FREMANTLE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA—Excavations of the parade ground, original bath house, and former engine house at Fremantle Prison have revealed information about the prison’s role in the region’s economy during the nineteenth century. Inmates learned to operate state-of-the art steam engines and boilers and left the prison with skills that were in demand in the local mining communities. But the prison housed Euro-Australian inmates only—Aboriginal convicts were sent to a prison at Wadjemup on Rottnest Island, where they received no skills training. “Fremantle Prison had boundaries that were explicit and enforced, but it also acted as a centerpiece of a spatially distributed system of labor control across Western Australia,” Thomas Whitely of the University of Western Australia told Science Network. “Those traveling to Wadjemup—a forbidden place to most Aboriginals—were not expected to return, much like the convicts transported to Australia from England,” Whitley added. For more, go to "Rogue's Gallery: The Convicts of Early Australia."
