Kitten of Doom

…And all the rest from the abandoned office space

•March 22, 2012 • 8 Comments

Following on from yesterday’s Stabs pieces inside a fresh abando…

So much good stuff in here. Sorry this post is a bit image heavy.

There were a couple of pieces I didn’t end up getting good photos of, but here is most of it.

Braddock and Klara

A gallery where the walls are the canvases

Dotty computer room, and a Psalm drifter

Evil lounge

Symbolic reflection

Neon loungeroom

Nelio

Korom

I REALLY wanted this mirror...

Li'l Braddocks

Even the toilet got redecorated

Eeeevil

Klara and I & The Others

Li'l puppeh

Wonderlust

Good place with decent light. Would be good for a studio.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Artyness, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, art, Braddock, derelict, evil men, graffiti, klara, korom, Melbourne, nelio, office, psalm, stabs, urbex, wonderlust

One Stabs, Two Stabs, Three Stabs, Four!

•March 21, 2012 • 2 Comments

Actually, there were five…

All in the one abandoned building.

More photos of this place to come.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Artyness, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, art, graffiti, Melbourne, stabs, urbex

Hot air balloons over the Yorkshire Brewery

•March 19, 2012 • 1 Comment

Here’s a few from the vault. I took these photos almost two years ago now. It was a lovely mid-Autumn morning, and I was still living on the Fitzroy-Collingwood border at the time, so I decided to go down the road and watch it from the top of the Yorkshire silos.

Just as I got there, hot air balloons were drifting down over Collingwood from the north.

After awhile they disappeared off into the distance southwards.

This place used to be like my second home when I lived nearby.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Collingwood, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, brewery, Collingwood, hot air balloons, Melbourne, silos, urbex, Yorkshire

“Murder at TinLids” by Murdoch80

•March 16, 2012 • 4 Comments

Murder at TinLids is a series of dark and creepy photographs shot by my good pal Murdoch80 last weekend at the giant abandoned factory we went to.

Check out the full set here!

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Melbourne misc suburbs, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, derelict, factory, Melbourne, murder, murdoch80, tinlids, Urban exploration, urbex

The abandoned factory we waited seven months for

•March 13, 2012 • 18 Comments

The second site we visited on Sunday was one we started staking out last August. The first time we went there, two of our crew got in, only for a car to drive up to the main gate and gain access with a swipe card. We didn’t know who it was, so the two guys inside hid for about half an hour until it was safe to make a hasty exit. They reported that the place did indeed appear completely abandoned though. And untouched by taggers/vandals.

So we kept our eyes on it whilst busying ourselves with other adventures, and were about to return, when Psalm beat us to it. Damn that Psalm. He always gets to the good places first 😉

It was good to finally get a chance to explore the factory – it’s massive – but demolition has already commenced, and I’d say this place will be completely gone in a matter of weeks. I got a mini-workout getting in to and out of the place as well.

There were old living quarters upstairs: little bedrooms complete with built-in wardrobes, kitchenettes whose once-sunny shades of paint are now faded and peeling. It has those beautiful sawtooth roofs that a lot of Melbourne’s early factories had (and these types of buildings really should be preserved).

A different section of the factory yielded several more staircases, and we were delighted to find that there were in fact two more floors above. A large room at the top has a raised platform, what seems to have been a small stage – did the workers have social events here after hours perhaps? There is also a massive kitchen area, followed by a large, empty room decorated with ripped, golden brown curtains and layers of dust. This must have once been their cafeteria.

There were a couple of other cool things we found. I’m not giving those away though…

Here are some shots from the factory:

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Melbourne misc suburbs, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, derelict, factory, industrial, Melbourne, psalm, Urban exploration, urbex

Abandoned shoe factory and shop

•March 11, 2012 • 17 Comments

Another Sunday, another exploration. First up for today was an abandoned shoe factory.

Judging by the dates of the newspapers left in the factory, it has been abandoned for awhile. There is hardly any graffiti though.

Upstairs from the factory is the former sales showroom, and office area.

Not sure why they closed down. If they were relocating they would have taken the machinery and shoe moulds with them. Perhaps they went out of business.

I will post the second half of today’s explore tomorrow.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Melbourne misc suburbs, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, derelict, factory, Melbourne, shoe, Urban exploration, urbex

Larundel revisit part 2 – the art and words of Larundel

•February 20, 2012 • 13 Comments

There’s a lot of ever-changing art at Larundel – mostly tags, but some interesting characters you may have also seen around on the streets. There are also the “words of wisdom”, as I like to call them.

Some of the pieces have been there for a number of years. Most of these ones are a few years old.

Happy Halloween from Sim Two:

Mishap:

Oksep:

Itch:

More Itch:

Not sure…

Sim Two:

Mishap:

Mishap and Sim Two:

Oppy:

There’s a couple that aren’t labelled as I can’t think of whose they are; though I recognise them from around the streets.

And here’s a piece of “installation art” to end with:

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Artyness, Things I see, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, asylum, Bundoora, derelict, hospital, itch, larundel, Melbourne, mental, mishap, oksep, oppy, psychiatric, simtwo, Urban exploration, urbex

Larundel revisit

•February 20, 2012 • 72 Comments

What better way to spend a nice sunny Sunday afternoon than by revisiting an abandoned mental hospital?

Larundel is currently being redeveloped… it will take a couple of years for the remaining buildings to be renovated for residential and commerical use; currently they are as trashed as ever.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Larundel was a mental hospital that opened in the 40s and was eventually closed for good in 1999. I recommend reading ‘Glimpses of the Past’ by Iliya Bircanin and Alex Short (the latter worked as the pharmacist at Larundel for many years). It gives a history of Larundel and it’s fellow psych hospitals Mont Park and Plenty. It’s more a general history of how the institutions came to be, going back to the 1880s; if you’re after stories about patients and their experiences at Larundel, you won’t find anything like that in this book.

I have heard mixed reports about what went on there… The hospital was open during a time where a lot of experiments were carried out in psych hospitals – some bad, some good. Most of what I’ve heard seems to be rumour, passed on like Chinese Whispers, because people really only want to know about disturbing tales. But there was definitely some groundbreaking work carried out there, such as the discovery of lithium as a treatment for bipolar mania by Dr. John Cade (watch ‘Troubled Minds: The Lithium Revoltion’ for more information on this).

Larundel, along with many other hospitals in the Western world in the 80s and 90s, shut down because deinstitutionalisation came into favour. Helping those with mental illness as outpatients, so that they could live a normal day-to-day life whilst still receiving treatment, was seen as the preferred method. However, I wonder just how many of those patients would have been better off living in a place like Larundel. How many of them ended up homeless or relapsing after Larundel closed because they couldn’t – or wouldn’t – look after themselves in the outside world? At least in a mental hospital they wouldn’t have to worry about being judged, or have to hide their illness.

I am still interested in hearing any stories from people who were once patients or who had relatives who were patients at Larundel.

x Kitten of Doom

Posted in Melbourne misc suburbs, Urban exploration
Tags: abandoned, Bundoora, derelict, hospital, john cade, larundel, lithium, Melbourne, mental, mental illness, psych, psychiatric, redevlopment, Urban exploration, urbex

Sunny Sunday School Sesh

•February 13, 2012 • 4 Comments

It’s been awhile between abandoned schools, and this one certainly has seen better days. It’s amazing I even got there at all due to a beer too many the night before (or three beers too many, or maybe eight, I… can’t really remember) and sleeping in, holding everyone up. After a cheeseburger meal hangover remedy, we discovered how difficult it is for a car full of people to navigate their way across one suburb.

This school wasn’t as interesting as Lakeside High was, there was no science equipment or darkroom prints strewn around. There were some really creepy pictures of a kid getting checked by a dentist (pictured below) and a doctor and some others. Creepy stuff is always good.