This is Eddie. Eddie is happy for me to tell his story but he’s a bit reluctant to show himself on the Internet and Eddie is not his real name. He is, however, a real person. I have known him for several years now, have spent many hours talking with and recording him, and he counts me among his friends, which is something I regard as both an honour and a surprise. I say surprise because we’ve led very different lives.
A quarter-century ago when I was a hedonistic 20-year-old , Eddie had already lived more of life than I ever will. He had served in Her Majesty’s forces decades before and experienced powerfully dramatic events in the line of duty that I won’t go into here but they still affect him to this day. After leaving the armed forces to settle down he joined the prison service and worked in Boggo Road for years. He is adamant that some of the events he was involved in there probably had even more of an effect on his psyche than being in combat zones.
A quarter-century ago when I was a hedonistic 20-year-old , Eddie had already lived more of life than I ever will. He had served in Her Majesty’s forces decades before and experienced powerfully dramatic events in the line of duty that I won’t go into here but they still affect him to this day. After leaving the armed forces to settle down he joined the prison service and worked in Boggo Road for years. He is adamant that some of the events he was involved in there probably had even more of an effect on his psyche than being in combat zones.
When it comes to being in a position to tell some stories about Boggo Road history, Eddie has more than earned his stripes. Heknows the place inside out and can see a mark on the floor or a hole in the wall and be able to tell you the stories behind them. He tells them well and he really enjoys sharing his knowledge with the public. However, Eddie and others like him have a problem at the moment.
That problem is the fact that Boggo Road Gaol is managed (for the time being) by a small businessman with an absurdly irrational hatred of ‘competition’ and all the public spirit of a shark with rabies, and so Eddie and his comrades are only allowed to share their stories with the public if they work for the financial benefit of that small business.
As a result of this, all that is currently on offer for visitors to Boggo Road are third-hand-but-expensivestories peddled by people in fancy dress who never set foot on the prison. This is what really irks Eddie. Cameron ‘Jack’ Sim makes much of his stories being ‘sourced’ from former officers, but he got those stories for free.And now he won’t let those same officers tell the same stories – their stories - at the prison unless they do it for his own personal profit.
Eddie and his colleagues find this incredibly disrespectful. Their stories and memories are being sold to visitors by a person who now demands that they pay him up to $120 every time they want to share their stories with the public themselves. As far as I’m concerned, this is an absolute disgrace.
The public are missing out on a unique and finite opportunity to hear some compelling first-hand history from those who lived it, and at the same time those storytellers are being denied a fair chance to share what they know with the public.
This is the kind of lose-lose outcome that is sadly all-too-typical of the failed interim opening of Boggo Road. With long-term planning now in process, we need to make sure it doesn't happen again and the public can finally get to listen to people like Eddie and other former officers and inmates. I've written about why their tours but be the best before, because when it comes to telling history, there ain't nothing like the real thing. Which is a terrible double negative but a great song.
You can help the cause by signing the petition HERE.