Nick during her woeful probation officer days.
  

With Meg’s sainted footsteps as our guiding light, we felt ready to tiptoe around the exterior of the domestic enclave that was she and Dennis’ flat in Marne Street, South Yarra. Just the thought of Frank Burke lying in wait was enough to enthrall our warped and savage minds – but sadly there was not a Yorkshireman in sight, so any plans to re-enact the celebrated kneecapping of Dennis Cruickshank were sadly scuppered!

Huddled enthusiastically in our minibuses, we passed down Collins Street in the city – this was used for location shooting in episode 2 following Bea’s release, when she has her hair done, calls Valerie Richardson, and then catches a taxi on the north side of the street.

More prestigious was the expensive bar where Margo Gaffney and boyfriend Wayne went to celebrate her release. This was in fact the Hilton Hotel in East Melbourne.  We were able to follow Margo’s short-lived release to its ill-fated conclusion as we later explored the scenes of the failed payroll robbery that landed her back inside and Wayne and Bazza an early place in the morgue. The snatch was filmed in Port Melbourne, and we had great fun loitering around the little street where the trio of bandits waited in their car before springing out and attempting to mug their prey. We then skipped off to the scene of Holly’s Haberdashery, the shop that was besieged by the police after the payroll grab went pear-shaped. All the heartache and nerve-gripping action flooded back to us – alas poor Bazza and Wayne.

The scene of one of Margo’s several penal residences, Barnhurst Prison, was even more evocative. The one-time monastery used to represent the prison-farm is located within a large expanse of parklands by the Yarra River in the inner-city suburb Abbotsford. Partly shrouded by trees and bush, ‘Barnhurst’ immediately filled us with an eager sort of foreboding: it was here that we first clapped eyes on Marie Winter (and indeed presumably here that she harvested her magic mushrooms)! Now the only residents of what passed as the ‘farm’ were goats, albeit very friendly ones, maybe a little too friendly, seeing as one had managed to lose a leg in its travels!

It was not enough to see prisons and courthouses. Our next trip gave us the opportunity to saunter by Greg Miller’s surgery (a white two-storey terrace house) in Spring Street, Fitzroy. This was obviously not a neighborhood accustomed to sightseers – several passers-by stopped in bafflement as this eager band of British tourists took photographs of an unremarkable terrace. It would have been too cruel to point out to them the true cultural heritage that lay within that building, not least when we were standing on the spot where an aggrieved David O’Connell staked out the place prior to shooting Karen Travers. Such monumental significance cannot be communicated to the uninitiated

One of the most notorious Prisoner locations is the ominous redbrick building that represented Blackmoor Prison (next to which Wentworth was a holiday camp). This was possibly the most striking, most dramatically important location of all. The building was in fact the old Melbourne Metropolitan Board of Works pumping station in the suburb of Spotswood. It was smaller than we had imagined, but the courtyard that featured as the prison yard still had a certain air to it, not least when we could set foot on the ground on which Rita Connors was inducted into the ‘black hole’. There was also the very grate to which the doomed ‘Bongo’ Connors was chained, and we could also ascend the steps at the back of the yard and patrol the rooftops as only a lamentable crew of would-be Gestapo-style warders could envisage!

Prior to Prisoner, the building had proven sufficiently portentous to play a role in ‘Mad Max’, where it served as the Halls of Justice building. Nowadays the building is part of the Science-works Museum, and as such remains open to the public.

Having empathized with the sorry denizens of Blackmoor, it remained for us to take a step back in time to the days of late 1980. When Meg’s less than exemplary stepdaughter Tracey Morris came to have her trial, a more spacious location than the Prahran Courthouse was chosen, possibly to accommodate the high drama of the ensuing chase scenes. The South Melbourne Town Hall in Banks Street was used to represent the courthouse – at any rate the exterior and streetscape were used, not the actual interior of the building. After the trial Tracey was kidnapped and driven around Port Melbourne until the exhilarating shoot-out at the Graham Street overpass.

Article and images © Simon Hall.