Bench Seat

The bench is cast iron and timber, and it has been a long time since anyone sat on it. The slats are buried under a continuous growth of lichen and moss, green and grey layered so densely the original timber grain is barely distinguishable. The grass around it is long and uncut, growing up against the legs and into the frame. Behind the bench, a weatherboard building with a verandah stands in soft focus, its form still readable but its detail swallowed by overgrowth and distance. Queen Victoria Sanitorium was established on Kings Tableland, 4 kilometres south of Wentworth Falls, by the Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Homes for Consumptives Fund Committee. The land had previously been owned by businessman George Eccles Kelso King, who sold the tableland property to the Committee for GBP 1,250 after his wife Irene's death in 1900. The sanatorium formally opened on 18 February 1903, with accommodation for 20 male tuberculosis patients. The site at that time encompassed approximately 500 acres; the buildings cost around GBP 5,000. The complex was designed by architect George Sydney Jones, who produced an Edwardian pavilion-plan campus between 1902 and 1921. Jones was the son of Sir Philip Sydney Jones, the physician who had championed open-air tuberculosis treatment in New South Wales and served as the institution's founding president. Twelve open-air chalets were constructed for consumptive patients, designed to maximise exposure to fresh mountain air. A recreation hall, the Philip Sydney Jones Hall, was added in 1921 and named for the founding physician. The sanatorium functioned as a tuberculosis facility for 55 years. In 1958 its purpose changed: it became a hospital for the aged and chronically ill, and later a nursing home. It operated continuously until May 1999, a total of 96 years. The 372-hectare site has stood unused since, with an onsite caretaker keeping the garden. The bench in the foreground and the weatherboard building behind it are what remain.