Cudgelo Junior Red Cross Home

Cudgelo Junior Red Cross Home was opened as a Junior Red Cross Home in Ramsgate in 1923. It appears to have been a holiday home and convalescence home for girls from the Far West of New South Wales, including the Bourke district. During World War Two, the Home temporarily relocated to Yass, before returning to Ramsgate around 1943. The Home closed in 1951 and its work was transferred to the Eleanor MacKinnon Memorial Home.

It was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald, 1934, that Cudgelo was originally opened in 1923 in a rented property in Ramsgate. Thanks to the funding of the young members of the Junior Red Cross they were able to purchase land and build a house. The Home was able to accommodate 100 children a year, in groups of 15.

Initially at least, the Home accommodated boys and girls, although later it was for girls only. From 1938, boys were sent to the Eleanor MacKinnon Memorial Junior Red Cross Home, also located in Ramsgate.

Cudgelo was officially opened in March 1929. An article from 1929 stated that Cudgelo was for ‘delicate and needy children from country districts, who are given a holiday there during the summer months’. For the rest of the year Cudgelo was used for ‘delicate city children who require rest and care’ (The Propeller, March 1929).

An article from 1932 described the experiences of girls who came to Cudgelo:

… little girls, many of them from the far “out-back” parts of the State, who have found, after a holiday in this beautiful Home, health and strength, and been sent back with seaside roses in their cheeks, and sturdy young limbs invigorated by sea bathing. Frequently, where these children need medical out-patient treatment at our large hospitals for any physical defects, the little ones are kept at “Cudgelo” while this is obtained, and there have been many cases of children being absolutely cured from apparently permanent disability, thanks to a course of treatment, often unobtainable in their far-away home districts.

In 1942, during World War Two, it was reported that the Home at Ramsgate was shut down (presumably because of its seaside location), and the Home was temporarily relocated to a property called “Linton” in Yass. Mrs A.B. Triggs gave over a wing of her home to house ‘delicate little girls whose fathers belong to Australia’s fighting forces’ (Yass Tribune-Courier, February 1942).

An article from July 1942 provided more information about the children who came to the Home’s new location in Yass:

The children are all in need of country change and restorative care, beyond the means of their parents, and it is hoped that the same success will attend the running of the home at “Linton” as the RC has achieved with its other homes, where many sons and daughters of fighting fathers have been built up to normal healthy, by timely care and treatment (Yass Tribune-Courier, 23 July 1942)

In 1948, it was reported that since opening, Cudgelo had cared for over 2100 children, and that the nearby Eleanor MacKinnon Memorial Home had cared for ‘over 800 small sons’.