rob's experience @ Queen Mary Hospital
Proud Mary
Been sitting on these pictures for a while.. Now seems as good a time as any to put them up. A mate heard about this place and brought up the idea of going on a bit of a roadie to check it out…
Located right by the hot pools in the hanmer village (currently residing in pixellated oblivion on the map) Queen Mary started life as a WW1 veterens hospital and since then has had a variety of medical uses, with it’s last function (before closing in 2003) being a retreat for people with substance abuse problems.
This ‘Hanmer Clinic’ drug rehab unit was closed under interesting circumstances: The government had created a private company to operate the hospital and funded it with taxdollars. When it was decided that the hospital no longer fitted the vision of the country’s health system, the company’s funding was cut so severely that it was forced into liquidation and the hospital closed its doors. However, the now-broke private company still holds the lease to the hospital campus until 2019. The Canterbury District Health Board considers the site to be surplus to requirements and is dead-set on selling this land to ngai tahu, who (for some reason) get first dibs on the land. This intent to sell the site has ticked off the local inhabitants who feel the hospital’s historic buildings and gardens should remain in public hands to prevent it being flattened by a developer.
This convoluted set of affairs appears to have left the hospital in a kind of limbo.
After some last-minute organization, we piled into the corolla and headed up State Highway 1, along the way we indulged in a marijuana cigarette, feeling it only proper to load up on drugs before paying the rehab clinic a visit.
The hospital is quite well-hidden from the road – during my childhood trips to the hanmer hot-pools I hadn’t even noticed a hospital right next door. Google maps wasn’t much help either due to most of the hospital being stuck under crappy resolution, fortunately one of my mates was better acquainted with the campus than I was and he led the way down a long driveway. Rounding a corner we came to some buildings that looked like they were related to grounds maintenence. We noticed that alot of the buildings on the campus had lights on, and one of the first things I noticed was a brightly-lit small room with a number of blueprints laid out on a table! This seemed like far too good a score so soon after entering the campus, assuming the room was alarmed with the blueprints set out as explorer-bait we continued towards one of the larger buildings.
Upon reaching the building I snapped a few shots of the outside before we proceeded around the back to look for a way in. Unfortunately for us this building was sealed tight as a nut, judging from the condition and style of the interior this is because the building is one of the few ones onsite that are considered historic.
We left this building and headed in the direction of the smoke stack – these buildings were wide open and contained a gigantic boiler as well as a number of other interesting pieces of plant machinery. From there we headed towards another set of wards – as we approached this double-winged building from across a large expanse of grass, the light in a single-window flicked on and off, giving our approach an awesome paranormal-slasher-flick atmosphere.
This building was not quite as well-sealed, but still alive with electricity – a number of lights are still on and even some of the little ‘nurse-call’ lamps are lit in the corridoor outside the wards. We managed to find the haunted room with the fizzing light – it was just a boring old toilet that smelt of the same cleaning products that they must’ve used at my primary school. After exploring these wards and taking a few more photos, we figured we had pushed our luck enough and, while vowing to return to explore the rest of the campus, decided that it was time to leave.
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Uploaded by zuriel
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