Boob-prisons - boob trees in Australia , whose hollow trunks at the end of the 19th century, when Australia was colonial property of Great Britain, were used as a kind of transit prisons for Australian Aboriginal criminals. In total, it is known that only two such trees are used as prisons, and the unconditional reliability of the conclusion of people in the tree cavity is confirmed only for one of them.
The most famous is the Wyndham Boab Prison - a large hollow tree 9 m high and 15 m in diameter, growing 40 km from the city, not far from the King River Road. Previously, this tree was known under the name “Hillgrove Prison”, as evidenced by the corresponding inscription carved on the trunk [1] , and the tree itself was allegedly called the police station [2] . In 1890, local police officers discovered through openings near the upper branches of the tree that it was hollow inside and cut out a “hollow chamber” of about 9 m² in it, supposedly capable of holding up to 30 people, although this may be an exaggeration [3] . Typically, prisoners were left in the tree for no more than one night while transporting them to Wyndham, where the court sentenced them. If at the same time a large number of prisoners were arrested, those who did not fit in the hollow were chained to the outside of the tree with chains at night. Some of these prisoners reportedly managed to escape [4] . Already in the early 1900s, the tree became a tourist attraction.
7 km from Derby, there is a large hollow boab 14 m in diameter with a huge hollow [5] , which, according to some reports, was also used in the 1880s as a temporary prison for Aboriginal people who were captured by white settlers in Kimberley and brought to Derby to work pearl hunters [6] . An article dated 1966 states that there is no reliable information about the use of this tree as a prison; Wyndham’s boab prison is not questioned in the same article [7] .
Notes
- ↑ Giant Bottle Trees. , Brisbane, Qld .: National Library of Australia (February 26, 1931), S. 54. Date of access January 11, 2012.
- ↑ FREMANTLE TO DARWIN. , Perth, WA: National Library of Australia (June 28, 1938), S. 17. Date of access January 11, 2012.
- ↑ THE BAOBAB. , Brisbane, Qld .: National Library of Australia (February 26, 1931), S. 29. Date of access January 11, 2012.
- ↑ A "BOOB" IN A BAOB TREE. , NSW: National Library of Australia (August 31, 1940), S. 9. Date of access January 11, 2012.
- ↑ Boab Prison Tree and Myall's Bore . The Sidney Morning Herald (1 janvier 2009). Date of access March 31, 2019. (unavailable link)
- ↑ Baobab Prison Tree (German) . Meb's Reisemagazin (9 avril 2011). Date of appeal March 25, 2019.
- ↑ DANCE OF THE BOAB. , 1933 - 1982: National Library of Australia (February 2, 1966), p. 26. Date of access January 11, 2012.