Peat Island: Dreaming and desecration

Book Extract

Peat Island cover

Cover of the book

For just over 100 years an institution for the mentally ill has stood on little Peat Island, in the lower Hawkesbury.

It was decommissioned in 2010; quite empty now, it remains a locked facility just as it had always been. And eerie.

The last residents were dispersed into the wider community. In this, they echoed the fate of the Darkinjung people, original custodians of this country – their community was scattered just as intentionally, and effectively, if not quite so brutally. It is not one of the New South Wales government’s finest accomplishments.

For all the unhappiness associated with it, Peat Island was home for more than 3000 residents, males only for the first half of its modern history. Over time, it became a happier place, even as the facility itself aged, fell into disrepair, and became a bureaucratic nightmare and a political football.

This is its sorry story.

 

Read an extract:

With the cessation of hospital care at Milson Island, everything devolved to Peat Island; so the hospital became Peat Island Hospital, plain and simple. Nothing whatsoever about identifying its purpose, nothing about mental care. As though not saying what service it performed disguised what in fact it was. Was this another of the Peter Pan episodes, breaking away from the shadows, expunging them?

With that closure, plans were drawn up to modernise the wards on Peat Island. Which is more public service speak. It meant that somehow even more beds had to be fitted in to help with the accommodation. Not everyone from Milson stayed on Peat, though, not by a long shot. Residents were sent here, there and everywhere. In cohesive groups, admittedly, not sprinkled throughout institutions all over the state. But in different directions nevertheless.

One consequence of the dispersal of the patients was that those parents who had taken an interest in the Parents and Citizens Association followed their sons to wherever their new placement was, and as it happened that took away the most active and interested members. Their bimonthly journal, News and Views, ceased. So too did the regular news sheet, The Islander. These had been making a very real difference to the range and quality of experience available to their children, and to the communal spirit of those connected with the hospital; but those who had been most productive had gone their separate ways.

A different kind of dispersal was also under way. It did not involve large numbers, but the Health Department was intent upon returning patients to care in the community – to their parents if that were possible, or to small-scale specialist hostels. That is what Dr Lindsay had been foreshadowing to the parent groups. Cottages with improved plumbing, and warm showers. At least these residents would have their own room, and some privacy. That, it might be recalled, was the way it should have been right from the beginning at Rabbit Island, for precisely that element had been designed into the original arrangement of the wards. But it had never eventuated. The powers that be had ridden roughshod over those enlightened plans. From day one the authorities had failed their own brief.

The dispersal of patients back into the community was not a triumph of rehabilitation, however. Years later David Richmond was quite frank about that. ‘Contrary to the misconceptions of some, a significant exodus from institutional care through bed number reductions had already occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, well before the report, largely to meet budget pressure on the institutions’. Not, it is to be noted, because of an impulse towards humane reform. The bottom line was the budget, not the needs of those in the government’s care. To him and the other bureaucrats they were ‘beds’, not people. Beans to be counted.

The year 1973 was a pivotal one for many people. Minister Jago, for example, forgot to nominate for his own seat, Gordon, in time for the state election. He was replaced as minister by John Waddy, member for Kirribilli for only the next two years; because Waddy resigned when his own constituency denied him preselection.

Jago had set in place a reform which came into effect in that same year, 1973, consequent upon an act passed in parliament in the preceding year. A Health Commission would resume the responsibilities of the Health Department, the Hospitals Commission and the Ambulance Service. Dr Barclay was elevated to the role of Commissioner for Personal Health Services, meaning the combination of mental health and public health. With this ongoing restructuring and renaming, the wonder is that anyone could make sense of what was going on. The endless changes implied instability rather than progressive reform. Nobody seemed quite able to make up their mind. Head Office indeed.

Peat Island: Dreaming and desecration will launch in Sydney on April 29. For more information about the launch, you can get in touch with us here. To purchase the book, visit us in our Mile End book shop or find it online.