These huge abandoned warehouses still contain a plethora of heavy machinery including huge lathes and industrial sized milling machines.
Category: Urbex
Nurses Quarters
This old nurses home was built in 1910 to serve the nearby hospitals, it now lays crippled and decaying for the last decade with it’s only visitors being the odd squatter and us.
Beaufort
The Crusader fortress of Beaufort Castle- constructed in the 12th century- has been the focus for countless battles and the home of many occupiers over the centuries.
Beaufort (French for “beautiful fortress”) sits atop a 300 meter cliff which declines steeply to the Litani River. Its commanding location, with views over of much of southern Lebanon and northern Israel, is still of strategic value today.
In fact, Beaufort is one of the few cases where a medieval fortress has also proven to be of strategic military value, in the age of modern warfare.
In late 2005 the place was in ruins- but there was no mistake who held the high ground here.
Hezbollah’s AK47 emblazoned flag fluttered in the breeze- along with their allies and former rivals, AMAL.
Seven months later, the IDF once again invaded Lebanon- blitzing their way up to Beirut- laying South Lebanon to waste and cluster bombs in the July War
The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) held the castle from the beginning of the Lebanese Civil War in the mid 1970′s, until the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) finally evicted the PLO and occupied and fortified Beaufort, controlling south Lebanon for the next two decades.
Upon their withdrawl in 2000, the IDF set explosives and destroyed most of the structure. In 2007 an Israeli film- Beaufort– was released about an IDF unit stationed at the fortress.
Bad Education
This former highschool was closed about 15 years ago. The decay and vandalism that has occurred in the interim is astounding. It’s finally due for demolition soon and the land it occupies is to be developed into a retirement village.
Trig or Track
“Don’t play on the tracks- head for the high ground”. Why not do both? Part II of Escarpment…
Anba Hatre
Aswan, Egypt, Dec 2005: Anba Hatre is an earlier name for the 7th century Coptic Christian monastery of St Simeon- featured here in the previous post. During the exploration some video was shot on a very basic mini-DV tape camcorder, and due to this being the last tape. it was edited in camera to make the tape last longer. This is the result, with only a basic “damaged” effect and a soundtrack by the instrumental band Grails, appropriately titled “Erosion Blues”.
The Monastery
Aswan, Egypt, Dec 2005: After exploring some ancient tombs on the westbank of the Nile (featured here)- we decided to walk across the open desert to the ruined 7th century monastery of St. Simeon. It didn’t look far, but in the heat and harsh enviroment of the desert, it proved to be a bit more challenging. The Monastery of St Simeon dates back to the 7th century- it survived as a Christian stronghold of southern Egypt up until being sacked by Saladin in 1173 and abandoned. No real thorough archaeological attention has ever been paid to this ancient site. It was examined and published by Grossmann in 1985, and in 1998 by the inspectors of the antiquities- but still very little is known about this ancient monastery fortress.
Cops Quarters
This station was constructed in 1938 on the eve of World War Two just before resources would become scarce and be redirected towards the war effort; there was never an opening ceremony for this building due to the war. Today the building is earthquake prone but with historical building status, left to decay with its replacement facility sitting just a few steps away.
Cockatoo Island 4 – Power Station
The power station which at one point powered the island, from what I can tell the facilities now on the island are now powered in part by solar panel arrays affixed to the defunct industrial warehouses.
Parkour harbour cleanup
While out on a parkour jam with the guys from Wellington Parkour and Freerunning we came across a bag full of trash that someone had dumped in the harbour, this represented a perfect opportunity to put their parkour skills to good use for the greater good of the community and was a good show of teamwork.
Mind the (kina) gap.
Following on from the success of our last collaboration with these traceurs we tagged along with them for a day, this is the first video in a series displaying their unique ability to interact with and explore the urban environment via. parkour.Their philosophy revolves heavily around the concept: “Etre fort pour être utile” (Be strong to be useful) and as you will see in some of our other videos (some yet to come) they practice what they preach…
Much like urban exploration, our bread and butter, parkour is about interacting with our urban environment and experiencing it in new and different ways. Where we preserve it statically on film and in video, practitioners of parkour interact kinetically with the landscape.
Massive respect to the guys from Wellington Parkour and Freerunning for performing these feats.
Vukovar
Vukovar, Croatia, 2002: Vukovar was utterly destroyed after a three month seige against the mostly Croat defenders by the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army (JNA) in November 1991. Some estimates are that Serb gunners fired a million shells into Vukovar destroying 15,000 buildings. It was the first European city since WWII entirely leveled to the ground. At least 3,000 people were killed and 20,000 “ethinically cleansed” The city was still a jigsaw of destruction 10 years later. Exploring was out of the question as the city was littered with landmines and unexploded ordance.
The Dead Pool
“I’ve never let my school interfere with my education.” Mark Twain
Psych
This former notorious rural psychiatric hospital- see this post- was visited by one of our group back in 2008. The majority of the buildings then were mostly intact with minimum vandalism. Today many of the buildings have been demolished, with the remainder largely abandoned or used as storage. Incredibly though a number of the villa’s are now reoccupied, by apparently sane people.
Cockatoo Island 3 – Gaol + Fort
The islands prison, and the garrison to guard them were a readily available source of workers for the islands shipyard and to quarry the sandstone of which the island is comprised.
Decrypt
Egypt, Dec 2005: Inspecting some ancient tombs on the westbank of the Nile- across from Aswan. They were completely off the tourist trail and not mentioned in any guidebooks. We eventually found a man who had keys to them and he let us in for a look- after a certain amount of “baksheesh” was paid. One tomb was for the overseer of Kom from approx 191bc- another dated way back, at least 4000 years…
The Centre
At the close of the Second World War, this former Air Force base was converted into a “Mental Deficiency Colony” to house children deemed ‘backward’. By the mid 1970′s it had become the largest psychopaedic hospital in the southern hemisphere, with a population exceeding 700. The centre was “deinstitutionalised” in 2005 and has been largely abandoned, but not forgotten.
Cockatoo Island 2 – Tunnels
Underneath the Island, in the areas not hewn away to make room for heavy industry, Cockatoo island is criss-crossed with a myriad of tunnels, facilitating the movement of people, materials and equipment across the island. These also served a dual purpose as an air-raid shelter for use in the Second World War: one was even kitted out with an infirmary located in an annex to the main tunnel. Another tunnel has an elevator running right down into it from the buildings atop the island, down through the rock.
Ammo
Exploring what we think were former ammuntion stores- though from the ouside they look more like hobbit holes…
A Convent For Girls
The property was formerly a convent in the 1960’s and stories of ill treatment to the students who boarded here are all the information that can be found about it. What remains here now are mere shells of what once were.
Cockatoo Island 1 – Cranes
Littering the Cockatoo Island landscape, these sentinels are an imposing sight on the skyline. Many of the cranes have fallen into incredible states of disrepair, with some of the booms having become completely detached from the body of the crane.
These cranes are the subject of my first post on Cockatoo Island, one is even a familiar reminder of home. Stothert and Pitt cranes are familiar to us from our explorations in Wellington, and are also a common sight on the Island.
Cockatoo Island – Introduction/Teaser
This is the first in a new series of posts focusing on Cockatoo Island, situated in Sydney harbour, with each of these instalments focusing on a different aspect of what cockatoo island has to offer in the way of urban exploration, the video here is a general overview of some of the different features of the island.
During it’s colourful history it has been used as a Military Barracks, Prison/Gaol, Shipyard and Naval Dockyard amongst other things. As a result the island is teeming with reminders of it’s history and is a plethora of abandoned buildings, tunnels, cranes and other structures including a beautiful old power station.
For more information about Cockatoo Island see:
http://www.cockatooisland.gov.au/about/history.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockatoo_Island,_New_South_Wales
Escuela Mala
“I had a terrible education. I attended a school for emotionally disturbed teachers.”
Woody Allen
Pyro
Pyromania is an impulse control disorder in which individuals repeatedly fail to resist impulses to deliberately start fires, in order to relieve tension, for gratification or for relief. The term pyromania comes from the Greek word πῦρ (‘pyr’, fire).
This was just one of a dozen buildings torched by a pyromaniac over a single weekend two years ago. A Porirua man was eventually charged with 13 arsons that included setting fire to five churches, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity.
Seahouse
There are people who, like houses, are beautiful in dilapidation. Logan P. Smith
Racecourse Tower
In keeping with our recent racecourse posts, but this time from a different racecourse entirely, join us on a trip up to the top of an observation tower at a rural racecourse on the Kapiti coast. Taken just after a big storm had lashed the lower North island, thankfully the wind had dropped enough to make the climb.
T.A.B
Horsing around at a deserted racecourse and inspecting a disused tote building…
Departures
“This is the final call for flight UC101. Departing at 1300 hours from Gate 9 for Space Station X…” With a bit of imagination, this abandoned airport boarding bridge could be a gateway to another reality…
Beelitz-Heilstätten
Beelitz-Heilstätten, just south of Berlin, was a large hospital complex that has its beginnings in 1898.
Originally designed as a sanatorium – with the outbreak of World War I in 1914, it was converted into a military hospital for the German Army.
The suitably freezing, misty day only emphasised the eeriness of the vast hospital complex, which consists of at least 60 buildings.
As we wandered around trying to find a way inside, it was strange to think that a gammy-legged Hitler may have once walked these very same steps almost a century ago.
During the months of October and November of 1916, a young Adolf Hitler recuperated here (unfortunately) after being wounded in the leg at the Battle of the Somme.
Eventually we gained access through a broken basement window, spending the next several hours exploring the derelict hospital…
At the close of World War II in 1945, Beelitz-Heilstätten was occupied by Soviet forces – remaining a Soviet military hospital up until 1995, well after German reunification. Since the late 1990’s however, the complex has been left mostly abandoned and become a favourite playground for urbex in Germany.
Our exploration was finally interrupted when a team of men in hi-visibility jackets arrived on the scene.
As night was descending, we felt it was about time to leave anyway – only wishing we’d taken some better photos before our hasty exit…
Rolling
Abandoned rolling-stock, or so we thought. They’d been sitting there idle for years, but within a couple of weeks of our visit- they had disappeared without a trace…
Drainspotting
“Never play on the train tracks”- but no one said anything about playing under the tracks…
Subterranean
We returned to an old haunt, some tunnels hewn through the Wellington hills, to find that some visitors from the Cave Clan had been through since our last visit. These tunnels run right through the hills carrying sewage in an enclosed pipe, the tunnels themselves have been hewn from the rock and the bare rocks are visible throughout. It was rumored that a large amount of money was hidden in these tunnels after a notorious Wellington bank robbery, council workers were sent in to investigate and the money was never found.
Now Boarding
At Gate Infinity, Nowhere Air Flight XXX to Bermuda Triangle is now boarding.
In Vivo
In vivo (Latin for “within the living”) is experimentation using a whole, living organism as opposed to a partial or dead organism. Animal testing and clinical trials are two forms of in vivo research. On average around 300,000 animals per year are used in experimentation, testing and teaching in New Zealand – from cats and dogs to rabbits, deer, mice, rats, fish, birds, pigs, cows and guinea pigs. This particular former testing facility has been irresponsibly left to the ravages of time and vandalism, a haunting reminder of what we commit in the name of science.
The Convent
This former Catholic girls boarding school and convent was closed in the mid 1980′s. The buildings have been used for a variety of purposes over the years (including featuring in a couple of Peter Jackson films), but it has now been deemed unsafe and closed indefinately. Although carrying the Historic Places Trust’s highest heritage protection status, the closure due to being “Earthquake prone” has left it in a strange kind of limbo. The future looks very bleak indeed for this Historic landmark.
Parkview
A retired Abortion Clinic known as Parkview, part of Ewart Hospital and the Wellington Hospital.
Opened in 1980 and short lived until it was forgone in 2000.
While it has been the subject of a lot of scrutiny and protest, it has been untouched and, ironically, resides next to a children’s kindergarten.
Bad Science
Some more Chemistry experiments from a former tertiary institution… This is both a sequel and companion to Gunner’s Big Science.
Pioneer Cottage
This abandoned house is trapped in time, there are numerous reminders of the history of this building scattered throughout. It is as if the occupants simply walked out 50 years ago, with dishes still drying in the kitchen…
Animal Testing Centre & Incinerator
This abandoned animal testing facility has been abandoned for about 20 years apparently, despite that there are no signs of graffiti. Syringes and other detritus still litter the site and the bones & feathers of the test subjects still sit in the now rusted incinerators.
“Twelve five- to seven-day-old calves from a commercial dairy herd
were used in the trial. The herd had no contact with goats. The
calves had been fed pooled bovine colostrum that tested negative
for MmmLC. They were then transported to the Isolation Unit where they were housed indoors in two pens.
Six of the calves were dosed orally with MmmLC (5.4×1011 colony
forming units or cfu) and the following day four control calves
were placed with them in the same pen.
Six days later the two remaining calves were inoculated
intravenously (IV) with MmmLC (7×1010 cfu) and placed with the
other calves. The calves were monitored for clinical signs and their
temperatures were measured daily for the first 14 days.
Nasal swabs and blood samples were collected from the day of oral
inoculation (day 0) until the day each calf was euthanased (the last
ones on day 43). Nasal swabs were collected on days 0, 2, 4, 6, 8 and
at necropsy; blood samples weekly and at necropsy. Necropsies
were carried out at regular intervals during the trial (see table) and
samples taken from tonsil, retropharyngeal and mesenteric lymph
nodes, trachea, lung, spleen, pericardial fluid and joint fluid (stifle,
carpal and hip). Both fresh and fixed samples were collected.
The nasal swabs and tissues were cultured for MmmLC. The same
samples plus bloods were tested in the CAP-21 polymerase chain
reaction (PCR)(3) for Mycoplasma mycoides cluster. The nasal swabs
were also tested in a generic PCR for mycoplasma(4) on days 0 and 2.
Serum samples were tested in the M mycoides complement fixation
test (CFT) using whole cell antigen(6). Histopathology was carried
out on the formalin fixed tissues
PTA
This Historic Hospital (c.1880) still stands in its dilapidated state, 22 years after its closure. When the hospital finally closed its doors in 1990, it had served the district for over a century. Locals have been complaining for years about the eyesore, demanding the owner of the property to demolish the derelict and vandalised buildings.
Light Painting
Some light painting up at an old WWII bunker.
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Sacred
We returned for another look at this location: urbexcentral.com/2013/02/03/e-college/
A lot of vandalism occured here last year, graffiti and general destruction. Thankfully the landlord and the new tenants have been taking great care of the place in the past few months and the vandalism doesn’t appear to have gotten much worse. Unfortunately the pigeons didn’t get the memo and have made parts of the college their home (and toilet).
The Tower
The iconic Hawera water tower has watched over this South Taranaki town for a century now. Standing at 55 meters high, the tower was saved from demolition after years of neglect in the 80s/90s had made it unsafe. Hawera (or “Te Hawera”) literally means ‘the burnt place’, and originates after an incident between two feuding Maori tribes in the area. One tribe attacked the other during the night and burned their village down- so it became known as ‘the burnt place’.
We’ll Take Care Of Your Children
This old building was once a nursery which helped to raise numerous children in the Wellington region. The building’s future is now questionable as it sits right in the path of a new roading project. It will probably either be moved or demolished, and Wellington may lose yet another historic building.
Ghost Town
Kayaköy, Turkey, Oct 2005: This was my second visit to Kayaköy, the ghost town near Fetiye in South Western Turkey. Kayaköy consists of hundreds of rundown but still mostly intact Greek-style houses and churches, which orignally hosted a population of approximately 2000 people. Built on the ancient Greek village of Carmylessus, it existed up until the population exchanges of 1922/3. Anatolian Greeks had lived here since antiquity. After the invading Greek’s defeat to Turkey in the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), Greece had no choice but to sign the demands of the victorious Turks in Lausanne, Switzerland. More than 1.5 million Asia Minor Greeks were forced out of Turkey, and at least half a million Turkish muslims from Greece.
Don’t Be In The Dark
A night visit to our favourite local factory… Documenting its history & decline- was interrupted by Gunner’s insistence on throwing a bit of light on the subject…
Hospital Complex
We would have stayed longer and explored more of the buildings at this picturesque hospital situated high on a hill with fantastic views, but some local homies decided to ruin our fun. These buildings are all in poor condition and are incredibly earthquake prone (some of the masonry is crumbling), the homies were playing loud music with their sub, perhaps in an attempt to initiate a partial collapse of the buildings.
Fertiliser Works
Apparently there is a dog which bites on command at this location, although when we were there we did not encounter this beast.
The location itself has decayed rapidly in the past few years, perhaps it is being slowly demolished by the owners.
U R B E X C E N T R A L 