Established as a mission in 1932, Warburton Ranges, at that time Warburton Mission, was under the management of the United Aborigines Mission (UAM) with mission operational headquarters in Melbourne. The UAM represented a number of earnest Christian religions including Baptists, Pentecostals and other dedicated Protestant groups.

I am drawing on a couple of online sources to elaborate a little further.

“The United Aborigines Mission ran residential institutions for the care, education and conversion to Christianity of Aboriginal children, mostly on Mission stations and in children’s Homes. The institutional care provided by the UAM was closely tied to Government funding and policy in the area of Indigenous affairs.

The United Aborigines Mission (UAM) (also known as UAM Ministries, United Aborigines’ Mission (Australia), and United Aborigines’ Mission of Australia was one of the largest missions in Australia, having dozens of missionaries and stations, and covering West Australia, New South Wales and South Australia in the 1900s. It was first established in New South Wales in 1895.^“

“The UAM ran residential institutions for the care, education and conversion to Christianity of Aboriginal children, mostly on mission stations or in children’s homes. It was mentioned in the Bringing Them Home Report (1997) as an institution that housed Indigenous children forcibly removed from their families”

“The United Aborigines Mission (UAM) was established in Western Australia in 1929 as a successor to the Australian Aborigines’ Mission (AAM). The UAM ran a number of missions and hostels around Western Australia. In October 2019, Sharrock Pitman Legal Pty Ltd, a legal firm based in Melbourne, advised the Find & Connect web resource that the United Aborigines Mission and UAM Ministries were in the process of being wound up. As of February 2020, UAM Ministries remained a registered charity, last reporting to the Australian Charities and Not for Profit Commission in September 2019.” Sources from online Wikipedia

(While completing a Post Graduate Diploma in Intercultural Studies through Mount Lawley College of Advanced Education in 1976, I researched some background on Warburton Ranges and wrote a dissertation titled.

“The evolution of cross-cultural relationships that developed in the Warburton Ranges Area in the period 1873 to 1935, taking into account factors that contributed to the comparability or fragmentation of relationships, to determine whether the Aboriginal Cultural Identity was strengthened or weakened because of contact with Europeans in Socio-Economic and Spiritual context.”

I would be happy to share this dissertation with anyone who might be interested. My email address is henry.gray7@icloud.com

Feel free to make contact should you so wish.)

During the time we were at Warburton in 1970, the mission was still a mission. That status was designated on signage identifying the settlement to those coming into the town by road from the west. Our first period at Warburton coincided with the last years of mission control, prior to the government taking over responsibilities from mission groups.