Children's home opened in 1924 by South Australian Protestant Federation on John Baker's former estate
The opening of the children's home by the South Australian Protestant Federation in 1924 at Norton Summit in the Adelaide Hills. This was formerly the home built on a large estate for wealthy pastoralist and politician John Baker in 1847.
Image courtesy state Library of South Australia
The Morialta Protestant Children's Home was started in 1924 at Norton Summit in the Adelaide Hills in the home first built in 1847 for wealthy pastoralist and politician John Baker.
Baker’s son Richard Chaffey Baker and then grandson John Richard Baker inherited the 17-room mansion with many out-buildings including servants' quarters, all on 125 acres of rich farming land.
John Richard Baker sold the property to the South Australian Protestant Federation in 1924. The federation had been founded in 1917 as a virulent anti-Catholic alliance. After the success of the (Catholic) Orphanages of St Vincent de Paul in Adelaide’s Gilberton and Goodwood Park, the federation decided to buy Morialta House as a Protestant home for orphan and neglected children. In 1924, many prominent members of Adelaide society made contributions to the home idea, at a public meeting in Adelaide Town Hall.
Federation secretary Philip Colebatch was briefly the home’s first superintendent that opened in 1924, with 67 children. Unlike other South Australian orphanages, Morialta had dormitories for babies, girls and boys so brothers and sisters weren’t separated. In 1929, another wing was opened, with beds for another 42 boys in three dormitories. By 1932, 56 boys and 37 girls were living at the Home.
The home’s management board had three members, elected annually, from each of the South Australian Baptist Union, Congregational Union, Presbyterian and Churches of Christ churches plus the Protestant Federation, Independent Order of Oddfellows Lodge, Loyal Orange Institution and public subscribers.
Staff included a head hardener, to oversee the vegetable garden, orchard and dairy herd, and train the boys, expected to be useful as farm workers on leaving the home., The matron oversaw the girls cooking, washing and mending, so they would later be employed as domestic servants, All the children attended Norton Summit state school. In 1934 the annual budget was £3,500 to feed, clothe and train the children. Income was derived from sale of produce, annual fetes at Adelaide Town Hall, and donations from individuals and organisations. In 1950, J. Campbell Dobbie produced a film The Open Door on the Morialta home.
IThe home's board opened the Toorak Gardens Boys' Hostel in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs in 1967. The hostel and the children's home were together renamed Morialta Children's Homes Incorporated in 1972 but closed both two years later. In its 50 years, 2,500 had passed through the institution. The property was later bought by the Youth with a Mission movement.
