what is it, five days that its been raining now? im a little agitated. i dont know if its the rain though, i just know im restless and bothered. i think its just my brain, going around and around, never getting any down time. i didnt help with that this week, im putting a lot of pressure on myself right now to get some specific outcomes related to my mental health nursing research. i got my DECRA response in on time, with lots of help from people and i started writing my fulbright application straight away, and it’s due in august, so i’m really looking to make it clear why i need to spend up to 12 months in the US. so this week i went looking in the archives here to see if my hunches were way off base and i’d need to rethink the whole idea.
so im going to talk a bit about work again but bear with me, i have pretty pictures of old stuff, and then some actual knitting content! and part of my DECRA application was an idea for a ‘work in progess’ research website, so i’m getting in some practice, sorry! (also, my life is so boring i have nothing else to talk about).
i caught the train up to sydney on thursday morning and had work book into me a hotel so i could stay right in the city thursday night and be close to the two places i had to visit up on macquarie st. i was able to check in early and got upgraded to a king deluxe room
i was a bit surprised by the view
hello centerpoint tower. i dont think i’ve ever seen it up so close before, even though i’ve been right to the top on numerous occassions! so i dropped my overnight bag and set off up through the city and across hyde park (looking very lush from all the rain)
and then up macquarie st, first stop sydney hopsital
i love this building, and knowing it was our very first hospital, built way back in 1811 and paid for in rum. of course.
new wings were added later, including this purpose built Nightingale Wing (on the right)
this is the first hospital ward in australia designed along florence nightingale principles, and operated by a ‘lady superintendent’ and 4 sisters she sent out here in 1868. the lady superintendent was Lucy Osburn, a controversial and hugely influential figure in the history of australian nursing, and a whole floor of the nightingale wing is now the Lucy Osburn Nightingale Museum, lovingly restored by Elinor. the museum is open to the public on tuesdays, but on thursday it was just me and elinor. she showed me around the amazing rooms and then set me up in the original nurses lounge with the books she thought i’d need.
these were originals of lucy osburns and i was looking for her ideas about how nurses should be trained and what their early duties were. a lot of that has been destroyed, but i did have fun looking at books that florence herself had sent out here with lucy. it is really amazing to be able to touch those same pages that florence herself had touched.
i only spent a few hours here then scurried in the rain further up macquarie st to the mitchell library in the state library complex. this is one my favourite places in the world to work, it reminds me of the rose main reading room in the schwarzman building of the new york public library in bryant park, except not quite as spectacular!
some of the things i wanted were in the the special collections and i had to sit in a separate area and only use a pencil and gloves and not press down on the book.
lucky you can take digital photos now (no flash), and i got what i wanted from here
im looking for ideas about early mental health nursing and what sort of treatment regimes were put in place and how nurses were trained and used. it was really interesting to read how one man (frederick manning) had done so much to reform psychiatric care in the 1870s. his treatments involved exercise and mental occupation, being gentle to people, long walks in the fresh air. he thought most of the problems of ‘insanity’ were caused by ‘high stress’ living in modern life, and he said that about 50 years before freud did, and he had a great belief in ‘recovery’ – his main aim was to have his patients leave his institutions – he even called them ‘recovered’ as opposed to ‘cured’.
it gave me shivers, and made me a little sad, to think how those ideas got lost for a long time in the twentieth century and are only now starting to find their way back into care. which is the whole point of my research – what makes ideas emerge at certain times and then fade away again, what can we learn from old ways of doing things in a world thats so obsessed with ‘tomorrow’. i was also pleased to see that Dr Manning had been all over the world and spent a lot of time in NY, Boston and Philadelphia looking at institutions as models there. hello fulbright!
anyway, all that work was interspersed with more walks though hyde park
a knitting meet up and dinner with friends (kris, jody, sue, jane – seen in this photo!)
and then back to my big king size hotel bed with the amazing view
i left the library mid afternoon on friday to grab the train from martin place
and it took nearly 2 hours to get home through the rain and the waterfalls falling alongside the rail cuttings through the national park
i tossed and turned last night, thinking about the fulbright application, where do i start with writing a paper from what i just found, so much i need to read, so much i want to do, so little time. then im thinking about the DECRA and maybe i might get it, and no i wont get it, but what if i do, do i buy my house here or move back to sydney, and how soon can i get back to Philadelphia and so we go around and around. its good though, its all really good, and im excited by what i found and where i think its going to take me.
so im agitated today, and finding it hard to relax. but relax i must, or my brain will explode. the plan for the weekend is to try and ignore the pile of books and papers and focus on something soft and fuzzy. yes, the puppy, who is a little ratbag made feral by rainy days, but also, wool type things. i have it all laid out on dining table
i finished atelier early in the week and was able to wear it in sydney, its lovely and warm and soft but i need to get some decent photos taken. i have maybe 1.5 skeins left so am going to make matching hats and mitts. i also want to start matching mitts for my brooklyn slouchy hat
and also wind some yarn to start a new cardigan, a version of kate davie’s ‘northmavine hoody’ using spud and chloe bought from purl soho.
so yeah, im wound a little tight, and feel like i need to let off some steam, have some wild reckless fun. it would also be really nice to be one of those people who can come home and drink a glass of wine, but im not, so i have to find other ways to deal. theres rugby union on tv tonight (mmm footballers) and the tour de france starts (go cadel), and i have chocolate and gossip girl.
not quite what i’m craving, but it will do.
k xx
