After going through the site during Dark MOFO I was taken by surprise how some people had written messages on their mirrors to loved ones. It doesn’t take much to realise how profound these are. I started to look through the documents that I have to see if I could find a matching name and time frame. I could only find this:
In 1975 in M Ward I found someone with the same name. They were 9 years of age at the time and had already been there for 2 years which would have made them 7 when that entered the Hospital in 1973. This part of the hospital closed in 2000 and the children were the first to move out, so I don’t think this is the person or the right fit for the data I have.
On another issue, in excess of 260 mirrors were found and counted during the week leading up to the recent Open Day. This is after the staff from Dark MOFO had “removed” them after Mike Parr’s performance during the Dark MOFO 2016 event. Some had been stuck to Heritage walls and there is now damage. Some people had pushed their mirror onto the walls by finding cracks or even creating new places in the old walls to leave their mirror.
One original plaster wall collapsed shortly after the event and it was believed to be because of the foot traffic up the stairs. Another ceiling plaster had also collapsed, this was believed to be original and dating back to the first construction in 1830 according to Brett Noble, Archaeologist.
The Archaeology team from Flinders University are preparing a report of what they found when they visited the site in January 2017. It is hoped the the Derwent Valley Council can then look at this and make informed decisions about the use of the site, obligations of users and create policy and procedures about the sensitive use and compensation around damage caused to the site in the future. The Council manage this site on behalf of the people of Tasmania.
The site is unsafe to walk around because of the broken glass (mirrors). Also left behind are power cables and even a large screen that was used for one of Mike Parr’s films.
It is unclear who was responsible for doing a final inspection of the site after it was handed back to the Derwent Valley Council, but it appears to be a big fail in ensuring that the site was left in a condition it was found in.
