Urban Exploring - The Kimberley Centre

The Barefoot Bohemian
Jul 12, 2019
2 min read

For years I have driven past the Kimberley Centre in levin, on my way back and forth from Wellington.

As time has gone by and I have watched as each original building has been demolished and a village of new housing has gone up, I have felt more urgent about finding my way inside to document the last of its long history.

Once the largest hospital for the intellectually disabled in the Southern Hemisphere, Kimberley closed its doors in 2006.

At its peak it housed 700 patients, however for some of those patients, Kimberley had a somewhat grim reputation.

Beginning as a home for delinquents, it was also used as an air force training centre during WWII.

In the 1940s it become a farm and “mental deficiency colony” for intellectually disabled boys and was renamed Kimberley Hospital in the 1970s.

It is now owned by Horowhenua developer Wayne Bishop, who has begun developing it into a sprawling 500-home estate.

With my two equally brave and curious kids in tow, we had a wee look around one of the few buildings that remain of this historical abandoned hospital.

Timeline of Kimberley Centre History

1906-1939: Weraroa Boys Training Farm, New Zealand’s principal institution for juvenile delinquents.
1939-44: The RNZAF Station Levin was operational for pilot training.
27 July, 1944: 42 young men and three male escorts arrived from Templeton to Levin Farm and Mental Deficiency Colony
1957: Gazetted as a hospital, Levin Hospital and Training School.
1961: Psychopaedic Nursing School set up on site.
1961: Education Department set up special school on site.
1967: National Training School for Training Officers
1972: 660 residents, 400 under the age of 18, transferred under control of Palmerston North Hospital Board.
1977: Renamed Kimberley Hospital.
1988: Renamed Kimberley Centre.
1991: Final nursing graduation.
2006: Closure.