In the early hours of a drizzly, still autumn day the approach to the old Greenvale Sanatorium site is a little unnerving. Access along Providence Road leads to a derelict dead end. The front entrance of the grounds has long been barricaded at two points. But it’s easy to get through on foot – and there are no forbidding signs to be seen anywhere. Timid roos are everywhere, grazing on overgrown scrub that narrows a crumbling driveway. But there are still groves of majestic gums lining the road, and rows of agapanthus among the weeds and grass. The driveway curves into the distance. It’s hard to tell what lies ahead – but not much, it turns out. A facility for “consumptives” opened in 1905 and is now mostly just open grassy space. Not even concrete slabs or footings remain to be seen. No helpful information boards. Just a peaceful opportunity to imagine what once was Victoria’s first purpose-built government sanatorium, that relied on fresh air for the benefit of the one hundred or more patients, and isolation for the protection of the community from which they came. Accommodation began as canvas-walled timber huts, which gave way in 1950 to the new four-storey, boomerang-shaped Percy Everett building. With the development in the 1950s of effective drug treatment regimens for tuberculosis, the facility was converted to one for aged care and rehabilitation. It was finally closed in 1998 and the last buildings demolished and the land cleared by 2006.
Date visited: 16 March 2021
Images source: author
History of Medicine Traveller 