Aradale Lunatic Asylum was a psychiatric hospital operating for 126 years in Ararat, Victoria. It has been abandoned since it closed in 1993.

Aradale

Aradale was designed to hold 250 patients. However, within its sprawling gothic complex of 70 buildings, it housed up to 1000 patients and around 500 staff.

Construction began in 1860, along with two other asylums, Mayday Hills at Beechworth and Willsmere at Kew. The government of the day commissioned the asylums to house the growing number of “lunatics” in Victoria. Aradale opened to its first patients in 1865, sitting high on the hill, looming over Ararat. The large complex was a town within a town. Furthermore, it had its own fire station, workshops, hospital, morgue, market gardens, orchards, vineyards, piggery, and cattle, making it largely self-sufficient from the nearby town. Overcrowding was soon a problem as the building was designed to hold 250 patients. But within 12 months of opening, it exceeded that by 20. By 1876 it housed 400, and extra beds lined the corridors.

The medical thinking was that mental illness was a disease that could be cured by fresh air. Therefore, all three asylums were situated on a hill where the air was cleaner. However, the Victorians also thought that ‘madness’ was contagious. Thus the location of the asylums above and away from the town protected the townfolk.

Ha Ha Walls

Ha Ha walls ringed the asylum preventing escape. A ha-ha wall is a low wall with a steep trench in front of it. This makes it impossible to climb up and out from the inside. However, it remains an attractive low wall that doesn’t give the impression of confinement on the outside.

Committed to Aradale

It wasn’t hard to be diagnosed with a mental illness in Victorian times. while it only two required signatures to be committed eight to be needed to be deemed sane enough to leave. The weekly cost of keeping a patient at Aradale was 14 shillings and 11 pence.

Common diagnoses that would cause being committed during this time period included – Delusional insanity, Dementia, Epilepsy, General paralysis of the insane – A neuropsychiatric disorder brought on by late-stage syphilis, Idiocy, Inebriation, Melancholia, Puerperal mania – Puerperal refers to the postpartum period, usually lasting 6 weeks after the birth of a child (now known as postnatal depression)

Find My Past

Up until the 1880s, Aradale housed child inmates in the same wards as adults. Children accounted for one-quarter of all inmates across the three main asylums in Victoria (Ararat, Beechworth, and Kew). While it is often reported that 13,000 died at Aradale, official sources put the number is closer to 3,000 patients and staff. It is, however, considered one of Australia’s most haunted places, and regular ‘ghost tours’ are held at night.

Treatments

Patient ‘treatment’ included restraint bags, strapped in chairs, isolation boxes, immobilised in hot and cold baths, and, from the 1900s to 1950s, electroshock treatments and drugs such as lithium. However, a shift occurred in thinking to non-institutionalising those with mental illness. As patients were transferred elsewhere, numbers declined. This led to Aradale closing in 1993.

Tours:

Guided tours of Aradale are available every Wednesday and Sunday.

• Tours run for approx 2 hours.
• Tickets from Ararat and Grampians Visitor Information Centre, 91 High Street, Ararat.
• Adults $22, Concession $18, Child 16 and under $5