Individual Reflections

MONTE PIO, MURRAY DWYER ORPHANAGE REUNION Sunday, 6 March 2011 Thank you to Nancy and Anne and Pat and other organisers for all the effort you’ve gone to over the years putting together these re-unions. And thank you for inviting me to share my own thoughts based on my own time in the orphanage. Some…

I have many memories of “Monte”. I was there from about 1966 – 1970. Also for a short time before that. The mind gets a bit hazy now and then. I remember…… The razzle dazzle; the rocker [some girls rocked so hard and fast it tipped over]. The Wooder girls getting their beautiful long hair…

Letter dated January 28, 2006 “Monte Pio – Memories of Daily Life in a Maitland Orphanage”. I was upset when I read this thesis. It does not speak for me or my sister. In the 1950s, we were placed in Monte Pio due to a broken home, while our brother briefly stayed at Mayfield with the Daughters…

Hi Just found your website and how excited I was. My sister Joanne and I were at Monte Pio from, I think, the end of ’67 or possibly ’68. Don’t know how long we were there. I was 5 or 6 at the time; Jo was a year older than me. Our life was quite…

Where to start? First and foremost, to thank God and my father for putting me into Monte Pio and not some other girls’ home. I didn’t have the shockingly terrifying experiences of many children who were placed in care, in institutions and homes throughout Australia. The broken spirits and the thread of fear that runs…

I remember when I was leaving Monte Pio, the Sister in Charge said to me “When I told you to do this, or go do that, it wasn’t because I had a grudge against you; I did it because when I asked you to do something, it would be done properly and I could rely on you……

It has surprised me that this contact to my past existed. I lived at Monte Pio. I do not have many good memories of this experience. You may remember the girl that was often sitting outside the TV room with a cake of soap in her mouth for daring to suck her thumb. Although I…