The La Perouse Mission Church is a heritage-listed former church building and now vacant building and unused church located at 46 Adina Avenue, La Perouse, City of Randwick, New South Wales, Australia. It was built from 1894 to 1930. It is also known as Colebrook Memorial Aboriginal Evangelical Church. The property is owned by La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 15 March 2013.
History
La Perouse is situated south of the Sydney central business district on the northern headland of Botany Bay. Named for a French navigator who stayed in the area for six weeks in 1788, La Perouse is the only Sydney suburb where Aboriginal people have held on to their territory from settlement until the present day. Its history is a story of the survival of the Aboriginal culture in the face of European invasion. It is also the story of a suburb where Aboriginal people and Europeans from a wide variety of backgrounds co-existed and established relationships on their own terms in the mid 20th century outside the prevailing government programs of separation and assimilation.
Indigenous presence at La Perouse, 1870s to 1930s
The 1870s marked a change in the nature of the Aboriginal community at La Perouse. Many Aboriginal people who had been forced off their lands on the South Coast by dairy farming moved to Sydney to seek employment or government rations. Informal refuges developed at La Perouse and Blacktown. La Perouse was known to government officials as the "blacks camp".
In the early 1880s, the colonial government was under increasing pressure to take action on Aboriginal affairs. In 1882 Sir Henry Parkes appointed George Thornton as Protector of Aborigines. Thornton believed that Aboriginal people should be removed from urban locations. Yet he did honour the request of five Aboriginal men and their families to be allowed to stay at La Perouse. He justified his decision to Parliament by arguing that the camp was economically viable, in contrast with other camps in Sydney which were seen as parasitic and a nuisance to society. Thornton organised for huts to be built for people camped at La Perouse. By 1881 there were approximately 50 Aboriginal people living in two camps in the Botany Bay region: 35 at La Perouse and the remainder at Botany Bay. Residents were free to travel between the camps.
In 1883 Thornton's position was replaced by the Aborigines Protection Board (APB), which followed a more isolationist and protectionist policy. The Board established Aboriginal reserves, which effectively segregated Aboriginal people from white Australians throughout New South Wales.
In 1885 a small Anglican mission was established at La Perouse. The mission provided religious instruction, food, shelter and basic education. A church was built on Frenchman's Beach in 1894. In 1894, the mission was included in the annual report of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Association.
In 1895 seven acres (2.4 hectares) of land at La Perouse were gazetted by the NSW Government as a "Reserve for the Use of Aborigines"—the only one in Sydney. The APB's decision was partly prompted by the desire of the local Aboriginal people to protect their homes and lifestyle from the encroachment of commercialism and missionaries.
The APB managed the reserve. In the first decades the reserve was run by the resident missionary with a policeman. In later decades (and certainly by the 1940s) there was a resident manager (often a retired soldier or former gaol warden) whose wife would act as the matron. With the introduction of the reserve manager, the resident missionary retained responsibility only for the church and its missionary activities to the community. The manager lived down the hill from the church, separate to the resident missionary. Managers and missionaries worked separately on the reserve. While the reserve managers were generally disliked, the La Perouse Aboriginal community "loved" the resident missionaries (Friends of La Perouse: 2012, pers. comm.).
The Aboriginal population was segregated from the Europeans on the reserve to "protect" them from the white community. They received rations only and no other benefits, which tied them to the reserve. In 1895 the reserve was enclosed by a fence and only the local constable and the resident missionary had a key. Aboriginal people on the reserve were literally locked in. A boom gate was built at the entrance to the reserve which survived into the 1950s.