Training Farm for Boys

The Training Farm for Boys, situated at 29 Riverview Road, was operated by the Salvation Army. It was previously known as the Home for Boys, Riverview. In 1969 its name was changed to Endeavour Training Farm.

A publication from 1968 described the Training Farm for Boys:

PURPOSE: To provide a home for uncontrollable and delinquent boys to 18 years of age.
ACCOMMODATION: 35 boys housed in dormitories. Clothing supplied by parents. Boys are trained in general farming.
MEDICARE CARE: Attend Ipswich General Hospital (Social Services Queensland, 1968, p.108).

The Training Farm for Boys, Riverview, was a Home that received child migrants from Britain. The Salvation Army’s involvement with child migration was discussed in the National Archives of Australia publication, ‘Good British Stock’.

After World War II, the Salvation Army as other religious denominations, was anxious to cooperate with the Government’s mass migration policy. In 1948, Brigadier Winton took Minister for Immigration, Arthur Calwell, on a tour of the Riverview property which had become run-down during the war years. Winton hoped to make it a centre for child migrants but his understanding was that the ‘child migrants’ would be young men over fourteen years of age, more youth migrants for farm training. The Salvation Army was not involved with child migration, strictly defined, after the war.

Time passed; the Salvation Army organisation in Britain had cooled towards youth migration; renovations at Riverview took time; and the Big Brother Movement had become the organisation for youth migration. In the end only a few youth migrants, fewer than one hundred, passed through Riverview during the 1950s, and by the 1960s the Salvation Army was using the place for other purposes.

In 1998, former residents of Riverview Training Farm made submissions to the Commission of Inquiry into Abuse of Children in Queensland Institutions (widely known as the Forde Inquiry). The Committee reported on incidents of unsafe, improper and illegal treatment of children in Queensland institutions, including cases of sexual, physical, emotional and systems abuse. Its findings were detailed and explicit.

In January 2014, the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse commenced a public hearing into response of the Salvation Army (Eastern Territory) to child sexual abuse in children’s Homes in Queensland and New South Wales, including the Riverview Training Farm. The evidence to be heard was to have a particular focus to the years 1966-1977, although the Royal Commission stated it expected to hear allegations dating back to as early as 1936.