Prison tree in Derby.
Australian baobab tree and the baobab trees of Madagascar and the coast of Africa, are a large tree with a large swollen trunk that resembles a bottle. Therefore, they are sometimes also called “bottle trees”. Because of its unusual shape and the fact that they are one of the most long-lived forms of life in Australia, baobabs always attracted tourists. Some baobabs have attracted more tourists than others.
In Western Australia, on the river, king road, is one such baobab. The tree is about 15 meters in circumference and hollow trunk. In the hollow of a carved door that led to the inside a spacious interior. The story goes that one day a police patrol, in the nineties of the 19th century, led a group of prisoners of aboriginal people in Derby for sentencing. Caught in the path of the night, forced police patrol stayed in this hotel for a night. The patrol noticed that the tree was hollow, so they cut a small hole and put the prisoners inside.
Such temporary detention continued for some time, and people began to call the tree “the many prison.” Sometimes when a group of prisoners was large and in the baobab was not enough room for everyone, some of the natives were chained to the trunk from the outside. The size of the internal space in the baobab tree is about 9 square meters, and there could simultaneously accommodate 30 prisoners.
There is another baobab South of Derby, is rumored to have served the same purpose. The hole is 6 meters in height and in the trunk there are two natural openings for ventilation.
Many historians, however, refute these stories, just as folk fiction. There is no evidence that the baobabs have been used as prisons. One of the baobabs, for example, is just 16 miles from Derby, so close to town that there was no need for prisoners to be locked up in the tree for the night when the police could just continue on your way.
Reports of these prisons-trees began to appear in Newspapers in 1910-ies, and almost every publication has repeated the same story. Some have argued that the baobab was a huge bolt to which was attached a chain for prisoners. However, even in descriptive articles about the Derby in 1900 years there is no mention of the tree-prison.
Despite the fact that the whole story is more like a myth, these baobabs are very popular among tourists. The local tourist industry also exploits a story about a prison the baobabs for the development of tourism in these areas. The trees are fenced to prevent people climbing on them and carved their names in the bark.
