Berrima Bull

Warmer weather so we ventured out to wander around Berrima, a nearby, historic village. It proudly claims to be the best preserved and finest Georgian village on the Australian mainland. It was established in the 1830s during a time of great exploration and expansion in New South Wales.
 
Berrima's famous gaol was built between 1834 and 1839 by convicts in leg irons. It was constructed to house the increasing number of bushrangers who were operating in the area. Thomas Williams, a member of Captain Moonlite's gang, was executed in Berrima Gaol in 1885 after stabbing a fellow inmate. In the novel Robbery Under Arms (1888), the author Rolf Boldrewood has Captain Starlite describe the gaol as "the largest, the most severe, the most dreaded of all the prisons in New South Wales".
 
During World War I the gaol was used as an internment camp for 'enemy aliens' and POWs. At one time it housed 329 Germans mainly from New Guinea (which, prior to World War I was a German colony) and the SMS Emden which had sunk the HMAS Sydney.
 
In recent years it has housed female prisoners but it was closed a couple of months ago. It remains on standby should it be needed.
 
On Berrima Gaol's northern wall is a fine cast-iron moulding known as the Bulls Head Fountain (1877). (See main photo). It served the practical purpose of channelling water from the gaol roof into a water trough which was used by the horses of the people attending the adjacent courthouse.
 
The extra is the main entrance to the gaol.