The Petersham Christian Endeavour Society built a house at La Perouse, near Botany Bay in New South Wales, in November 1894, where a Miss J. Watson took up residence and began working among the local Indigenous peoples.
She moved to the Singleton area in the Hunter Valley in 1905, where the Aborigines Inland Mission of Australia was formed.
The inaugural public meeting was held on 11 September 1905 in the Singleton Methodist Church,[1] which established the Aborigines Inland Mission of Australia (AIM).
[1] The mission was considered unique due to being mostly female;[6] they mainly recruited young single women.
[1] The Australia Indigenous Mission Church took responsibility for things such as the appointment of pastors, the handling of properties, and oversight of a bible school based in Rockhampton which provided short-term and long-term courses in a number of centres.
However the government has prevented Australian Indigenous Ministries (AIM) from being a participant in the NRS, for the stated reason that the group cannot afford to pay out potential claimants.
[14] The mission was opened by Reverend James White and was run by Baptist missionary Retta Dixon in 1893.
[1] AIM did not involve themselves with organisations that took the children who became the Stolen Generations; their only concern was salvation, and assisting those who were "eager to read God's word".
[6] The main mission of AIM was the salvation and expanding the Biblical knowledge of those who were "eager to read God's word',[6] with a particular emphasis placed on preaching, teaching, and applying the word of God.The foundational belief of the AIM was that teaching life skills, providing better health and education, as well as having the ability to resist temptation and trouble would build a better Aboriginal Christian community.
[7] Retta Dixon said that within the organisation's 30-year history up to 1935 that there had been 11,000 people under their spiritual care, 35 centres, 100 outposts and 106 "agents at work".
[4] Missionaries were placed in major centres like Darwin and Alice Springs or in Aboriginal communities and outback towns.