Bidura

About

Bidura House, or simply, Bidura, is a heritage-listed former residence, orphanage and office building located at 357 Glebe Point Road in the inner western Sydney suburb of Glebe, New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Edmund Thomas Blacket and built in 1860. It is also known as Bidura House Group. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 28 August 2017.

The traditional inhabitants of the Sydney city region are the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. Despite the destructive impact of first contact, Gadigal culture and connections in Glebe endure. In addition to the Gadigal, Aboriginal people from elsewhere gradually moved into Glebe as it developed into an inner Sydney suburb.

The subject site is on land that was part of a 1790 grant of 162 hectares (400 acres) by Governor Phillip to the Church of England, officially named St Phillip's Glebe but known as "the Glebe". When the church reserve was subdivided into 27 allotments in 1828, Lots 3 and 4 of the subdivision were purchased by William Dumaresq, a captain in the Royal Staff Corps. Dumaresq first subdivided his land as the "Boissier Estate" in 1840 with Lots 1 and 2 purchased by businessman Stuart Alexander Donaldson in 1841.

The property was purchased by prominent colonial architect, Edmund Blacket, as family home while he was working on the University of Sydney in 1857. The landscape was still largely covered in dense bush at this time and Blacket is recorded to have "found it necessary to have four men to escort him home through the heavy timber after a day's work at his city office", along the track that became Ferry Road. Blackett built the two-storey house and single storey annex c. 1860. Sketches of the building, dating from 1865, and likely drawn by his daughter Edith, label the building "Our House". Blacket sold the house following the death of his wife Sarah in 1870.

The ballroom was constructed by subsequent owner, Robert Fitz Stubbs, in the 1870s. The extensive rear garden contained a number of outbuildings including a detached kitchen, scullery, servants' hall, store, servant's bedrooms, laundry and ironing room, workshop, tool house, two bedrooms, garden-house, carriage house, stables, and horse-boxes. In 1904, the northern corner of the property was subdivided and sold by subsequent owner, Frederick John Perks.

Joint welfare and judicial role 1920-1925

In 1920 the site purchased by the NSW Government for use as accommodation for wards of the state. Children lived and were schooled on site. Originally called the Depot for State Children, but also known as Bidura Orphanage or Glebe Girls Home. The site originally had two functions:

- as a receiving home: all wards of the state come to Bidura for processing after they had been removed from their families

- as a remand facility: it also housed children awaiting trial in the Metropolitan Children's Court. At the time, under this dual function a common "child saving" objective saw children who had committed crimes, those who were neglected or abandoned, those who were from single parent families, or had Aboriginal parents, and those who were simply poor processed in the same way. The site was the central point of child welfare in NSW, being the first place most children saw after they were taken from their families and the transit point for their referral to other institutions or programs. As a result, this was the place many members of the Forgotten Australians and Stolen Generations entered "care".

Development of the Metropolitan Girls Shelter 1925-1940s

From 1925, the two functions began to be separated when the NSW Government reorganised its approach to child justice institutions. The government had moved the Children's Court from Ormond House, Paddington to Albion Street, Surry Hills in 1911, and established two designated sites to house children awaiting trial-a nearby property, Royleston, was designated for use as the Metropolitan Boys shelter and a new building, the Metropolitan Girls' Shelter, was constructed fronting Avon Street at the rear of Bidura House. Both Bidura and the Girls Shelter operated on the subject site under the same administration and appear to have shared facilities for the first few decades, with the entire site known as the Metropolitan Girls' Shelter until the 1940s. The site as a whole was notoriously known as a place where cruelty and abuse were an everyday occurrence. This has caused significant ongoing distress and associated health and social problems for the former residents and their families, as specifically recognised in the Forgotten Australian's report of 2004.

Separation of Bidura and Metropolitan Girls Shelter 1940-1977

By 1943 the Victorian house group was simply known as Bidura and appears to have been both administratively and physically separated from the Metropolitan Girls Shelter fronting Avon Street. The site was subject to protests by Women's Liberationists in the 1970s for the plight of female residents. Adaptation of all buildings and erection of additional outbuildings was undertaken in line with shifts in thinking, for example changing of open dormitories to single rooms, and adaptation of the ballroom for use as a school.

Establishment of offices late 1970s-present

Bidura closed as a residential facility in 1976/77 and the house was restored by the NSW Department of Public Works and used as office space for what is now known as the Department of Family and Community Services. Restoration works included demolition of the rear veranda and construction of a new one, removal of non-original internal partitioning and repartitioning of some areas for new purposes, reinstatement of some infilled openings and bricking up of others, replacement or removal of bathroom and kitchen fitouts, replacement of timber windows and doors, installation of new electrical, lighting and ventilation services. A children's court was on the site from 1983 to 2017, during which time it was known as the Bidura Children's Court. The site was sold into private ownership in 2014, with the Department of Justice vacating in 2017.

The institutional history of Bidura has been recognised by Federal and State governments through a series of reports. The National Museum of Australia 's Inside exhibition, (promised in the National Apology to the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants delivered by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 16 November 2009 in Canberra ) noted that three Senate reports were undertaken following pressure from interest groups for the government to put on record the histories that had been hidden or unrecognised. The reports acknowledged that children had experienced systems of "care" and social attitudes that had utterly failed to protect them. It also noted that the places associated with these Australians, like the Bidura House Group, despite being adaptively reused for other purposes, or left derelict or demolished, continue to be repositories of these historic events and connections.

In 2016 local heritage groups pushed to save Bidura, which led to the NSW Land & Environment Court rejecting a refusal of a DA by Sydney City Council for a proposed $43m redevelopment of the rear of the property, involving the five-storey 1983 Brutalist style court building as well as Bidura house and garden. Two apartment blocks were proposed, up to eight storeys high, behind (east of) the villa, which was proposed for retail and office use. In early 2017 the developer lodged an amended $29m DA proposing one seven-storey apartment building, which was due to be heard by the court by February 2018.

The traditional inhabitants of the Sydney city region are the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation. Despite the destructive impact of first contact, Gadigal culture and connections in Glebe endure. In addition to the Gadigal, Aboriginal people from elsewhere gradually moved into Glebe as it developed into an inner Sydney suburb.

The subject site is on land that was part of a 1790 grant of 162 hectares (400 acres) by Governor Phillip to the Church of England, officially named St Phillip's Glebe but known as "the Glebe". When the church reserve was subdivided into 27 allotments in 1828, Lots 3 and 4 of the subdivision were purchased by William Dumaresq, a captain in the Royal Staff Corps. Dumaresq first subdivided his land as the "Boissier Estate" in 1840 with Lots 1 and 2 purchased by businessman Stuart Alexander Donaldson in 1841.

The property was purchased by prominent colonial architect, Edmund Blacket, as family home while he was working on the University of Sydney in 1857. The landscape was still largely covered in dense bush at this time and Blacket is recorded to have "found it necessary to have four men to escort him home through the heavy timber after a day's work at his city office", along the track that became Ferry Road. Blackett built the two-storey house and single storey annex c. 1860. Sketches of the building, dating from 1865, and likely drawn by his daughter Edith, label the building "Our House". Blacket sold the house following the death of his wife Sarah in 1870.