Rush abandons children
GEELONG’S first orphanage, at the top of Herne Hill on McCurdy Rd, has been listed for auction.
The building was last used as a museum containing artefacts from the former orphanage and the nearby Fyansford cement works which had bought the building in 1935.
Those cement works artefacts included the cockpit of one of the locomotives used to transport lime from the cement works’ Batesford quarry to the Fyansford plant until the early 1960s.
The museum, however, has been closed to the public in recent years due to the state of the bluestone building.
The push for an orphanage in Geelong started in 1854 when numbers of children were abandoned by their parents after the discovery of gold near Ballarat in 1851 triggered a gold rush.
The immediate effect of the gold rush on Geelong was a sharp fall in the town’s population as streams of people left for the diggings.
A meeting was held in May 1854 at the Mechanics’ Institute in Ryrie St to discuss the need for an “asylum’’ for abandoned children. The Mechanics’ Institute later became the Plaza Theatre and eventually formed part of the Geelong Performing Arts Centre.
The meeting agreed that an “asylum for the reception of orphans and destitute children’’ would be established on land granted for the purpose by the government at what was referred to at the time as Mt Pleasant.
The use of the term asylum to describe the building did not come with the negative meaning the word later acquired. In fact the road became known as Asylum Rd before it was named McCurdy after a local farm operator.
A foundation stone for what was to be Geelong’s first orphanage was laid in March, 1855, by then Geelong mayor William Baylie, and the institution welcomed its first children later that year.
The orphanage soon became known as the Geelong Protestant Orphanage after Catholics opened their own orphanage, known as St Augustine’s, in Aphrasia St in 1855.
The original St Augustine’s buildings were to form the nucleus of St Joseph’s College after the orphanage moved to new premises in Highton in 1939.
By that time the original orphanage on McCurdy Rd had also moved to new premises at Belmont. That orphanage became known as Glastonbury from 1955.
St Augustine’s Orphanage in Highton closed in 1988 and it became Christian College Geelong, while Glastonbury changed its name to Glastonbury Children’s Home in 1977 and later became Christian College’s junior school.
The cement works, which opened in 1890, closed 20 years ago and most of the original works have disappeared. Contact: peterjohnbegg@gmail.com