Australian Orphanage Museum Opening

On 1 April 2023, Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, officiated at the long-awaited opening of the Australian Orphanage Museum in Geelong. The opening included a luncheon and dinner at the Geelong Cats ALF club and the day was attended by around 150 Clannies (care leavers).

You can read more about the opening in James Taylor’s Geelong Times article from 6 April 2023.

Curator, Karen Wykes, recently provided us with some fantastic photos from the day, which you can scroll through below.

Don’t forget to come and visit us, Monday to Friday 10am to 4pm, to see our permanent exhibition, as well as the recently opened temporary exhibition, Our Lives, Our Stories: Geelong Care Leavers Talking Back to Their Records.

 

 

A new temporary exhibition opens at Australian Orphanage Museum, tomorrow Tuesday 6 June 2023.

Our Lives, Our Stories Talking Back to the Records

Our Lives Our Stories: Geelong Care Leavers Talking Back to the Records is an exhibition that focuses on Geelong Orphanages and Children’s Homes and five Care Leavers who were in some of the Geelong Orphanages. Care Leavers tell what they liked, didn’t like, and what they would have wanted to know about from their childhood records.

This is the Australian Orphanage Museum’s first temporary exhibition at its new home in Ryrie Street, Geelong, and features the stories of Care Leavers who grew up in one of the region’s many children’s institutions.

Commissioned by CLAN (Care Leavers Australia Network), the exhibition was developed and written by historian Abigail Belfrage from The History Dept., with design by Megan Atkins. It explores the importance of records to people who grew up in orphanages and children’s homes, and the complexities of accessing records for Care Leavers. This has been a focus of CLAN’s advocacy for many years.

Childhood records are vitally important to Care Leavers, but they can be difficult to access. Records can also fall way short of people’s needs and expectations and give a distorted view of people, events and experiences. Care Leavers have a strong urge to “talk back” to the records of their childhoods in institutions. Listening to the voices of Care Leavers, adding memories of their lived experiences and challenging the version of the past in their records, helps to “set the record straight”.

As a microcosm of a larger story, the exhibition has a geographic focus on the thirteen children’s Homes and orphanages of Geelong, the earliest of which dates back to the 1850s. This was the most outside any capital city in Australia.

Exhibition booklet now available to purchase: Our Lives, Our Stories: Geelong Care Leavers Talking Back to their Records – Stories from an exhibition at the Australian Orphanage Museum, Geelong, June 2023

Bound copies of the exhibition booklet are now available to purchase for $20.

An accompaniment to this powerful exhibition, the publication contains full transcripts of interviews with 10 CLAN members who all spent time as children in Homes in Geelong. Contact us to get your copy.

 

 

Australian Orphanage Museum gratefully acknowledges the Local History Grants Program and Public Record Office Victoria, supported by the Victorian Government through the Community Support Fund.

 

 

 

 

Royal Historical Society of Victoria

2023 VICTORIAN COMMUNITY HISTORY AWARDS WINNERS

Commendation in the Oral History Award to Our Lives, Our Stories: Geelong Care Leavers Talking Back to their Records Abigail Belfrage, Consulting Historian with The History Dept. with the Australian Orphanage Museum Project Team Australian Orphanage Museum, 2023

 

The Museum’s permanent exhibitions explores three continuing themes

 

The History of Child Welfare in Australia

This exhibition the history of Child Welfare in Australia from the First Fleet in 1788 until the 1980s. The main feature wall has a timeline, which describes the development of Orphanages, Children’s Homes, Missions, and Foster Care.

Care Leavers Activism

This exhibition highlights the history of the Care Leavers Australasia Network, CLAN, and its activism to gain Redress for Care Leavers. Silent protest meeting posters are displayed. TV reports describe how CLAN was instrumental in achieving the Senate Inquiry for the Lost Australians and the Royal Commission to Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The Children’s Voices

The Children’s Voices room is a themed exhibition centred around direct quotes from adults explaining their childhood in ‘Care’. Artefacts and photos from many Orphanages, Children’s Homes, and Missions are also in the same themes and enhance the children’s voices.