Early History

The Four Principles of the Aborigines Friends Association
1. To instruct the Natives in such industrial pursuits as may make them useful in the land, and enable them to earn their own living.

2. To encourage and assist Native families in forming civilized homes.

3. To instruct them in the doctrines, precepts, and duties of the Christian religion.

4. To maintain a boarding school for children from five years of age and upwards, who may be committed to our care, where they may receive gratuitously the ordinary elements of an English education and be trained in civilized habits.

AFA Annual Report, 1890: 6

By the end of his first full year at the School, C.W. Gregory had extended the range of classes from Junior to Grade Five, six levels in all, for a total of about fifty children. As early as 1890, it was common for children at Point McLeay to start their schooling at the age of five and continue until fourteen or fifteen. The school day covered no more than three or four hours, two hours each in the morning and afternoon, with a long lunch break. Gregory was relieved to report that members of the Public Service Commission who had visited the School ‘considered the school would compare favourably with other schools of the colony.’ The work of the children was displayed at a Native Exhibition in Adelaide in October 1889.

Gregory also helped to organise a ‘young man’s improvement class’, on Monday evenings. These classes were strongly employment-oriented, and conducted by the Overseer, Mr Redman. Parents were concerned that their children needed more than education than before in order to gain a foothold in the economy. In 1891, Gregory reported that ‘the parents continue to manifest an interest in their children’s education, and are desirous that they should, when old enough, learn a trade.’ The bare skills required for seasonal farm and station work were accurately viewed as insufficient by parents: Gregory was therefore especially anxious to ensure that commensurability between the Education Department curriculum and his own was achieved and maintained: in 1891, he reported that ‘the subjects as revised by the Education Department from time to time, for the public schools, have been introduced and applied as far as practicable.’ This struggle for a similar education continued for another twenty years until a segregated and inferior education was once again imposed.
Blackwell was also concerned, at the other end of the education-employment nexus, with generating projects which could offer people employment at Point McLeay: he considered the pros and cons of planting vines, figs, wattle, tamarind trees, even box thorns as hedges – in the days before it was realised what a noxious weed box thorn could be – and in 1891, set aside a large workshop for a boot-making enterprise.
This turned out to be quite a complicated operation, with specialised staff, equipment, work and storage space, and a regular system of orders and dispatches, not to mention the accounting involved. H. Baker, the bootmaker-teacher, stayed for a short time before heading off to the Western Australian goldfields and was replaced by Mr Mugg. Many young men were extremely keen to be involved in training to be boot-makers and the boot-making shop soon gained a good reputation for the high quality of their work.
However, as happens in racist societies, the very success of the venture incurred the enmity of white workers and the bootmakers’ union: ‘Unfortunately, due to the pigment of their skin, no manufacturer was prepared to risk employing a native tradesman due to the backlash they would receive from their white employees.’ (Hughes, 1996: 12). As Linn comments,
The union men caused large changes in the way shearing was done in the area. Not only did they demarcate the boundaries between masters and servants, they also described the workers themselves. Aboriginal shearers now worked in separate sections of their sheds. (1988: 137).
Redman also was very preoccupied with fostering employment schemes: he helped build a fish-curing plant for a Ngarrindjeri fisherman, so that the meat ration could be supplemented by dried fish in the winter months. He also began work on a eucalyptus oil processing plant.