In the quiet place

The courtyard is simple, inviting. Framed by bluestone to the north, ironstone to the south, iron gates standing firm to the east and west, it is a cocoon of faux lawn, big sky, and stillness.
Tanned and shirtless twenty-somethings from a dozen different nations play soccer in the warm afternoon light. A groovy nanna, pudgy and enthusiastic, her boom box cranked to eleven, dances wildly at noon like nobody is watching. The lovers at lunch, spread over a yellow blanket, steal kisses between bites of pide, sips of chai.

The regulars, the visitors, the old, the new, all seek temporary solace in this small piece of Melbourne city that is free from bustle and business and sky-rise shadows.

But the courtyard was not always as it now appears. Its history has been pressed deep beneath the turf. What this space once held – once meant – to those who occupied it, lays stifled under a green and peaceful façade. For this courtyard was not always a courtyard. It was a burial ground. A dead house. A pit for the bones of executed prisoners.

Those in the know will tell you that, one hundred and seventy years ago, this was a hanging site for convicted criminals. The bodies of the freshly dead were dragged from within the bluestone walls, and laid out upon a cold slab. Their faces were covered in wax, and when the wax hardened, it was cracked and removed, sealed once more, and filled with plaster to create a grotesque image of the deceased, pale and frozen in time. A death mask. A morbid tool to study the criminal mind.

The hanged men, no longer serving any useful purpose, were then tossed into unmarked graves. Their flesh was soaked in quicklime; their bodies sealed in wooden coffins and covered with dirt. And more dirt. And time. And change. And time. And, eventually, faux lawn. And nannas. And lovers. And shirtless, tanned twenty-somethings.

Upon this piece of earth, the dead and the living converge. In the sunlight, faded memories of death are smothered by laughter and shouts and music and breath. In the black of night however...

Well.

If you believe those in the know: if one sits in the silence of the courtyard, alone in the black of night, and listens carefully, after a time the air will stir ever so slightly. A chorus of long-forgotten voices will exhale, and anguished whispers of ‘how did I end up here?’ will drift up from the turf and hang, momentarily suspended, before disappearing into the night.