Archives



Royal Brisbane Hospital

The Brisbane General Hospital was established in 1867 on a parcel of land in Herston. In 1966 its name changed to the Royal Brisbane Hospital. In 2003, it merged with the Royal Women’s Hospital to form the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital (RBWH). The first facility at Brisbane General Hospital for patients with psychiatric issues…

Aborigines Rescue Mission, Jigalong

The Aborigines Rescue Mission, Jigalong was a mission established at Jigalong in central Western Australia by the Apostolic Church in 1946. Dormitories and a school operated at the mission. The mission closed in 1969 and the Australian Government took ownership of the land, returning it to the Martu people in 1974. The Aborigines Rescue Mission…

Clifden Children’s Home

Clifden Children’s Home was a privately-run Home for “destitute children” and Convalescent Home opened in 1891 in Smythesdale, moving to Wedderburn in 1894. The Home aimed to provide farm training for homeless and “neglected” children of Melbourne. From the early 1900s a number of state wards were placed in the Home. In 1923 the Home…

Kingsbury Farm Reformatory

Kingsbury Farm Reformatory was a training farm for Protestant boys that opened in Newstead in April 1893. It was operated on the ‘family system’, run by a married couple, and had capacity for six boys. Boys were sent to Kingsbury from other reformatories in order to learn practical farm skills, such as land clearing, dam-making,…

Heidelberg Girls’ Home

The Heidelberg Girls’ Home was a Salvation Army Home for younger girls opened in 1896, on the premises of the former Heidelberg Boys’ Home. The first girls in residence in the Heidelberg Girls’ Home were the younger residents of the Brunswick Girls Home. The Home closed in November 1899 and the girls were moved to…

Woodlands Home

Woodlands Home opened in 1886 in South Preston as a domestic training school for selected girls from the Government Reformatory for Protestant Girls at Pentridge in Coburg. Woodlands, described as a “cottage”, had capacity for eight or nine girls. The objective of Woodlands was for the “better conducted girls” of the Reformatory to spend a…

The Cottage Home

The Cottage Home was established in July 1879 as a private boarding-out home in Newtown, Sydney. The Cottage Home had capacity for approximately 10 children and was managed by an older couple acting as house “father and mother”. It was established as a trial of the boarding-out “family system” as opposed to the institutional system…

St John’s by the Sea

St John’s by the Sea, in Beach Road, Sandringham, was a cottage-style Home for 20 boys. It was run by St John’s Home for Boys. It opened in 1951, was still open in 1954, and possibly closed in 1958. The residents of St John’s by the Sea included child migrants from Britain. The Home was…

South Yarra Hostel

South Yarra Hostel was established in a vacant building on the Methodist Babies’ Home site. Run by Wesley Central Mission it was described as a ‘supportive hostel for young people’. The Mission closed down South Yarra Hostel in February 1982. The hostel’s residents were taken on as clients by the Richmond Fellowship of Victoria (a…

Ruthven Hostel

Ruthven Hostel was run by the St John’s Home for Boys and Girls in association with the Church of England Boys’ Society. Located in Reservoir, it provided accommodation for 6 to 8 boys. In the 1980s, the Church of England Boys’ Society established the Community Services Foundation Youth Welfare Trust, as a means of attracting…