• Courthouse out of action for $15m upgrade

If walls could talk, the halls of Wollongong Courthouse would definitely have some yarns to spin.

The “Bulli rapist” Terry Williamson, Belinda Van Krevel, Matthew de Gruchy – the courthouse has seen them all, hosting the region’s most notorious trials and housing thousands of paedophiles, thieves and thugs waiting to be sentenced.

Friday marked a new chapter in the building’s 128-year life as its doors were closed, allowing work to start on its much-anticipated renovation.

The refurbishment, which is expected to take at least 14 months, will give the building a facelift, changing the court registry and courtrooms and creating a new main entrance off Market Street.

The work is set to revitalise the building while maintaining its history, allowing its heritage-listed Supreme Court and facade to stay in  original condition.

Court staff have spent several months preparing for the renovations, packing thousands of boxes and moving bound volumes and records to the courthouse’s basement or off to Sydney for permanent storage.

But their work won’t stop there; staff will now take up residence at Port Kembla, Albion Park, Kiama and Sydney courts to hear the many Wollongong matters that arise each year.

More than 9000 Local, District and Supreme Court matters are lodged in the city annually, keeping the court’s three resident magistrates, single judge and more than 70 staff extremely busy.

Registrar Kathy Frost has been working at the courthouse since 1983, arriving almost fresh out of school to work in the registry.

Her colleagues gave her a baptism of fire, initiating her with a terrifying practical joke.

“It was my first day on the counter and I was so new, I had no idea what I was doing,” she said. “A man came up the counter and said: ‘I need to talk to someone. I’ve just murdered my wife.’

“I remember just being speechless, turning white and going out the back saying, ‘this bloke has just said he’s murdered his wife!’

“Turns out they knew the guy and had asked him to say it as a joke, but it’s always stayed with me.”

Over the years, she has handled thousands of criminal, civil and family law files,  and has had to grapple with new technology and filing changes.

“We used to do everything on carbon,” she said.

“We had people in the courtrooms who would take handwritten notes or type things out on typewriters; now, we just record everything.

“It would take hours just to fill out a good behaviour bond because you had to get the paperwork, put the carbon in, fill it all out by hand. Things definitely changed when computers came in.”

Colleague Evelyn Gauci has worked in the court’s registry since 1985 and has also witnessed the building’s history (“jurors used to sleep overnight – we had a room for them”), along with some familiar faces.

“We had this man called Ivan who used to come to the registry every week for about an hour,” she said.

“Every time he came in, he would rattle off his name, serial number and what he was reporting for. He’d then show you a cheque he wanted honoured; he’d received it in the amount of $1 and changed it to $1million.

“I remember seeing him coming towards the counter and you’d just roll your eyes because whoever got stuck talking to him, you knew you were going to get the initiation speech.

“He came in every week for years. He had this Russian accent and you just couldn’t get a word in edgeways.”

Both women agree their workplace is in need of revamp.

The Market Street courthouse, which opened in 1886, is the third courthouse in the life of the city, but the first to be located in its  business heart.

A court was first established in Wollongong in September 1832 in a makeshift room at the military barracks. Two years later, the first purpose-built courthouse, located on the corner of Harbour and Robertson streets, was built.

A second courthouse, facing Brighton Beach at the bottom of Cliff Road, was built in 1857 and had its first sittings on February 1, 1858. By 1883, community growth prompted calls for a larger, more imposing courthouse, so the government started afresh on a site at Church Hill. Colonial architect James Barnet designed a single-storey building with a basement for jury rooms, cells and a court keeper’s residence. It cost nearly £10,500  to build and officially opened in 1886.

Fast forward to 2014 and the courthouse has expanded significantly, now housing a sheriff’s office, court registry, remote witness rooms, interview spaces, a mental-health nurse, probation service and rooms for legal aid, the public defender and the DPP.

The court’s eight cells host nearly 4500 people a year and have held some of the Illawarra’s most infamous criminals. Terry John Williamson, aka the Bulli rapist, who raped several women and children and terrorised the northern suburbs in 1989 and 1990, was kept in Wollongong’s cells while his trial played out.

Mark Valera was convicted and jailed for life for the 1998 murders of former lord mayor Frank Arkell and shopkeeper David O’Hearn.

His sister, Belinda Van Krevel, also spent time in Wollongong’s cells, while being sentenced in 2001 for soliciting the murder of her father, Jack.

Murderer Matthew de Gruchy was convicted in the city in 1998 for the murders of his mother, Jennifer, brother, Adrian, and sister, Sarah,  in 1996.

The courthouse also hosted the coronial inquest into the death of artist Brett Whiteley, who died from a drug overdose in a room at Thirroul’s Beach Motel in 1992.

In recent years, the court has heard the cases of murdered woman Kim Barry and slain teenager Louise O’Brien, and pre-trial hearings relating to the murder of solicitor Katie Foreman.