Marribank Farm Training School

Marribank Farm Training School was continued on the site of the Carrolup Native Settlement when the Settlement closed in June 1951. Some teenage Aboriginal boys from Carrolup were the first residents. In June 1952, the government closed the Marribank Farm Training School, which re-opened later in 1952 on the same site, as a Baptist Union facility also called Marribank.

Marribank Farm Training School was a government-run facility that was open for only one year. On 17 June 1951, Carrolup Native Settlement was closed and the Commissioner for Native Affairs reported that the adults were ‘dispersed’ but that teenage boys were kept there to establish Marribank Farm Training School. On 30 June 1952, the Marribank Farm Training School was closed. In his 1959 Annual Report (p.8), the Commissioner of Native Welfare explained that there had been a ‘lack of interest in it by native parents and youths, no applications received for admission of native youths as trainees despite intensive canvassing efforts on the part of Departmental Field Officers’.

Young people at Marribank Farm Training School were under the guardianship of the Commissioner for Native Affairs.