Alcatraz!
This afternoon we headed over on the Alcatraz tour. There’s only one ferry company which is allowed to dock at Alcatraz so we were quite lucky to get tickets – most people book about a month in advance.
The ferry docked at Alcatraz and then a National Park Ranger gave us a talk on a bit of the history of the island – such as how the native Indians lived here for 2 years after Alcatraz shutdown – in a kind of “Mabo”-equivalent protest over native land-rights. Seeing as the island has no natural source of freshwater, it was a big task to survive there.
We then headed up a series of hills to get to the cell house. Along the way we visited some of the other buildings around. Most of them are pretty derelict now and there’s a lot of areas on the island where civilians aren’t allowed.
It was also interesting to see some apartment style building where the families of the prison guards used to live in – including many children. That would have been pretty crazy!
Alcatraz island is pretty much overrun by birds. There are massive seagulls and bird droppings everywhere!
Once at the top of the hill, we went inside the cell house where they hand out an audio tour thing (on an ipod-like thing). The whole prison is actually very small – it only house around 250 prisoners at any one time. The cells themselves are pretty tiny – doesn’t seem like a great place to have been as you can imagine.
The audio tour was great and explained all of the attempted escapes and major events that happened at the prison.
If you look at the photo above (click on it for larger view) you can see the hole in the back wall dug out by spoons and used to escape through.
The guards control room and view from the warden’s house area is below:
So overall it was something good to see. The only downsides are that there are so many other tourists there that you have to shuffle around the cell house cos of the crowds. Rob and I couldn’t even be bothered waiting in the line to get a photo of ourselves behind bars. Also, as you can imagine, the gift shops have a ridiculous amount of merchandise on offer. Alcatraz this and Alcatraz that – you name it, they’ve got it.
Earlier in the day we went on board the S.S. Jeremiah warship – which was an absolute highlight – Rob will post about that soon.
Leeane