Leslie Wilson Home, Emu Park

The Leslie Wilson Home operated at Phillip Street, Emu Park, from at least February 1937. It was officially opened by then Queensland Governor, Sir Leslie Wilson, on 21 June 1938. The Home was run by a committee from the Royal Queensland Bush Children’s Health Scheme and provided short term accommodation for children from rural areas of Queensland in need of medical or dental treatments and recuperation. The Home closed in 1954 when the committee ceased to exist and the building was sold. The proceeds from the sale went towards a new purpose-built Home in Yeppoon which opened in 1958.

Leslie Wilson Home, Emu Park was opened on 21 June 1938 by Sir Leslie Wilson, then Queensland Governor, to accommodate children from western Queensland in need of medical and dental care.

The Home was temporarily closed in 1942 due to the Second World War. The building was offered to the military however it was not used. The Home reopened on 1 October 1945. It closed again for several months during the polio epidemic of 1951. Following this it was condemned due to the building’s dilapidated state, and the last children went through the Home in March 1954.

The building was sold in November 1954 and the proceeds of the sale along with donations and fundraising led to the new purpose-built Leslie Wilson Home in Yeppoon operating from December 1958.

The publication Royal Queensland Bush Children’s Health Scheme: The Train is in. Where to now?: 75 years of caring states:

Yeppoon (Rockhampton) Home – This Home began in 1937 at “Stratford House” Emu Park. In 1959 a new Home to accommodate 24 children was built at Yeppoon, another extension was built to care for a further 8 children, together with additional staff to care for the larger number when this was completed in 1966. Changes in buildings continued throughout the years. Then in 1992 , houses were built for children to be accommodated in regular domestic settings rather than the dormitory style accommodation that had been used earlier.