OPAL Joyce Wilding Home

OPAL Joyce Wilding Home was operated by the One People of Australia League (OPAL). In 1970, OPAL purchased the home (on the Pacific Highway in Upper Mount Gravatt, later known as Eight Mile Plains) with funding from Commonwealth and Queensland governments in 1970, and the Home was licensed on 7 August 1970. Its licence was cancelled on 11 February 1977, and it became an aged care facility. By late 1978, OPAL House, Eight Mile Plains had returned to housing mothers and children, whilst also housing pensioners. The Joyce Wilding Hostel continues to provide transitional accommodation in 2018.

The Home was named after Winifred Doris (Joyce) Wilding, one of the founders of OPAL and former matron of OPAL House in South Brisbane.

Wilding was the Matron of Joyce Wilding Home from 1970, but she resigned the position in 1971, following disagreement with the policies of the new OPAL board.

The building had been used as a motel before it was purchased by OPAL and converted into a Home. According to an article in New Dawn from March 1973: ‘The buildings are set amidst spacious grounds and so afford the children ample room for games and recreation’.

OPAL has advised the Find & Connect web resource that they no longer have any records relating to children who were resident in their homes.

Joyce Wilding Home closed in 2021, and the site was redeveloped as the Mari-Mari-Ba accommodation precinct , which provides support for Indigenous women and children who were experiencing, or at risk of, homelessness.

National Redress Scheme for people who have experienced institutional child sexual abuse

In 2021, the Queensland government has agreed to be a funder of last resort for this institution. This means that although the institution is now defunct, it is participating in the National Redress Scheme, and the government has agreed to pay the institution’s share of costs of providing redress to a person (as long as the government is found to be equally responsible for the abuse a person experienced).