Wrongfully Admitted to Sunbury Asylum

In 1945, Maraquita Sargeant, a mother of five young children, was admitted against her will to Sunbury Mental Asylum in Australia. Her youngest child, Tony, has spent the last 50 years of his life searching for answers.

Walking the grounds of the now vacant and dilapidated Sunbury, Tony claims his mother was the victim of an era where there were no contraceptives and divorce was not allowed. Having five children already, Maraquita was not willing to give birth again and soon after was admitted. In 1946, she wrote a letter to the governor of Victoria stating she had been “unjustly detained.” The governor responded with a letter to the mental hygiene director and stated the letter “appears to be from a sane person.” The hygiene director’s response can only be described as chilling:

“She is definitely insane and if released would be a threat to certain prominent people’s reputations.”

With the director alerted to Maraquita’s attempt to write the governor, he shipped her to the Royal Melbourne Hospital where she received a lobotomy—a new and experimental procedure at the time that involved separating the front of her brain from the back. The operation was considered a failure. Maraquita spent her time at Sunbury in the sewing room repairing linen and ironing. Despite the injustice, Maraquita remained optimistic and in 1967 she was released. - Continue reading and watch the video at Smithsonian.com.

Ed note: This video was submitted to our In Motion video contest. The deadline to submit your video is May 31. Head over to the contest page for more details.

Photo of the Day: Tubing wave from inside the barrel

Photo by: Mark Johnson (Fairfield, Australia); Queensland, Australia

Infrared Timelapse of Rolling Australian Countryside

This infrared time-lapse footage features the limestone landscapes near Wee Jasper, a village in New South Wales in Australia.

The footage is part of a larger work—in scope, duration and resolution—from Glen Ryan, who shot the footage, and self-proclaimed cloud wrangler James van Der Moezel. The time-lapse served as the motion component of the recent Karst Country prints and paintings exhibition shown at the Belconnen Arts Centre in Australia.

Ed note: Do you shoot cool time-lapse videos? We want to see them! Submit your footage to Smithsonian Magazine’s Video Contest and you could win $2,000. Learn more here.

Photo of the Day: ‘Nemo’ peers out from his anemone on the Great Barrier Reef.

Classy Mugshots from the 1920s

The Historic Houses Trust features a collection of beautifully composed vintage photographs of Australian convicts.

Photo: (De Gracy and Edward Dalton, circa 1920). The Sydney Justice & Police Museum

Ed note: Read our story on the case of the sleepwalking killer.

h/t Twisted Sifter

atlanticinfocus:

From Spiders Flee Australian Flood, one of 20 photos. Here, a barbed-wire fence is covered in spiderwebs, formed as spiders escape from flood waters, in Wagga Wagga, Australia, on March 7, 2012. The Murrumbidgee river slowly receded after reaching 10.56 m (34 feet) on March 6. (Reuters/Daniel Munoz)