New South Wales Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Office, abbreviated as NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Office, is a heritage-listed former Aboriginal land, farm and house and now education centre and teacher-training facility at 37 Cavendish Street, Stanmore, Inner West Council, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1887 to 1888. It is also known as NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group Office and Records and NSW AECG Office. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 19 January 2018.
History Land ownership history - pre and post contact The land on which the NSW Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) office now stands, at 37 Cavendish Street, Stanmore is the traditional land of the Cadigal and Wangal people of the Dharug nation. The Cadigal land stretches from South Head, through central Sydney to the area around Petersham and to the south along the Cooks River. Wangal land was located from about present day Birchgrove and ran west along the southern shore of the Parramatta River to near Parramatta.
The Cadigal and Wangal people were salt water people, skilled at living from the coastal and harbour waters and resources of the Cooks River. Accounts from the memoirs of First Fleet officers W. Clements and J. Saddlier describe seeing Aboriginal people fishing from canoes and others preparing fish on the banks of the Cooks River. The existence of several large shell middens at the mouth of the Cooks river and near the many sandstone rock shelters in the escarpment running along the Cooks River, also attests to the skill of the traditional landowners in harvesting the resources of their environs.
The traditional people of the area also made use of resources of the woodlands away from the waterways where plants were foraged and kangaroo, birds and possums were hunted. Campsites were most often made near the coast and river especially during the warmer seasons of the year. Movement through the Cadigal and Wangal territory was made via regularly used tracks many of which have been adapted as roads for later colonial and modern-day movement around Sydney.
In 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip arrived in Sydney Cove and established the penal colony of NSW. After this the lives of the Cadigal and Wangal people changed dramatically. Their traditional food supply was encroached upon by the new settlers and the diseases such as smallpox the Europeans brought with the, severely decimated the local Aboriginal population.
The pattern of European dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land accelerated, when in 1792, Governor Phillip received "Additional Instructions" dated 1789, allowing him to grant land for church and school uses. Church and School and Crown lands which extended to the north eastern corner of the former Municipality of Marrickville.Fox and Associates. 1986. Marrickville Heritage Study p. 16
Further communiques from the British government allowed the granting of land to British Officers in 1792. With the aim of establishing a chain of farms between Sydney and Parramatta, land grants were made along the road to Parramatta. In 1793 Lieutenant Thomas Rowley was granted land, an estate he named Kingston, in the area now known as Newtown, part of Camperdown and part of Stanmore. It is within the area of this land grant that the NSW AECG office is located.
In 1871 the Petersham Municipal Council was incorporated and the Council area encompassed Cavendish Street. By 1879 the western rail line was well established and Stanmore gained a railway station providing convenient access to Sydney. The area soon became home to many city workers as well as well-heeled businessmen such as William Paling of Palings Music Store who lived on the corner of Cambridge and Merchant Street, Stanmore and Alexander Stuart, Premier of New South Wales (1883-1885) who lived in "The Lodge" which had been constructed by William Paling.
One city merchant and entrepreneur who settled in the Stanmore area was John Bardsley who in 1888 constructed the Victorian Italianate residence at 37 Cavendish Street Stanmore, which is now the office of the NSW AECG.
In 1927, property was sold out of the Bardsley family and underwent several changes of ownership through the twentieth century. In 1974 the Inner City Education Centre Cooperative Ltdbought the property. This began the building's association with the field of education.Parbury, 2010
In 1990, the Aboriginal Education Consultative Group (AECG) moved premises from Sydney city to share the premises at 37 Cavendish Street with the Inner City Education Cooperative. In 1997 the Inner City Education Centre ceased operation and transferred the building to the NSW AECG. The title specifies that should the NSW AECG vacate premises, the building would revert to the Department of Education.
History of Aboriginal Education in pre and post contact Australia Prior to European settlement in Australia young Aboriginal people were immersed in a whole-of-life educational experience. They learned of the world around them and of how to be in this world through observation of elders, and through practical involvement in the activities necessary to daily life; hunting, sheltering and healing among other things. They also learned of their place in the network of relationships between people and places in their world and of the pervasive spiritual values of these relationships. Knowledge was passed on from elders and was reinforced in dance, ceremonial activities, songs and storytelling.
In the very early years of European settlement in NSW, the gradual dispossession of the Cadigal and Wangal from their traditional lands impacted on these traditional ways of gaining knowledge. Early contact with the Cadigal and Wangal included several attempts to detain local people such as Bennelong and attempt to teach them about English language and culture. Other young Aboriginal people, often after being left parentless, were adopted and given a European style education either at home or at school. From early colonial attempts at providing European education, right up to this day, Aboriginal people often had the experience of a double education - attending white school from 9 am to 3pm and immersed in Aboriginal education in the ways of their land and people the rest of the time.
There a number early institutions involved in educating and training young Aboriginal people the first being the "Native Institution" in Parramatta, initiated under the direction of Governor Macquarie in 1815. This school was subsequently moved to Blacktown in 1822-3 and was located near the first land grants made to Aboriginal people. The focus of the Native Institution was to train Aboriginal children in the skills of domestic service or farming, with a view to student providing service to colonists at the end of their training. This school produced a model student in Dharug girl Maria Locke, (daughter of Yellamundi) who in 1819 was the highest achiever in the Anniversary School's examinations.
Other "experiments" in educating Aboriginal people in the early decades of the colony included introducing a number of Aboriginal children from the former Blacktown Native Institution to the Liverpool Orphan School. This scheme had as its aim to see whether mixed schooling would encourage the assimilation of Aboriginal children into white society. The Blacktown Native Institution was revived in 1827 and Aboriginal, non Aboriginal and Maori students were taught in segregated classes. When this Institution was finally closed down in 1829, students were sent to Liverpool where they were taught in a segregated environment by Rev. Cartwright.
From 1925 the Christian Missionary movement in NSW became an important provider of education in the colony. Schools on the Missions were attended by Aboriginal children only. After 1881 some Mission Schools received government funding. Despite this the prevailing attitude towards educating Aboriginal children was negative. The 1849 Select Committee review of Aboriginal education in government and non-government schools found that "Aboriginal people could not be changed by European education" and concluded that funding should be provided only to non Aboriginal students. In 1853 the NSW Board of Education re-endorsed this finding.
A change in policy came about in 1866 when the NSW Council for Education was formed and the Public Schools Act was enacted. This allowed for full-time government schools to be established in areas where 15 - 24 pupils regularly attended and half time schools were able to be established for 20 pupils. During the 1870s Aboriginal families began to enroll their children in NSW public schools in order to give them opportunities for a better life. In 1880 the NSW Public Instruction Act provided free, compulsory secular education for all children in NSW and many more Aboriginal families enrolled children in public schools. By 1882 a Protector of Aborigines census estimated that 200 Aboriginal children attended school.
Despite Aboriginal children's entitlement to receive a free public education, there were many obstacles to accessing education for Aboriginal families. Often white parents protested against mixed classes resulting in Aboriginal children being excluded from public education. One of the earliest such exclusions occurred at Yass Public School, Aboriginal students were expelled from the school, an action endorsed by the then Minister for Education.
Often Aboriginal schools were set up on Aboriginal Stations or Reserves which were set up under the 1883 Aborigines Protection Board. The government made provision for the Reserve Manager to employ a teacher for the Aboriginal children although these "teachers" were often untrained and the curriculum taught often bore little resemblance to that taught in government schools.
In 1909 the Aboriginal Protection Act was passed. Under the Act, the Aboriginal Protection Board had the power to take custody of neglected Aboriginal children. Those taken into custody were sent to a number of training facilities established for Aboriginal people. Girls were trained in domestic skills at institution such as the Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Home, boys were trained in agricultural skills at places such as Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Home and younger children were sent to the Bomaderry Children's Home.
This was the situation for Aboriginal people right up until the late 1950s and early 1960. There was effectively little in the way of education provided to Aboriginal children unless a local government school was able to tolerate the attendance of suitably "clean, decently clad" and polite Aboriginal students in their school. Cindy Berwick relates the story of one such "lucky" Aboriginal boy who attended Peakhurst Public School in the 1930s. This boy was bright and attained the award of Dux of the school only to have it withdrawn because he was Aboriginal. What education Aboriginal children were able to get was often in segregated Reserve schools, offering an often second rate education or in large Institutions concerned with domestic or labour training.
During the late 1940s and 1950s some small changes in the direction of Aboriginal education began to be seen: In 1949, a medical certificate was no longer required for aboriginal children to attend government schools; complaints about the second rate education at Reserve schools were heard and acted on; in 1956 the NSW school system welcomed its first Graduate Aboriginal teachers; in 1957, Tranby College Cooperative was established to provide training and education for Aboriginal people. The college became independent ion 1962 and was given government funding in 1982;