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.
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.
Sources used to compile this entry: New South Wales. Aborigines Protection Board (ed.), Report of the Board, Government Printer, 1881-1941. Also available at http://nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn1447508; Parry, Naomi, 'Such a longing': black and white children in welfare in New South Wales and Tasmania, 1880-1940, Department of History, University of New South Wales, 2007, 361 pp, http://hdl.handle.net/1959.4/40786.
Prepared by: Naomi Parry
Created: 16 May 2014, Last modified: 19 June 2014
Last updated: 4 August 2023
Cite this: https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/nsw/biogs/NE01613b.htm
First published by the Find & Connect Web Resource Project for the Commonwealth of Australia, 2011
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