G'day viewers, and welcome to another mysterious episode!
Just seven kilometres from Brisbane, is a peaceful island which is now a national park.
But it was once deservedly known as the 'hell hole of the Pacific'.
St Helena's dark and shocking past began in 1867,
when the island was converted into a penal colony,
and the prison was almost completely self-sufficient.
Market gardens and sugar cane fields provided a steady supply of food.
Inmates were actively involved in tailoring, book-binding and carpentry.
During the period of the late 1800s,
the St Helena Establishment was considered to be the best prison of its kind anywhere in the world.
It is thought that this unforgiving island gaol inspired the United States...
to build its infamous maximum security island prison, Alcatraz.
And just like at Alcatraz, the disciplinary regime at St Helena was harsh, almost inhumane.
Punishment was severe and prisoners were often straightjacketed, and gagged.
They were locked for days in windowless underground cells...
measuring less than one metre by two metres for the most minor of infringements.
The convicts were locked in their cells for 12 hours at a time,
sleeping in cramped dark quarters in hammocks slung from the damp roofs.
In the morning, after emptying their night buckets into an open cesspit,
inmates would tuck into breakfast on benches...
just metres away from the festering sewerage.
In such unhygienic surroundings,
illness often swept through the prison like wildfire.
Death often followed illness...
and the bodies of deceased inmates were usually transported back to the mainland.
However, if the prisoner's family was too poor or not contactable,
the deceased suffered a fate far worse than death itself...
to remain on the island forever.
Fellow prisoners would make the coffins and dig graves...
which were marked only with the deceased inmate's official prison registration number.
For many prisoners serving life sentences, the only alternative to dying on the island was to try and escape.
However, with its stone walls, trigger-happy guards, and shark infested waters,
St Helena was deemed impossible to escape from.
In desperate bids for freedom, distraught inmates tried all manner of futile methods...
to make the seven-kilometre voyage to the mainland.
This included taking to crudely made rafts,
driftwood,
and in one bizarre case...
a leaking bathtub.
Of the 50 desperate men involved in various break-out attempts,
in total 44 were recaptured,
3 disappeared without a trace;
2 men were drowned or taken by sharks,
and only one made it to freedom.
And if you want to discover more, then be sure to check out my book:
"Haunted & Mysterious Australia".
I'm Tim the Yowie Man. And thanks for watching!
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