This week Lady Gowrie Tasmania is celebrating a significant milestone.

We are celebrating the 85th anniversary of the opening of the very first Lady Gowrie Child Centre, at our Battery Point service.

The Battery Point Education and Care Service, as it is now known, has provided education, care and support to literally thousands of Tasmanian children and their families since first opening its doors in 1939.

This marked the beginning of not only the Lady Gowrie history in Tasmania, but also in Australia, as Battery Point was the first of the six centres in the state capital cities to be built and opened in Australia.

As we celebrate 85 years of Lady Gowrie Tasmania’s rich history in providing high-quality programs to Tasmanian children, families and educators, it’s time to pause and reflect on this remarkable journey.

Lady Zara Gowrie, who was the wife of the governor-general of the time, was an advocate for children when she became involved in the development and opening of kindergartens, and developed an interest in child welfare.

She was also a keen and powerful advocate for the development of nursery schools across Australia.

She planned for and convinced the government to fund six Lady Gowrie Child Centres across Australia. This was brought to life in 1939. These centres were to provide a holistic approach to childcare (what we now know as early childhood education and care) with a focus on nutrition, health and wellbeing, as well as education.

The children admitted to the centres were to primarily come from disadvantaged families. Battery Point in Hobart was chosen as the site for the Tasmanian centre.

Her view was that the earlier children were engaged in education and care, the more likely they would be to attend school and to be supported with their health and welfare.

The designs of the centres (located in each state’s capital city) were cutting edge at the time for their approach to not just delivering services for children but for being demonstration sites and for building a workforce, through a new approach to supporting children in one place.

We can see elements of these designs carried through today in services like our integrated centre in South Hobart and in other approaches to supporting children in a place-based, and integrated services way.

The Lady Gowrie Tasmania Education and Care Service at Battery Point continues to operate in 2024 and is a much-loved fixture in the local community.

There are very few Hobart families that have not had some interaction with the centre over the generations.

This was our beginning as an education and care provider in Tasmania.

Today, 85 years later, we have more than 40 education and care services, across long daycare, outside-school-hours care services, as well as inclusion, workforce and training services, including our own Registered Training Organisation.

Lady Gowrie Tasmania is part of a network of Lady Gowrie services across Australia, where we all deliver high quality education and care programs to children.

Just as Lady Zara Gowrie was an advocate for children, so too is our organisation in that we engage regularly in advocacy with government and decision makers about the future of education and care and the wellbeing of children.

The way families are structured and live their lives is vastly different today than it was in 1939, and that means that not only does education and care play in important part in the economic landscape of our cities and towns, but there is a very well-established agreement that education and care is in the best interests of children as well.

The research is very clear that the first 1000 days of a child’s life are formative in their development and future opportunities and so we work closely with governments to try to do our part to realise the ultimate goal of universal affordable access to education and care for all children.

Our legacy comes from the ambitious goals of our founder, Lady Zara Gowrie, and we are proud to be continuously operating in her vision 85 years later.

Mat Rowell is the chief executive of Lady Gowrie Tasmania