On the way back to work, the boss generously decided to stop at Goulburn for a break, as I said that I’ve never been there, which is part of region that our program covers. I guess the reason she was happy to go there was, she actually has her little “hidden agenda” for herself. She loves those abandoned orphanages and mentioned them many times in front of us about re-using them for other functions one day if she can afford to buy them herself. Mind you we are talking about $1-1.5 Millions for each of buildings. Apparently she said they are far out of her leagues, but it did get her mind all working.
If I didn’t or couldn’t bother thinking about her little “fantasy” too much, I have to say that I really started to get the point when we were driving through the town, seeing all those gorgeous old buildings and finally stopped in front of one of the girl’s orphanages.
My God! I was speechless. A gorgeous building with broken windows, grass growing wildly everywhere in the front yard and a big white whatever lady sculptur attached on the outside of the front wall of the building, neglected, abandoned and lonely. I can’t help imagining when it was the time when there were orphans living in this place, how the garden would have looked like, and the sounds that were made by girls and harsh teachers and how children were running around in this place…..pretty much a scene for Charlotte Bronte’s book Jane Eyre.
It actually made me feel quite sick when thinking of these. I mean the possible history of an old building which had been closed down 30 or 40 years ago makes you sometimes feel quite frightened. A building like this can be very scary and full of bitter stories. We all know there is an obvious history of orphans in institution cares being abused and mistreated in many countries, even in those church funded facilities. Who wants to reflect that? To those orphans who had gone through those miserable things, here would be certainly a heart-breaking place to remember and would be very hard to be removed from their lifetime memories. The place they used to call it a home….but not so much a good home, who wants to be there again?
Re-use? Maybe…lots of potentials, if you look at everything in this world from an economic perspective of view, there are. But history? It might fade but you can never make it disappear.
Hi, we are just wondering if you know any history on the old goulburn orphanage. Kaycee and myself are both at school at mulwaree and we have heard alot of stories about the orphanage, like that kids were hung and dround in this place. We are just curious if its true or not. We have searched the internet trying to find information about it but havnt found anything. If you could please help us it would be very much appriciated. Thank you
Hi Beth & Kaycee, Thanks for visiting my blog.
I wouldn’t say that I know much about the history of Australkian Orphanages, as all I can find is from the Internet. People seem knowing little about it and nobody talks about it neither, so I guess I could never know the true story unless I could talk to people who had been there.
However there is a website ran by CLAN which might help you to find more information about what you are looking for.
http://www.clan.org.au/pages/index.php
Good luck! You guys look just as curious as I am
hello wats uri stand for i spent time at the orphenage in the fifties carolan
hello my time at goulburn was only twelve months it was a lonely place even it was full of people butwe made the best of it .
hi there my father stayed at this place for most of his young life & he has never gone back.
He states that it was hell.
Hey there,
Me and my friends are from Canberra and are keen media students.
We are to do a documentary for school and came across the Goulburn orphanage.
we thought it would be a fantastic topic for our project due to the many stories we have heard whilst researching.
We were just wondering if anyone who attended Saint Johns would be willing to be apart of a short interview
Please Contact us on j.o.s.i.e-b@hotmail.com
Thanks!
I spent about 14mths at st joseph orphanage and it was no fun starved and abused by the nuns in particular sister beneadictor she was ruthless.
Yeah – Hell is probably the word to use – Hunger and abuse etc.-
I lived at St. John’s from the late 60′s to the early 70′s.
My uncle used to live here as a young boy, i feel sorry for all that stayed in their they now recon their building it into a retirement village well good luck to them the building is 100yrs old this year please leave it as is or turn it into a museum cause its historical and its very old and i have heard stories that the place has an erry feeling to it and people recon stange things happen in side after midnight i would love to take a walk through it before they destroy all the lovely history the place has to offer ive grown up around goulburn for 30yrs and have never seen the outside or inside of this place up close please don’t ruen our lovely history lets restore it and give people things to come look at in our town we don’t have much for people to come look at and history is things that people would like to see my self love the history of old building and there aint much in this town to go look at exept the war museum at rocky hill we want more!