Solution to June Mystery photo
by Wayne Carveth, from Bulletin 4/2026 (June)
This was the Baby Health Centre in Foley Park. It was built in 1951 and demolished in 2009.
Six people gave answers, some with fond recollections of going there with their babies: Lyn Collingwood in the early 1970s, Dale Dengate who took her babies in the 1960s to be weighed and measured and to discuss their feeding and general progress, Salle-Ann Ehms, whose Mums Group was initiated in the 1990s by nurses at the centre. Also, Alison McKeown, Nick Sangster and Phil Young.
The first public services providing child and family health care to NSW children and their families opened in 1914. The early focus was on reducing infant mortality as in 1914 about 100 in 1000 children died before they turned one. The causes were predominately gastroenteritis and other infections. Today, fewer than 5 children per 1,000 die. See Our Babies: The State’s Best Asset – A History of 100 Years of Child and Family Health Services in NSW (2015), from NSW Health.
The first Baby Health Centre in Glebe opened in 1915 at 76 St Johns Road, corner Broughton Street, Glebe (the building is extant but minus the veranda roof iron decoration – photo right).
In 1944, the Department of Education agreed to transfer control of the old Hereford House grounds (which became Foley Park) to the Glebe Municipal Council on the explicit condition that a new baby health centre be built on the property. The brick baby health centre opened there in 1951 on the site of former tennis courts.
Child and family health services currently operate from Glebe Town Hall in St Johns Road.
How did you go with last month’s mystery photo?
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