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The site of KU Lance Children's Centre in Millers Point has been filled with the sound of children playing for more than 100 years.
In the early 1900s, the children of families working at the wharves and warehouses at Millers Point needed somewhere to play. In 1912, a supervised playground was established on High Street, among the workers' terraces, at the current site of KU Lance.
12 years later it became a fully-fledged kindergarten run by the Kindergarten Union. It's remained so ever since. The City of Sydney purchased the kindergarten from the Maritime Services Board in 1991.
“We’ve a wonderful history here at KU Lance," said centre director Barry Odlum. "Millers Point was an area of community housing and KU Lance has always been here to support those families. Now there are lot of young families moving into the area and we're here to support them too."
The centre has also enjoyed a recent upgrade. We replaced damaged roof tiles with corrugated tin sheeting, restoring the building to its original form. New flooring was installed throughout the centre and there’s now better drainage across the site.
KU Lance overlooks one of Sydney's most prominent construction sites at Barangaroo.
While the scale of works carried out at KU Lance pale in comparison to the huge metro development in the area, for the children and their families these upgrades are no less significant.
Published 28 May 2021, updated 17 October 2023
