Place and Memory at Kinchela Boys Home, Australia

Between 1924 and 1970, hundreds of Aboriginal children, mostly boys, passed through the gates of Kinchela Boys Home (KBH), one of a network of institutions established by the Australian state that sought to instill white culture into Indigenous children. Held against their will, the boys at KBH were routinely subjected to physical, psychological, and sexual abuse by staff. The trauma that resulted has had an enormous impact on the lives of the children—popularly known as the “Stolen Generations”—and their families.

Their accounts are important records of the wrongs committed by the government towards Indigenous Australians—and testify to the role of space in both memory and healing.

Some survivors, like KBHAC board member Roger Jarrett (#12), remember the police promising their parents that their children would soon be returned. In reality, once at Kinchela, the boys might be interned there for years unless they either escaped or were transferred elsewhere.

Brothers and sisters were broken up without regard for family bonds, with boys and girls being sent to separate institutions. For many, Sydney’s Central Station was the last place they saw each other—some for the last time.

Once boys arrived at Kinchela, management took away one of the most fundamental ties to their previous life: their names.

“There was a lot of boys had nicknames to get away from the numbers, but the number was still stuck in their head for years.… It's like a scar that's been forced in your head and you never, ever get away from it. That's what all the numbers all about. Just forced upon you, and you’re stuck with it for the rest of your life.”

Willy Nixon
Gamilaroi people, taken from Gulargambone
Assigned #24 at KBH

The original showers, now covered over, were the site of an important element of new boys’ induction: having their heads shaved and their bodies doused with insecticide, experiences of dehumanization that set the tone for how KBH’s management treated the children in its custody.

Kinchela had two dormitories, separated by age. Brothers were not kept together, something that was particularly painful for those used to sleeping in the same bed at home and looking after each other.

Managers and staff also sexually abused boys in the dormitories. Sexual abuse of Aboriginal children at government-run institutions, including Kinchela, was the subject of a royal commission in 2013.

“If they piddled the bed, my older brother used to get up and do their washing, wash their sheets and that out for him. We'd be stripped off naked and we'd be washing sheets out and we'll be copping all the blame ’cause of our baby brothers who did wet their beds, and it was going on like that for years. And you couldn't even jump in a bed there with your baby brothers to keep them in comfort.”

Willy Nixon
Gamilaroi people, taken from Gulargambone
Assigned #24 at KBH

Kinchela boys were not permitted to attend the public primary school in Kempsey until in 1963. Prior to that point, they received what education they got on the grounds of KBH, where teachers often subjected pupils to severe corporal punishment.

Following school integration, the Aboriginal pupils faced discrimination from white peers and teachers who thought them incapable of doing anything other than manual labor.

“In my files it says that I will never amount to anything. I got news for them. I'm talking to the world here right now. So I'm ‘amounting to nothing’—but this 'nothing' is something that's beautiful.”

James Michael "Widdy" Welsh
Wongaibon people, taken from Coonamble
Assigned #36 at KBH

Athletic activities allowed management and staff, many of whom were former soldiers, to exercise discipline and encourage aggressive behavior through sports like boxing.

But athletic competitions and beach activities also presented a rare opportunity to leave the grounds of KBH and interact with people on the outside, for which reason some boys embraced sports as a means of escape and emotional release.

“Beyond the boys’ dormitory was a recreation hall where they had a boxing ring…. They used to have a tall boy and a young boy going pound to pound, hitting each other, didn’t care if it was your brother or cousin or friend, and then just for their satisfaction, too, after they, they’d had enough of you, they would tap you on the head and get another couple boys and do the same thing.”

Robert Paul Young
Gamilaroi people, taken from Oyster Bay
Assigned #24 at KBH

For several KBHAC board members interviewed by WMF, the buildings contain not only past memories but spirits in the present—traces of the kidnapped children on whose behalf the Survivors now work.

If successful, their museum would be the first of its kind in Australia and a model of survivor-led efforts to reclaim sites of painful heritage—and bear witness for the future.