Former lunatic asylum site Peat Island to become a ‘tourist hub’
It’s the former lunatic asylum about to be redeveloped into a waterfront tourist hub. But some are convinced Peat Island could be haunted — including two maintenance workers tasked with showing The Sunday Telegraph around. WATCH THE VIDEO
- Sydney’s west to get $5.5m mental health boost
- Mental health patients to be shown videos of survivors
Less than an hour after stepping onto Peat Island, the creepy former lunatic asylum lived up to its ghostly reputation.
Maintenance workers Steve Heggs and Sam Bolth were removing boarded up doors to give The Sunday Telegraph access inside the old, abandoned buildings.
As they toured the dark rooms of the Rizkalla block, the knockabout men were stopped in their tracks at the kitchen.
“I walked in and as we got to the edge of the doorway, I turned the torch on,” Mr Heggs said.
“I could see the cupboard door half open, half shut, half open, half shut.
MORE FROM MIRANDA WOOD
THE BUZZING 24/7 CITY DEEP BENEATH BARANGAROO
‘GET OUT OF THE WAY COCKHEAD’ - REALITY OF LIFE FOR OUR AMBOS
“It went quiet and then I could hear footsteps and I mean for about 15 seconds.
“I thought it was someone outside – Sam thought it was someone inside.”
Both workers went to investigate.
“We walked outside and said ‘is anyone there?’,” Mr Bolth said. “There was no-one there.”
Mr Heggs said the incident was “very freaky”.
“Sam said ‘do you believe in ghosts?’ and I said, ‘I don’t know, I think I do now’.”
Recently a group of researchers were planning to camp outside one of the facility’s buildings to observe owls in the area.
When night fell, members told security they saw a light moving around inside one building.
They quickly packed up their gear and never came back.
Eight years after Peat Island was decommissioned and boarded up, the state government is ready to develop the former hospital for the insane.
The tiny, eerie site, located just north of Sydney off the M1 Pacific Motorway, will become a “tourist hub” with holiday units, a foreshore walk and 130-berth marina.
NSW Property Minister Victor Dominello said construction could start as early as the end of next year with the island open to the public by 2021.
“It really is that mystery island that sits off Mooney Mooney Bridge that people look at and think ‘what is the history there, what has gone on there and why has it been closed’,” Mr Dominello told The Sunday Telegraph.
“It’s got almost like a ghost story type of feel to it.”
The plans for Peat Island and surrounding Mooney Mooney, first flagged by the government four years ago, involves both selling off and leasing prime waterfront land.
Mr Dominello said the proposal, which also includes shops and 260 new homes, would “breathe new life” into Peat Island with a three-month public consultation to begin in January.
“The public do have a keen interest in this site because of its historical significance,” Mr Dominello said.
Property NSW executive director of development and transaction Leon Walker said striking the right balance for the site had been difficult.
“We deal with a lot of complex sites but this would be number one on the list, I would say,” he said.
“It’s a bit like Callan Park and a few of these other prominent sites — it’s very important to open it back up and explain some of the history.”
The Sunday Telegraph was given exclusive access to the dilapidated eight hectare island, left to rot since October 2010.
Surrounded by the picturesque Hawkesbury River, Peat Island’s overgrown bushland and rats have provided a perfect haven for brown snakes.
Windows and doors have been securely boarded up to stop local youths from breaking in at night and vandalising the buildings.
Once inside the old, dark wards, it’s as if time has stood still.
Paperwork lies scattered across the desks while scribbled notes and pictures by patients are across walls.
In the sandstone Rizkalla building — one of four heritage buildings expected to remain on Peat Island under the new plans — a farewell message from staff also remains.
It reads: “Goodbye Peat Island. Thank you for being a wonderful home to our dear clients. You shall be missed.”
The outdoor, in-ground pool has become a dirty pond with plastic chairs and a basketball hoop dumped in the filthy water.
“When you go in there, you quickly realise it was a different way of caring for people with needs 50 or 100 years ago,” Mr Walker said.
The horrors of Peat Island’s past have been hidden away for 107 years when the “lunatic asylum” first opened.
Known as Rabbit Island at the time, the government first chose the site as an asylum for alcoholics in the late 1890s.
“It was about getting them out of Sydney so they could dry up and sober up but obviously that morphed over time,” Mr Walker said.
The first male “lunacy” patients, aged between 16 and 52, were admitted in March 1911 and over the decades, stories of physical and sexual abuse, torture and unexplained deaths emerged from the psychiatric institution.
One was eight-year-old Robert Bruce Walker who was found floating in the Hawkesbury in 1940 and in 1983, a 17-year-old had his 10 fingernails torn out.
During its years in operation, more than 3000 people lived at Peat Island — the youngest aged just five — before it closed in 2010 and during its peak in the 1950s, 610 men and boys were patients.
In its final years, the facility was used to care for people with intellectual and physical disabilities.
Mr Dominello said Peat Island proves how “we’ve advanced from days past where we would treat people like lepers and remove them from sight and mind”.
“Now they are appropriately incorporated as able members of our society,” he said.
Join the conversation
‘It’s a day of celebration’: Shock remarks at western Sydney rally
There’s a massive police presence across Sydney as evening gatherings on the grim anniversary of Hamas attacks get under way. At Lakemba Mosque, hundreds have massed as a police chopper flies overhead.
Read more
‘So, so devastating’: Mainstay deli shuts after 70 years
The closure of an iconic southwest Sydney deli has prompted its legion of customers to express how the institution – treasured like the Opera House – meant more than prosciutto and panini.
Read more