DIARY OF A GHOST HUNTER

In the dead of night on Sydney’s Parramatta River, an abandoned asylum sits cloaked in darkness – Gladesville Mental Hospital, once known as Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum. The History of Gladesville Mental Hospital Gladesville Mental Hospital’s story begins in colonial Sydney with lofty ideals and grim realities. Opened in 1838 as the Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, it was Australia’s first purpose-built mental hospital. The site – aptly located at Bedlam Point on the river – was initially designed by Colonial Architect Mortimer Lewis and meant to house just 60 patients in humane conditions. Early superintendents like Dr. John Thomas Digby and later Dr. Frederick Norton Manning sincerely aimed to “treat” rather than merely confine the mentally ill. Manning in particular, after studying overseas, condemned the asylum’s original “prison-like” atmosphere and worked to minimize restraints and improve diets and recreation by the 1870s. In 1869 the name was changed from “Lunatic Asylum” to Gla...