Church of England Girls' Home, Carlingford

The Church of England Girls’ Home was opened in Carlingford in 1928, in the same buildings, Minden and No. 2 Home that had previously operated as the Church of England Boys’ Home. From 1928, girls were transferred from the four homes of the Child Rescue Home in Glebe Point and No. 2 Home became known as Tress-Manning Home. In August 1929, the Evening News reported that the final girls were being transferred to the newly opened Mary McGarvey Home for Girls on the Carlingford site.

The Home was supported by fundraising activities, including fetes where stalls were held selling items the girls had made.

Gwen Pearce shared recollections from her time in the Home as part of a submission to the Inquiry into Children in Institutional Care:

My first home was a Church of England Home in Carlingford, we used to go out to school there. My brother Ken was in the boys home and we would see each other on the way to school. We would try to talk to each other but would be stopped and get into trouble for talking to the opposite gender even though we were brother and sister as this was not allowed.

In 1956 Minden was demolished and two new homes were built in its place, with Molly Trigg and TA Field Cottages opening that year.

The Church of England Girls’ Home began to transition in the late 1960s as children were placed in group homes. In 1969 Tress-Manning Home became a temporary care unit and Molly Trigg and TA Field Cottages underwent renovations to become family group homes. The McGarvey Girls Home, Molly Trigg and TA Field Cottages closed in 1976, and Tress-Manning closed in 1977.

The site continued to be used for a few years with McGarvey Girls Home becoming an administration office, and the Trigg Working Boys Hostel from the Church of England Boys’ Home moved into the Molly Trigg Cottage from 1977 to 1979, before moving to a new property in Granville and becoming known as Trigg Hostel. Tress-Manning also briefly operated at this time as a training hostel for children with additional needs. The property was sold in 1980, and Tress-Manning and McGarvey Girls Homes buildings still stand.

According to research done by the staff of the Northern Territory Department of Health, the Church of England Girls’ Home, Carlingford was a place where children from the Northern Territory were sent. The Home was also mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families.

The Church of England Girls’ Home was mentioned in the Lost Innocents Report (2001) as an institution involved in the migration of children to Australia.