Dr. Bowie was appointed as Surgeon-Superintendent to the Asylum in October 1852. The asylum then accommodated only 72 patients. Bowie portrayed the condition of the asylum at that time as "very imperfect"; he described the kitchen as a "miserable hovel"; there was no road and the asylum was surrounded by a bog. There was no garden, only a solitary flower pot at the door of Dr. Bowie's house. "It was a miserable place." Under Bowie, individual cottages were built for the patients and by the end of 1853, the asylum housed 150 to 200 residents. By 1855 four acres of garden had been developed.

Report of the inquiry into the management of  the Yarra Bend Lunatic Asylum as detailed in the nine days' trial of the action for libel BOWIE v. WILSON, Melbourne 1862, page 70