Yarra Bay House, Phillip Bay, 7 August 2007, by Bar, J, courtesy of J Bar, Wikimedia Commons.
Details
The La Perouse Training School was opened in 1928 in Yarra Bay House at Phillip Bay at La Perouse as an annexe of the Parramatta Girls Training Home. It held girls who had been committed to Parramatta but who were generally younger and was deemed less problematic. In 1940 La Perouse Training School closed and Yarra Bay House Truant School for boys was established at the same site.
The La Perouse Training School was proclaimed on 28 July 1928 under the control of the Superintendent at Parramatta, with a Matron responsible for day to day operations.
The girls housed in La Perouse were deemed 'less depraved and younger' than those housed at Parramatta Girls Training Home, and 'whose general conduct and good health justify it'.
La Perouse was an 'open' institution and discipline was more relaxed. Girls were allowed a degree of freedom to enjoy its beach-side location. The school used the domestic science curriculum and emphasised training for domestic duties.
In December 1939 the annexe was closed and in 1940 Yarra Bay House was converted to a Truant School for Boys.
Sources used to compile this entry: A Changing Landscape and a People Return, At The Beach: Contact, Migration and Settlement in South East Sydney, La Perouse, New South Wales, NSW Migration Heritage Centre, 2011, http://www.migrationheritage.nsw.gov.au/exhibition/atthebeach/changing-landscape/; Djuric, Bonney, Abandon All Hope: a history of Parramatta Industrial School, Chargan, Georges Terrace, 2008, 238 pp; 'Kamballa', in State Records Authority of New South Wales website, State of New South Wales through the State Records Authority of NSW 2016, https://www.records.nsw.gov.au/agency/460; Parry, Naomi, 'Such a longing': black and white children in welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania, 1880-1940, Department of History, University of New South Wales, 2007, 361 pp, http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/40786.
Prepared by: Naomi Parry
Created: 22 January 2012, Last modified: 16 May 2017
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE01072b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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