Mid-North Coast: The Aboriginal Children’s Home, Wonnaruah (Singleton)

The Aboriginal Children’s Home at Singleton — on the Hunter River in Wonnaruah country, inland from Lake Macquarie — was established by the Aborigines Inland Mission in 1910 and abandoned in 1920. It was one of many homes that opened after the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Act of 1909 gave the Aborigines Welfare Board the power to take Aboriginal children from their families under a policy of assimilation.

From 1910 to the 1970s thousands of Aboriginal children were removed from their families and communities under this policy. Children taken from their parents, known as the Stolen Generations, were taught to reject their Indigenous heritage and forced to adopt white people’s culture. Speaking their languages was forbidden.