A career in the Victorian penal system might not seem to be a source of excitement, but for John Buckley Castieau it was the trigger for nearly three decades of of diaries that reveal far more about the colonys early social history than what went on behind prison walls. J.B. Castieau was the governor of Beechworth Gaol and, later, Melbourne Gaol at the time of Ned Kellys execution. He was also briefly and somewhat disastrously, the Inspector-General of Penal Establishments for Victoria. Well-educated, frequently in debt, impulsively generous, self-doubting and of unsteady habits in his cups, he knew many of the prominent characters of Marvellous Melbourne including the journalist Marcus Clark and the famous and fiery legal figure Sir Redmond Barry.
