Midsummer, Melbourne

A hot northerly wind batters its way down Bourke Street. Grit from the Mallee pounds against shop windows, scrapes along tram tracks and settles in the eyes of shoppers and tourists. Today the temperature will climb to the high 30s, already the city seems to wilt, her green and shaded avenues slowly baking in the furnace. The old post office sorting centre is built of solid bluestone – built to withstand centuries of Melbourne's cruellest summers and bleakest winters. Like so many other public buildings it has faced the indignity of endless recycling. Once a monument to the efficiency of Victoria's post, it now houses the records of ‘Human Services’: personal files, departmental memos and the case-books of long closed hospitals and asylums.

‘The order from the Public Records Office has come through – looks like we've got something.’ Melanie's voice is cheerful and excited. Researchers seldom call at Human Services and a historian is a welcome change from the usual interdepartmental inquiries. All last week, we'd worked through asylum admission books, heavy, leather-bound volumes, groaning with patients' particulars. Then, as today, certifying insanity was a grim legalistic business. Then, as today, doctors speculated on the ‘supposed cause’ of madness: