Grieving mother builds youth centre in Hamilton 12 months after fatal Bochara car crash
Lee-Ann Elmes's son, Josh, was one of four victims of the Bochara car crash tragedy in 2023. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
Lee-Ann Elmes's two-storey red brick warehouse isn't much to look at from the outside.
Weathered sheets of timber cover most of the downstairs facade, while faded white paint peels away from the windows that mark much of the second level.
But inside, it's the start of a dream for Ms Elmes.
Twelve months ago, her 15-year-old son, Joshua, along with three other young friends, died in a tragic car crash in the regional town of Bochara, around three hours' drive west of Melbourne.
It completely up-ended not only her life but the lives of thousands throughout the community.
Her grief was immeasurable, and it was shared.
"A lot of people are hurting from it still," Ms Elmes says.
Lee-Ann Elmes is excited by the opportunity to honour her son's memory with a centre for other young people in Hamilton. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
Determined not to let her life be defined by tragedy, Ms Elmes is working to fill a gap in services she says could have saved Joshua.
Within the red brick building, she's building a volunteer-led youth centre for the town. Something she thinks her son would have loved.
"I want something positive to come of it. I don't want us all to just stay in the grief," she says.
"Grief isn't just a five-minute thing. It can take up to 10 years, 20 years, who knows how long? But the fact of the matter is we need support.
"I couldn't sit back and do nothing. I had to do something."
Ms Elmes wants the youth centre to have a lasting legacy in Hamilton. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
Help is on the way
The tragedy in Bochara brought the region's shortage of mental health care into dire focus.
A lone 17-year-old survived the smash, but the before-and-after of which was documented in harrowing social media footage showing the car speeding at over 130 kilometres an hour before it ended in a crumpled wreck at the side of the road.
Additional mental health workers were deployed to the region in the wake of the accident, but as life returned to normal the gap in services returned.
Work to fast-track the opening of a new headspace office in Hamilton is underway, with the building expected to fully open later this year.
"When you think about a regional area, the access to [mental health] services is a lot less," Western Victoria PHN's Andy Giddy says.
"I think Hamilton's pretty reflective of other regional areas where there’s an ongoing growth in demand [for services]."
The youth centre will be beside the new headspace office in Hamilton. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
Mr Giddy says some headspace staff have been deployed in the community since the end of last year, but building delays had stalled progress on the new site.
The headspace office will be housed in a building next door to Ms Elmes' youth centre.
She jokes that she'd like to install a sliding door between the two.
"We want it to be a hub, a resource for everyone in Hamilton," she says.
"It'll be helping the youth, but also the parents."
Megan Fox, Joshua Elmes, Alicia Montebello, and Lucus Garzoli died in the crash. (Supplied: Facebook)
National 'tipping point' reached
Australia's shortage of psychiatrists is having devastating impacts on patients, according to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP).
The peak body says nine in 10 specialists felt the impact of the "critical and chronic" psychiatrist shortage was impacting patient care.
"We think we're at a real tipping point in this country," said RANCZP NSW chair, Dr Angelo Virgona.
"We're only meeting just over 50 per cent of the demand for psychiatric services with the psychiatry psychiatric pool that we have currently.
Angelo Virgona is the chair of the NSW branch of the RANZCP. (Supplied)
It's a problem that's exacerbated in regional areas such as Hamilton.
RANZCP's latest federal budget submission revealed only 14 per cent of the nation's psychiatrists work rurally but 29 per cent of the population, or roughly seven million people, live in country areas.
Two in five Australians will experience some kind of mental health condition in their lifetime, with mental ill-health costing Australians more than $220 billion a year, according to RANZCP.
It's asking the Federal government to contribute $80.6 million to help reinvigorate the industry and help attract more psychiatrists to a shrinking pool of practitioners.
"The demand is getting so much that we're going to be failing more and more people," Dr Virgona says.
"People are going to miss out and people's lives are going to be lost as a result of not being able to get good psychiatric care.
"We know our public sector services are overwhelmed by demand, our emergency departments are filling up with people with mental health problems because there are few other options available to them."
The empty warehouse in Hamilton offers plenty of open space to be redeveloped. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
Light at the end of the tunnel
Back in Hamilton, Lee-Ann Elmes is still dreaming about where to put the pool tables and computers in her youth centre.
It's also got an official name — Stable Ground — a throwback to the building's original function as a Cobb and Co Carriage factory.
Lee-Ann Elmes hopes her son would have been proud of what she's doing with the centre. (ABC News: Daniel Miles)
The owner of the factory scrapped plans to turn it into a craft brewery when Ms Elmes got in touch.
"I said to him, no, we've got 12 drinking holes in Hamilton, we don't need anymore drinking holes — let's do something positive," she says.
And that's exactly what she's done.
She knows nothing will bring her son back, but she hopes having somewhere safe to go might stop another mum going through the hell she has.
"I'm hoping he'd be proud," Ms Elmes says.
"But it's more than legacy. [I want] to help those kids who are really hurting out there."
Ms Elmes hopes to start construction within the building by the end of 2024 and open to the public in the new year, eventually operating a 24-hour service for the town.
The Victoria Police investigation into the accident remains ongoing.