Reckoning with the haunting past of Brisbane's Wolston Park

Unimaginable abuse took place behind the walls of Wolston Park, but what to do with the symbol of Queensland's dark past remains a vexed issue.

Debbie Manson has been haunted by Wolston Park Mental Hospital for almost 40 years.

But today, she is confronting her trauma head on.

"I live every day with what I went through ... nothing stops that," she says.

In the late 1980s, Debbie was detained in Osler House, an adult ward for women judged criminally insane. 

She shouldn't have been there at all — she wasn't a criminal, but a suicidal teenager who was sleeping rough to escape a violent home.

Debbie alleges she was raped, beaten and chemically restrained during the six months she spent at the ward.

An ABC investigation into historic allegations of patient mistreatment and abuse at the Brisbane facility has sparked a government review, due to begin this year.

Now, for the first time, our camera crew has been given exclusive access to capture this fading nightmare.

Room three

Wide-eyed, Debbie steps into Osler House.

It's taken an awful amount of courage to return.

"This was my room, room three," she says.

A room is a generous description. It's more like a concrete cell.

"If you wanted to see the staff, and provided you weren't too bad, you could reach the alert buzzer here to alert the staff you wanted to go to the toilet," she says.

"But they'd never come during the night time."

It's a muggy day and there's little ventilation, except for gaps in the broken glass windows and holes in the roof.

Strips of paint hang from the bathroom ceiling and a beer bottle sits discarded on the floor.

"Death will hunt you down" is scribbled on one cell.

"I see dead people" screams the graffiti in another room.

The abandoned ward has been boarded up to stop ghost hunters and urban explorers from causing further damage.

Debbie says staff treated patients like they were "Hannibal Lecters". She'd often wonder what she'd done to end up in such a place.

On the side she was in, she was not allowed her own clothing, belongings or a photograph of her family.

In the "good girl section", which sat parallel, patients were allowed a desk, paintings and a few other personal items.

Debbie says patients spent most of their time wandering aimlessly around the yard, fenced in like farm animals.

"People who commit murder get treated better than how we were treated in Osler House," she says.

Debbie alleges that after being sexually abused by staff, she walked out of Osler House with Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. 

The condition is often caused by untreated sexually transmitted diseases like gonorrhoea and chlamydia.

"I had to try and explain to a male doctor how I got that after being in an all-female ward," she says.

Straitjackets and locked boots

Wolston Park was Queensland's first public mental health facility and is almost as old as the state itself.

First known as the Woogaroo Lunatic Asylum and later renamed Goodna Hospital for the Insane, the site and its patients were heavily stigmatised.

In its early days the facility was a custodial environment, with patients restrained by straitjackets and boots locked onto their feet, says Jo Besley, former curator of histories and community at the Brisbane Museum.

Patients were allowed more freedom with the introduction of anti-psychotic medication, but the stigma and reports of abuse persisted.

"When I was growing up, in older generations, just the word Goodna basically meant you're crazy, you're a loony, you should be in Goodna," Ms Besley says.

"That's the kind of thing people said in the schoolyard."

That sense of separation between patients and the community was reinforced by how they travelled to the facility, she adds.

Back in 1865, the first patients were transported to the "asylum" on a steamer on the banks of the Brisbane River.

In the 1920s and 1950s, they were taken by rail in "lunatic" and "leper" carriages to avoid offending other passengers. Later, it was in a police wagon.

Throughout its long history, the facility has been a dumping ground for all kinds of patients, including those with post-natal depression, epilepsy, mental illness, alcoholism and people living in poverty with few options.

"There were a lot of people who shouldn't have been there," Ms Besley says.

"Young people who were sent there from hospitals, carceral environments, children's homes and orphanages.

"Often it was a case of difficult behaviour."

Despite the facility's enduring history, there are few photos of the institution.

"Sensitive" Queensland Health records of Wolston Park are sealed for 100 years, unless obtained through Right To Information requests. 

"I don't think the government has been transparent about the site and its history," Ms Besley says.

'Grab, drag and jab'

Survivors have fought for decades to be heard. But now, not many are left.

Those who remain would like to see the state confront its ugly past.

Some have argued previous attempts to right wrongs have been small and exclusory.

There was an apology by the Queensland government in 2010 and compensation granted to nine wards of the state in 2017, but patients and their families argue it's not only wards of the state who have suffered.

Other former adult and child patients have been harmed by their experiences — including those with disabilities, epilepsy and mental health conditions.

An investigation by the ABC in August sparked the announcement of a review into patient experiences at Wolston Park from the 1950s to 1990s, which is expected to be completed in late 2025.

The news was welcomed not only by patients, but also by former staff.

S* trained at Wolston Park in the 1980s before eventually working there as a nurse.

She didn't last long.

"I can't say I enjoyed my time at Wolston Park," she says.

"They had this saying 'grab, drag and jab' — you grabbed the patient … dragged them to the exclusion room, held them down and jabbed them."

S has been a mental health nurse for 40 years, but she vividly recalls the "appalling" treatment of patients at the facility.

She says the shower at Osler House was a cesspit of abuse.

"Males often did the shower duty … one male nurse in particular I saw touch a female," she says.

"I reported that to the school and … [they] said they knew these things happened there and it was best to keep my head down and finish my placement."

On other occasions, she says she saw staff encourage a male patient with highly sexualised behaviours to approach women at the weekly dance.

"I saw two nurses go up to [him] and say 'she said she likes you, she wants to f*** you, why don't you go over and ask her to dance?'

"He'd get very inappropriate … and then staff would give him an intramuscular injection ... I saw patients being goaded for the pleasure of staff."

She says there was also neglect, with all 21 women in Osler House expected to share two toothbrushes.

"I ordered two dozen toothbrushes … and when the charge nurse came back, she said I had no right [to do that].

"Patients weren't seen as people — they were seen as bad, not mad."

'Too many memories'

When Wolston Park closed in 2001, it was already worn out and in need of a face lift.

More than 20 years on, the heritage-listed buildings are unlikely to be demolished, but time is claiming some parts of the site.

Ownership of the site is a complex issue.

Queensland police owns some of the buildings, including Osler House, while Queensland Health owns others.

Both deny the site is in ruins and say most of the buildings are in use or have been repurposed — but not everybody wants them to stay.

"My opinion — pull it down," former patient Paul says. 

"It brings too many memories."

But Debbie doesn't want Queenslanders to forget.

As she walks through the tired old ward, she sees a brighter future for the glum site: a memorial garden where the public can acknowledge and learn from the dark history of Wolston Park.

"Knocking down the buildings wipes the truth from being told as … there's no permanent reminder of the mistakes of the past," she says.

"It's not the buildings which destroyed our lives. It was the people who worked there."

For now, a boom gate and guard hut on the northern side of the complex deter meandering members of the public.

The row of old buildings, owned by the Queensland Police Service, sit in the shadow of a police training academy where recruits shoot firearms and learn tactical skills.

On the southern side of the complex is The Park Centre for Mental Health, a psychiatric hospital owned by West Moreton Hospital and Health Service and Queensland Health.

A vacuum of information about the sprawling site has given rise to countless rumours, including the existence of tunnels and dungeons, says Dr Adele Chynoweth, a historian and author of Goodna Girls.

Such suggestions need to be unpicked by experts, who can unearth the truth of Wolston Park's dark history, she adds.

"The review needs to include professionals … and be informed by those who have a strong association with [the site], including former patients."

A promise kept

The barbed wire fence has been torn down, but an old mango tree stands tall in the yard of Osler House.

Debbie remembers picking up the rotten fruit and tossing them at her friend, another teenager, named K.

When boredom took hold, they'd have mango fights and race up the fence as staff screamed at them to get down.

Debbie says K died from suicide at the facility before she was due to be released.

She promised her friend she'd never forget her.

"I kept my promise," Debbie cries as she ties flowers around a pole in honour of K.

A week on from her visit, Debbie's nightmares have stopped, and the hallucinations are fading away.

For the first time in more than two years, she's been able to shower for longer than five minutes without constant flashbacks of the alleged abuse.

"I walked into the place which destroyed me … I stood in my cell, and I picked up that very scared 17-year-old girl and carried her out of that place," Debbie says.

"I feel that there is now hope for my future after 37 years."

Credits:

Reporter: Eden Gillespie

Video and photography: Mark Leonardi and Chris Gillette

Digital production: Jessica Black

Editor: Bridget Walker