Our History
MercyCare has a proud heritage. We continue traditions started by the Sisters of Mercy and provide services that have their origins in the 1850s.
The information provided here is just a snapshot of the work of the Sisters. The current MercyCare services can trace their roots to these services - even though they indicate a very different time in the story of Perth and Western Australia.
The Sisters
Catherine McAuley, an heiress of 50 years of age, founded the Sisters of Mercy as a Catholic Religious Order in Dublin in 1831. Sister Ursula Frayne was a friend and associate of Catherine McAuley and imbibed her spirit and values very deeply. In 1846, Ursula was chosen to lead the small group of pioneer Sisters of Mercy who accompanied Bishop Brady to the Swan River Colony in Western Australia. These Mercy women were part of a band of 28 missionaries. The group included Spanish Benedictine priests, brothers and lay catechists.
In January 9, 1846 having landed in Fremantle after a voyage of 113 days on the barque 'Elizabeth' the seven Sisters then sailed up the Swan River to Perth. "We stood in the wilds of Australia in the mid-summer night and we could truly say of it that we had nowhere to lay our heads", wrote Ursula Frayne when they found no arrangements had been made for a place to live.
The Sisters made packing cases into desks and bricks and planks into seats and were ready to open the first school on February 2, 1846. This school became the first secondary school for girls in Australia and is the present site of Mercedes College where our original convent, our Mother House (Victoria Square), stands today. At the same site the sisters founded the first welfare home for Aborigine girls in Perth.
This pioneer group was the first of the Sisters of Mercy in Australia.
From 1846 to 1900 there were eight independently operating groups of Sisters of Mercy in W.A.: - Victoria Square Perth that founded West Perth, Bunbury, Guildford/Midland, York and Toodyay. Coolgardie - founded from Adelaide and Victoria Park - founded from Derry. In 1896, West Perth assumed a separate identity, while the other seven foundations amalgamated under the auspices of Victoria Square, Perth.
Hence at present there are two Mercy Congregations in W.A., West Perth and Perth.
Further information on the Sisters of Mercy can be found at http://www.mercy.org.au/perth/history.html .
The Wembley Site
There is a wealth of information existing about the unique history of the Catherine McAuley Family Centre from its beginnings as a Benedictine Monastery to its present identity.
A Heritage Group formed in 2001 and decided to draw from both written and oral histories to produce an accurate guide to the Heritage of the Wembley MercyCare site. One of the outcomes of this was a Heritage Trail opened in 2001. The accompanying Heitage Trail Booklet sought to tell the history of the site while retaining the human quality of the yet living story.
The information in this section of the MercyCare website is based on the Heritage Trail Booklet compiled by Lyn Pushong and Kate Sweet, and produced by Carlos Palacios, and was the result of input by all the Heritage Group who spent many joyful hours of pouring over maps, researching existing literature, and interviewing Sisters and former residents in an endeavour to fill gaps not covered by the written histories. We owe a special indebtedness to Norm Power, former builder and Maintenance Supervisor whose intimate knowledge of the site for over 50 years was crucial to our task.
The Trail and the Heritage Centre will serve as a constant reminder of the mission of care undertaken by the Sisters of Mercy and the present staff of this organisation.
They will also serve to tell the stories and honour the memory of the many thousands of children and other residents who have, from 1872, known this place as “home".
Any past residents of the care facilities run by the Sisters of Mercy on this site are encouraged to contact us for access to personal records. We also encourage past residents to contact the Care Leavers of Australia Network at http://www.clan.org.au/ .