Lizzie's Journey to Yarra Bend

Book excerpt: Lunacy is a crime when Lizzie sets foot in the new colony of Victoria, Australia, in 1855. Based on extensive research, this is the story of her struggle with mental illness - at a time when limited medical knowledge about her condition existed, stigma was omnipresent, and treatment was archaic and inhumane. Shrouded in secrecy for more than a century, her story, as told through her own voice and that of her daughter and estranged husband, begins with her journey from her home in England with three young children in tow, to her eventual incarceration in gaol and Victoria's first mental institution - Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum - where she spent the last four decades of her life.