Yarra Bend Asylum and the Lost Cemetery

Yarra Bend Asylum was Melbourne’s first hospital specialising in mental health. The grounds are now a public park, but traces still remain.

Melbourne’s European settlement began in 1835. Agriculture was the primary industry, the first settlers were drawn by the availability of prime farmland.

The city developed steadily until 1851, when gold was discovered near Clunes; their triggered a gold rush, and a more dramatic expansion after that.

The local authorities faced enormous challenges delivering services to this swelling population. One initially neglected area was mental health; people suffering from neurological conditions were originally incarcerated in the city jail.

But while this was only a stopgap solution. Crime was relatively high in fledgling Melbourne, and the jail facilities quickly overcrowded.

In 1843, Governor Gipps sanctioned a mental hospital for the city. Surveyor General Robert Hoddle selected an area north of the city; an expanse of unused land further up the Yarra River, near Dight’s Falls.

620 acres were set aside for the asylum and grounds. The original buildings were modest; a single wing was built out of bluestone, with 7 cells and 2 wards for men, and 3 cells and 1 ward for women.

Costing around 3000 pounds, Yarra Bend Asylum opened in 1848.

Admission was initially at the Governor’s discretion; prospective inmates had to be certified as mentally unsound by a medical professional, and then have their transfer to the hospital approved by the Governor himself. But once the asylum was in full operation, and the number of inmates began to grow, this system was abandoned.

After 12 months, and with 43 people interred, the Government approved a second wing. Additional buildings and staff were also added.

But all was not well at the hospital. In 1852, reports of abnormal care and patient abuse began to surface.

A Parliamentary enquiry was held, and shocking testimony given. Among the charges: physical and sexual abuse of patients, dirty and unhygienic facilities and misappropriation of funds.

Head of the asylum, Captain George Watson, a retired military officer, was described in the enquiry’s report as ‘grossly negligent and extremely culpable.’ At the end of the enquiry, Captain Watson was replaced by the asylum’s first chief administrator with medical experience, Dr Robert Bowie.

Demand for the asylum’s services continued to grow.

By 1855 there were 251 inmates, three years later this number had doubled. Additional wards were added, now constructed more cheaply out of wood, and the grounds were redeveloped to allow gardening and farming. The inmates were put to work growing vegetables and crops as part of their treatment; they were able to produce much of their own food, with some left over for sale at local markets.

By 1860, Yarra Bend Asylum had become an elaborate and crowded compound.

Among the challenges for the asylum’s administrators was what to do with inmates who passed away. Many of these were poor, or had no family.

The asylum established its own cemetery, on the banks of the Yarra, to for bodies that would be otherwise unclaimed. Missing, or poorly kept, records meant that the exact number of burials in this cemetery are unknown, but some estimates put the figure as high as 1 200.

By 1870, the asylum had ballooned to more than a 1 000 inmates.

Again facing chronic overcrowding and reports of inhumane conditions, the State Government began to examine a replacement. A new mental hospital at Kew had been proposed as far back as 1856, but plans for its construction had stalled in Parliament.

They were now revived, and the Kew Asylum opened in 1871. Around this time, new institutions were also opened at Royal Park and, in rural Victoria, Ararat and Beechworth. All were significantly smaller than Yarra Bend, and so served to ease the strain on the main institution, rather than replace it outright.

Another public commission across 1884 – 1886, The Zox Commission, formally recommended the closure of Yarra Bend. The land it sat on had, by this time, become very valuable, and the same report recommended its sale to private interests.

Successive State Government’s used this report as justification to reduce or withhold funding from the facility, with the result that its already antiquated buildings fell further into disrepair. Perversely, the same authorities still balked at closing the hospital altogether.

In the first decade of the twentieth century, the Victorian Government finally set about funding a proper replacement. Mont Park Psychiatric Hospital was built on 185 acres near present day Bundoora, and accepted its first patients in 1910.

Although this was meant to supplant Yarra Bend, the older facility would continue to operate for another 15 years. Additional funds were required to close the hospital – transfer of patients, demolition of buildings – and these were only made available reluctantly.

It was not until 1924 that Yarra Bend stopped accepting new patients, and the asylum was finally closed the following year. The remaining patients were transferred to Mont Park.

Inspector General for the Insane, Dr Ernest Jones, provided a grim epitaph for the place he helped to close down:

‘The airing courts were very small and damnable, with high bluestone walls preventing all view of the surrounding countryside. There was also a row of outside cells, with earth closets, two dark padded cells, and an all pervading smell of poor, mad, humanity.’

– Dr Ernest Jones

Some efforts were also made to relocate the cemetery.

Where next of kin were identifiable, and had the means, they were offered the option of having the body moved to a cemetery of their choosing. Where this was not an option, most cases, bodies were exhumed and buried in common graves at Melbourne General Cemetery.

It is not known how many bodies were moved and, as accurate records had not been kept, how many therefore remained.

Even the precise location of the cemetery has been lost to history (the images in this article provide an approximation only, based on historical data). But it is assumed that an unknown number of corpses remain on the site, below the present day location of a practice fairway of the Studley Park golf course.

After the closure of the asylum, the buildings and property were taken over by the Mission of St James and St John. They used it as a venereal disease clinic, known as ‘Fairlea’.

This closed in 1951.

The property was then converted into an all female prison, the state’s first.

Women had previously been incarcerated in the same prisons as men, in dedicated wings. Now the government built a separate facility at the old asylum site, called HM Prison Fairlea. This operated for forty years, only closing in 1996.

The Kennett Government, recognising the unique significance of having such a large expanse of open space in the inner city, then converted the site into a public parkland. It is a wonderful place to visit; there are countless walking trails, scenic lookouts, and a flying fox colony.

It is interesting to think about the rich history of the location, while you explore.

Of Yarra Bend Asylum, once the state’s largest hospital, a sprawling compound covering hundreds of acres, almost no physical trace remains.

An original gate post stands to the side of a road near the Eastern Freeway, a solitary reminder of the many thousands who lived and died on the site.

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