Gill Memorial Boys' Home

The Gill Memorial Boys’ Home was a Salvation Army Boys’ Home located at Auburn Street, Goulburn from September 1936. It was opened after the closure of the Salvation Army’s Dee Why Boys’ Home. It held around 90 boys at a time, aged from three to 18 years. In 1980 the Home was restructured and changed, becoming the Gill Memorial Family Group Home.

Some children at Gill Memorial Boys’ Home were there under court orders, some were state wards, some were child migrants, some were placed there ‘informally’, for example by a parent.

The Gill Memorial Boys’ Home was mentioned in a number of submissions to the 2004 Senate Community Affairs Reference Committee Inquiry into Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants. Some former residents recall sexual abuse and most described a harsh routine, where numbers were used instead of names.

One former resident, who described regular bashings and abuse in his submission, also wrote out the words of a song the boys used to sing:

THE BOYS AT THE GILL VERSION OF THE “ROAD TO GUNDAGAI”
There’s a gaol on the hill
and they call it the Gill
along the road to Goulburn High.
You can hear the Sallies singing
and hear the stockwhip ringing
beneath the Goulburn sky.
When my mummy and daddy are thinking of me
I’m in the Sallies office copping six, four or three.
There’s a gaol on the hill
and they call it the Gill
along the road to Goulburn High.

We used to sing this song on the way to school and after school, anywhere we could, just so long as the officers didn’t hear it because we were well aware of the consequences. [Submission 336]

Gill Memorial Boys’ Home was investigated by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Case Study 05: The Salvation Army boys’ homes, Australian Eastern Territory.