Melbourne (Brunswick)
In 1955 Melbourne City Mission combined its Maternity Home and Toddler Home into Hartnett House, named after Sister Hartnett who had founded the Maternity Home in 1900. Over time, Hartnett House had many other buildings added to its small property, and concerns were raised by government inspectors about the crowded institution site. In 2000 Melbourne City Mission acknowledged that 'life in institutional care was often bleak and caused lifelong pain and difficulties for many careleavers' and also that 'some children [in Melbourne City Mission's institutions] did not receive the love, nurturing and care to which they were so rightly entitled' .
0Established in 1955 by the Melbourne City Mission, closed in 1982.
Hartnett HouseCate O'Neill, Hartnett House (c. 1955 - c. 1982) (4 February 2015) Find & Connect https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/biogs/E000525b.htm
Cate OÕNeill, Melbourne Citymission (2000 - ) (22 October 2014) Find & Connect https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/vic/biogs/E000890b.htm
VicSBS, 'Port Augusta', Custodians, 31 May 2016 (Lindsay Thomas)
http://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/video/353161795541/custodians-nukunu-port-augusta
Robert Foster and Amanda Nettelbeck, Out of the Silence: The History and Memory of South Australia's Frontier Wars (Wakefield Press, 2012), 176.
Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation (also known as the Woiwurrung or Woiwurung people) Woiwurrung language Koori VicIn 1960 my wife and I applied to adopt an Aboriginal baby, after reading in the newspapers that these babies were remaining in institutionalised care, going to orphanages, as no one would adopt them. Later that year we were offered a baby who had been cared for since birth in a Church run Babies Home in Brunswick. We were delighted! We had been told, and truly believed that his mother was dead and his father unknown. Where we lived there seemed to be no Aboriginals around. We knew some were grouped in Northcote and in Fitzroy but the stories told about them were so negative, we felt we should avoid them at least until Ken was much older. [By the time Ken was a teenager] he was in fact an isolated individual, alienated from the stream of life with no feeling for a past or a future, subject to racism in various forms day in and day out. No wonder he withdrew to his room, and as he told me later, considered suicide on occasions. When Ken was eighteen he found his natural family, three sisters and a brother. His mother was no longer living. She died some years earlier when Ken was four. Because of the long timespan, strong bonds with his family members could not be established (p. 57).
Confidential submission 266, Victoria.
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)
Birth Confidential submission 266