The Old Prison

Judith Wright’s poem “The Old Prison” is an expression of her feelings on seeing the ruins of a convict prison on the headland of Trial Bay, New South Wales, abandoned in 1903. Her descriptive poem evokes an atmosphere of cold, harsh suffering experienced by convicts. Particularly effective in the poem is the imagery of the wind as a physical, malevolent presence. Looking back on European Australian heritage, this work is a musical evocation of a harsh and desolate area of the Australian landscape where the abandoned prison lies. As the chorus enters, a simple plainchant-like melody is hummed, representing the suffering and hardship of the convicts. Fragments of this theme are scattered throughout the remainder of the work as if to suggest that the convicts have been forgotten, that their memory has faded and blown away in the wind. Furthermore, slowly moving textures and static harmonies suggest the desolate landscape while rising and falling gestures give the impression of wind. The music reflects a land that has borne witness to profound pain and suffering, not only by the convicts in Wright’s poem but also throughout millennia of ancient Indigenous cultures that have endured here.