Best of a bad bunch: Mugshots of 'Eddie' Dalton and 'Gus' Gracey at the Justice and Police Museum, in Sydney. Photo / Anna Kucera
Best of a bad bunch: Mugshots of 'Eddie' Dalton and 'Gus' Gracey at the Justice and Police Museum, in Sydney. Photo / Anna Kucera
Steve Braunias sees dead people in Sydney
One of the best, strangest little museums in the world is in downtown Sydney, only open at weekends, and covered in blood. The Justice and Police Museum is an exhibition of the dead, of violent murder, senseless beatings, blood everywhere. Sydney has alwaysromanticised its convict past but this is something else. It's kind of sick; it's definitely entertaining.
The Justice and Police Museum, in Sydney. Photo / Anna Kucera
The main attractions are New South Wales police photos of crime scenes and murder victims. They're all in black and white, and a lot were taken in the 1930s or earlier. Sydney noir: the settings are dark spaces in the urban jungle. No names, no details. There's a woman dead on her bed, a movie magazine on the chair beside her. There's a woman dead on a floor, beneath a sewing machine; her hat is on the bed, and so is her blood. "Greasy surfaces, unswept floors, bare walls", notes a caption.
Weapons and mugshots on display in Sydney's Justice and Police Museum. Photo / James Horan
A bit more information appears alongside the photo of a man found dead in a vacant lot. He was shot three times in the head at close range at dawn on September 30, 1933. The museum's catalogue cheerfully states, "We offer a range of stimulating and enjoyable education programmes for primary and secondary students."
Bloody hell. Still, death is a part of life, and there is an agreeable openness about the museum's chamber of horrors. Blithe indifference is key to the Australian character. You'd never get away with this sort of carry-on in uptight, pent-up New Zealand, with its codes of conduct, its cultural sensitivities.
Mugshot of Olga Anderson (alias the Marchioness de Falaise), taken in November 1929, from an exhibition at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum. Photo / New South Wales Police
Mugshot of Arthur Caddy, taken in March 1929, from an exhibition at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum. Photo / New South Wales Police
To visit the museum as a Kiwi is to experience the small dark thrill of social transgression. Look, a photo of a male corpse lying on top of a female corpse, a rectangle of blood beneath her head! Look, a photo of an Aboriginal man with a chain around his neck ... "Aboriginal people claim," notes the caption, which makes it screamingly obvious it was written by a whitefella, "they are still over-policed."
The room dedicated to car crashes is like an early, still-life version of David Cronenberg's 1996 film, Crash. It has a similar feel about it, the way it makes a kind of fetish out of vehicular death. There's an eroticism to one photo, in particular, a black-and-white of a white Falcon, split open against a gum tree on Burragorang Rd, Oakdale, in 1967. Blood on the smashed bodywork, dark shadows in the Australian sunlight.
Mugshot of Arthur Edward Murray, taken in March 1928, from an exhibition at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum. Photo / New South Wales Police
There's a room dedicated to famous murders, such as the case of the Pyjama Girl, from 1934, when a woman's body was found in a culvert. It was partially burned. It was wrapped in a towel and hessian, and the woman had been wearing yellow crepe Chinese pyjamas. The 1960 murder of schoolboy Graeme Thorne records the killer's confession. He abducted the boy for ransom. "I told the parents that if I don't get the money I feed him to the sharks." The boy's body was later found in a vacant lot. His skull was fractured. He was 8 years old.
Mugshot of Amy Lee, taken in September 1929, from an exhibition at Sydney's Justice and Police Museum. Photo / New South Wales Police
His killer was caught. The museum is a testament to police efficiency. It doesn't indulge in police failure, police incompetence, police idiocy. One room has a stuffed exhibit of Tess the police dog. It could climb a vertical ladder! Very good, but at first sight, when you walk into the room and see the outline of a stuffed dog, your hopes are raised that it's a dingo. Disappointingly, the Justice and Police Museum makes no reference to Lindy and Azaria Chamberlain.
CHECKLIST
GETTING THERE Virgin Airways flies daily from Auckland to Sydney. virginaustralia.com
DETAILSThe Justice and Police Museum, Corner Albert and Phillip Sts, Circular Quay, Sydney, NSW 2000. Phone +61 2 9252 1144
