The Friends of J Ward announced it is anticipating tours to recommence in early November.

J Ward Gaol and Aradale Asylum tours have been closed for the second half of the year due to the government-imposed restrictions.

Friends of J Ward president Peter Waterman said he is reasonably confident tours will recommence on November 8.

"The government still hasn't been able to tell us exactly when tours can be run indoors," he said.

"We are anticipating that we should be able to open at the 80% vaccination mark in early November. When the time comes, we are going to check whether people who come in have been vaccinated.

"We are fairly confident that we will be opening back up on the eighth, but in these times, anything can happen.

"We are anticipating from by the point that we open up, Melbourne people will be able to come.

"The main thing is to look out for the safety of our guides and the community of Ararat, so we are not in a hurry."

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Mr Waterman said the committee has decided to scale back the number of tours moving forward.

"We will begin two tours a day at J Ward, as opposed to four and twice a week out of Aradale," he said.

"This is partly due to the safety side of it when we have to do a lot of cleaning up.

"We will stick with the two tours a day until we see what happens.

"If social distancing guidelines stay in place, there are certain areas in the complex where we won't be able to take people to the guard tower.

"You can't take people up there and maintain social distancing precautions."

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Mr Waterman said the pandemic has not financially affected J Ward Gaol and Aradale Asylum.

"The Friends of J Ward is a volunteer organisation, our members are generally retired people," he said.

"We (J Ward Gaol and Aradale Asylum) are financially pretty well-off.

"Places like this still need to be maintained, there are old paintings on the wall, and one, in particular, has survived reasonably well.

"We are looking at preserving that, not re-painting it but just making sure it doesn't deteriorate any further. We are looking at around $80,000 to do that.

"It would have been handy to have people here to save that kind of money but because we are volunteers we haven't had to worry about people losing their job or missing out on wages."

Mr Waterman said when allowed to return, it will be business as usual.

"We will just do what we usually do, the tours will be pretty much as they were," he said.

"During the weekends and school holiday's we will put on extra tours to try and keep the numbers reasonably low.

The Aradale Asylum will run just as much as it always has due to its size, and it runs a fair bit outdoors, so that won't be an issue."

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