Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Training Home, also known as Kinchela Boys' Home and the Aboriginal Mission School, is a heritage-listed former Aboriginal Boys' Training Home at 2054 South West Rocks Road, Kinchela, Kempsey Shire, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1924 to 1970.
It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 17 February 2012. Today the property is owned by Kempsey Local Aboriginal Land Council. The site was also recognised in 2022 by the World Monuments Watch.
Background Aboriginal children were separated from their families from the earliest days of the colony. Governor Lachlan Macquarie established the first Native Institution in Parramatta as early as 1814 and, in 1823, another "native institution" was started in Blacktown (Blacktown Native Institution Site). Both those institutions were considered failures, one reason being that once parents realised their children wouldn't be allowed to come home, they wouldn't give them up. In the 1820s and 1830s, the Government of New South Wales also subsidised Christian missionary activity among the Aboriginal people, including that of the London Missionary Society. On the European settlement frontier of Wellington Valley, the Reverend Watson gained a reputation for stealing Aboriginal children and, as a consequence, the Wiradjuri hid their children from white men.
The spread of European settlers and their livestock resulted in conflict with the indigenous population, and their dispossession. The first bill for the protection of Aborigines was drafted by the New South Wales government in 1838, following the Myall Creek massacre in June of that year. Thus began a systemic government approach to the regulation and control of the lives of Aboriginal people that became ever tighter, until the success of the 1967 constitutional referendum brought significant change.
Before 1881, Aboriginal people in New South Wales were under the jurisdiction of the Colonial Secretary, police and the Lands Department. In 1880, a private body known as the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Association was formed and, following agitation by that body, the government of the colony of New South Wales appointed a Protector of Aborigines, George Thornton MLC. The Board for the Protection of Aborigines was subsequently created in 1883. "The objectives of the Board were to provide asylum for the aged and sick, who are dependent on others for help and support; but also, and of at least equal importance to train and teach the young, to fit them to take their places amongst the rest of the community". That objective became the basis of the future child removal policy, arising from he belief that the "inferiority" of Aborigines would only be dealt with by removing the children and educating them in a European setting.
In Darlington Point, Reverend Gribble established the Warangesda Aboriginal Mission in 1880 and, in 1883, set up a separate girls' dormitory. The girls were housed separately, in a building which included a dining room and kitchen, as well as the dormitory. Girls were brought in from many areas and were trained to be domestic servants. When Warangesda Mission became an Aboriginal Station in 1884, the Aboriginal Protection Board continued to send Aboriginal girls to the Warangesda girls' dormitory. It was the Warangesda Mission/Station girls' dormitory which became the model or prototype for the later Aboriginal Children's Training Homes at Cootamundra (Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls) and Kinchela.
Frustrated by the lack of legislative power to control the education and lives of Aboriginal children, the Aborigines Protection Board successfully lobbied for a new act. In 1909, the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 was passed. The Board's Annual Reports of 1909 and 1911 show the emphasis on training of Aboriginal children. The Board felt limited by the Act because it only gave them direct control over children over 14 who could be apprenticed. To remove younger children they had to apply to a magistrate under the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act 1905. The Board was of the opinion that the children would only become good and proper members of "industrial society" if they were completely removed from their families and not allowed to return.(Brindley p48, A board official quoted by P Read and C Edwards.) The underlying assumption, as ever, was that Aboriginal people lacked the intellect to undertake anything but menial tasks. That later translated into the limits on the types of training provided: girls being trained for domestic service and the boys for labouring.
The Aborigines Protection Act was amended in 1915 and again in 1918, giving the Board the right "to assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine, if after due inquiry it is satisfied that such a course is in the interest of the moral or physical welfare of such child. The Board may remove such child to such control and care as it thinks best."(Aborigines Protection Amending Act, 1915, 4. 13A.) A court hearing was no longer necessary and, if parents wanted to challenge the seizure of their children, it was up to them to go to court.
The Depression and drought years of the 1920s and 1930s were particularly difficult for Aboriginal people. Conditions on the Aboriginal reserves which remained after the redistribution of land to soldier settlers, were poor and often overcrowded, so it was easy for the government to prove neglect and remove Aboriginal children. In 1937, in response to public pressure from academic and missionary groups sympathetic to Aboriginal people, a meeting of State and Commonwealth Aboriginal authorities was convened. The result was an official assimilation policy formed on the premise that "full-blood" Aborigines would be soon extinct and the "half-castes" should be absorbed into society. Meanwhile, Aboriginal people were organising to become a force of resistance. The sesquicentenary of the European colonisation of New South Wales in 1938 was marked by a National Day of Mourning and a call for the abolition of the Protection Board.
In 1940, the Aborigines Protection Board was abolished and replaced by the Aborigines Welfare Board. Aboriginal children then became subject to the Child Welfare Act 1939. Before an Aboriginal child could be removed from its family, there had to be a hearing before a magistrate, and the child had to be proven to be neglected or uncontrollable. Nevertheless, Aboriginal children continued to be sent to Cootamundra, Bomaderry and Kinchela, and some went to Mittagong or Boystown. There were no specific homes for uncontrollable Aboriginal children so they were sent to State corrective institutions such as Mt Penang or Parramatta Girls Home.Brindley 60 The education of Aboriginal children had generally been one of segregation until, in 1940, the Department of Education officially took on the role.
In the 1960s, the work on "attachment theory" by British psychiatrist John Bowlby, began to influence the institutional care of children in Australia. It held that, for social and emotional development to occur normally, an infant needed to develop a relationship with at least one primary caregiver, rather than only being treated with affection as a reward ("cupboard love"), which was the prevailing theory. Fostering then became the preferred option and a more common occurrence. In accordance with the assimilation policy which was still in force, Aboriginal children were fostered with non-Aboriginal parents.
In May 1967, a referendum which changed the Australian constitution brought positive changes for the Aboriginal people. Responsibility for Aboriginal affairs passed from state governments to the Australian government. One resultant change was the abolition of the NSW Aborigines Welfare Board in 1969. After that, non-Aboriginal girls were admitted to Cootamundra Girls Home.
Operation as a boys' home The Board for the Protection of Aborigines gazetted the Kinchela Aboriginal Reserve on 23 April 1883.AR 174 Kinchela (originally known as Arakoon) was gazetted as a village in 1885 or 1886. Dormitories were added to the Aboriginal Reserve in 1924 to accommodate the daughters of Aboriginal parents who lived too far from a school and boys who were transferred from Singleton Aboriginal Boys' Home.
The Kinchela village became a centre of shipping for produce and cattle on ocean-going steamers. Three sugar mills operated in the vicinity and the hamlet was the centre of a large maize growing area. Cheese making was an important industry and the village had a bakery and butchery, two churches, two schools, a post office and a hall.(4) Aboriginal people were excluded from the activities of the village and the local community successfully petitioned in the 1940s to prevent the Aboriginal boys from the home from attending the local school.
The precursor to Kinchela, Singleton Boys' Home, was established by the Board for the Protection of Aborigines in December 1918 on the grounds of a former mission. By the end of 1918 there were 46 boys accommodated there. The home was intended to accommodate the boys removed from their families under the Aborigines Protection (Amendment) ActNo.2 1915 until they were old enough to be sent out to work. The boys were to receive training whilst in the home so they could be gainfully employed in manual or agricultural work when they turned 15 years of age. They remained wards of the state until they were 18 and their income was held in trust by the Board. By 1923 eight boys had been placed in apprenticeships. By the end of 1923 the Board decided to dispose of the Singleton Home on the ground that the premises were unsuitable. The school on the grounds was officially closed on 15 January 1924 and the boys remaining at the home were transferred to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Training Home.
Established in 1924, the Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Training Home had the same function as the Singleton Home. Under the Aborigines Protection Act boys between the ages of 5 and 15 were removed from their families if in the opinion of the Board (or those enacting its laws, the police or reserve managers) it was "in the interest of the moral or physical welfare" of the child. These boys were sent directly to Kinchela or if they had been taken at a younger age they were sent to Bomaderry Children's Home until they were old enough to be transferred to Kinchela. Once the boys were removed from their families and communities they became officially wards of the state until they were 18 years old.
From the 1920s until the 1940s the Kinchela Home was known as an extremely harsh and cruel environment. After this time the home is said to have improved; however, oral history shows that conditions were still appalling. When describing the difference between the Bomaderry Home and Kinchela, one former resident felt that whilst there were difficulties with Bomaderry they were too young to comprehend the impact of the separation from their families until much later. He felt that the United Aborigines Missionaries tried to provide a loving caring environment whereas Kinchela was an institution. He described the manager at the time, in 1935, as "dictatorial and aggressive". The staff were untrained and did not make the same efforts to provide a homely environment. The boys were referred to by number rather than name. Cases of beatings and sexual abuse are well documented. The cruelty was investigated in the 1940s and some staff were dismissed. The policy of segregation from the rest of society became more relaxed and boys were permitted to engage in activities outside the home.