Henry Beater Christian (1886-1962) , was a descendant of one of the earliest settler families in Kew. Employed at the Kew Asylum as a 'public servant', he was a skilled amateur photographer, photographing numerous scenes in Kew and on his travels around Victoria. The majority of his photographs date from 1916 to 1929. His finest photographs are housed in two photograph albums. Digital copy of a photograph from page 8 of the 47-page photograph album containing 261 gelatinous silver images, loaned by Diane Washfold with permission given to digitise and hold a copy in our collection. This photograph reveals how the photographer, Henry Christian, positioned himself to take the photograph from the angle in which he was interested. A skilled canoeist, an empty canoe is on the left of the photo that he apparently he used to access his vantage point. His subject, the Zig-Zag Bridge linked the grounds of the Yarra Bend and Kew Asylums. The wooden bridge was constructed in the 1870s and lasted through numerous floods until its destruction in 1929. A horizontal structure, one climbed steps to reach the higher Yarra Bend bank. At the Studley Park end, the bridge descended via a staircase to reach the much lower bank. "Zig-Zag Bridge"henry beater christian (1886-1962), landscape photography, kew (vic.) — yarra river, christian-washfold collection, photograph albums, zig-zag bridge

Henry Beater Christian (1886-1962) , was a descendant of one of the earliest settler families in Kew. Employed at the Kew Asylum as a 'public servant', he was a skilled amateur photographer, photographing numerous scenes in Kew and on his travels around Victoria. The majority of his photographs date from 1916 to 1929. His finest photographs are housed in two photograph albums. Digital copy of a photograph from page 8 of the 47-page photograph album containing 261 gelatinous silver images, loaned by Diane Washfold with permission given to digitise and hold a copy in our collection. This photograph reveals how the photographer, Henry Christian, positioned himself to take the photograph from the angle in which he was interested. A skilled canoeist, an empty canoe is on the left bank that he apparently he used to access his vantage point. His subject, the Zig-Zag Bridge linked the grounds of the Yarra Bend and Kew Asylums. The wooden bridge was constructed in the 1870s and lasted through numerous floods until its destruction in 1929. A horizontal structure, the walkway was reached via a wooden staircase on the Studley Park end. The steps were requires due to the different levels of the banks on this stretch of the river. "Zig-Zag Bridge"henry beater christian (1886-1962), landscape photography, kew (vic.) — yarra river, christian-washfold collection, photograph albums, zig-zag bridge

Henry Beater Christian (1886-1962) , was a descendant of one of the earliest settler families in Kew. Employed at the Kew Asylum as a 'public servant', he was a skilled amateur photographer, photographing numerous scenes in Kew and on his travels around Victoria. The majority of his photographs date from 1916 to 1929. His finest photographs are housed in two photograph albums. Digital copy of a photograph from page 8 of the 47-page photograph album containing 261 gelatinous silver images, loaned by Diane Washfold with permission given to digitise and hold a copy in our collection. This photograph reveals how the photographer, Henry Christian, positioned himself to take the photograph from the angle in which he was interested. A skilled canoeist, an empty canoe is on the left bank that he apparently he used to access his vantage point. His subject, the Zig-Zag Bridge linked the grounds of the Yarra Bend and Kew Asylums. The wooden bridge was constructed in the 1870s and lasted through numerous floods until its destruction in 1929. A horizontal structure, the walkway was reached via a wooden staircase on the Studley Park side. The steps were requires due to the different levels of the banks on this stretch of the river. "Zig-Zag Bridge"henry beater christian (1886-1962), landscape photography, kew (vic.) — yarra river, christian-washfold collection, photograph albums, zig-zag bridge

Mrs Sheila Parkinson was born in Wagga in 1916 and came to Beechworth as a young woman around 1938. Sheila trained as a psychiatric nurse at Mayday Hills hospital prior to the second World War. At that time, unmarried women were accommodated and received nursing training on-site. Shiela was obliged to cease professional training and employment when she married in 1941, which disrupted completion of her final nursing examinations. Following post-war changes to the law that allowed married women to work, Sheila returned to Mayday Hills. Sheila's husband, Don, returned to Beechworth after four years abroad as a serviceman in the Australian Air Force. Beechworth's institutions were a major source of local employment throughout the twentieth century. As well as providing limited employment opportunities to young women like Shiela, post-war European migrants from Bonegilla Migrant camp found at Mayday Hills, encouraging European migrant settlement in the district. Mayday Hills was renamed several times since its establishment in 1867. At the peak of operations, it comprised sixty-seven buildings housing over twelve hundred patients patients and five hundred staff. The hospital officially closed in 1998. Today, the decommissioned two-storey Italianate style main building stands on eleven hectares of botanical gardens under National Trust protection. The site remains a popular cultural heritage destination for visitors. This oral history recording was part of a project conducted by Jennifer Williams in the year 2000 to capture the everyday life and struggles in Beechworth during the twentieth century. This project involved recording seventy oral histories on cassette tapes of local Beechworth residents which were then published in a book titled: Listen to what they say: voices of twentieth century Beechworth. The cassette tapes were digitised in July 2021 with funds made available by the Friends of the Burke.Employed as a psychiatric nurse at one of Beechworth's large welfare institutions, Mayday Hills, Mrs Sheila Parkinson recalls the conditions faced by staff and patients at the hospital, which cared for chronically ill people from the Ovens region and patients from the Yarra Bend Asylum, Melbourne, which closed in 1925. When Sheila first began her nurse training, Mayday Hills suffered from a lack of resources and rudimentary facilities and patients frequently suffered from the cold due to poor heating and inadequate clothing and bedding. However, as the twentieth century progressed, Sheila recalls how conditions and treatments improved as a result of increased government funding of services and advances in psychiatry and pharmaceutical medicine. Mrs Sheila Parkinson's oral history recording is historically and socially significant for its witness to life in Beechworth in the pre- and post-WWII period. Sheila's story enriches our understanding of processes of modernisation with regard to psychiatric and welfare services, while the course of Sheila's professional training and employment brings attention to systemic and socio-economic barriers faced by women, as well as the valuable contribution women and migrants make in the delivery of care and ancillary services. This oral history account is socially and historically significant as it is a part of a broader collection of interviews conducted by Jennifer Williams which were published in the book 'Listen to what they say: voices of twentieth-century Beechworth.' While the township of Beechworth is known for its history as a gold rush town, these accounts provide a unique insight into the day-to-day life of the town's residents during the twentieth century, many of which would have been lost if they had not been preserved.This is a digital copy of a recording that was originally captured on a cassette tape. The cassette tape is black with a horizontal white strip and is currently stored in a clear flat plastic rectangular container. It holds up 40 minutes of recordings on each side.Mrs Sheila Parkinson /twentieth century beechworth, mayday hills, psychiatric care, benevolent asylums, nursing, wwii, psychiatric treatment, country women, psychiatric hostpital, beechworth's institutions, local employment, government institutions, listen to what they say, oral history, burke museum, sheila parkinson, beechworth lunatic asylum, beechworth mental hospital, beechworth hospital for the insane, the kerferd clinic, bonegilla migrant camp, working women, white australia policy

printed plan on paper backed onto linenmelbourne, richmond, prahran, st kilda, collingwood, kensington, footscray, kew, studly park, kew lunatic asylum, yarra bend national park, hawthorn, clifton hill

[Northcote, Victoria] : Colin Briton, [2018] ©2018 v, 118 pages, 11 pages of plates : illustrations, maps ; 21 cm non-fictionHistory of institutional care in Yarra Bend Park and Studley Park by Colin Briton.institutional care -- victoria -- melbourne -- history., health facilities -- victoria -- melbourne -- history, asylums -- victoria -- melbourne -- history., reformatories for women -- victoria -- melbourne -- history.

An item from an outstanding and diverse photographic collection, assembled by members of the Christian and Washfold families of Kew.Rare programme for what was once an annual event in Kew with important, possibly unique photos of sites in Kew and on the Yarra.Programme for the 1910 Kew Canoe Carnival which was held on the River Yarra on February 11th. The location was at the Asylum Reserve at the old white bridge (the precursor of Kane's Bridge). Funds were raised in Aid of the Annual Treat to Kew and Yarra Bend Patients (and the Carnival fund). The booklet includes details of the programme, numerous advertisements and rare and important historic photographs of the district including: the Willsmere Park Dairy, the Glen Tea Gardens at Hawthorn, the Pipe Bridge, the Kew Boat Sheds (Macauley's), and Rudder Grange boat house.christian-washfold collection, kew canoe club, kew canoe carnivals