Good Shepherd Home (former)

Preparations began to build a convent, girls’ home and commercial laundry on the site.  Perth’s Archbishop Patrick Clune laid the foundation stone of the Good Shepherd Home in December 1930. Architects Hennessy, Hennessy & Co designed and  Brisbane contractor S.S. Carrick, constructed a Romanesque double storey U-shaped brick and tile building, with wide verandahs over ground floor arcades. In December 1931, Archbishop Duhig officially opened the series of buildings, the day the first girls arrived to take up residence.  Here the sisters cared for, in Duhig’s words, “young girls whose lot in life is not conducive either to their religious or material welfare ... such girls find a happy home [here]”. The home offered chapel and convent, dormitories, refectory, theatre/hall, recreation rooms, kitchen, bakehouse and a commercial laundry, completed in 1932. At a time of depression and severe unemployment, the church congratulated itself on the employment of over 70 men on the building work, part of a larger endeavour to provide employment in difficult times.

The sisters had chosen fertile acreage capable of supporting vegetable gardens and cattle grazing, to feed themselves and their charges. By 1954 the site boasted market and vegetable gardens, cow bails and bull pens, turkey pens and fowlhouse. In April 1955 extensive, but unspecified additions to the home (possibly including additional machinery and furnishings) costing over £50,000 were opened. Inspection of the site shows that these extensions were most likely to have been additions to the laundry, covering part of the original facade and adding space at the back and sides.

The home was later renamed the Mount Maria Training School for delinquent girls, taking in girls who had been sent by the State Government for reformation, and training them for later domestic and service occupations such as needlework, laundry, or cooking. A number of these girls were of indigenous heritage and were under the control of the Aboriginal Protector. The home was closed late in 1974 due to lack of funds and staff.

The buildings were reopened in 1978 as the coeducational Mount Maria Senior College for students in years 11 and 12. The laundry still operates as a commercial concern, separate from the school, in conjunction with the Wooloowin Holy Cross Laundry.

In 1993 over eight hectares were leased to the Australian Catholic University until 2040, leaving the remainder of the site as it is today.

1. Queensland Certificates of Title

2. Detail plan 1856, 6 October 1954

3. Daily Mail, 5 December 1930; 2 April 1931; 17 July 1931; 11 December 1931

4. Queenslander, 17 December 1931, p. 28

5. Brisbane Courier, 6 January 1932; 29 April 1932

6. Courier Mail, 11 March 1936

7. Catholic Leader, 17 December 1931; 28 April 1955; 15 June 1975; 22 February 1981