Port Augusta

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Kennion House provided accommodation for Indigenous and non-Indigenous boys until they left school. Younger boys attended St Andrews School and then Walkerville Primary School. Older boys mostly went on to Nailsworth Technical School .

In an inquiry into sexual abuse of children under institutional care, former residents of Kennion House described their experiences. They recounted manipulation by staff, the harshness of physical punishments and the fear that controlled their lives. A former Indigenous resident recounted that, when he attempted to leave Kennion House in order to escape the abuse, he was apprehended and returned by the police. He was labelled as "having absconded", and then had his house privileges revoked as punishment .

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Established in 1886 as the Boys' Home at Walkerville, closed in 1982.

Kennion House

Karen George and Gary George, The Church of England Boys' Home at Walkerville (1903 - 1955) (28 November 2014) Find & Connect https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/ref/sa/biogs/SE00346b.htm

South Australia, Children in State Care commission of Inquiry, Report (2008), 68.

SA
Port Augusta

Barani, Aboriginal People and Place, Barani Sydney's Aboriginal History
http://www.sydneybarani.com.au/sites/aboriginal-people-and-place/

Nukunu people (also known as the Nuguna people) Nukunu language Nunga Anangu in Central Australia SA
Confidential evidence 179 Personal SA Port Augusta Kennion House

When we left Port Augusta, when they took us away, we could only talk Aboriginal. We only knew one language and when we went down there, well we had to communicate somehow. Anyway, when I come back I couldn't even speak my own language. And that really buggered my identity up. It took me 40 odd years before I became a man in my own people's eyes, through Aboriginal law. Whereas I should've went through that when I was about 12 years of age (p. 176).

Confidential evidence 179, South Australia: man removed as an 'experiment' in assimilation to a Church of England boys' home in the 1950s.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

Unknown Confidential evidence 179
A black and white photograph of the front of Kennion House. The building has a brick face, and several trees which shield the ground floor windows from the street.

Kennion House (then the walkerville Boys' Home), 1925

A black and white photograph of the rear porch of Kennion House. There are a large group of people on the porch, either sitting or gazing out across the grass field.

Kennion House (then the walkerville Boys' Home), 1926