Hawksbury, New Zealand

Hawksbury, also known as "Cherry Farm" (and sometimes erroneously as "Evansdale"), is a small residential and industrial area beside State Highway 1 between Dunedin and Waikouaiti.

Cherry Farm Hospital

Cherry Farm Hospital, a psychiatric hospital serving the Dunedin area opened here in 1952 and patients from Seacliff Mental Hospital at Seacliff were relocated here. Cherry Farm Hospital epitomised the village-asylum atmosphere in name and design, contrasting with the harsh conditions in the fortress-like Seacliff hospital.

When the hospital closed in 1992, it was the consequence of new arrangements for the three groups of patients that remained. While at its peak Cherry Farm had many hundreds of patients, in latter years this number had dropped to below 400. Psychogeriatric patients were either transferred to a unit at Wakari Hospital, or to residential care in the community, people with intellectual disability moved to new lives in the community provided by a range of community agencies, one of which, Hawksbury Community Living Trust, is referred to below. General adult psychiatic patients were either transferred to new services at Wakari Hospital or into supported accommodation in the community. The closure of Cherry Farm Hospital was a key milestone in the policy of successive governments to implement "deinstitutionalisation". This process was completed nationwide in October 2006 with the closure of Kimberley Centre, Levin, the last large institution of its type.