The Gables

The Gables was opened as a state-run children’s Home in 1962. It accommodated 25 children who were wards of the state, consisting of boys from 4 to 10 years of age and girls from 4 to 14 years of age. Most of the children accommodated at The Gables had either physical, behavioural or learning difficulties. The Gable Children’s Home was closed in 1985 and a residential unit opened on the same site, called The Gables Residential Unit 101.

The Edwardian brick two-storey residence was initially built as a private home, and later used as nurses’ quarters for the Kew Mental Hospital. In 1962, it became a state-run children’s Home for 25 children, boys and girls who were wards of state.

The Gables first accommodated children in dormitories on the first floor, but in 1965 alterations were made so that the children were accommodated in three fairly self-contained units, upstairs and downstairs in the main building and in a cottage at the rear of the main building. At the same time the Home’s rostered child care workers were replaced with cottage mothers.

The Home was closed in 1985 as part of the Department’s rationalisation of residential child care resources. The Gables Residential Unit 101 opened on the same site in 1985 and continued to operate until around 1992.

The Gables was mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families.