Back in the late 1800s if you truly were a few sandwiches short of a picnic, you would have been confined to the state-run Mount View Lunatic Asylum, located here above the Basin Reserve.
Today, this picturesque site is better known as the grounds of Government House, but from 1873 till 1910 it housed at least 250 Wellington citizens suffering from mental health problems or age-related dementia - not to mention a few who had just been labelled "plain difficult".
In its original guise, Mount View was a two-storey wooden building designed by architect Christian Julius Toxward - who would later draw up the plans for Wellington Public Hospital down the road - and erected by prisoners from the nearby Wellington Jail.
Billed as the country’s second modern psychiatric hospital, the 46-hectare facility was proclaimed on May 22, 1873, with Dr Charles France as its live-in medical officer. Henry and Charlotte Seager were appointed from the just-closed Karori Lunatic Asylum as keeper and matron, heading a team of 36 staff who unfortunately did not care for their charges as they should have.
Over the next 30 years, as the asylum grew to accommodate 150 extra patients, weekly headlines in The Evening Post newspaper shrieked of abuse, unsafe facilities and suicides – though officially Mount View boasted a "very satisfactory" recovery rate of 40 per cent.
In May 1910, its patients were relocated – mostly to Porirua’s asylum, but also to Christchurch and Seacliff in Dunedin – after the site was earmarked for the new Government House. All that remains today is the Convicts' Wall at that official residence.
BUT BACK TO YOUR OWN AFFLICTION:
Locating GZ will involve a short promenade across the hospital grounds from the carpark - much like many of the Mount View patients did daily, as medical practitioners believed it good for the constitution.
The container looks relatively normal on the outside but the logbook has been encased in a straitjacket for its own safety; you will need to free it before you can be admitted. No tools or special training are required to access the logbook's inner psyche, though smartphones users may be able to download extra clues online.
For those who do lose their marbles in the process, certification of insanity has been provided in the cache container. A larger file can also be downloaded here (be sure to tick geocaching as the cause of your disorder).
NB: Placed with permission of the local authorities.