'A Chance to Be Decent': Northern Territory 'Half-Caste' Girls in Service in South Australia 1916-1939

Abstract

Shortly after the Commonwealth government, in 1911, took control of the Northern Territory from South Australia, homes were established in Darwin and Alice Springs for Aboriginal children of mixed descent, most of whom were forcibly removed from their Aboriginal mothers. At the age of 13 or 14 the girls were sent out to work as domestic servants under the exploitative working conditions applying to Aboriginal workers throughout the Territory. From 1916 a number of the girls from the Alice Springs Home were sent to service in South Australia under circumstances similar to those applying to institutionalised White children in that state. However, their Aboriginality meant they suffered working conditions that were inferior to their White peers. On the other hand, their removal from the Territory resulted eventually in total exemption from the Aborigines Act. In contrast, the lives of women of mixed descent still resident in the Territory continued to be dominated by the provisions of the Act.2 From the mid-nineteenth century, apprenticeship was a major feature of the institutional care of dependant children throughout Australia. Consignment to institutions was seen as rescuing pauper children from both the physical and moral dangers of their situation, whilst apprenticeship was said to fit them for a life of independence. In addition, there was the rarely stated fact that the children provided a source of cheap labour in an era when it was normal for working class children to be expected to be 'useful'.3 So it was that from 1866 orphan and delinquent children were available as apprentices from age 12 and for as long as seven years. In NSW masters and mistresses were required to provide for apprentices' keep and teach them appropriate skills. During the last three years of indenture, pay was supposed to be compulsorily deposited in a bank account as a means of forced saving.4 In South Australia, state girls were most commonly sent into domestic service at age 14. The notion of apprenticeship is known to have attached itself to domestic service5 although few of South Australia's state girls were apprenticed in the sense that they formally received on-the-job training to skill them.6 However, in other respects the conditions under which they were