5 Jun 2008 | Nick Hartgerink
History and Politics Research Day to feature . . .
Uncovering the Mystery of the Marsiling Dungeons
UOW’s School of History and Politics will tomorrow (Friday 6 June) hold its annual Research Day. Two presentations that will be held in the same session are “Uncovering the Mystery of the Marsiling Dungeons” and “Histories from the Asylum: ‘The Unknown Patient’.
In 2006, an investigative group in Singapore researching on local popular and cultural beliefs unknowingly stumbled on an unusual underground tunnel system. Located deep in a secluded forest between the Woodlands and Marsiling district of Singapore it was dubbed the Woodlands Tunnels.
It was also given the ominous nickname, the Marsiling Dungeons. The national newspapers in Singapore covered the story extensively. The Land Authority of Singapore and the National Heritage Board had no records of the tunnels and were unable to identify their purpose. Singaporean academic historians, architects and archaeologists were also consulted on the tunnels but were not able to offer a clear explanation.
Speculations from the public further fuelled the mysterious nature of this tunnel structure until 2008 when archival and fieldwork research, including that of an intrepid UOW PhD researcher, John Kwok, finally uncovered the truth and untangled the mystery of the Marsiling Dungeons.
Histories from the Asylum: ‘The Unknown Patient’
The bodies of more than 25,000 of the 60,000 Australians who were killed during the Great War of 1914-1918 were either unidentified or unidentifiable. The grief of families of the ‘missing’ was intensified by the lack of certainty regarding their fate. Even into the 1920s, many families clung to the slim hope that perhaps a mistake had been made and their son, brother or husband might still be alive, yet unable to find his way home.
The closed psychiatric files of Sydney’s Callan Park Mental Hospital have revealed a soldier whose family was informed in 1916 that he was missing, presumed killed, but who ‘came back from the dead’ in 1928. Unable to identify himself when found wandering and incoherent on the Western Front, he was returned to Sydney and committed to Callan Park for treatment.
He was referred to as ‘The Unknown Patient’. After 12 years at the asylum, he was finally identified and reunited with his mother, who had never given up hope that her son somehow may have survived the war.
Using NSW Department of Health archival files, Jen Hawksley’s paper tomorrow will tell the story of this Unknown Patient and, in doing so, examines the power of grief and memory and the social impact of war. It will further explore the realities of life within the asylum walls during the 1920s. Jen Hawksley is a Research Assistant in the Faculty of Arts. Jen is the first person to be granted access to the files of Callan Park.
For further information contact Dr Charles Hawksley on (02) 4221 3087.
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