Aborigines Inland Mission

The Aborigines Inland Mission (AIM) was an Evangelical Baptist missionary organisation established by Retta Dixon in 1905. The AIM and its staff ran the St Clair Mission, the Singleton Home, the Native Workers’ Training College and the Singleton Bible Training Institute in New South Wales, as well as the Phillip Creek Mission and the Retta Dixon Home in the Northern Territory. AIM also had administration agencies in Queensland, South Australia, and briefly in Western Australia, which approved the placement of AIM missionaries in those states. Aboriginal assistants to AIM missionaries were employed where possible. The AIM had two periodical publications, Our AIM and The Australian Evangel. In 1998 the Aborigines Inland Mission changed its name to Australian Indigenous Ministries.

Prior to founding the Aborigines Inland Mission in 1905, Retta Dixon had been associated with the Christian Endeavourer Fellowship and New South Wales Aborigines Mission (which later became the Australian Aborigines’ Mission) at La Perouse, Sydney. In around 1893 she moved to St Clair Mission and later, with the support of her Singleton Committee, took over the Mission and set up the Singleton Home in ‘Glasgow Place’, George Street. Retta Dixon and her husband were superintendent and matron of the Singleton Home until 1910, when they returned to Sydney.

According to the Encyclopaedia of Aboriginal Australia (1994), AIM missionaries commenced their activities in New South Wales at St Clair and Redbournebury (near Singleton) and Karuah (Port Stephens). The first annual AIM convention and first publication of the journal Our AIM occurred in 1907. By this time the organisation had missionaries in New South Wales at Yass, Brungle, Warangesda, Moonahcullah, Cummeragunja and Walcha.

From its beginnings in New South Wales the Aborigines Inland Mission spread across the country. In 1907 the decision was made to expand the AIM’s work into Western Australia, and in 1908 the AIM took over the running of Welshpool Reserve (also known as Maamba or Cannington Reserve), which had been established by the government in 1902. Although the AIM planned to set up a Home for Aboriginal children on the reserve, this did not occur, and AIM withdrew from Western Australia in 1909. The AIM continued its expansion across New South Wales and, from 1911, into Queensland, where they established a base at Herberton. Over the next three decades the AIM extended work to almost every Aboriginal settlement in NSW as well as to Gayndah, Cherbourg, Woorabinda, Palm Island, Normanton, Stradbroke Island, Ravenshoe and Cooktown in Queensland, and at Port Augusta and Tarcoola in South Australia. The AIM began work in the Northern Territory in the 1930s, establishing mission premises in Darwin and Tennant Creek. From the mid-1940s it ran the Retta Dixon Home at Bagot Reserve, and had missionaries staffing the Phillip Creek Native Settlement until 1952.

In 1998 the name of the Aborigines inland Mission was changed to Australian Indigenous Ministries.