"Here by itself, atop a quiet hill
holding darkness within, its heartbeat long stilled.
A century gone and half of one more, Rusten House,
here it stands, battered and worn.
Silence lays steadily against wood and stone
But whatever walks here still, walks here alone."
In every sense it's a tale of life and death.
The crumbling stone, Victorian-epoch edifice - once one of the most significant buildings in the then Canberra region - stands atop an elevated rise overlooking the place it catered to for almost three quarters of a century.
For years it's been forlorn and largely forgotten, its empty corridors and darkened rooms echoing with whispers of a history filled with equal parts heartache and happiness.
Its revival though, 160 years after first coming into being is but a heartbeat away.
The Queanbeyan District Public Hospital, completed at the end of 1861 and opened the following year, provided medical services, such as they were, to the wider area – including early Canberra – until superseded in 1933.
It was the second establishment to fulfil the role, though the first, the Benevolent Asylum of 1847, was more a private affair and received no government love.
That was instigated by a posse of committed townsfolk, among them, the first Police Magistrate, Captain Alured Tasker Faunce, on his property, the perhaps now not terribly PC “Irishtown” – essentially where the Queanbeyan Golf Course is located today.
Primitive to say the least, the Asylum was run in conjunction with the similarly ramshackle local lock-up, little more than a rudimentary timber shack from which the prisoners regularly escaped.
The gaoler of the time was a fellow by the name of William Rusten; his wife, Mary, was appointed as the town's first Matron – and by all accounts, a most remarkable woman. She was described as possessing “many estimable qualities, an attentive nurse and a trustworthy public servant … one who discharged the duties of matron faithfully and efficiently.”
On the opening of the District Hospital, Mary became a permanent fixture there, remaining in situ for 21 years before dying in the very place where she ably attended so many others. During the course of her duties, she and her husband William, even adopted two children whose parents had died while within her care (in addition to having two children of their own).
Rusten House, the lovely building now named for her, was constructed of hand-hewn stone quarried some distance from the town, and it offered 16 beds with separate male and female wards.
Plentiful tales of madness, mayhem, disease and disaster continue to haunt it, giving an idea of the harshness of life in those early times – and the swiftness of death.
While there was obviously many a birth and occasional stories of survival, as with so many of those facilities in those earliest periods, it was initially literally a waiting room for the graveyard.
Electricity wasn't even connected until 1921.
Giving voice to the notion that odds for walking out again were not that flash, in its first years of operation, for four years in a row, a total of 11 patients were admitted, and in each of those years four of them died – one, a Joseph Cooper, not even making it as far as a bed, actually expiring on the doorstep.
A year after the creation of the nation's capital, Canberra, right next door to Queanbeyan, in 1914 the doors of its first medical facility at Acton were opened.
The Canberra Community Hospital possessed a mere eight beds and services were apparently well below par as Queanbeyan remained the hub, particularly when it came to delivering babies.
In fact, so many Canberrans continued to cross the border to utilise Queanbeyan's services that in the 1920s, the Council proposed charging a higher fee for all interlopers contributing unduly to the town's lengthy waiting lists!
A famous patient or two was also treated at Queanbeyan, including war historian Charles Bean (not combat inflicted); he left with his health restored - and his soon-to-be bride, Sr Ethel 'Effie' Young.
By 1933, the Queanbeyan hospital could no longer cater to growing demand and the next incarnation of the Southern District Hospital with its 25 beds was constructed. Declared in the Sydney Morning Herald of the time as “one of the finest in the State”, it would meet its demise 75 years later to make way for yet the next in 2008.
For a time the original old faithful continued to serve as nurses quarters and then in ancillary roles, but for any number of years now its insides have remained unseen by the public it so nobly served.
Heritage-listed, an ongoing strong advocacy campaign was waged over many years, but inevitably finances were the issue.
Now though, on the 160th anniversary since first it became a reality, on a joint effort by the NSW Government and the Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional Council, Rusten House has flung open its doors once more, transformed as a vibrant regional arts hub and community space - a return it to its former glory and delivering for the greater good once more.
When can we visit to see inside? I've been driving past the outside for decades now ...