Health Services Unit 2021.
In 2021 the Health Services Unit (HSU) and Allied Health were located in what was originally opened in 1960 as the R.L. Williams Nurses’ Residence. In November and December 2021 photographer Catharine Neilson visited a couple of times and wandered through the corridors and offices of the building. Earlier in the year some of the spaces were used for a Covid Clinic. These had become empty and, given the impending move to the new hospital, it was decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to move staff back into these spaces.
There were also other spaces and corners that told stories about past uses of the building, and there were still some staff working from the premises.
Catharine’s photographs capture some of the different stories and uses that sat within and outside the building on the days she visited.
To see photograph titles, hover over the images.
Staff
Inside spaces and details
Personalised spaces; empty desks, offices, bedrooms; worn furniture and furnishings; abandoned and sometimes broken equipment and items; architectural features; occupied work spaces - these are the aspects that captured Catharine’s photographer’s eye. There was a strong sense of the adaptive reuse of the building, and there was an equally strong sense that the current services and uses of the building were being wound up. Catharine was also attracted to small details and still life compositions that captured this mixed sense of occupied and still being used but, at the same time, a sense of going and gone.
Covid and Covid Testing Clinic
Outside spaces and views
The building opened in 1960, served as a nurses’ residence until the mid-1980s, and was then adapted for a variety of uses with some of the accommodation remaining as accommodation - for patients’ families and for others. This history and the changing uses are reflected in outside spaces and views: photographs of the balconies for bedrooms, glimpses of gardens, unkempt patches, wear and tear.
