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Eventide and Westbrook Farm Home: Brisbane City Mission (1950)

Synopsis

Operated through the Queensland State Government Department of Health and Home Affairs, the Eventide aged care facility is situated in the seaside suburb of Sandgate in Brisbane. In another area of the State, just outside Toowoomba in the Darling Downs, the rehabilitative Westbrook Farm Home for Boys houses male convicted juveniles and wards of the state. This short documentary promotes the work of the Brisbane City Mission, whose members provide support to the residents of Eventide and assist with activities at the Westbrook Farm Home.

The film includes footage of Eventide’s streetscapes, buildings, staff quarters and gardens, as well as its facilities and services. It also shows the main living quarters and recreational areas of the Westbrook Farm Home. It includes voice-over narration.

Curator’s notes

by Poppy De Souza

Eventide and Westbrook Farm Home: Brisbane City Mission is one of a handful of films made by the Brisbane City Mission to promote its charity and social work assisting vulnerable members of the community. In this film its focus is the aged and the infirm, as well as marginalised male juveniles. The narrator’s assertion that Brisbane City Mission (BCM) welfare officers cater for the ‘spiritual and psychological welfare of the inmates’ is supported with images of the officers spending time with the residents of Eventide (clip one) and the recreational and rehabilitative activities which the BCM assists with at the Westbrook Farm Home (clip two). But as well as showing the mission’s direct work, it also presents an overview of facilities and how they help the people housed there. As such, the film is a record of both the extent of the Brisbane City Mission’s work in the southeast Queensland region and also of the state-run facilities of Eventide and Westbrook Farm Home (now closed) during the 1950s.

A Brief Survey of the Activities of the Brisbane City Mission details the charity work that the BCM conducted for the poor and needy in 1930s Brisbane, at a time when many people were struggling financially because of the Depression. Both films would have screened to mission supporters in Queensland to raise funds to continue its activities and promote its work within the region.