Kinchela Training Home for Aboriginal Boys
Kinchela Training Home for Aboriginal Boys
2054 South West Rocks Road
Kinchela
NSW
Australia
Provider: Aboriginal Protection Board
Year Opened: 1923
Year Closed: 1970
Kinchela Boys’ Home, near Kempsey, was built in 1923 by the Aborigines Protection Board. It was modelled on Cootamundra Girls’ Home and was intended to offer ‘training’ in farm labouring to boys who had been removed from their families under the Protection Board’s policies of apprenticing Aboriginal youths. There were between 30 and 50 boys at the home at any one time throughout its history.
The property included a dairy and farm and boys did all the labouring. There was a school, but farm training was the main focus of activities. Major investigations into the home in the 1930s revealed cruelty by managers and showed that the ‘training’ on offer was severely limited.
From the 1940s, when the Aborigines Welfare Board was interested in assimilating Aboriginal children into the wider community, boys were sent out to Kempsey Public School. In the 1950s and 1960s some were admitted to Kempsey High School. The home was closed when the Aborigines Welfare Board was shut down in 1969.
CLAN Homes – Orphanages Gallery
There are currently no other images available for CLAN members to view for this Home. If you have any images and would like to donate them, please contact CLAN.
CLAN Museum Gallery
There are currently no images of historical items available for CLAN members to view for this Home. If you have any historical items and would like to donate them, please contact CLAN.
CLAN library books where this Home is mentioned include:
N 405
Lalor gives a sometimes angry but more often funny account of what it was like to be a part-Aboriginal man in outback Australia. He grew up with colour prejudice among his own relatives, was put in a boys’ home and ran away, and did various kinds of work. He recorded on tape these detailed recollections of his extraordinary life.
