Deebing Creek Mission is a heritage-listed former Aboriginal reserve at South Deebing Creek Road (now Grampian Drive), Deebing Heights, City of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. Considered a sacred site for the Yuggera and Jagera tribes. It was built from to . It is also known as Deebing Creek Aboriginal Home, Deebing Creek Aboriginal Mission, and Deebing Creek Aboriginal Reserve. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 September 2004.
History
Establishment, 1892 Deebing Creek Mission comprised areas of land which were gazetted for Aboriginal purposes from 1892 to 1948. The first area of land to be gazetted was R. 177 situated at what is now known as Lot 219 RP858789. This area does not appear to have been used as a place of residence, but from about 1900 it was used as a farm to support the Mission. Two further portions of land were gazetted as Aboriginal Reserves in 1892, the first in lieu of a Water Reserve, and the second nearby on the west bank of Deebing Creek. This area, with the proclamation of additional land, became what is known as the Deebing Creek Mission and a place of residence and work for missionaries and Aborigines until 1915. This Mission was transferred to Purga in 1915, although the Deebing Creek Mission land, remained an Aboriginal Reserve and was used for grazing purposes. Purga Mission was closed in June 1948 and all the reserves were rescinded in December 1948.
Around 1887 the Aboriginal Protection Association of Ipswich commenced work on the establishment of a mission at Deebing Creek. It is not clear from the records if a specific religious denomination had responsibility for the Mission, although it is understood that the Reverend Peter Robertson, Chairman of the Aboriginal Protection Association, was a minister of the Presbyterian Church. The Aboriginal Protection Association, comprising Reverend Peter Robertson and local business figures William Foote, George Thorn and John Greenham formed with philanthropic and economic motives to establish a Mission. The Committee had sole authority to run the Mission from 1892 to 1897. At the time of establishment there were two known groups of Aborigines in the Ipswich area. The first were camped in Queen's Park in Ipswich and the second at Purga. It is thought that a combination of the two groups were the core of the first residents at the Deebing Creek Mission.
The Statistical Returns for Deebing Creek School No. 612 (the Mission school) for 1900 state that all of the children attending the school belonged to the Salvation Army, but this may have come about because the Superintendent, Thomas Ivins, appointed in 1896 was a member of the Salvation Army. A report from the Chief Protector of Aborigines in 1906 states that the Deebing Creek Mission, situated from Ipswich, was controlled by a Board appointed by the Church authorities. However, the name of the Church has been blackened out in the report. It is evident, however, that the Aboriginal Protection Association, the term regularly used by the committee, managed the Deebing Creek Mission, but relied heavily on the Government to assist financially. The Committee saw this as a legitimate claim after the Deebing Creek Mission was asked to take orphan children and was proclaimed an Industrial School in 1896. The Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act of 1865, provided that Aboriginal and "half-caste" children under the age of fifteen could be brought before a bench of magistrates and ordered for detention at a relevant mission.
The Reverend Edward Fuller became the first manager of the Deebing Creek Mission. From February 1892 he was thought to have lived in a tent for a year, after which he and his family lived in an architect designed house overlooking the bark huts of the Aborigines along Deebing Creek. It is not stated where this was situated, but it may have been on R. 371, the area gazetted in lieu of a water reserve in April 1892. The mission was supplied with provisions by the Government from February 1891 to February 1894 when a grant of per annum was authorised. This continued until 1896.
In July 1892 a deputation from the committee of the Ipswich Aboriginal Protection Association requested that the land already granted to the home be vested in trustees and that a small additional area of land be granted in the immediate locality for the purposes of the Mission. This occurred on 29 October 1892, with the gazettal of a temporary Reserve for the use of the Aboriginals of adjacent to Deebing Creek. This description aligns it to the east of portion 197, and is denoted on the survey plan as R. 65, a part of which is now Lot 228 on CC2905, an Aboriginal Cemetery Reserve. Trustees of the Aboriginal Protection Association were appointed.
When Myora Mission ceased to be a school around 1896, the dormitories were closed, and the children classified as orphans and removed to Deebing Creek Mission, without provisions and given a penny a day allowed for food.
The first record of the number of Aboriginal residents at the Mission appeared in correspondence of 1893, which indicated that there were 33 people. The numbers varied as some went away to work and returned at other periods. Prior to the Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, the Aboriginal people of Deebing Creek Mission were free to come and go as they pleased. There were only two Aboriginal workers on the Mission at that time.
The Act, 1897 With the passage of the Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act 1897, the lives of Aboriginal people became increasingly controlled by the State. This Act was described as being passed "to make Provision for the better Protection and Care of the Aboriginal and half-caste Inhabitants of the Colony, and to make more effectual Provision for Restricting the Sale and Distribution of Opium". The Act established the positions of Protectors of Aborigines who administered the Act, and to whom a report was provided each year on each Mission and government settlement. It also provided for the establishment of government-run reserves, made provision for the removal of Aborigines to reserves, and provided for written agreements for the employment of Aborigines. The Act provided Regulations to control the residence, movement, employment and wages, in effect, every aspect of an Aborigine's life. The Act also expanded official control over mixed-race families. This control, of course, extended to the residents of the Deebing Creek Mission after 1897, especially in relation to agreements for employment outside the Mission.
Both children and adults were sent to Deebing Creek Mission from all over the State, from north Queensland as far west as Charleville. Aboriginal people who were sent to reserves away from their traditional lands are known as "historical" people. The reserves which became their homes were the traditional lands of other groups, but the State authorities did not take this cultural aspect into account in removing people from place to place. Nonetheless the reserves, such as Deebing Creek Mission, became "home" to those who were sent there by the Aboriginal Protectors. This has caused great difficulties for Aboriginal Peoples.
A typescript report, probably from Archibald Meston in 1896, stated that the Deebing Creek Mission provided a home and food in varying numbers for up to 150 people. He commented that the children received a plain public school education, and that the Aborigines provided labour for clearing, fencing and cultivation on the land that was suitable. Evidence from Meston's official report of 1896 indicates that the Mission consisted of a Mission house, buildings at the head of the creek and housing for Aborigines which Meston considered were too close together.
A short history of the school dated 30 January 1894 verifies that work began at the Mission in 1887 by the then present committee of the Aboriginal Protection Association. In 1894 there were 62 Aborigines at the Station and 27 attending school. An amount of per month was received from the Government. J Fitzgerald was the teacher and Superintendent. At this stage a tent was being used as a school-room. Each adult male was required to work on the Mission for four hours each day and each family was encouraged to build their own dwelling. By 1897 the land had been fenced off into three portions and the houses and gardens had been fenced off from a common area. Thirteen cottages had been erected.
A report dated 5 September 1894 from the Police Magistrate to the Under Secretary, Colonial Secretary's Office, states that there had been clearing of timber at Deebing Creek Mission and substantial two-railed fencing erected. Two new huts were in evidence and another one was being built. There were about twenty children at the school. It was reported that the land was poor and that 12 young men were doing fencing and clearing.
Evidence that a school had been established by 1895 is also located in the Register of Purga Aboriginal School (formerly Deebing Creek) which shows the name, residence and admission age of children from 21 January 1895. Twenty-five names appear on the admission register for 1895. Thereafter the numbers ranged from 3 to 20 until the school was relocated to Purga Mission site in 1915. On 4 September 1895 correspondence indicates that there were new cottages, and that a tent that had been used as a school-room had been replaced by a new building to accommodate 80 people. There was at this time mention of the game of cricket being played.
A report dated December 1895 on the material organisation of Deebing Creek Provisional School shows that the school was a rough slab building, canvas lined, and with shingles, being long, wide with a semi partition about from the entrance. It was close to the Superintendent's quarters. Another hardwood building, , to accommodate children being sent was thought not to be required, in which case it was to be converted to a school room.
The only evidence of the location of the school in the Deebing Creek area appears on the original plan. This plan indicates that the school was situated on R. 371, the area of land granted in lieu of the water reserve. A report of 1931 states that the school was erected on the south-west corner of the portion. In 1905 the Secretary of the Aboriginal Protection Association reported to Dr Walter Roth, Chief protector of Aborigines, that the portion on which the farm was situated was R. 371 and the house was on the west and the farm on the east end.
Correspondence from the Chief Protector of Aborigines to the Home Secretary on 1 February 1907 provides an indication of how the Industrial and Reformatory Schools Act 1865 was administered. The Chief Protector stated that the Government was pleased to remit the unexpired portions of the sentences of detention passed upon the undermentioned Industrial School children: Paddy, Jacky and Chloe - sentenced by the Bench of Magistrates, Roma on 7 June 1904, upon conviction on charges of being neglected children, to detention in the Deebing Creek Industrial School for seven years.