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NSW and the ACT Policies and practices 1788 to 1936
from Bringing them Home Part 2 Tracing the History

At Darlington Point I have heard an aborigine, who was highly educated, explaining in the best of English how the aborigines were plundered of their rations, robbed of their lands, and reduced to the position of slaves. I do not say the man was right in all his contentions, but when you meet men who understand all these things, you cannot expect them calmly to submit to an order to take from them their girls or boys and to place them in a Government institution (Mr Scobie MP during parliamentary debate on the Aborigines Protection Bill 1915 quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on pages 53-4).

Early policies and practices

Within months of the ‘First Fleet’ arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788 there was ‘open animosity’ as Indigenous people protested against ‘the Europeans cutting down trees, taking their food and game, and driving them back into others’ territories’. Bitter conflict followed as Aboriginal people engaged in ‘guerilla warfare – plundering crops, burning huts, and driving away stock’ to be met by ‘punitive expeditions of great ferocity in which bands of Aborigines encountered were indiscriminately killed’ (Bickford 1988 page 57).

The Native Institution at Parramatta, the first of many such schools for Aboriginal children, was opened by Governor Macquarie in 1814. Designed to distance the children from their families and communities, provide them with the ‘benefit’ of a European ‘education’ and inculcate the diligent subservience thought desirable in servants and the working class, it was quickly boycotted by Indigenous families. By 1820 it had closed and other attempts were similarly short-lived.

Early missionary activity similarly failed to attract the support of Aboriginal people to whom a settled agricultural lifestyle and study of the Bible had little relevance. In the meantime, as the non-Indigenous occupation extended throughout New South Wales, Indigenous people were forced from their lands to the fringes of European settlements.

In the 1870s the destitution and vulnerability of Aboriginal people moved the missionaries to renewed efforts. They successfully lobbied the government to reserve lands for their use and appealed for public support resulting in the establishment of missions at Maloga and Warangesda. In 1881 a Protector of Aborigines was appointed. He recommended that reserves be set aside throughout the State to which Aboriginal people should be encouraged to move.

In 1883 the Aborigines Protection Board was established to manage the reserves and control the lives of the estimated 9,000 Aboriginal people in NSW at that time. The Board took over the reserves at Maloga and Warangesda. After the Australian Capital Territory was established in 1911 the Board compelled all Aboriginal people in the Territory (including those who had been granted land for farming) to move to the Egerton Mission Station at Yass. When that mission closed two years later the residents became fringe-dwellers on the outskirts of Yass until another forced move to Hollywood Mission in 1934. The few Aboriginal children who lived in the ACT came under the control of the NSW Protection Board.

By 1939 there were over 180 reserves in NSW. ‘In most cases they were small with housing consisting of humpies made from iron roofing’ (Learning from the Past 1994 page 14). They were of two kinds. ‘Managed reserves’, also called stations, were usually staffed by a teacher-manager and education of a sort, rations and housing were provided. Unmanaged reserves provided rations but no housing or education and were under the control of the police.

Segregation and ‘merging’

By about 1890 the Aborigines’ Protection Board had developed a policy to remove children of mixed descent from their families to be ‘merged’ into the non-Indigenous population.

The Board reasoned that if the Aboriginal population, described by some as a ‘wild race of half-castes’ was growing, then it would somehow have to be diminished. If the children were to be de-socialised as Aborigines and re-socialised as Whites, they would somehow have to be removed from their parents (Dr Peter Read submission 49 page 11).

In 1893 a dormitory for girls was built on Warangesda station. From then until 1909 approximately 300 Aboriginal children were removed from their families and placed there. Local Aboriginal people were offered free railway tickets to vacate the area leaving their female children behind (Read 1981 page 5).

The Board relied on persuasion and threats to remove the children. But it wanted the legal power to take them and to control the movement of Aboriginal adults and children. Its lobbying resulted in the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 which gave the Board power ‘to assume full control and custody of the child of any aborigine’ if a court found the child to be neglected under the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act 1905. It also allowed the Board to apprentice Aboriginal children aged between 14 and 18 years.

In 1914 the Board instructed all station managers that all mixed descent boys 14 years and older must leave the stations to find employment and all girls 14 and over must go into service or to the Cootamundra Training Home for girls which had opened in 1911.

The Board thus acted as a father figure and in so doing denied the Koori parents their rights in the rearing of their children. For example, it was common for a white child to be apprenticed out to a master. But it was the child’s father who made the arrangements. If this child failed, then he would be sent back to his father’s care. However the Board decided when and to whom a Koori child would be apprenticed and when a Koori child failed in his apprenticeship duties, he would be placed under the Board’s control and would be punished for his misconduct by a Board official (Miller 1982 page 140).

Full control and custody

The Board was not satisfied with having to seek the consent of a court to remove Indigenous children from their families. Its 1912 Annual Report declared, ‘To allow these children to remain on the Reserves … would be … an injustice to the children themselves and a positive menace to the State’ (quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on page 47). As the Colonial Secretary complained,

… it is very difficult to prove neglect; if the aboriginal child happens to be decently clad or apparently looked after, it is very difficult to show that the half-caste or aboriginal child is actually in a neglected condition, and therefore it is impossible to succeed in the court (quoted by NSW Government submission on page 26).

The Board’s efforts to remove children were also inhibited by the ‘cumbersome and ineffective’ procedures involved. ‘For instance, after learning that action is intended, parents have removed children across the border into Victoria, and thus defeated the objects of the board’ (Parliamentary Debates 1914-15 quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on pages 49-50).

Although great care has been taken to explain at length the many advantages a child would derive from such an opportunity, the almost invariable experience has been that the parents or relatives have raised some frivolous objection and withheld their consent. Consequently the children have perforce had to be left amidst their most undesirable surroundings (Colonial Secretary, 1915, quoted by Miller 1982 on page 141).

The Board’s concerns were addressed by the Aborigines Protection Amending Act 1915 which gave it total power to separate children from their families without having to establish in court that they were neglected.

No court hearings were necessary; the manager of an Aboriginal station, or a policeman on a reserve or in a town might simply order them removed. The racial intention was obvious enough for all prepared to see, and some managers cut a long story short when they came to that part of the committal notice, ‘Reason for Board taking control of the child’. They simply wrote, ‘For being Aboriginal’ (Read 1981 page 6).

Apart from just ‘being Aboriginal’ other commonly cited reasons for removal were ‘To send to service’, ‘Being 14 years’, ‘At risk of immorality’, ‘Neglected’, ‘To get her away from surroundings of Aboriginal station/Removal from idle reserve life’ and ‘Orphan’.

The only way a parent could prevent the removal was to appeal to a court.

We are told that the parents have an appeal. What does an appeal mean? Suppose a poor Aboriginal woman goes into court, who will listen to her? (Parliamentary Debates 1914-15 page 1953).

The 1915 amendment also abolished the minimum age at which Aboriginal children could be apprenticed.

Some Parliamentarians of the day such as the Hon P McGarry strongly opposed the 1915 amending Act. According to McGarry it allowed the Board ‘to steal the child away from its parents’. This ‘act of cruelty’ was a scheme to take the children ‘prisoners’ and ‘to gain absolute control of the child and use him as a slave without paying wages’. Another Member of Parliament assessed the amending Act as tantamount to the ‘reintroduction of slavery in NSW’ (Parliamentary Debates 1914-15 pages 1951, 1953, 1957).

Rather than appeal removal decisions, Indigenous parents protested by leaving the stations ‘with a view to escaping supervision and to evade having their children removed to domestic employment’ (1922 Board circular quoted by Link-Up (NSW) submission 186 on page 56).

Extending official control

From 1905 the Board was under pressure to relinquish reserved land in eastern NSW for non-Indigenous settlement. This pressure became ‘irresistible’ in 1917 with the Returned Servicemen’s Settlement Scheme whereby returned soldiers could select a block of agricultural land (Goodall 1996 page 124). At the same time changes in the pastoral industry were forcing Indigenous communities off pastoral stations as the stations were broken up into smaller family-based operations. Communities moved onto reserves or to the outskirts of towns where work might be found.

Coping with this influx of people put demands on the Board’s budget. Its response was to persuade the government to amend the 1909 Act to narrow the definition of ‘Aborigine’. Children who did not fall within this definition were not entitled to remain on the reserves with their families. According to the then acting Premier,

… quadroons and octoroons will be merged in the white population, and the camps will merely contain the full-blooded aborigines and their descendants … By this means, considerable savings will be effected in the expenditure of the Aborigines Protection Board … There is hope … in years to come, the expenditure in respect of Aborigines will reach vanishing point (quoted by NSW Government submission on page 28).
The 1918 strategy to force ‘lesser castes’ from dependence on the Board and into the wider community to make their own way did not take account of the discrimination they would encounter. They were said to be ‘a great annoyance’ to the European population and there was a public demand that they be supervised more closely. In 1936 the Board regained control over these people by yet another change to the definition of Aboriginality.

The effect of this change was to extend the Board’s control to Aboriginal children living away from the reserves and stations, then estimated at half the Aboriginal population. If a child refused to enter employment on the terms laid down by the Board, he or she could be admitted to an institution. Families who refused to move to reserves or from one reserve to another as reserve land was resumed were threatened with the removal of their children. This happened to families who moved to the Darling River at Wilcannia to escape being forcibly removed to the Menindee Mission after it opened in 1933 and to those resisting removal from Menindee when it closed in 1949 to Murrin Bridge.

It is ironic therefore that very often the Welfare Board would use the poor conditions of the river bank houses as a justification for subsequent removals. It was the neglect of the Welfare Board with the tacit approval of the Shire Council which had forced such appalling conditions on the Aboriginal community in the first instance (Western Aboriginal Legal Service (Broken Hill) submission 775).

As the Board had very limited resources it relied on local police to administer its child removal policy, ‘protect’ Indigenous people, distribute rations and prosecute offenders.

The policeman, who no doubt was doing his duty, patted his handcuffs, which were in a leather case on his belt, and which May [my sister] and I thought was a revolver … ‘I’ll have to use this if you do not let us take these children now’. Thinking that the policeman would shoot Mother, because she was trying to stop him, we screamed, ‘We’ll go with him Mum, we’ll go’ … Then the policeman sprang another shock. He said he had to go to the hospital to pick up Geraldine [my baby sister], who was to be taken as well. The horror on my mother’s face and her heartbroken cry! (Tucker 1984 pages 92-3).

Training institutions

The Board expressed particular concern about the prospects of young Aboriginal women and girls. To 1921 81% of the children removed were female. That proportion had decreased only slightly by 1936 (Goodall 1990 page 44).

Girls were sent to Cootamundra Girls’ Home until the age of 14 then sent out to work.

During any one year in the 1920s there would have been between 300 and 400 Aboriginal girls apprenticed to white homes. Aboriginal wards thus represented approximately 1.5% of the domestic workforce at the time (Walden 1995 page 12).

Many girls became pregnant in domestic service, only to have their children in turn removed and institutionalised. Generations of Aboriginal women passed through Cootamundra Girls’ Home until it closed in 1969.

When the girls left the home, they were sent out to service to work in the homes and outlying farms of middle class white people as domestics … On top of that you were lucky not to be sexually, physically and mentally abused, and all for a lousy sixpence that you didn’t get to see anyway. Also, when the girls fell pregnant, their babies were taken from them and adopted out to white families, they never saw them again. Confidential submission 617, New South Wales: woman removed at 8 years with her 3 sisters in the 1940s; placed in Cootamundra Girls’ Home.

In 1918 the Board established the Kinchela Training Institution in northern NSW for Aboriginal boys. Kinchela moved to Kempsey in 1924. The Board also contributed to the United Aborigines Mission home at Bomaderry on the NSW south coast where younger children and babies were placed.

The Board regularly received complaints about the conditions in these institutions. A 1937 Board inquiry into allegations of extreme cruelty by the Kinchela manager led to him being transferred to the station at Cumeragunja. In response to his actions there Cumeragunja families walked off the station, crossed the Murray River and established communities in Victoria. These communities were later subjected to the child removal policies of the Victorian Government.

Under arrangements with the Commonwealth Government the NSW Board also placed Aboriginal children from the ACT who had been removed from their families under the Neglected Children and Juvenile Offenders Act 1905 (NSW).

While Indigenous children were being institutionalised, removed non-Indigenous children were being fostered or ‘released back’ into the care of their mothers. An 1874 Public Charities Commission inquiry had stressed that institutional life,

… is prejudicial to a healthy development of character and the rearing of children as good and useful men and women. The one fatal and all-sufficient objection to the massing of children together under the necessary conditions of barrack life is, its utter variance from the family system recognized by nature in the constitution of human society as the best suited for the training of the young (page 40).
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Resistance and dissent

During the late 1920s and the 1930s Aboriginal resistance to the operations of the Board organised at the political level. In 1925 the Australian Aborigines Progressive Association (AAPA) was formed in New South Wales and immediately called for an end to the forcible removal of Aboriginal children from their families (Markus 1990 page 176). In 1928 the Association wrote,

… girls of tender age and years are torn away from their parents … and put to service in an environment as near to slavery as it is possible to find (quoted by Markus 1990 on page 177).

Fred Maynard, an Aboriginal activist, wrote to the Premier in 1927 demanding ‘that the family life of Aboriginal people shall be held sacred and free from invasion and interference and that the children shall be left in the control of their parents’ (quoted by Learning from the Past 1994 on page 44).

The Member of Parliament for Cobar, a supporter of the AAPA, raised the management problems then existing at Brewarrina Station in Parliament which resulted in a Parliamentary Select Committee into the Aborigines Protection Board, followed by a further inquiry in 1938.

Aboriginal activists continued to campaign against the actions of governments towards their people since the time of the invasion. At a 1938 protest meeting held on the 150th anniversary of the British occupation of Australia, William Ferguson and John Patten forcefully denied the myth of white benevolence in their manifesto Aborigines Claim Citizen Rights.

You have almost exterminated our people, but there are enough of us remaining to expose the humbug of your claim, as white Australians, to be a civilised, progressive, kindly and humane nation. By your cruelty and callousness towards the Aborigines you stand condemned … If you would openly admit that the purpose of your Aborigines Legislation has been, and now is, to exterminate the Aborigines completely so that not a trace of them or of their descendants remains, we could describe you as brutal, but honest. But you dare not admit openly that what you hope and wish is for our death! You hypocritically claim that you are trying to ‘protect’ us; but your modern policy of ‘protection’ (so-called) is killing us off just as surely as the pioneer policy of giving us poisoned damper and shooting us down like dingoes! (quoted by Markus 1990 on pages 178-9).

Source
Bringing them Home
Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their Families
Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
April 1997

Full report available on the web.