Tours at a former psychiatric hospital in a regional town are starting again. The site was shut in August after a safety inspection raised concerns, and operators have been waiting to hear when they could return.
The restart covers outdoor routes while repairs continue. Buildings stay closed to the public for now, and there is no timetable yet for work on them.
Image: Aradale Mental Hospital, by JacsWiki via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.
The photograph shows the asylum's heritage buildings from outside and is not from a tour.
What Aradale is
Aradale is a former psychiatric hospital at Ararat. It operated until 1993, after a decision to move patients out of large institutions. The site includes 64 buildings across more than 40 hectares, and it has become a popular tourist attraction.
It opened in 1865 and closed in 1993. Patients were subjected to treatments including restraint and electroshock therapy. Since it closed, Aradale has become a well known dark tourism site, which means travel to places connected with death, suffering or tragedy.
The town is the only place in Australia that is home to two former mental asylums, and its other site, J Ward, remains open.
The buildings sit on the edge of town, and the scale of the complex is part of what draws visitors. A self-contained institution of that size, built to house patients away from the community, is rare to see intact.
Why it closed
Parts of the site were closed in August due to safety concerns. The state government owns the site and leases it to Melbourne Polytechnic, which shut it on the Friday of that week.
In a statement, Melbourne Polytechnic said the inspection identified a number of safety concerns requiring further investigation and assessment. It said the closure applied only to the affected areas of the site, and that other areas of the broader site remained open.
The shutdown was immediate. Operators were told by phone and email, and bookings were suspended with refunds processed for tours that could not go ahead. Eerie Tours later said it was contacting booking holders week by week, offering vouchers and the reduced tours.
The restart
Tours at the Aradale asylum will restart this weekend, after the site was shut down over safety concerns. Eerie Tours owner Nathaniel Buchanan said being able to run outdoor tours while work continued was a win for the community.
Earlier in September, tour operators said they were relieved after being assured repairs would begin shortly. Operators had been told the building would be closed because of safety fears, and Mr Buchanan said he had been told repairs would start soon.
Melbourne Polytechnic issued new licences to tour operators, then worked with them to identify possible external routes through the precinct and to work out how public access could be provided safely. The operator has said the plan is to advance through more buildings as maintenance is completed, returning the tour to its former scope over time.
The staged return mirrors how other regional attractions have reopened after a closure, starting with outdoor access and adding more as work is completed.
What the restart covers and what it does not
The new arrangement allows guided tours to access designated external areas of the precinct. No buildings are open to the public as part of the initial arrangement.
Melbourne Polytechnic has said it has not committed to any building remediation, scope of works or reopening timetable at this stage. Any proposals or estimates about works will be finalised once a specialist building survey is complete. The operator has said it will work through a list of priority buildings according to budget, timeline and how severe the damage is.
So the restart is a partial return. Visitors can walk the grounds with a guide, and the interiors that made up the classic tour stay off limits until assessments are done. The story of the place is still being told, but from the outside.
What is on offer from the operator
Eerie Tours now carries a banner on its site reading that the site is reopened, with bookings available.
The standard Aradale Ghost Tour runs for two hours, with an extended four-hour option, priced from A$50 and departing at 7pm and 8pm. The operator describes 130 years of operation. The operator also runs paranormal investigations, priced from A$100 and running three or six hours, and lists a Friday the 13th special event from A$130.
Eerie Tours says it has operated since 2008, has won a Victorian Tourism Award and is the only ghost tour company in the country with professional historians. Bookings are made online.
What it means for Ararat
Local businesses had been concerned about the effect of the closure on the local economy. Tourism businesses said about 80 per cent of weekend bookings were from people wanting to visit the asylum.
Ararat Rural City Council said it recognised the heavy toll the closure would have on local businesses and remained committed to supporting the local business community.
The restart does not hand the full site back to visitors, and it does not settle the question of what happens to the buildings. It does put tours back on the calendar for the town and gives operators something to sell heading into spring, when visitor numbers across the region begin to climb.
Ararat has built a tourism identity around its two former asylums, and the operators who run tours there have been the ones carrying that story to visitors. Getting guided walks moving again keeps some of that traffic in town while the repair questions are worked through.
For more on the area, start with the Victoria local guide.
Works Cited
Dandeniya, Nethma. "Mildura-Swan Hill and Wimmera local news briefing: Tuesday, September 22, 2026." ABC News, 22 Sept. 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-22/mildura-swan-hill-and-wimmera-local-news-briefing/107179730.
Neal, Matt. "Ballarat and South West Victoria local news briefing: Tuesday, September 15, 2026." ABC News, 15 Sept. 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09-15/ballarat-and-south-west-victoria-local-news-briefing/107153734.
Hynninen, Eden, and Laura Mayers. "Businesses say closure of Ararat asylum 'economic catastrophe'." ABC News, 25 Aug. 2026, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-25/ararat-aradale-asylum-closure-sparks-anxiety/107070708.
The Weekly Advertiser. "Modified Aradale tours to open." The Weekly Advertiser, 16 Sept. 2026, https://theweeklyadvertiser.com.au/articles/modified-aradale-tours-to-open/.
Eerie Tours. "Aradale Ghost Tours." Eerie Tours, accessed 24 Sept. 2026, https://www.eerietours.com.au/aradale-ghost-tours.
ABC News. "A rare insight into the unique history of Victoria's first hospital for the mentally ill." ABC News, 21 Oct. 2017, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-10-21/looking-back-in-time-at-ararats-mental-asylum/9072024.