Brewarrina Aboriginal Station Dormitory

The Brewarrina Aboriginal Station Dormitory was a dormitory for Aboriginal girls that was attached to the manager’s house at Brewarrina Aboriginal Station, an Aborigines Protection Board property 16 kilometres from Brewarrina township. Aboriginal girls from all over New South Wales were sent there for ‘training’ and discipline, usually from the ages of 14-18 when they were subject to the removal and apprenticeship policies of the Aborigines Protection Board. The dormitory fell into disuse around 1940, when the Protection Board was replaced by the Aborigines Welfare Board, but Brewarrina Station remained a place where Aboriginal people and children were forcibly relocated until its closure in 1965.

The Aborigines Protection Association (APA) set up the Brewarrina Aboriginal Station in 1886, after the Brewarrina Reserve was relocated from the riverbanks in the township to a new site further up the Barwon River. The dormitory possibly began operating in this time, as the APA had set up a dormitory at Warangesda. The dormitory was certainly established by the time the Aborigines Protection Board took over the management of Brewarrina in 1897.

The Brewarrina mission school was destroyed by fire around 1945. By 2004 there were no mission buildings standing, and only the cemetery remained. Interprative signage had been placed at the site providing information to visitors.