Former Animal Experimentation Facility at Downer Shops?

flyamanita said :

My god, I was going to make a post of this exact topic. I got in there back when I was 11 or 12, just before they demolished the place and took a few photos, I’ll dig around and upload them tomorrow.

Cool, someone is actually going to answer the Photos or it didn’t happen challenge.

aelliso said :

I’d really like to know how they managed to get a 500kg animal into the building…

My thoughts exactly, followed by “I wonder how long the horse had been dead before they carried it in there and was it mid-summer?”

I’m not surprised they didn’t remove the horse afterwards. It was probably a bit smelly and where would you take it to?

My god, I was going to make a post of this exact topic. I got in there back when I was 11 or 12, just before they demolished the place and took a few photos, I’ll dig around and upload them tomorrow.

I’d really like to know how they managed to get a 500kg animal into the building…

Yep, no witch craft at all. Just an art installation by a bunch of Canberra School of Art students.

Mr Julz worked there (NBSL)in the early 80’s. They experimented on mice and rabbits (no rats).

Thanks for that Mr Evil. That’s heaps more than I could remember.

I think NBSL was up near ANU though – maybe subsequent to the Downer site or both?

In about 1993 or 94, a photography student from the School of Art was into photographing dead animals, and being a cocky little try-hard wanker he decided it would be a ‘good’ idea to organise an artistic event at this particular site (without any approval, of course!). He managed to convince a few other art students to be involved by contributing various other works. The event was held on either a Friday or Saturday night, if I recall correctly.

He apparently picked the dead horse up from a property somewhere outside Canberra, and after the event he stupidly left the dead horse and quite a number of other bizzare works on site.

A few days later some young kids were snooping around the site, and of course found all this weird shit on the site, and then ran home to tell their parents. The parents contacted the Police and the media about it, because quite fairly they thought it was some sort of Santanic ritual stuff.

To cut a long story short, the organiser of the event wasn’t quite so cocky when the Police came looking for him at the Art School…….

There is nothing to see there anymore, just townhouses.

I tried to link a google map but didn’t have any luck. It is on Frencham St.

The NBSL sounds interesting, looks like the urban myth wasn’t that far from the truth.

Im interested too.

I remember the Satanic / Art installation horse fiasco from quite a few years ago, Canberra suddenly became a hotbed / Hub of supernatural and pagan activities (didnt last long). Might go and have a look.

I am interested in this.

What sort of drug testing did they do on the horse? Ketamine?

The National Biological Standards Laboratory used to be there in the 60’s. It was part of the Commonwealth Department of Health and originally was housed in the Institute of Anatomy along with the Health Laboratory. The NBSL was the drug testing agent for the Commonwealth to make sure that new drugs, medicinal type, were fit for human use. They used to use rats for their experiments.

I lived nearby when that happened. The usual phrases of “satanic cult” and “weirdo art installation” were bandied about. I seem to recall the horses hooves becoming detached from the rest of the horse somehow.

Didn’t know it was a fluffy-bunny torture house though! 😐

I also have hazy memories of the dead horse but can’t remember why there was a fuss about it – it struck me as being very strange. Kudos to you for snooping around!

I am intrigued by stories of underground raves in Canberra (anything pre-1995), especially the venues used for them.

The satan house?

HAHA that is lame!

Wow. I don’t know what went wrong with the formatting there. Sorry guys.