Tour guide Jack Sim says he regularly receives disappointed messages from visitors who are unable to visit Brisbane's infamous Boggo Road Gaol, which features in the Netflix series Boy Swallows Universe.
Key points:
- The popular tourist attraction was forced to temporarily in 2022 close due to a development next door
- Boggo Road Village was supposed to be complete in 2023, but major construction has not started
- The jail has received international attention due to its use as a set in Boy Swallows Universe on Netflix
The show, which premiered on Netflix earlier this month, has drawn international eyes to the jail-turned-tourist-haunt, which shut was in March 2022 due to a construction project next door.
The Boggo Road Village development was supposed to finish in 2023, but major construction is yet to begin.
The ABC understands that the state government imposed safety restrictions on the jail due to work on nearby water and sewerage pipes, in addition to vibration from construction.
Mr Sim said he was turning away thousands of disappointed visitors who wanted to see the jail in real life.
Loading..."There's demand from the public, schools, cruise ship companies, and we've had that on hold like a lid on a bottle for two years," Mr Sim said.
"It's reached a crisis now. We're being harassed online by people wanting to gain access to the prison since Boy Swallows Universe."
The developer, Mark Stockwell, said he now expected the project to finish mid-2025.
Mr Stockwell said several state government projects, such as Cross River Rail and the underground bus tunnel, had complicated the project.
"When I started on this at the end of 2015, Cross River Rail was off the drawing board, so significant things happen," he said.
"Me and Jack are very frustrated with the delays, because for me I've been working at this now for nearly nine years."
Mr Stockwell said he appreciated the work Mr Sim did in preserving and promoting Brisbane's heritage.
The 'Houdini of Boggo Road'
Mr Sim said the school holidays were peak season for the jail, with over a thousand visitors a day pouring usually through the cells.
When it was open to the public, Mr Sim ran crime and ghost tours through the cells, where tourists would hear grisly tales from the building's past.
The jail was infamous for its filthy conditions, violent riots, executions and daring prison escapes.
The most famous escapee was Slim Halliday, who was known as the "Houdini of Boggo Road" for his ingenious methods of escape.
Mr Halliday befriended a young boy named Trent Dalton, who went on to write the book Boy Swallows Universe, based loosely on his life experiences.
Mr Sim said the book and the show were a realistic portrayal of Brisbane's gritty underbelly in the 1980s and "the dark side of the sunshine state".
He is petitioning the Queensland government to work with the developers to speed up their project, or at a minimum, come up with a concrete completion date.
Mr Sim said the lack of an opening date meant his plans to build a museum inside the jail were in limbo, and he was struggling to make bookings or plan for the future.
"It's … frankly embarrassing to Queensland that the jail is closed on the back of international interest in its story through Boy Swallows Universe," he said.
"For a tourism-centric state like Queensland it's untenable for the government to leave us dangling like this."
The Queensland government was contacted for comment.