Asylum Ghost Tours shut again but public invited to virtually explore former Beechworth Asylum

Asylum Ghost Tours owner Geoff Brown isn't able to operate for a second time due to stage three restrictions, after tours were returned to 70 per cent capacity in June and July.

"When things reopened, people wanted to go out and do things - we were knocking people back," he said.

"The border lockdown was the first thing that killed our tours; it was coming up to the NSW school holidays and a lot of Albury people cancelled.

"Then with the Melbourne lockdown, we lost a lot of bookings as well."

Mr Brown is grateful to have five staff and one director on JobKeeper.

"We've had a couple grants from state and federal governments, and that's given us enough to get through," he said.

"We haven't been able to operate properly since January, with the fires and smoke haze, and as it started to ease COVID hit.

"2020 has been written by Stephen King and directed by Quentin Tarantino."

Although the doors to Mayday Hills have closed, the public will be able to explore its history in an exhibition.

Since Up Top: A Sense of Place for Mayday Hills Hospital exhibited at Albury LibraryMuseum in 2016, Charles Sturt's Jennifer Munday has been adding to her research about the former psychiatric hospital.

"As the four years have gone by, we've found out so many new aspects, both from the employee point of view ... and from the patients," she said.

"There was a feeling of lives wasted, whereas hopefully now with new treatments and ways of caring for people with mental health issues, there's more care for them, but there's still so much of a way to go.

"We do hear quite often that for the patients that were in Mayday Hills, that sense of routine and sense of a place was really important to them, and so many of them missed that when it was disestablished."

In recent years, Dr Munday has been joined by genealogist Eileen Clark and Alison Watts from Southern Cross University in researching the asylum.

"We have pictures that we found that we're putting into the exhibition and only a couple of them have been seen before," she said.

"We have the front covers of a newsletter that was made at Mayday Hills; it was called the Open Door and was a newsletter for staff and patients, and the patients would colour in the front of the newsletter as part of their occupational therapy.

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"Some artworks haven't been seen up here on the border before, these are heavily embroidered items of clothing that one of the patients at Mayday Hills spent a lot of time on."

The first draft of a virtual tour, created through drone footage, will be a facet of a Zoom presentation taking place on Social Sciences Week.

"I'm a little bit sorry that at the moment, only NSW people will be able to visit the exhibition," Dr Munday said.

The Collections from the Asylum exhibition at the LibraryMuseum will open on September 5.

A Charles Sturt presentation featuring the three researchers will be available to view via a Zoom event on Sunday, September 13 from 5pm.

Register at https://charlessturt.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_y7gFFWXRRg-ruTH9aDdwMw.