Working Up Top: employment at Mayday Hills Mental Hospital, Beechworth, Victoria, 1960-1995

In this article, we explore employment practices at Mayday Hills Mental Hospital, Beechworth, Victoria in the thirty years or so before its closure in 1995, principally through the eyes of staff. Beechworth was an isolated country town and the hospital was a major employer. While psychiatric hospitals struggled to attract staff, two factors operating at Mayday Hills served to mitigate this shortage. Local people were familiar with its environment, with generations of families working there, and government jobs offered security. However, the complex pattern of relationships built up over generations between staff and in the town meant that conformity to unwritten norms was rigidly enforced through pranks, hazing and trade union activity