Qualla: Redruth Gaol https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:28 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Redruth Gaol https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol Redruth Gaol: Introduction https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol/ Photo credit Peripitus, CC BY-SA 3.0. In January 1866 a newspaper made a curious report about the gaol at Redruth: it held no prisoners at all, despite being a perfectly active prison. That small absurdity sets the tone for one of the more peculiar institutions in South Australian history. Built of local stone on the edge of the copper town of Burra in 1856, Redruth Gaol was the first prison the colony ever built outside Adelaide. For more than half a century it would swing between emptiness and overcrowding, change its purpose entirely, and eventually find an unlikely second fame on cinema screens.

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Image: Peripitus | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/r44b-redruth-gaol-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Redruth Gaol: A Prison for the Copper Country https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol/ Photo credit Peripitus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Redruth took its name, like much of Burra, from the Cornish mining heritage that built the town, and it served the spread of small settlements across the mid-north. From 1871 it was gazetted as the official place of confinement for people arrested on warrants from the local court...

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Image: Peripitus | CC BY-SA 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/r44b-redruth-gaol-a-prison-for-the-copper-country.mp3 0:06 2 full Redruth Gaol: A Home for Wayward Girls https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol/ Photo credit Peripitus, CC BY-SA 3.0. The stone walls did not stay quiet for long. In 1897 the old gaol reopened as a girls' reformatory, an institution meant to reform rather than punish, though life inside was hard and the arrangement uneasy. The reformatory became locally notorious for its escapes, as girls slippe...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/r44b-redruth-gaol-a-home-for-wayward-girls.mp3 0:06 3 full Redruth Gaol: Lights, Camera, Court Martial https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol/ Photo credit Peripitus, CC BY-SA 3.0. Redruth's strangest chapter came decades after the last inmate left. In 1979 its weathered cells and stone yard stood in for a South African military prison in Bruce Beresford's Breaker Morant, the acclaimed 1980 film about three Australian soldiers court-martialled and, in two c...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/r44b-redruth-gaol-lights-camera-court-martial.mp3 0:06 4 full Redruth Gaol: What Remains https://qualla.com/redruth-gaol/ Photo credit Peripitus, CC BY-SA 3.0. By the late 1980s the gaol was restored as a project for the Australian Bicentenary, jointly funded by the National Trust of Australia and the Commonwealth Bank. The renovation turned the decaying complex on Tregony Street into a museum of historical displays, and today it opens ...

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]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/4/4/b/redruth-gaol-wp/r44b-redruth-gaol-what-remains.mp3 0:06 5 full