The building that housed the Home was later taken over by the Aboriginal Evangelical Fellowship as a Christian vocational, cultural and agricultural training centre called Bimbadeen College.

"The objectives of the Board were to provide asylum for the aged and sick, who are dependent on others for help and support; but also, and of at least equal importance to train and teach the young, to fit them to take their places amongst the rest of the community" (State Records).

Although there was a school at Warangesda, the dormitory followed the institutional model of its time, and taught housekeeping skills to the girls to prepare them for respectable employment in menial duties on nearby stations.

The Board was of the opinion that the children would only become good and proper members of "industrial society" if they were completely removed and not allowed to return.

The result was an official assimilation policy formed on the premise that "full-blood" Aborigines would be soon extinct and the "half-caste" should be absorbed into society.

In 1938, the Sesquicentenary (the 150th anniversary of British colonisation of Australia) was marked by a National Day of Mourning and a call for the Abolition of the Protection Board.

[1] In the 1960s the work of British psychiatrist John Bowlby on "attachment theory", began to influence the institutional care of children in Australia.

[1] The former Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home is located on lands described by Tindale as those of the Wiradjuri language group.

(Read)[1] Charles Sturt and George Macleay visited the area in 1829 and by 1837 John Hurley & Patrick Fennell were licensed to pasture stock on Coramundra Run, which grew to encompass 50,000 acres.

The hospital buildings being set apart but close to a town and railway were considered suitable and in 1911 were purchased to become the Cootamundra Home for Orphan and Neglected Aboriginal Children.

[1] The climate at Cootamundra has an extreme range of temperatures which made conditions at the Home relatively harsh, particularly for those girls from more temperate or sub-tropical areas.

[1] The removal of Aboriginal children from their families, culture and "Country" created a dislocation for the girls as was described by one submission to the Commission of Inquiry.

Many girls became pregnant whilst in domestic service, only to have their children in turn removed and institutionalised back at Cootamundra or Bomaderry.

In the south eastern corners of the central ward/dormitory are two square rooms with pyramidal roofs originally used as a bathroom and latrines with another verandah in between.

[18] One former "Coota girl," Lorraine Peeters, established the Marumali Program in 2000, to help people affected by the Stolen Generations to heal from trauma and in a culturally informed manner.

[citation needed] In 2013, the Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation was created, with former resident Aunty Isabel Reid (see below) appointed as one of the inaugural directors.

[20] Aunty Isabel Reid (born 1932), a former resident of the home, is in 2021 aged 88, the oldest living survivor of those forcibly removed under the Aborigines Protection Act 1909 (NSW).

[20][23] Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, paid homage to Aunty Isabel Reid on 13 February 2021, the 13th anniversary of Kevin Rudd's Apology to the Stolen Generations.

The nation was made aware of how widespread the practice of removal was, which affected every Aboriginal community but was outside the consciousness of mainstream Australians.

The Cootamundra Girls' Home provides contemporary Australia with physical evidence as a means to comprehend the pain and suffering of past assimilation practices.

[1] Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls was listed on the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 17 February 2012 having satisfied the following criteria.

The Girls' Home is a direct example of how the Board's policies were implemented and the government acted as a paternalistic force in Aboriginal lives.

The Girls' Home as a training facility only offered Domestic Service as a career choice and demonstrates the entrenched social theory of the 19th and greater part of the 20th centuries that Aboriginal people were inferior in intelligence.

It demonstrates the implementation of Social Darwinism as government policy which believed that "full blood Aborigines" would become extinct and the rest of the "half caste " population would be assimilated or absorbed into white society.

The home is associated with the National Apology to the Stolen Generations in Australian Parliament in 2008 by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.

[1] The place is important in demonstrating aesthetic characteristics and/or a high degree of creative or technical achievement in New South Wales.

The Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls' Training Home provides contemporary Australia with physical evidence as a means to comprehend the pain and suffering of past assimilation practices.

The original buildings and associated plans and descriptions of their former use provide an insight into the domestic routine and the life of the home and methods used in raising Aboriginal wards of the State.

The use of the former hospital buildings as an institution for Aboriginal girls reflects the early 20th century practice of placing children in dormitories, divided by age.

The place has rarity as the only surviving evidence of the assimilation policies which dictated that Aboriginal girls be institutionalised and trained as domestic servants.