St Clair Mission, located on the southern bank of Lake St Clair, between Muswellbrook and Singleton, was an Aboriginal mission that was established by Reverend JS White in 1893. In the late 1890s Retta Dixon, a Baptist missionary, moved to the Mission. In 1905 she formed the Aborigines Inland Mission and took formal control of…
Charlton Boys Home at Castle Hill was opened in 1960 by the Home Mission Society as an Anglican boys’ home. It closed in 1970 and the boys were moved to the new Charlton Boys’ Home site at Ashfield.
The Dominican Sisters of Eastern Australia is a Catholic women’s religious order. In 1867, representatives of an Irish Dominican community founded an autonomous eastern Australian congregation initially based in Maitland, New South Wales (Hellwig, 2020). The Dominican Sisters ran the School for Deaf Girls at Waratah in New South Wales (established 1886), and St Mary’s…
The Sky Pilot Fellowship was an evangelical Christian organisation set up by Gwen and Keith Langford-Smith, who fostered Aboriginal children on their Kellyville farm property, which became Marella Mission Farm. Keith Langford-Smith was a pilot and Anglican missionary who had lived in the Northern Territory, and had run Roper Mission for the Church Missionary Society…
Marella Mission Farm originated in the early 1950s with Gwen and Keith Langford-Smith fostering Aboriginal children on their farm property at Kellyville. From 1953, Marella Mission Farm operated as an institution where Aboriginal children were removed to. Keith Langford-Smith was a missionary who rose to fame in the 1930s for his accounts of flying across…
Gateway Children’s Home, at Lewisham, was set up by the Central Methodist Mission in 1964 as a short-term childcare centre for children in crisis. It had accommodation for 14 children. In 2014, Wesley Dalmar Children’s Services (part of Wesley Mission) ran the premises as Gateway Children’s Cottage (also called Gateway House), a crisis care accommodation…
Tress-Manning Home, at Carlingford, was established in 1920 by the Church of England Homes Committee. It was boys’ home, and closed around 1970. Tress-Manning was named after the Reverend TB Tress and the Reverend Dr Manning, who set up Church of England Children’s Homes in the Anglican Diocese of Sydney in the 1880s, beginning with…
Dundas Boys’ Home was opened by the Churches of Christ in 1930. It was intended to house 21 boys, but by 1932 there were 31 boys in residence. Dundas Boys’ Home was located in the house “Calmsley” at Dundas. In 1936, “Calmsley” was sold and the boys moved to Dunmore House, Pendle Hill. Dundas Boys’…
Church of England Homes was an agency of the Sydney Anglican Diocese that ran children’s homes in Sydney and the Blue Mountains. It was created around 1884 by Reverend TB Tress and Reverend Dr Manning, in Woolloomooloo, and grew to take in several committees that had operated in the Sydney area. Church of England Homes…
The Isabella Lazarus Children’s Home was a home for Jewish children at Hunters Hill that was founded in 1939. It was opened at the same time as the Sir Moses Montefiore Jewish Home, which ran the children’s home, and was located on the same property. It moved temporarily to Killara in 1942 then to Waverley…