J Ward
Back to Ararat again today, this time to vist J Ward, an old prison and later asylum. Sabriena, Duncan, and I have visited this before, but Sabriena and Shaina in particular are really interested in creepy stuff so we thought it’d be fun to do. We looked into it too late to be able to do the Aradale Asylum the same day, so we figured we’d go back there tomorrow for that.
The tour is entirely volunteer run, and they actually update it as the researchers find new information, and as a result the tour has improved significantly since the last time we were there nearly 9 years ago (though it was by no means bad then). Our tour guide told us that they were apparently lucky enough to have at least a couple of former warders come through, who filled in many blanks with their own stories, and we in turn got the benefit of them. There’s still a ton of speculation, but it was a load of fun.
We also got to climb the rebuilt watchtower - these were apparently torn down when a new doctor came in to take over operations of the asylum, but the volunteers rebuilt one as the stone was left on-site and they apparently had all the information needed to do so. I’m not sure if this tower wasn’t rebuilt yet when we last visited, or whether it just wasn’t part of the tour, but we definitely didn’t get to do that last time.
Off to find some lunch, then back home to rest for the afternoon. Sabriena tried to book a tour of Aradale, but it turned out the tour was too full to accomodate us all, so we scrapped the idea, in favour of going to Mt Arapiles instead.
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