Deebing Creek Mission, Aboriginal mission site in Deebing Heights, Australia
Deebing Creek Mission is a heritage-listed former Aboriginal reserve at Grampian Drive in Deebing Heights, City of Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. It was built from about 1887 to about 1915 and is also known as Deebing Creek Aboriginal Home, Deebing Creek Aboriginal Mission and Deebing Creek Aboriginal Reserve. It was added to the Queensland Heritage Register on 24 September 2004.
Around 1887 the Aboriginal Protection Association of Ipswich, led by Reverend Peter Robertson with William Foote, George Thorn and John Greenham, began establishing a mission at Deebing Creek. The first manager, Reverend Edward Fuller, initially lived in a tent. Land was gazetted for Aboriginal purposes from 1892, and the mission became an Industrial School in 1896. It operated until 1915, when it was transferred to Purga.
The cemetery area, gazetted in 1892 as an Aboriginal Cemetery Reserve, is still tended by Aboriginal families connected to the Yuggera and Jagera peoples. The mission was also called Deebing Creek Aboriginal Home, and the reserve remained in Aboriginal use for grazing after the mission moved to Purga in 1915.
The site is in a rural area south of Ipswich and is reached by road along South Deebing Creek Road. Because the remains are spread across open ground with uneven surfaces, sturdy footwear is a good idea before visiting.
Records show that some children sent to the mission came from places as far as Burketown, over 1,200 miles (about 2,000 km) away in northern Queensland. That distance gives a sense of how far families could be separated from one another under the system that ran the mission.
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