Old Australian courthouse finds new life as Nihon University facility

Newcastle, Australia – A 134-year-old former courthouse in Newcastle, Australia, is now a facility of Japan’s Nihon University, with its preserved courtrooms offering students a hands-on lesson in the justice system.

Completed in 1892, the former Newcastle Courthouse, distinguished by an arched entrance, is listed as a New South Wales cultural heritage site. After the court moved to a new building in 2016, Nihon University purchased and restored the property.

The university has used the former courthouse since 2024, along with classrooms and lodging facilities built on either side.

Courtrooms of different sizes, holding cells as well as rooms where defendants met their lawyers, remain in their original configurations. The defendant’s dock in the former Grand Courtroom is enclosed by a wooden railing, with a dedicated staircase connecting it to the cell directly below.

Students taking part in a study program in Australia in late August held a mock trial in the former Grand Courtroom.

The smaller courtroom was named the Yamada Room after Akiyoshi Yamada, a former Japanese justice minister and founder of Nihon University’s predecessor, Nihon Law School, which was founded in 1889.

The university and the former courthouse date back to roughly the same period.

“Preserving the site’s historical value is meaningful,” Takenari Shiba of Nihon University’s office for internationalization promotion said. “We hope it will help students learn from the past.”

Haruhisa Ikenaga, a second-year student of the university’s College of Law, said, “The courtroom felt authentic, and I gained a vivid sense of how it differed from Japan.”

Hana Harada, a second-year student of the university’s College of Humanities and Sciences, said: “I saw cells for the first time. Scars on the walls prompted me to imagine the emotions of people who had been incarcerated there.”