page_title: Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls
section_title: History of Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home
hierarchical_section_title: Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls / History / History of Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home
caption_attribution_description: Title:Cootamundra Training Home for Girls - front view Dated: No date Digital ID: 4346_a020_a020000148 Rights: No known copyright restrictions www.records.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-permissions We'd love to hear from you if you use our photos/documents. Many other photos in our collection are available to view and browse on our website using Photo Investigator.
context_page_description: The Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls, commonly known as "Bimbadeen" and Cootamundra Girls' Home, located at Cootamundra, New South Wales operated by the New South Wales Aborigines Welfare Board from 1911 to 1968 to provide training to girls forcibly taken from their families under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909. These girls were members of the Stolen generations and were not allowed any contact with their families, being trained to work as domestic servants.
  Reports of girls being abused were related in Bringing Them Home, the 1997 report into the Stolen Generations.
  The building that housed the Home was later taken over by the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship as a Christian vocational, cultural and agricultural training centre called Bimbadeen College. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 17 February 2012.
context_section_description: The former Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home is located on lands described by Tindale as those of the Wiradjuri language group. (Tindale) Aboriginal people from the area identify themselves as being part of the Wiradjuri nation. Wiradjuri means "people of the three rivers", these rivers being the Macquarie, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee. Clashes between the new European settlers and the local Aboriginal people were common around the Murrumbidgee and even further north, particularly between 1839 and 1841. These violent incidents have been termed the "Wiradjuri wars". (Read)
  Charles Sturt and George Macleay visited the area in 1829 and by 1837 John Hurley & Patrick Fennell were licensed to pasture stock on Coramundra Run, which grew to encompass 50,000 acres. By 1861 the town of Cootamundra was gazetted and the first lots were sold a year later coinciding with commencement of gold mining east of the town at Muttama gold fields. The opening of the railway in 1877 led to the expansion of the settlement.
  In 1889 the first Cootamundra Hospital was opened on a hill east of the town on a site of 35 acres after 5 years of fund raising. The hospital was designed by government architects, Morell and Kemp of Sydney. The original plan had the main brick building with verandas on four sides and a separate kitchen to the north. The large ward was in the centre of the building and later became the older girls' dormitory. The entry was from a circular drive in front of the southern verandah which faced the town below. In 1910 the Cootamundra District Hospital moved to a new more central site in town and the old hospital on the hill closed.
  In the meantime, the Aborigines Protection Board had been looking for accommodation for Aboriginal girls under 14 who were too young to enter domestic service. The hospital buildings being set apart but close to a town and railway were considered suitable and in 1911 were purchased to become the Cootamundra Home for Orphan and Neglected Aboriginal Children. There is oral history reference to another building referred to as the nurses quarters, the fever hut and the old school. Its exact location isn't known at this stage. The original morgue, originally located near the well was moved in the 1950s to the other end of the kitchen and has since been demolished. The well was twelve metres deep and four metres across with a domed concrete lid, it was filled in during the 1980s. Water supplies were often unreliable until the town water was connected in the 1940s. The operating theatre became matron's room; the committee room, her sitting room; the dispensary her office. The verandah were enclosed for extra dormitory space on the southern and eastern sides. In the 1920s and 1930s the kitchen was extended and a new caretaker's cottage was built. A weather shed was built near the school, a pan-system toilet block, laundry and a dairy. There was also a windmill to pump water from a dam below the main building to the vegetable garden and orchard. In the paddocks Lucerne was grown to support six cows and there was a chicken run. The home must have been reasonably self-sufficient however in the reports of the Board there is reference to the high cost of maintenance of Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home as compared to Kinchela Aboriginal Boys' Training Home. The Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home had its own school up until 1946 (Cootamundra East Aboriginal School). After 1946 the girls attended the Cootamundra Public School.
  The climate at Cootamundra has an extreme range of temperatures which made conditions at the Home relatively harsh, particularly for those girls from more temperate or sub-tropical areas. The routine at the home has since been described by the former residents as very strict and the days were long. The Home was planned according to early twentieth century social welfare policy which housed the children in dormitories according to age. The older girls were considered to be a corruptible influence on the younger ones and were therefore separated. The girls were looked afte
caption: Historic photo of the Training Home
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