‘Where there is repression, there is resistance’
A new memoir by Barry York exposes the brutality of life inside Pentridge Prison. This is an edited extract
Monday, August 10, 2026Leave a comment
Fergus Robinson, Brian Pola and I were imprisoned for contempt of the Supreme Court of Victoria. Our crime was that we defied an injunction restraining us from ‘entering the premises known as La Trobe University’.
We were jailed [in 1972] without trial, without rights of bail or appeal, without the right to cross-examine witnesses, and without sentence. It was ‘indefinite’ imprisonment akin to internment.
We were political prisoners, as all this arose from our activism and leadership of the radical student movement at La Trobe University.
The period from the mid-1960s to early 1970s was intensely political in Australia, characterised by a rebellious questioning of capitalism and its dominant culture, and activism around issues such as conscription for the Vietnam War and opposition to apartheid in South Africa.
The protests and challenges to authority in Australia were part of a global movement, from China’s cultural revolution to ‘youth revolts’ in the USA, UK, France, Czechoslovakia and many other countries.
I was only inside for 44 days, so I don’t claim to be an authority on prison life. I can only speak from memory, from raw and vivid fragments.
What stays with me most were the nights in A Division, locked in my cell, lights out, no escape – and the sounds echoing from H Division, the prison’s maximum-security wing. Thuds. Kicks. Fists. Screams. The screws in H didn’t merely enforce discipline. They enjoyed inflicting pain on men who couldn’t fight back. They beat defenceless men – unarmed, caged.
Then there was the crying. A prisoner in an observation cell in our own division, just wailing. Not weeping – wailing. Hour after hour, this long, haunted howl of anguish that cut through everything. I couldn’t block it out, it became part of the atmosphere, the texture of the night.
And I can’t forget the young man in the cell beside mine. He died during the night. Alone. Sniffing glue and chrome paint to escape the weight of it all. The glue and paint were for his hobby building model aeroplanes. That night the smell drifted into my cell. I lay there breathing it in, not knowing he was slipping away just on the other side of the wall.
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Despite living in a different state for the past 40 years, Barry York continues to avidly chronicle the Brunswick of his youth
Despite living in a different state for the past 40 years, Barry York continues to avidly chronicle the Brunswick of his youth
I’m weaving into this account the broader context of my personal life and upbringing in Brunswick, Melbourne, along with the emotional state in which I found myself, both leading up to my imprisonment and in its aftermath. I’ve always found it far simpler to grapple with cold facts and figures than to delve into the more complex territory of feelings and subjective experience. But the truth is, they are inseparable.
At the time, an affair of the heart on the outside deeply complicated things. It made my prison experience qualitatively worse than it might otherwise have been. Every clang of the cell door reminded me she was outside and I was not.
Then there is my upbringing, which casts a long shadow. I grew up an only child in a household scarred by domestic violence. Those early years left emotional and psychological marks that I hadn’t fully acknowledged, let alone confronted, until much later – when I became a parent myself. Only then did I start to truly grapple with how profoundly those experiences have shaped me.
That too, is an essential part of my story. It’s not just a footnote or background; it is a core part of the experience, the deeper undercurrents that help explain who I was then, and how I endured.
It’s strange now to see Pentridge redeveloped into an upmarket residential and commercial centre, with cafés, cinemas, wine cellars, salons and landscaped grounds.
Established in 1851, it became Victoria’s – and arguably Australia’s – most infamous high-security prison. Pentridge finally closed in 1997, sparking debate about what should become of the site.
It is essential that any interpretation of the surviving parts of Pentridge does more than focus on the architecture or local curiosities. The brutality, ill-treatment and human suffering that occurred there must be acknowledged, as must the courage and resistance of those who endured it.
To me, that is the central historical lesson of Pentridge: where there is repression, there is resistance. Any honest account of the prison’s history should recognise both.
For that reason, I believe a monument should stand on the prison grounds to honour the prisoners who rebelled against injustice and helped expose what was happening behind the walls.
A Pentridge Memoir: A Political Prisoner’s Story can be ordered directly from Barry York for $29.95 plus $12.05 postage. Email barryyork554@gmail.com; payment and delivery details will be supplied.
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