Since moving to Ararat I have a strange fascination with Aradale, a large imposing building you can see on the right as you enter Ararat from the East, maybe I was a patient in a previous life ?
Construction began in 1864 on the asylum commissioned to accommodate the growing number of “lunatics” in the colony of Victoria. Only two signatures were required to commit you to Aradale, however it took the signatures of 6 doctors to have you released, and there were a multitude of reasons you could be committed – legitimate mental disorders, perceived conditions or in the case of the early days simply not speaking English. At its height Aradale had over 500 staff tending to 900+ patients. It was a town within a town, having orchards, a vineyard, vegetable gardens and a piggery, comprising 63 buildings dating from the original wings built in the 1860s to the modern Ararat Forensic Psychiatry Centre built in 1991.
In December 1886 the Ararat County Goal, in Girdlestone Street, 3km away was proclaimed by the Lunacy Department as J Ward of the Ararat Lunatic Asylum. This housed the criminally insane for 102 years until it was closed in 1991 and the patients/inmates were transferred to the Ararat Forensic Psychiatry Centre. This included a comprehensively renovated 1880s farm cottage at the rear of the Aradale facility and a newly built modern building. These are fitted with unbreakable security glass throughout. The farm cottage was specially renovated with a bedroom, ensuite, lounge room configuration to house criminal Garry David (Webb), but depending on the version you hear he was transferred to Melbourne before he could take up residency.
With the decommissioning of Aradale in the early 1990s and the transfer of patients to community living or other facilities, after December 1993 the Ararat Forensic Psychiatry Centre was the only remaining ward.
In November 1997 it was announced that the Ararat Forensic Psychiatry Centre would close on February 9, 1998 and the remaining 12 patients be transferred to the Victorian Institute of Forensic Psychiatry at Rosanne, until the new Thomas Embling Hospital in Fairfield was completed in 2000.
In 2001 the buildings and grounds became a campus of Melbourne Polytechnic who run a viticulture course from there.
Being mindful of muggles – tours of the facility run regularly day and night. Opposite GZ is a Bowls club. And despite the plethora of ghost tales locals wander the area.
BYO pen, no room for swaps or trackable.