Qualla: Stewart's Creek Gaol https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 27 Jul 2026 10:40:32 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Stewart's Creek Gaol https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol Stewart's Creek Gaol: Introduction https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. Drive out to Stuart, on the southern edge of Townsville, and you reach a working prison ringed in razor wire. Tucked inside that modern facility are two structures that have watched over this ground since the 1890s: a red-brick gatehouse with an ornate pediment, and a tall cylindrical tower locals still call the Trig Tower. They are the oldest surviving prison buildings in Queensland - older even than the famous Boggo Road gaol in Brisbane - and they have outlasted nearly everything built around them.

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/rk83-stewarts-creek-gaol-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Stewart's Creek Gaol: A Gaol for the North https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. By the 1880s, Townsville had outgrown its first prison at North Ward. The town was booming on pastoral wealth, gold and sugar, and residents complained that the gaol now sat too close to the heart of a growing city. It was also dangerously overcrowded. In 1889 the Prisons Departm...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/rk83-stewarts-creek-gaol-a-gaol-for-the-north.mp3 0:06 2 full Stewart's Creek Gaol: The Tower and the Architect https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The watchtower came a few years after the cell blocks, designed in 1897 by John Smith Murdoch. The structure is curious - a tall cylinder topped by an octagonal cabin with covered walkways radiating from it, a spiral stair winding up inside to a small room fitted with a basin and...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/rk83-stewarts-creek-gaol-the-tower-and-the-architect.mp3 0:06 3 full Stewart's Creek Gaol: Judgment in the North https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. A prison this size sat at the hard end of colonial justice, though it is a common misunderstanding that executions took place here - they did not. Capital cases were tried in Townsville's Supreme Court, but those sentenced to death were sent south to be hanged in Brisbane. The mo...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/rk83-stewarts-creek-gaol-judgment-in-the-north.mp3 0:06 4 full Stewart's Creek Gaol: What Survives https://qualla.com/stewart-s-creek-gaol/ Photo credit Heritage branch staff, CC BY 3.0. The original gaol was largely swept away in the 1990s. When the site was redeveloped as the Townsville Correctional Centre and works finished in 1996, the cell blocks, administration buildings and the six-metre perimeter wall were demolished, the wall replaced by a modern razor-w...

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Image: Heritage branch staff | CC BY 3.0

]]> Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/k/8/3/stewart-s-creek-gaol-wp/rk83-stewarts-creek-gaol-what-survives.mp3 0:06 5 full