The New South Wales government will engage a specialist to explore the site of a notorious boys home where locations “consistent with clandestine human burials” have been found using ground-penetrating radar.
In September, Guardian Australia revealed there are at least nine “suspicious” sites of possible graves on the grounds of Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home, one of the most violent and abusive institutions of the stolen generations era.
A report by experts surveying the area using ground-penetrating radar (GPR) highlighted “high priority anomalies” in the ground at the home, which show “signal patterns that in other contexts have proven to be human burials” and cannot be explained by other information sources.
“Some evidence supports the use of cadaver dogs in finding buried human remains,” the report said.
The report recommended further physical searches of the entire property near the north coast NSW town of Kempsey. If human remains are found in those areas, the report said, “they would likely be of the clandestine burial type and not typical Christian burials”.
The report’s authors said some of the anomalies could be archaeological as well as forensic. They noted the only way to determine for sure if there are bodies buried on the site is to excavate.
The former federal Indigenous Australians minister Linda Burney said the reports were “deeply disturbing” and called for a full investigation. The NSW premier, Chris Minns, announced he would support further searches.
In January, the NSW government confirmed the search had widened to include investigative work at two other stolen generations institutions: Cootamundra girls home and Bomaderry infants home.
Since the revelations, Aboriginal Affairs NSW has been brokering meetings between the survivor organisation, the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation, and the Kempsey Local Aboriginal Land Council, which owns the site.
A spokesperson for the minister for Aboriginal affairs and treaty, David Harris, said the government “is working to engage expert archaeological and heritage services to support the next phase of the Missing Children Project”, which encompasses all three stolen generations institutions.
“This is highly sensitive and technical work which requires a number of steps to comply with heritage legislation,” the spokesperson said.
“The minister notes the sensitivity of these issues which involve sorry business and can cause trauma for stolen generations survivors, their families and their communities.”
Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home was run by the Aborigines Protection Board, later called the Aborigines Welfare Board, under the NSW government from 1924 until it closed in 1970.
An estimated 400 to 600 Aboriginal boys between the ages of five and 15 were taken away from their families and incarcerated there under the laws and policies of the stolen generations.
The stated aim was to assimilate them into white society by training them to be labourers. Kinchela, on the banks of the Macleay River, included a dairy and farm, where the boys did all the work. It was known during its time of operation as a violent and unregulated place.
Kinchela survivors have long maintained that Aboriginal boys died at the home, either as a result of the brutal physical punishment and neglect or because they may have “met with foul play”.
