Note about half-caste homes - 'the stolen children' and The Old Telegraph Station

Between 1905 - 1970s thousands of mixed-descent children were separated from their families (sometimes by force) and placed in government and mission institutions. The Bringing Them Home report estimates that 100,000 children may have been removed. Government policy reflected prevailing genetic theories where it was thought that Australian Aborigines would either die out or be assimilated. Part descent children were labelled half-castes, crossbreeds, quadroons, and octoroons, terms now considered derogatory to Indigenous Australians. Occasionally parents placed their children in these institutions by choice. Sometimes the mother would also enter the home and work as a domestic.

In the Northern Territory many of these children were placed in two half-caste homes - The Bungalow in Alice Springs and The Kahlin Half-caste Home in Darwin.

After protests about living conditions at the Bungalow the children were moved to Jay Creek in 1928 and from there in 1932 to The Old Telegraph Station, 5 kilometres from Alice Springs.

Today, the vitality of some of the communities has been weakened by government handouts (sit down money), corruption and limp paternalism; violence, rape, abuse, petrol sniffing and malnutrition characterise the environment for many aboriginal children. For these children permanent brain damage and sexually transmitted diseases are endemic. Effective action can only be found by abandoning top-down government paternalism through a bottom-up approach which empowers Indigenous women in communities and supports them to take control and ownership.