Wolston Park Mental Health Asylum
Today we visited one of the largest, oldest, longest running mental asylum in Australia, Wolston Park.
First I'll fill you in on a bit of the history about this beautifully built building.
It opened in 1865 and was named Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum then changed in 1880 and was renamed Goodna Mental health hospital and then finally named Wolsten park in 1959 , it is said that over 50,000 people passed through the hospital, some with very disturbed stays. When it was first opened it was for females and then in the 1950's a male wing was opened.
It has been around a year since I last visited and in that time there has been so much further deterioration, it was really sad to see.
Today we saw parts that we hadn't seen before that were accessible, one room that makes me feel really sad and almost deeply depressed is the apparent room the patients were first taken into on admittance to the asylum, it had a door from the river side that they would be taken into and apparently stripped off and their heads shaved.
I'm not sure if these are true stories but someone once said that the
patients would be bought to the asylum by boat and be snuck up to the
asylums side entrance so no one would see them. Unfortunately Wolston
Park asylum holds a dark and very cruel history, the treatment of the
people in the asylum was torturous, the electric shock treatments,
hot/cold baths, the beatings and other cruel drug experiments was real
for so many people. Wolston park was home to them and the people who
never got out died within the walls of it.
Nothing
paranormal or out of the ordinary happened when I was there this time,
but I have been there at midnight and conducted evp's and even felt
someone touch my head. We also heard little foot steps running above
us, which there would have been a perfect explanation...if there was
floorboards still at the time.
Anyway, We
have taken
Alot of photos to show you the current deterioration, we tried to
cover most of the parts we could still access to capture as much history
as possible because unfortunately the way its heading it probably wont
be around for much longer. It is really annoying that morons are still
going there to trash it even more,
if only the walls could talk I think they'd have pretty interesting stories to tell us!
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| The change room in the downstairs toilet |
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| The Front left of Wolston Today |
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| One of the pipes outside the furness room |
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| The furness room |
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| One of the underground "dungeons" |
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| outside view from the above photo |
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| Standing in the room where the patients were first bought in |
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| The doorway to the room with the fire damage |
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| Entrance from the river side |
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| Inside Wolston, the room to the right from the river entrance |
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| I couldnt help but think how many times the key to this turned and the locked the door |
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| One of the fire places still remains intact |
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| Looking through to some of the patients rooms |
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| Small patient rooms, more like cells to the right |
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| Every door way had a door that locked, the doors where made of solid wood and at least 5cm thick |
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| Once was filled with beds (hanging chandeliers) |
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| Looking down on the first photo of the "dungeon", |
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| The existing bath is the 2nd door to the right |
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| Snakes skin hanging from the rafters |
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| Another hallway of rooms/ staircase to the right |
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| This room was what once seemed to be a kitchen |
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| Kitchen servery door |
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| lonely window from one of the staircases |
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| The deterioration of the wall of one of the staircases |
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| upstairs |
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| How many hands have held that rail in fear |
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| View from around the Corner of the last photo |
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| Not sure what room this was used for, seem to be a fire there at one stage |
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| Outside wooden staircase |
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| The stairwell to the wooden stairs |
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| The back view of Wolson |
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| Nestled away on the Brisbane river - right |
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| Downstairs back toilet block, the remnants of a tree trunk that was growing through, only been removed within a year or so |
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| Toilet stalls |
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| Inside the toilets looking out |
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| These are underneath Wolston and lead into other little doorways and barred rooms |
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| When you go through a small gate to get underneath Wolston you have access to the bathroom upstairs, second door on the left when you look up |
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| This is the other side of the toilet blocks where the tree trunk was removed |
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| A horrible reminder of the treatment of patients at Wolston |
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| This room was the creepiest for us, I suppose the way the room was set out doesn't help with the lonely bath in the middle of the room |
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| The row of porcelain sinks in the bathroom |
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| The back right view |
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| The front of Wolston as it stands today |
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| Back left angle |
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| Outside stairs leading up |
No images have been Photoshopped.
Photography by Cameron Nunn & Erin Hodgkinson
