Patio

The concrete patio at Queen Victoria Sanitorium has been splitting slowly since the facility closed in May 1999. Plants have pushed through the fractures, widening gaps that no maintenance crew will ever fill. Sunlight crosses the broken surface the way it always did on Kings Tableland, at around 867 metres elevation, where the air was the point. The sanitorium was formally opened on 18 February 1903, on approximately 500 acres of tableland south of Wentworth Falls purchased from businessman George Eccles Kelso King for GBP 1,250. The site was chosen deliberately. Architects and physicians of the Edwardian period held that fresh mountain air, cold baths, and open exposure were the most effective treatments available for tuberculosis. The complex was designed around that belief by architect George Sydney Jones, son of the founding physician Sir Philip Sydney Jones. Jones produced a pavilion-plan campus of open-air chalets, pavilion wards, and institutional buildings across two decades of construction, with the Philip Sydney Jones Hall added in 1921. The facility treated male tuberculosis patients until 1958, when the TB sanatorium function ceased after 55 years and the site was converted to a hospital for the aged and chronically ill. It continued operating in that capacity until closure, accumulating 96 years of continuous use in total. After May 1999, three separate ownership changes produced no redevelopment. The 372-hectare site was listed for auction in September 2012. The buildings remained standing and continued to deteriorate. Asbestos contamination was documented. Perimeter fencing went up. This photograph, made in 2015, records the patio as the plateau's seasons were steadily finishing what closure began. The concrete is fractured. The plants are patient. The tableland light is unchanged.