Author: Kahlen Day
Note on architecture: The building currently known as Building 31 at Baillie Henderson Hospital was first constructed in 1902 as Female Ward 4. In its most recent history, the Building was used to house the Toowoomba Hospital and Baillie Henderson Hospital historical collections and maintained by a dedicated committee. No longer open to the public, Building 31 is now used by the current Museum Committee and their volunteers for archiving and preparing the collection for the new Museum of Health.
Building 31 has been one of my favorite working experiences as a Trainee with the Toowoomba Hospital Foundation, not only being able to gain an understanding on the process and working with old files but the amazing team at Building 31 that has grown into a family. Having these wonderful people surrounding you makes you enjoy the work you do so much more.
It was very interesting going through the old Baillie Henderson files and seeing how young people were admitted and the reasoning behind them being admitted. It was fun being able to share the stories you found with the team, them sharing the same interest and even having their own stories to tell you.
Building 31 itself is just so fascinating to walk through and see all the old instruments and furniture that used to be used. There is a small room filled with books and one of the books was called Psychological Problems with a list of things that were considered problems.
There is also a massive pool table that was just so cool to me. I was telling my partner about it because it was just so big, I couldn’t get over it. The team at Building 31 ended up finding the pool balls and cue and we would play a game every Tuesday on our lunch break.
One afternoon when I was doing a tour of Building 31 for my mum, we were walking back down the stairs, and we saw a little footprint which was interesting because I had never seen a footprint there and I had walked up and down those stairs so many times. Not long after I saw the footprint one of the volunteers Shayne had found a little wooden boot mold that fit the footprint perfectly but when you work at buildings like this one you find these types of things – a little bit shocking, but also fascinating!
Working with everyone there and creating memories is such an incredible thing to experience in a workplace. Savannah and I, the other Trainee when we first started, we got to set up our own desks and own computers and she loved doing all of that because she was into technology, so it was nice to see her excited about setting it all up and making it look nice.
Another experience that was nice to be a part of was watching Sues, my supervisor, get so happy about compactors that we had delivered to Building 31. It is just nice seeing people be happy with the little things in life. With the compactors put in, this meant that we could start making up archive boxes and putting them in the compactors. We made it a challenge on how fast we could make the boxes since they were ones you had to fold and put together yourself. That is now knowledge that I have now and was fun to acquire!
Another thing that I learned how to do is work an oral history voice recorder it is called Zoom H4N Pro. Sues organised a meeting with Glennys another volunteer so she could give Savannah and I a run down on how it worked. I haven’t just been involved in small meetings; I have also sat in with a meeting with some of the Committee members to talk about programs that could be used to improve the work efficiency within Building 31. I can’t wait for many more memories to come.
Volunteer with the Museum of Health
Volunteers play an important role in the development of our museum and management of our collection.
