Archives



After Care School, New Town

The After Care School, held in St John’s Home for the Aged at St John’s Park, New Town, opened in the 1940s. It provided schooling for children with disabilities. The School appears to have closed in 1957. The After Care School provided schooling for children receiving outpatient care at Wingfield House or living in the…

Girls’ Welfare School

The Girls’ Welfare School, the Education Department’s first special school, opened in 1924. A few girls from the Industrial School for Girls – Hobart attended the Girls’ Welfare School. In 1954, it became the Dora Turner School. The first principal of the Girls’ Welfare School, Dora Turner, remained there for 27 years. She aimed to…

Lachlan Park Special School

Lachlan Park Special School, run by the Education Department, opened in 1959 following lobbying from the New Norfolk Branch of the Retarded Children’s Welfare Association. It was located within the walls of Lachlan Park Hospital, in a former hospital ward. Education at Lachlan Park had more or less stopped by 1965. Margaret Reynolds, the former…

St Giles’ School

St Giles School, run by the Society for the Care of Crippled Children, opened in 1931. The School provided an education to the children with physical disabilities who lived at St Giles Home or attended it for treatment. Children did not live at the School. In the 1980s, the Education Department took the School over…

Talire School

Talire School opened in 1950. The Retarded Children’s Welfare Association ran it between 1952 and 1954 when the government took it over. It was a non-residential School which provided an education for day students with intellectual disabilities. Talire School closed during the 1980s. Talire School was possibly the first of its kind in Australia. It…

Devonfield Hostel

Devonfield Hostel, run by the Retarded Children’s Welfare Association, opened in Devonport in 1965. It was a combined Hostel and school for children with intellectual disabilities. In 2013, Devonfield continues to provide training but is no longer residential. The Social Welfare Department placed wards of state with intellectual disabilities at Devonfield. Margaret Reynolds, the former…

St Joseph’s Waterton Hall

St Joseph’s Waterton Hall, run by the Sisters of St Joseph’s, opened in 1951. It was a boarding school in Rowella for girls aged between 6 and 12. In 1952, the School became an approved institution for British child migrants but it never received any. It appears to have closed in the late 1960s or…

Boys’ Town

Boys’ Town opened in Glenorchy in 1945. It was run by the Missionaries of the Sacred Heart and, after 1946, by the Salesians of Don Bosco, who opened a school on the premises. Boys’ Town was for boys aged between five and 16 years. Thirty-nine British child migrants lived there between 1952 and 1956 when…

Cabra Dominican Convent Boarding House

Cabra Dominican Convent opened in Adelaide in 1868 as a day and boarding school. Run by the Dominican Sisters it was initially staffed by nine sisters who supervised 37 boarders. In 1886 the school moved to a new site in Goodwood. By 1928 numbers of boarders had grown to 93 with 232 day students. In…

Umeewarra Mission Home, Davenport Reserve

Umeewarra Mission Home, Davenport Reserve continued the role of the Umeewarra Mission Children’s Home from 1964 after the Mission was taken over by the government and became Davenport Reserve. The Home continued to be run by former superintendent and his wife and it accommodated a small number of Aboriginal children. The local Aboriginal community council…