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World War One: Coming Home
From 1920 until 1993, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre operated first as Bundoora Convalescence Farm and then as Bundoora Repatriation Hospital.
For more than seventy years, it was home to hundreds of returned servicemen. These men were not only physically damaged by their wartime experiences, their mental health was also dramatically affected. Despite the severe trauma, sometimes it took years or decades for the conditions to emerge.
For some servicemen, this meant being unable to sleep, hold down a job, maintain successful relationships or stay in one place, whilst others experienced a range of debilitating symptoms including delusions and psychosis. While these men tried to cope as best they could, they were rarely encouraged to talk openly about what they had seen or done. The experience of war haunted their lives and the lives of their families as they attempted to resume civilian life.
At this time, there was little understanding around trauma and mental health. For some returned servicemen and their families, it was important that their mental illness was acknowledged as being a consequence of their war service. This was not only due to social stigma associated with mental illness generally, but also because war pensions provided families with greater financial security.
This is as much the story of the Bundoora Repatriation Hospital as it is the story of a mother and daughter uncovering the history of the man who was their father and grandfather respectively. That man was Wilfred Collinson, who was just 19 when he enlisted in the AIF. He fought in Gallipoli and on the Western Front, saw out the duration of the war and returned home in 1919. He gained employment with the Victorian Railways and met and married Carline Aminde. The couple went on to have four children. By 1937, Wilfred Collinson’s mental state had deteriorated and he would go on to spend the remainder of his life – more than 35 years – as a patient at Bundoora.
We know so little about the lives and stories of men like Wilfred, the people who cared for them, the people who loved them and the people they left behind. For the most part the voices of the men themselves are missing from their own narrative and we can only interpret their experiences through the words of authorities and their loved ones.
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home, Bundoora Repatriation Hospital', 2014
Courtesy of AMaGA (Vic)
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home, Bundoora Repatriation Hospital', 2014
CASSIE MAY: My name’s Cassie May and I’m the curator of Bundoora Homestead for the City of Darebin. The exhibition we have coming up later in 2014 is called Coming Home and it explores the role of Bundoora Homestead as a convalescent farm and also a ward for returned servicemen.
[Musical interlude]
The homestead was built in 1899 by a wealthy racing family called the Smiths. The Smith family were here, operating their horse stud from 1899 right up until 1920. And there were negotiations around 1920 for the Commonwealth to purchase Bundoora Homestead, specifically for the task of a convalescent farm for returned servicemen from the First World War.
In 1924 as the numbers of returned servicemen grew and the needs grew, Bundoora convalescent farm became Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital.
One of the reasons for the exhibition is to be able to bring to light some of this buried history of the homestead. A lot of the records that we had from the hospital have actually been lost and it has been a slow research process to be able to bring to light these stories and even the names of the patients who were here.
One of the patients that we do know is Wilfred Collinson and he was a World War One veteran who was admitted to the hospital in 1937.
JUNE DALGLIESH: My name is June Barbara DALGLIESH and Wilfred Collinson was my father.
JULIE MELIA: My grandfather, Wilfred Collinson, was a resident, a resident patient for around about, I think it was thirty-six years.
Mum’s got a photo of her dad as a young man and two years ago I was walking past the photo on mum’s beside table and I said ‘I’m going to find out who you are’, so I began to get a better understanding of exactly who Wilfred Collinson is.
My grandfather was a British migrant. He migrated to Australia in 1914
JUNE DALGLIESH: He came out to Australia with a very good friend.
JULIE MELIA: Eric Brymer - he actually met on the ship that they were both on, coming out to Australia on.
JUNE DALGLIESH: And they came here and worked on farms and things like that and then they joined the army together and they went away together, to war.
JULIE MELIA: They enlisted around the same time they fought together at Gallipoli.
JUNE DALGLIESH: He was gassed four times and he was a gunner on those big guns. And that’s about all I really know, you know, about his war service.
[Musical interlude]
JULIE MELIA: He returned from the war around about 1919.
JUNE DALGLIESH: He was living next door to my Mum in South Melbourne.
JULIE MELIA: Carline was eighteen, he was twenty-five.
JUNE DALGLIESH: Well I think he was a good looking man. He had beautiful blue eyes, he had a sense of humour from what I’ve been told. Yeah, I think he would have been a pretty, someone you would have noticed. And yeah, my mum was only about eighteen, yeah.
JULIE MELIA: And they married at Clarendon House in South Melbourne and that would have been 1920.
JUNE DALGLIESH: I think they started off happily enough and probably free of dad’s problems, but I don’t know when his problems actually started.
JULIE MELIA: My grandfather had what you would, what we would call a mental breakdown
JUNE DALGLIESH: He just started to imagine things. Became neurotic, I suppose, and imagined there were men hanging around the house.
JULIE MELIA: He was committed to Mont Park Mental Hospital and later transferred to Bundoora.
CASSIE MAY: Quite often symptoms didn’t necessarily arise for the patients immediately after their service. Sometimes it was up to five, six, seven years later that the families at home were finding they weren’t able to cope with their beloved family member, with their mood swings, with their attitude. They weren’t able to work, they were physically unwell, mentally unwell and really not understood in general society.
JUNE DALGLIESH: You know, I can remember being at school and they’d say ‘well what’s wrong with your dad?’ ‘Oh it’s his nerves’ that’s about all that they knew I think.
CASSIE MAY: If you were a returned serviceman, the families were quite keen to distinguish your mental condition from being a normal lunatic to being a returned serviceman. And quite often the conditions were of a better standard and the family had a larger say in the car of their family member.
JULIE MELIA: The difficulty that my grandmother had in having my grandfather’s mental illness and a range of other physical ailments – there were very few that were accepted as being war-related.
JUNE DALGLIESH: His good friend that he came out to England, out from England with, he wrote a letter at the time supporting mum, and all that for her to get a pension
JULIE MELIA: The letter that, that Eric Bramer wrote in support of my grandfather’s mental illness being accepted as war related, as a war injury, um the letter actually describes Wilfred before Gallipoli and Wilfred after.
JUNE DALGLIESH: And he finished his letter off by saying that ‘and may I say’ he said that ‘at the loss of Wilf’s sanity’. So.
CASSIE MAY: That’s why facilities such as Bundoora were so important, because they provided a safe place and structured environment and an attempt for thee soldiers to get better and to recuperate.
JULIE MELIA: I came out here to, to visit my grandfather, to visit my grandfather, Wilfred.
JUNE DALGLIESH: It was just something that we were going to go and see Dad, you know, we took his afternoon tea and when we first came, of course, we were both, my sister and I, were both young and mum and dad would walk in the room and mum would say go and meet dad and we’d go and meet dad and he’d give us a kiss. Yeah. It was lovely.
JULIE MELIA: That’s what our family did, our family came out to Bundoora in the same way that my, my mother came out to Bundoora when she was a child with her mother.
JUNE DALGLIESH: He would talk but a lot of the time he was speaking so softly. A lot of times I think he was talking to himself really. And then he liked to jot things down on a piece of paper and he’d say to mum ‘have you got a pencil?’ and she’d give him a pencil and he’d write something down and he’d have a little chuckle, and she’d say ‘what are you laughing at?’
JULIE MELIA: He hunched over and um, he constantly had a cigarette and I believe that that’s really how he spent most, most of his days here.
JUNE DALGLIESH: He would have been here about thirty-six, thirty seven years. Yeah. He died in 1972.
CASSIE MAY: The exhibition aims to bring out those personal sides. We’re able to view the Army records or the medical records but it totally doesn’t put a name and a face or a story together that these were real people – real men with families– that they were loved ones ultimately.
JULIE MELIA: I think it’s been wonderful for mum because she, she looks at that photo and she says he looks happier.
-----------------------------------------
Music Credits Gunshot, written and performed by Cavanagh and Argus, copyright Cavanagh and Argus, 2012. Rise (Ambient), written and performed by Tony Anderson, The Music Bed, 2014.
Image Credits
1. The Smith Family pose on the front steps of Bundoora Homestead, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre Collection.
2. The Smith Family in the driveway of Bundoora Homestead, Bundoora Homestead Art Centre Collection.
3. Photograph - Walking wounded soldiers repatriated to Australia come down the gangplank at Port Melbourne, J00327, Australian War Memorial.
4. Photograph - Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital, Victoria. View of the old homestead now an open ward, H19366, Australian War Memorial.
26. Photograph - The Administration block of the Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital, Victoria. A car parked outside, H19367, Australian War Memorial.
27. Photograph - An unidentified member of staff stands in the dining room at the Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital, H19372, Australian War Memorial.
42. Wilfred Collinson, c. 1920, courtesy of June Dalgliesh.
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This is story of the Bundoora Homestead, which was home to hundreds of returned servicemen for over seventy years. It is the story of the hidden cost of war.
For some men, Bundoora was a respite, a break from a world that didn't understand the horrors of war they had experienced. For others, Bundoora was a place from which they would never leave.
This film has been made to honour long term resident Wilfred Collinson and men like him, whose service to their country left indelible scars.
Thank you to June Dalgliesh and Julie Melia for being willing to return to a place so full of memories to share the story of their father, grandfather and long term Bundoora Repatriation Hospital resident Wilfred Smith Collinson.
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home - Snapshot One', 2014
Courtesy of AMaGA (Vic)
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home - Snapshot One', 2014
-There was an expectation at the time for returned servicemen to be able to return back to their lives, to return to their jobs, and be a productive member of community as they were prior to their service. Some patients were here for a short time. Some were here for decades.
-I hardly ever saw the other patients really, except one man, whose sister used to come and visit him. But I can remember one day when a younger man walked in. And I remember my mum saying, look at that poor fella. He'll be here for the rest of his life.
-I remember looking up this particular day, and there was a group. I don't know whether it was a family group, or whether it was a group of patients. But I remember there was a man and a woman. And they started dancing. And they were dancing on the foot path, and as a little girl, I just remember knowing that it was very unusual.
I'd seen adults dancing, and I'd seen adults partying, and having a lot of fun together. But you never saw it without music.
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Bundoora Repatriation Hospital was home to hundreds of returned servicemen over more than seventy years. There is little documentation of the lives and daily experiences of these men.
In this film snapshot, the daughter and granddaughter of long term resident Wilfred Collinson reflect on their memories of other patients at Bundoora Repatriation Hospital.
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home - Snapshot Two', 2014
Courtesy of AMaGA (Vic)
Film - Joel Checkley and Belinda Ensor, 'Coming Home - Snapshot Two', 2014
-He came into the hospital when my mother was three, so the old man that I visited at Bundoora when I was a little girl, up until being a teenager, that was all I knew of him. So a couple of years ago, after looking at the records online, and reading through them, and reading letters from various family members, and Eric Brimer. I began to get a better understanding of exactly who Wilfred Collinson is. And what became apparent in the files was the difficulty that my grandmother had in having my grandfather's mental illness accepted as being war related.
So I get more of a sense of what she was like from reading the letters that she wrote in support of my grandfather's pension appeals. And to be able to see these letters, which in my mother's generation, got thrown out. So to know that they're not only preserved, but anybody who wants to look can find something if they have a connection with the Australian War Memorial, for instance. This can go on for generations.
-Julie's done a wonderful thing for me by researching all dad's family, because I said to her not long ago, if you don't do anything else for me for the rest of my life, this has been the best thing you've ever done.
--------------------------------
Image Credits
1. Wilfred Collinson, c. 1920, courtesy of June Dalgliesh.
2. Wilfred Collinson, Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital, January 1972, courtesy of June Dalgliesh.
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June Dalgliesh and Julie Melia reflect on their mother and grandmother, Carline Collinson.
It was Carline's battle with authorities for acknowledgement of her husband's mental illness and its connection to his war service that brought Wilfred Collinson to Bundoora in 1937. This part of Carline's story is documented in Wilfred Collinson's Repatriation File, held at the National Archives of Australia.
Photograph - 'Residents at Bundoora Repatriation Hospital, 1970', 1970, National Archives of Australia
Courtesy of National Archives of Australia (Object Reg B6295 2604D)
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Courtesy of National Archives of Australia (Object Reg B6295 2604D)
This photograph, depicts residents at Bundoora Repatriation Hospital in 1970.
It is one of very few known images depicting the daily lives and realities of the men who called Bundoora home. It is unknown who these men are or their stories. The photograph was taken as part of the documentation of Commonwealth buildings undertaken by the Department of Works.
The Bundoora Homestead Art Centre is hoping to uncover more photographs and the identity of the unknown men pictured above through their Coming Home project.
Photograph - 'The Administration Block of the Bundoora Repatriation Hospital', c.1939-1945, Australian War Memorial
Courtesy of Australian War Memorial (Object Reg H19367)
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Courtesy of Australian War Memorial (Object Reg H19367)
This photograph, shows the administration building of Bundoora Repatriation Hospital.
This grand building, which has since been demolished, would have been central to the efficient running of the hospital. The building’s architectural style and the car parked out front suggest it was built sometime between the wars.
Photograph - 'Wilfred Collinson', c.1920
Courtesy of Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria
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Courtesy of Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria
This candid, happy portrait of Wilfred Collinson was taken in 1920 after his First World War service. Wilfred Collinson enlisted in 1914 when he was just 19 years old.
After the war, he returned to Melbourne and married Carline Aminde the year this photograph was taken. Neither Wilfred or Carline could foresee that the trauma from his war experience would lead Wilfred to Bundoora Repatriation Hospital, where he would live for 35 years until his death in 1972.
Photograph - 'Bundoora Interior Ward', 1961, National Archives of Australia
Courtesy of National Archives of Australia (Object Reg A7342 V24)
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