rob's experience @ Hokitika Lunatic Asylum
Seaview
Tangy bought a BJ40 landcruiser from some joker up in Motueka, after about 4hrs of planning we had our tickets and were on a plane flying to Nelson airport.
We had planned on doing a double-banger and going to check out Ngawhatu Psychiatric in Stoke but unfortunately the ‘cruiser needed a spot of maintenance before she was ready for the trip. As usual the repairs wound up taking more time than we expected so we decided just to push for the west-coast and the rumoured asylum that was somewhere in Hokitika.
Found the place almost immediately upon arriving, its on the northern outskirts of town – look for a wee stormwater ditch thats called ‘Seaview Creek’ then turn in from the coast the first chance you get and you should find it without too much trouble.
Place is VERY active, with what I’m starting to think is the norm for abandoned mental asylums in NZ: people living in the old buildings. That said, there is still a large number of buildings that are uninhabited, some in better condition that others.
The campus is pretty large, almost like a small village; with roads, footpaths and random lampposts sprouting out of the marshy ground in the areas where the venerable west-coast bush has begun to reclaim the property.
I’m pretty sure our arrival was of significant interest to the locals: it seemed as though there was a WHOLE heap of traffic soon after we turned up and starting looking around, with the same cars doing laps around the roads and a number of people slowing down to gawk at us.
Undeterred by the vigilante security force, we began poking around the place, starting with a walk around the property, trying to get an idea of which buildings were what etc. The secure ward, which had a small yard surrounded by a 10ft-high inwards-facing fence attached to it, looked like it was in the process of being cleaned and restored, which sucked cos I was hanging out for some padded room action :(
We levelled our sights upon the Weka ‘Villa’ that is situated towards the rear of the campus – it looked suitably derelict with the odd broken and boarded up window, flaking paint and the other usual signs of building neglect. We parked the truck out of sight around the back of the building and went for a look around. Inside was pretty cool as there is a fair bit of old equipment left lying around (but no electroshock machines D:), however it was bloody stressful as the locals persisted in driving around the roads outside, making us very conscious of being seen in the windows and of the noise we were making as we explored the place. At one stage I heard a vehicle pull up fast outside around the back of the building, right by where we’d stashed the truck; the door opened, someone jumped out and the door was slammed violently – I thought we were in for it.
We moved as quickly and quietly as we could to the other side of the building and sat tight, silently shitting our pants. After a wee bit we decided that if whoever was outside intended on coming into the building, they would have done so by now; I went back and snapped a shot of some bathtubs and then we high-tailed it out of there. Once outside we noticed that there was a guy in a ute parked right up next to the building, just sitting there. We snuck around the back and got into our truck without him seeing us then casually drove past him and gave him a wave, to which he responded with a small nod and a steely gaze. We got the impression we weren’t welcome.
The other building we saw the inside of was 2-storied and looked out over the sea, which made it pretty cool to walk around in despite it having a lot more holes in it than the Weka Villa and being pretty much devoid of equipment.
Just as we were leaving we had a quick look at the largest boiler building and realised that this place has full-on walkable steam tunnels! By this time we’d spent about 5hrs looking around the campus and were getting the feeling that we’d very much outstayed our welcome, also we only had 1 torch and the light was quickly fading. We made the hard decision to pass over the tunnels this time, jumped in the truck and made tracks for the Punakaiki pub where cold Monteiths were enjoyed until closing :D
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