Underfoot: The Facility

Who built this waterfall? What was here before? Whose land, whose water?

Site 1, Dights Falls Site 2, Site 3 Site 4

Today, Yarra Bend is a place of sport, relaxation, and connection with nature, and sport. This seems very different from its past as an institution of social control, but is it really?

Places mentioned:

Key Site 5, Yarra Bend Asylum Cemetery

Key Site 6, Yarra Bend Public Golf Course

What is "total paralysis of the insane"? It sounds like a band name.

Related places: Key Site 8: Fairhaven VD Clinic

Your intrepid hosts discover a secret* building!

*it’s not really a secret, but it sure looks that way from the back!

From 1845-1851, the Merri Creek Aboriginal School grew vegetables for Yarra Bend Asylum patients. The school closed in 1851 due to low student numbers. This was partly caused by recruitment to the controversial Native Police, which briefly had their barracks in this area.

The Eastern Freeway construction likely destroyed most archeological evidence of this site.

Fairlea Women’s Prison was the first dedicated women’s prison in Victoria, established in 1956 in the buildings formerly used for the Fairhaven VD clinic and Yarra Bend Asylum. Every year from 1988, anti-carceral feminists held “Wring Out Fairlea” protests outside the prison, and broadcast from inside.

In 1996 Fairlea was closed and its functions transferred to the Dame Philip Frost women’s prison in Deer Park (still operational). The buildings were razed to the ground.

What you're hearing is an excerpt from Suzi's Story, a 1987 Australian television documentary about Vince and Suzi Lovegrove and their son Troy. Suzi didn't know she had already contracted HIV before meeting Vince. This documentary was made at Suzi's request to humanise people with HIV/AIDS. Tragically, both Suzi and Troy would die of complications of AIDS.

For more information, see Australian Screen Online.

Suzi's Story (1987)

A Kid Called Troy (1993)

Psychiatric hospital for incarcerated people, still in operation. Named after the first resident medical officer from Yarra Bend asylum, showing historical continuity of the institutions.

At the time of writing in 2024, the Thomas Embling Hospital is undergoing renovation and expansion. The expansion is expected to create room for another 82 incarcerated patients, at a cost of $515.7 million – over $6 million per patient.

Thomas Embling Hospital expansion

Forensicare: Thomas Embling Hospital

THE MURDER AT THE YARRA BEND ASYLUM.

The mystery, surrounding the murder of the warder Archibald Hunter, which took place at the Yarra Bend Asylum on Satur-day afternoon last, has assumed another phase.

Joseph Howard, one of the patients, who has all along been suspected of the murder, and who has been kept in the refractory ward ever since, made the following confession to Senior-constable Marks, of Northcote, and Detective-sergeant Cawsey, in whose hands the case had been placed from the first:—

Read at the National Library of Australia: Mount Alexander Mail, Sat 5 Jan, 1889, p 3.

The rows of mature cypress trees in Yarra Bend Golf Course are relics of its earlier use as a cemetery for Yarra Bend Asylum. The cypress tree is a traditional cemetery planting and an ancient symbol of death.

The Australian, Fri 25 Jul 1828, MISCELLANEA. EMBLEMATIC RESEMBLANCES. THE CYPRESS, EMBLEM OF DEATH.

But isn’t it strange how much the freeway resembles a river? Carving through the rock like a deep gorge. roaring like rushing water. From a distance, deep in the mix, it sounds just like Dights Falls.

In other words, don't try and navigate Yarra Bend by sound.

An early example (c. 1850s) of corrugated iron in vernacular Australian architecture — in this case, it’s also a prefabricated portable building. What could be more nostalgic than a portable building still in use well in excess of its lifespan? It’s just like our school days!

Corrugated iron, like cast iron lace, served as ballast in ships making the UK-Australia trip. When they returned, they carried Melbourne bluestone — the paving for such iconic locations as London’s Trafalgar Square. Thus, the technical requirements of shipping shaped the characteristic architectural forms of both the Imperial centre and the colonial periphery.

"Thomas Embling (1814-1893) was a medical practitioner and parliamentarian who advocated the introduction of camels and llamas to Australia as livestock. This caricature shows him as an idealized herdsman, surrounded by his exotic flocks."

State Library of Victoria

This monument memorialises early European settlers, and their keen interest in exploiting water and grass. Let’s call them the water guys and the grass guys.

The main water guy memorialised here is Charles Grimes, head of the first European mission to assess the suitability of the Narrm region for white settlers in 1803. The mission was unable to navigate further upstream, but the discovery of the Yarra, a reliable fresh water source, led Grimes to recommend the locality for a settlement, duly established in 1835 by John Batman as “Batmania” (later “Melbourne”).

The grass guys are John Gardiner, Joseph Hawdon, and John Hepburn, who crossed the river here in December 1836 with cattle, moving to appropriate the fertile grasslands in the basalt plains to the north and west of Victoria as cattle grazing land. (Batman was also a grass guy, just not as keen on hiking.) The colonial government of the day, based in New South Wales, was not pleased by what they saw as land theft – from the Crown. Nevertheless, they opted to recognise the new unauthorised settlement rather than risk a potential breakaway state.

These graziers, dubbed the “squattocracy”, amassed huge economic and political power – and came into violent conflict with many First Nations people, who relied on the same grazing lands as a source of foods such as grains, tubers, and kangaroo. As graziers came to dominate the politics of Victoria, colonial policy towards Aboriginal people became harsher and more overtly violent. The consequences were devastating and far reaching.

The Girls’ Memorial Home, a maternity home run by Wesley Central Mission, opened in 1922 in Fairfield.

Funds for the purchase of the property came from money inherited by Dr Georgina Sweet from her father. The home was situated in ‘Carmelea’, a building in Station Street, Fairfield that had formerly been the home of chocolate manufacturer, MacPherson Robertson.

…A doctor visiting the Home in 1936 expressed his concern about the women and babies there:

“I regret I have to state that the atmosphere of the whole place at present is a reflection on a religious institution, the girls are miserable, look underfed and over-worked, and the babies show obvious signs of neglect. The girls are obliged to get up at 5am to do the laundry and are kept going all day … I find that my instructions with regard to rest and diet are rarely if ever carried out.”

Another comment by a former resident contradicts the image of the Home put out by the Mission – she felt that the women were treated “like we had committed a dreadful crime”.

A report in 1970 to the Executive Committee of the Mission made reference to changing social attitudes towards single mothers, meaning that the Home could ‘no longer pay its way’.

In 1973, the Home ceased operations. It became Georgina House, a refuge for victims of domestic violence. This service closed in 1989.

Girls’ Memorial Home was mentioned in the Commonwealth Contribution to Former Forced Adoption Policies and Practices Inquiry (2012) as an institution that was involved in forced adoption.

(Text from Find And Connect: Girls Memorial Home, Fairfield

This amphitheatre was built in 1984-5 for the Epidavros Summer Festival, a series of bilingual (Greek-English) productions of Classical Greek plays such as Medea, Lysistrata, and Antigone driven by the passion of Greek-Australians for Greek history and culture. It’s modelled on one of the places those plays were originally performed – the ancient amphitheatre at Epidavros (late 4th century BC).

Fittingly, the Epidavros (or Epidauros) ampitheatre was dedicated to Asclepius – the god of healing and medicine. Art and healing were closely linked in the Greek pantheon – the other Greek god of medicine is Apollo, who was also the god of theatre.

Melbourne remains a major centre of the global Greek diaspora.

Image: ”Outstanding cast in special series of Greek classics”, The Canberra Times, Mon 27 Feb 1984.

Music: 'Mother Send the Doctors Away’, a 11940s Greek song in the Rebetika style, written by Steliou Hrisinis, performed by Melbourne group Apodimi Compania in 1986. The song tells of a man with tuberculosis, a common disease in Greece at the time, who is resigned to his death – he believes doctors can be of no further use to him. Learn more at Australian Screen Online