Hawkesbury People & Places
Peat Island
Hospital
Reference: pp 91-92
Peat Island lies in the Hawkesbury River towards the eastern shore and upstream of the freeway bridge. Formerly known as Rabbit Island because its shape is said to resemble a rabbit. The first use of the current name appears to have been in 1936. George Peat was granted land nearby in 1831. The island was linked to the mainland by a causeway in the early 1950s. It appears as Rabbit Island or Goat Island on a Lands Department map of 1898.
Records of the buildings on the island and its time as an institution are held by State Archives NSW and surviving documentation includes Peat and Milson Island Register of Patients and Admission from 1911-1958 and from 1958 to 1970; the Medical Journal and the Register of Discharges Removals and Deaths from 1911 to 1965. Contact State Archives for further details.
It seems that some of the people who died on one of the islands were buried in unmarked graves in Brooklyn Cemetery. Some of the plaques commemorating the deaths of inmates were found in 2016 at another government facility, Wadalba, on the Central Coast.
Read more about the history of Peat Island as a goverment institution in the Kuringai Examiner 17 July 2014 by Sandra https://www.kgex.com.au/new-life-dark-history/
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