Abandoned - a photographic journey

While we mainly went back to the town where Andy spent a big chunk of his life growing up in, to spend Christmas with his family, I fell in love with a certain aspect of Morawa – the abandonment.  I know that there’s a thriving community of wonderful people that live there however this is not how my camera saw it on Christmas morning. It had an eerie beauty.  

 

The wide streets. Not a soul to be seen or heard, not even the sound of people laughing or talking, just the screech of Sulphur Crested cockatoos.

'Where are all the people?'

'They're all inside unwrapping presents', Andy said.

 

But shouldn't there be kids trying out their new bikes?

 

 

Found this classic down the side of the Museum.

 

 

The sparseness leaves many city people feeling unnerved.

 

 

Apparently Salt bush takes a few years to grow, indicating how long these cars have been there.

The lesser used end of the main street. I can only imagine what this would have been like in it’s heyday.  

Now I found this really creepy. I daren’t ask what they put on their hands to mark those prints

Those were the good old days, when you could buy guns and toys in the one convenient location.  

Lost streets.

Empty.

Wide enough to swallow you up.

Soul and all.

 

 

There were many houses like this dotted around town and this one was in better condition than most.

Morawa is hot, very hot and hot for long painful stretches of the year. Most people, like the houses have been weathered by it and there's only one thing people can do - retreat inside and pull the down shutters.  

This is the old Morawa Regional hospital where Andy worked for 10 years. It’s now been replaced by a new modern ‘medical centre’ next door and leaving the original hospital to rot and decay. Ruin Porn in the making.

I love this stuff.

Peeking through the front window down the main entrance way. It was a little bittersweet for Andy to see a place where he’d worked for so long, created many memories and forged lots of friendships to be in a state such as this.

The Midwifery Section is rumoured to be haunted. Andy recalls the time when as an orderly he was mopping the floors and saw a lady in a red cape pass behind him.

When he asked if anybody else had seen her, they said no. They all worked out he must have seen a glimpse of the ghost, which they assume was of an old nurse.   

It’s like everyone just walked away.

 

The mortuary. I would have loved to have seen inside, but alas it was locked.

 

The old ambulance bay.

 

I have no idea what type of bed this is and what it’s doing in the car park but it sums up the overall feeling of the old abandoned hospital.

 

The rear of the hospital complete with Ambulance Bay.
 

There's always some morbid train crash type of fascination I think most of us have with old abandoned places. They reflect back our own deep fear of hopelessness, loss and of our own  abandoning.

Each abandoned building seems devoid of life, of people, of love and a sense of purpose. It's just a lifeless shell. Dead.

Death.

Our own death.

Maybe looking into these abandoned places gives us a chance to see what our own death might be like.

Morbid curiosity.

There's nothing like it.

If you want to find out what happens when you die, read about my journey to find out in Dying To Know: is there life after death.