Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum

Fig. 80.5 Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum, 1864 ( Scene on the Yarra image in Austraiian News,...

Willson, R. W. (1859). A Few Observations relative to the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum. Reprinted from the Australian Medical Journal. Melbourne, VIC Goodhugh and Co. 

The warm climate was considered a factor, which not only encouraged heavy drinking but produced a peculiar condition of the blood which induced deliriums tremens (Black, 1856), one of the major reasons for admissions to Yarra Bend and Kew Asylums (Brothers, 1957 341-347). Loneliness, despair, isolation were all counted as contributing factors and were listed in official reports. The 1858 Select Committee inquiring into a new site for instance, raises peculiar climate, northerly winds and disappointment as possible explanations (Report from the Select Committee upon the Lunatic Asylum, 1858 26, 28, 34, 37, 40). This last suggestion of disappointment was particularly associated with young women who had been only a short time in the colony and who found the reality of their new home so at variance with their idealized hopes, that they took to drink and became mad (Report from the Select Committee upon the Lunatic Asylum, 1858 10). 

The other feature of the asylum grounds that is emphasized in visual representations, is the rurality of the sites, both in terms of location and function. In fact, one of the interesting observations to note from representations of Yarra Bend and Kew is that the proximity to the city or suburbs is never referenced, despite the fact that eye witness accounts indicate that the nearby city and suburbs could be clearly seen in 1858 (Report from the Select Committee upon the Lunatic Asylum, 1858 12). Further, representations of the asylum as a rural retreat, persisted well into the 20th century, even when the sites were abutted by suburbs. An example of this is the 1920 postcard of the road through Yarra Bend that crossed the Yarra River to Kew, Track to the Asylum which retains the device of the picturesque and rural in both visual and verbal language (Fig. 80.9). 

Fig. 80.10 Looking toward Zig Zag Bridge and Kew Asylum from site of stables, 1927 (Photo by E. Lilly, Yarra Bend Park and Lunatic Asylum Collection, State Library of Victoria)...

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