The New Asylum – revisited
In this article, I am revisiting my poetry collection The New Asylum.
A couple of days back I revisited my poetry collection Small Town Kid. The occasion being that I have recently reformatted the book in order to go ‘wide’ with it. To make the collection available to be purchased and read in digital form an all e-reader platforms and devices, and not exclusively using Kindle devices. For example, online book-retailing stores like Barnes and Noble and Kobo cater for other formats than the Kindle demands, (such as Nook Book, for example).
I have now uploaded The New Asylum at Smashwords, as well, and felt it would be appropriate to stroll through the back-story to the collection, today.
A background to The New Asylum
The New Asylum is, in some ways, an extension of the Small Town Kid story. It is a memoir written in free-verse poetry that has a starting point in the very early 1960s, which time saw both of my parents working in the local lunatic asylum, later known as Mayday Hills Hospital.
Migrants
The family arrived in Australia as new immigrants from what was then Yugoslavia (via Germany), in 1957. Most of the stories about that initial period, and the temporary accommodation at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp are generally harrowing.
If you can imagine:
- An Australia that was wide and brown, with no familiar (European) features.
- BArracks accomodation. Shared ablutions. I have visited a retained ablution block at the camp and was reminded of Concentration Camp facilities. Probably merely a result of the architectural norms of the time, but chilling, none-the-less.
- A first meal consisting of cold lamb or mutton. Congealed before it could be transported to the hut, with no family member ever having encounteresd such food in their lives, let alone eaten it.
- No possessions other than what could be carried.
- No work
- Absolutely no sense of what or how the future might unfold.
Quite traumatic after they had actually established the beginnings of a life, while still in Germany.
Work
My father was first to find work and thus begin the journey out of the Migrant Camp. A family member lived in Beechworth – about 50 kilometres away, and had work and contacts within the thriving forestry industry. My father had some experience of that and a great willingness to do anything for some money.
There are many stories that might be told of that time, but this yarn is about the path to the Asyluym, and after dad found work it became possible to move on and settle, in a beginning kind of way.
The Lunatic Asylum
No apologies for this repeated reference to Lunatic Asylums. Not only were these institutions referred to in those terms at that time, but there was an Act of Parliament – The Mental Health Act of 1959 – which officially designated them as such.
Mayday Hills was a walled facility that was home to around a thousand residents, approximately half of whom were classified as ‘Retarded’ and cared for in their own ward – the ‘Children’s Cottages’ as they were known. Wards were gender segregated at that time, with a ‘male’ side and a ‘female’ side.
At that time, there were very few trained doctors or nurses employed in the sytem. Rather, there was a Superintendant, and a Matron, with perhaps some medical officers on staff, perhaps a few trained nurses in charge of the wards, but for the main part, the care of the patients was undertaken by unqualified staff known as Ward Assistants, gender segregated, as were the patients.
Working On The Wards (Female)
My mother was employed as a Ward Assistant very early on, despite the fact that she had no English language ability. German and Yugoslav, but not English.
That was alright, thouygh, because she was not alone. There were many immigrants from Europe working in the Asylum at that time. The pay was not brilliant, but the work could be done without training or pre-existing skills, and the work was ‘government work’. Secure.
To some extent the poor pay was made up for by the staffing shortages generally, which resulted in overtime work (and pay) being mandatory for all nursing staff.
How crazy was it?
Just as an aside, I can recall two of my mother’s stories from those very early days.
- As the most junior nurse, one job that routinely fell to her to perform was to put shoes on the patients in one of the Retardation Wards. She would describe going round and around the room putting shoes on. The, going round again – putting the same shoes on the same feet – endlessly. As soon as they were on, they were kicked off again, but, that was the job. The routine.
- A second job she described was being the sole nurse (still without English language skills) supervising the patients during a meal. Her position was standing in the doorway. The task? Watch as the food flew around the room, intervening only f it appeared a patient might somehow come to grief.
In the end, I believe she stopped trying to comprehend what this work was really about, and focussed on knowing and following the set routines. Just like all the other staff.
Eventually better/easier placements came her way, but they were all hard days, and all of it was just a little bit crazy.
The Main Kitchen
Over the course of a couple of years, my father also sought and obtained work at the Asylum – as a Cook’s Assistant (a mess hand).
The rationale was, again, that while the job was not the best paid, necessarily, it was good steady work, and it was backed by the Government of Victoria. Safe. Secure.
I won’t speak more of my father’s role here. These are big stories and my own association with the Asylum led down the Nursing path. There are a few tales of dad and the Kitchens in The New Asylum, but we’re nursing, here!
The Small Town Kid meets The New Asylum
As a child, I and many of my ilk had one or both parents working at the Asylum. In fact, Beechworth was ‘an institution town’, with 3 or 4 main institutional employers, catering to generations of the same families following in each others footsteps – Mental Asylum; Old People’s Home (known as The Benev)’ Prison; Forestry Commission).
The work days were long – 10 hours for cooks, 13 hours for nurses, and we kids were left to our own devices a great deal of the time. It wasn’t uncommon, however, for me to visit mum and dad if they were working on a weekend day (with no bosses around). The whole walled institution became a part of my familiar territory and I could spend time with dad while he attended the slicing and buttering of bread for 30 or so wards in the Bread Room, or visit mum in one of the Female Wards where she might sneak me a little left-over lunch, or a boel of dessert.
I also became familiar and found myself at ease with the patients who were the residents of the Asylum. A slightly bizarre, sometimes demented or out of control extended family. Just like home!
Student, Nurse, Policy Maker, Service Consultant, Unit Manger, Nurse (again)
I have been blessed to have had a full career in Public psychiatry. Not just a nursing role on a ward, but the whole gamut of experiences that the system had available.
I was someone who was prepared to move around, and had a genuine hunger for experience and to help bring about change. As a result, opportunities found me, and I them.
Some of them found their way into my collection – The New Asylum.
What is in The New Asylum
In this collection, I have tried to take the reader on an experiential journey from first exposure, as a child, through student Psychiatric nursing (as it was). Practical acute Psychiatric nursing, and Unit Management form the main part, and throwing in some of my experiences in policy development and related areas where they seemed best to fit.
Looking back, the outcome of my personal efforts and those of the system to pursue and achieve positive change is dubious at best. The system of care remains deficient and I fear that it always will be. Our best efforts, it seems to me, have produced no better result than a New Asylum.
Poetry Readings from The New Asylum
Below are some of the readings from The New Asylum located on my YouTube Channel. Most of these were read at the Booklaunch. I hope you enjoy them.
Smashwords Link
It should be possible to find the digital version of The New Asylum fairly readily, now, including in the Kindle store, still. For the purpose of this re-presentation though, I’ll pop in the linl to the Smashwords store for you to check out.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/1091148