AustLit

John Buckley Castieau arrived in Port Phillip with his sisters and was employed as a turnkey at the Melbourne Gaol in December 1852, and subsequently as gaoler at Eastern Gaol in 1854. In 1856 he was promoted to the position of governor at Beechworth Prison and later governor of Melbourne Gaol. His diaries, written between the 1850s and the early 1880s, reflect the 'everyday life, manners and aspirations among the Victorian middle classes in nineteenth-century Australia.' (Mark Finnane, ''Building Castles in the Air' - the Castieau Diaries' National Library of Australia News, January 2005 p. 13). Castieau's son was the writer John Buckley Castieau (q.v.).