In a quiet corner of Brisbane’s West End, remnants of stolen childhoods linger.

At the turn of the 20th century, the Aboriginal Girls Home at West End housed young Aboriginal girls who were forcibly taken from their families to be trained and put to work as domestic servants for white households in and around Brisbane. It was home to a succession of Aboriginal girls placed in service as part of the then-government policy of protection. The government called it a training depot and refuge for domestic servants. In reality, it was a place of slavery, cruelty, loneliness, and profound loss.

Forced to stay at the Home, these girls were in the care of strangers who saw them as workers, not children. They faced strict rules, constant surveillance and long days of hard labour. Some were as young as five years old. The number of girls at the home varied from month to month as they waited to be placed in domestic service. One young woman, Mary Combo, was the longest resident at the home, being employed to cook and clean as a general servant to the institution. The girls were discouraged from practicing culture, speaking their languages and forced to adopt “white” ways.

In 1901, a girl named Ruby who had been forcibly removed from her family in western Queensland, tried to escape the Home. Ruby made it all the way to Chinchilla, hundreds of kilometres away, before she was found by police and escorted back to the Home. Ruby’s friend Jessie escaped with her on the same day and made it to Dalby. Jessie was apprehended eight weeks later.

Above: A photograph of the Aboriginal Girls Home at West End

Survivors from similar institutions have said that punishments for rule-breakers often included solitary confinement, starvation and other human rights abuses. The girls’ employers were also known to direct violence towards workers.

Whilst working as domestic servants, large numbers of Aboriginal girls became pregnant. Their babies were often taken away soon after birth. Some mothers never saw their child again. The Home and other institutions established under “the Protection Act” was a deliberate attempt by the Government to break the bonds of family, country and culture among Aboriginal people.

Those in power knew of the horror occurring within the doors of the Aboriginal Girls Home. In 1901, the Aboriginal Protector for Southern Queensland described the Home as a “jail” and the house matron as an “unsympathetic jailer”. Despite this, the Home remained open for another five years until an inquiry was undertaken into the conditions in the home and the questionable handling of the girls’ wages.

Today, only the Home’s concrete steps remain. They stand as a silent memorial to the lives forever changed within those walls. The abuse, neglect and loss experienced at the Home, and at many institutions like it, continue to deeply affect the families and descendants of those who lived there through intergenerational trauma.

Despite the incredible strength and resilience of Stolen Generations survivors and descendants, the pain lives on.

Above: Today, only the steps to the Aboriginal Girls Home remain, located at Cranbrook Place within Orleigh Park, West End.

Published July 2025.