Mount Margaret Mission

Mount Margaret Mission, south of Laverton, was established in 1921 by R. Schenk, with assistance from the Australian Aborigines Mission. Around 1928, the Schenks established a dormitory system at the Mission, where Aboriginal children were housed separately from their parents. It was called the Graham Homes. By 1942 several hundred Aboriginal families, including children, lived at the Mission. The head of the government departments responsible for Aboriginal welfare was the guardian of these children until 1963. Mount Margaret Mission closed in 1975 and the lands were transferred to the Aboriginal Movement for Outback Survival.

There was a dormitory at Mount Margaret Mission, established around 1928, where children were housed separately to their parents. It was called Graham Homes.

Mount Margaret Mission accommodated children as part of family groups but these children, even when living with their families were under the guardianship of the authorities responsible for Aboriginal welfare in Western Australia.

The ‘Bringing them home’ report (1997) describes how missions like Mount Margaret attracted families whose children would otherwise be taken from them.

According to the State Solicitor’s Office in Western Australia (Guide to Institutions Attended by Aboriginal People in Western Australia 2005, pp.93-94), R. Schenk, the manager of Mount Margaret Mission, established in 1933 ‘an outpost at Warburton Ranges Mission, which became an entirely separate mission in 1937’ (p.93).

Sadie Canning told her story about being taken to Mount Margaret Mission in the 1930s as a four year old:

My mother … lived a traditional lifestyle. She could not read, write, nor could she speak English. They tried to hide us from the authorities, but when my sister … was taken during a raid, I was told to stay under a blanket. Of course, I didn’t, and they took me, too.

I was taken at the age of four years and placed in Mt Margaret Mission, which was in the area my parents traversed. I still had contact with them during my time at Mt Margaret and they were welcome to visit.

I was placed in the Graham Home for girls with about 59 others. I entered the home speaking and hearing Wongatha, as English was completely unknown to me. We were allowed to speak our language anytime other than in the classroom. We were not treated cruelly, but we were disciplined …

We grew up as sisters, with the older girls looking after the little ones. My mother visited me on occasions when she returned to the mission after going on their traditional and cultural practices (Goold & Liddle, p.2).

By 1942, there were ‘several hundred’ Aboriginal people living at the mission in ‘cottage residences’ and 70 children went to the mission primary school. Schenk took an active role in the ‘vocational education’ of children at the Mission (p.93) ‘.

Young people were educated generally along practical lines, with what could be considered to be relatively high aspirations for the pre-World War II period. Boys were trained in carpentry, shearing, mechanics and mining skills so that they could get jobs in industries common to the Goldfields area. Girls were trained not only in domestic work but also as typists and nurses.

In 1933, Mrs Mary Montgomerie Bennett, teacher and advocate for Aboriginal people’s rights, joined the staff at Mount Margaret, and emphasised ‘learning’, teaching classes in ‘personal hygiene, money transactions, arithmetic and bible history’. She taught at the school until 1942 (Taffe, 2018).

Bennett’s entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography states that at Mount Margaret:

… she devoted herself principally to unorthodox but highly successful primary teaching of Aboriginal children and the promotion of handicrafts among Aboriginal women. Her teaching was supplemented by tireless agitation for Aboriginal rights, which made her anathema to State officials and politicians.

Bennett sent copies of schoolwork by students at Mount Margaret Mission to individuals and groups around Australia who shared her interest in Aboriginal education and justice. In a collection held by University of Melbourne Archives, there are copies of students’ work from the 1930s and 1940s sent to a philanthropic assimilationist organisation called the Victorian Aboriginal Group (Leeper Family Papers, University of Melbourne Archives, reference number 1987.0162).

In 1949, the mission school received the services of a government teacher.

In 1947, superintendent Schenk took a party of children from the Mission on a 7,000 mile tour by truck to Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. Along the way, they raised funds for the Mission and the children performed musical concerts, singing and playing instruments including the banjo and the gum leaf (Kalgoorlie Miner, 1947).

According to the Guide to Institutions (2005, p.94) there were only a ‘number of families’ living at the mission by the end of the 1960s, with 18 children being taught in a one-teacher school.

By 1971 (Wilson and Robinson, quoted in Signposts 2004, p.359) there were 39 children enrolled at the mission school. Wilson and Robinson also stated that Mount Margaret Mission was run by the Department of Native Welfare but other reliable sources report that the UAM ran the mission until 1975.

In 1972, responsibility for child welfare at Mount Margaret Mission was transferred from the Department of Native Welfare to the Department for Community Welfare (DCW) in accordance with government policy at that time.

Mount Margaret Mission closed in 1975 (Guide, p.94), and the lands were transferred to the Aboriginal Movement for Outback Survival.

Some young people may have been placed with adults resident at Mount Margaret Mission after the lands were transferred in 1975.

Mount Margaret Mission was mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children removed from their families.