{{Short description|Australian missionary (1902–1990)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2025}} {{Use Australian English|date=March 2025}}
'''Amelia Shankleton''' {{post-nominals|country=AUS|MBE}} (4 June 1902 – 15 June 1990) was an Australian missionary who worked with the Aboriginal Inland Mission. She spent much of her career, between 1961 and 1980 working at the Retta Dixon Home in Darwin, Northern Territory.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book |last=Dorling |first=Mary |url=https://territorystories.nt.gov.au/10070/492231 |title=Northern Territory Dictionary of Biography |publisher=Charles Darwin University Press |year=2008 |isbn=9780980457810 |edition=Rev |location=Darwin |pages=521–522 |chapter=Amelia Nellie Shankelton (1902 - 1990)}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Retta Dixon & Amelia Shankleton {{!}} Monument Australia |url=https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/religion/display/80180-retta-dixon-and-amelia-shankleton |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=monumentaustralia.org.au}}</ref>
== Biography ==
Shankleton was born in Marrickville in New South Wales and she was the eldest of five children born to William David and Mary Ellen Shankleton. Her father died when she was ten years old and her mother supported the family as a storekeeper. The family were very involved in their local church and, after leaving school in 1916 she attended the Stott and Underwood Business College where she qualified as a book keeper.<ref name=":0" />
After gaining her qualification Shankleton began working for a bakery company but soon became interested in overseas missions and, by her later teens, she was attending night classes to prepare her for this. She was particularly interested in becoming a missionary in China and, for this reason, began working at markets in Sydney City to become better acquainted with Chinese people and start learning the language.<ref name=":0" />
In 1927, when she was 25 years-old, Shankleton attended a public meeting hosted by the Aboriginal Inland Mission of Australia (AIM), now known as Australian Indigenous Ministries, where she felt the call of God' to work amount Australian Aboriginal peoples. Soon after this, with her mothers support, she was accepted as a probationary missionary for them in March 1927 and, later that year spent a six-moth courses at Erambi Reserve, near Cowra.<ref name=":0" />
After completing this course she spent 5 years at Woorabinda in Queensland, where an Aboriginal Reserve had been established, and there she worked an all aspects of church work; as a part of this she ran groups for men and women and delivered sermons. In 1932 she was transferred to Cherbourg where she remained until 1940. In both of these roles she did not receive a salary of allowance for her work.<ref name=":0" />
In 1940 Shankleton was transferred to Darwin in the Northern Territory after the outbreak of World War II with four other female missionaries; she would also spend a period of time living in Delissaville (now known as Belyuen) where she cared for twenty children, at the decision of the Native Affairs Branch, were not placed in any of the more established missions. For about a year she worked at different mission locations in the region including the Kahlin Compound and the Channel Island Leprosarium and she often crossed Darwin Harbour in a dug out canoe to do so.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{cite book |last=Brown |first=Douglas |title=Placed in Our Care – Millie Shankelton, Missionary to Aborigines: Her Role in the Stolen Generations Story |date=2023 |publisher=Elder Books |others=Foreword by Nicholas Hasluck}}</ref>
In 1941, in the immediate lead up to the Bombing of Darwin, there were calls to evacuate Darwin and Shankleton, alongside another missionary Mary Beasley, was asked to transfer 87 Aboriginal women and children to Balaklava in South Australia. They left Darwin with a military escort and travelled by train, bus and truck to Alice Springs where they picked up more evacuees. They would remain in Balaklava, under Shankleton's care, until May 1946.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web |date=1947-06-04 |title=Report on the administration of the Northern Territory 1945/1946, PP no. 48 of 1947 |url=https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-2769291789/view |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=Trove |language=en}}</ref>
On the groups return to Darwin many of the women and children returned to their home communities and families and approximately 30 of them remained in Shankleton's care. They initially lived in ex-Army hospital buildings in Berrimah until the establishment of the Retta Dixon Home, which Shankleton named to honour Retta Long,<ref>{{cite news |date=12 May 1966 |title=Miss Shankleton's life of Christian service |url=http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article131772362 |accessdate=31 March 2025 |newspaper=The Canberra Times |location=Australian Capital Territory, Australia |page=21 |via=National Library of Australia |volume=40 |issue=11,466}}</ref> on 17 December 1947 where Shankleton was the superintendent. by March 1949 there were 67 children living there. A 1950 report on the home stated that the average number of children living there was 70 and that about 8 women, at any one time, were receiving pre-natal care there.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Retta Dixon Home |url=https://www.findandconnect.gov.au/entity/retta-dixon-home/ |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=Find and Connect |language=en-AU}}</ref>
Shankleton served in this role until 1 June 1962 when she retired at the age of 60; she stayed on as the homes book keeper until June 1967 and continued to live at the home until it was officially closed in 1980. Shankleton was evacuated for a six month period due to Cyclone Tracy between 1974 and 1975.<ref name=":0" />
Many claims of abuse have been levelled at the Retta Dixon Home while under the leadership of Shankleton and many believe that she did not act when told about wrongdoings by other staff employed there.<ref>{{Cite news |date=2014-09-24 |title=Accused child abusers 'should appear at royal commission' |url=https://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-24/accused-retta-dixon-abusers-should-appear-at-royal-commission/5766684 |access-date=2025-03-31 |work=ABC News |language=en-AU}}</ref> She also discouraged any children under her care attending leisure activities in Darwin and did not allow them to go to the local picture theatre or any of the dance halls without supervision; Harry Giese, the then Director of Welfare in the Northern Territory Administration, deemed her attitude "very limited" and a bad decision for the children.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Pemberton |first=Greg |date=2014-09-29 |title=The price Aboriginal children paid at Retta Dixon |url=https://www.smh.com.au/national/the-price-aboriginal-children-paid-at-retta-dixon-20140926-10mb2z.html |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=The Sydney Morning Herald |language=en}}</ref>
After leaving the Retta Dixon Home Shankleton moved to Batchelor, some distance from Darwin, until deciding to leave the Northern Territory in 1984 to live with her sister in Sydney.<ref name=":0" />
She died on 15 June 1990 at the age of 88.<ref name=":0" /> After her death, a group calling themselves "the boys and girls of Retta Dixon Home" placed an ad in ''The Sunday Territorian'': "You never forgot our birthday or a Christmas gift, but the greatest gift of all was the love you gave to each of us."<ref>{{cite news |author=Caroline Overington |date=17–18 February 2024 |title=Placed in Care: a new biography of a Christian missionary in Aboriginal Australia [print: A Christian mission ends in sorrow] |url=https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/books/placed-in-care-a-new-biography-of-a-christian-missionary-in-aboriginal-australia/news-story/63540a522a27dce69c17daf0262e8804 |url-access=subscription |access-date=18 February 2024 |newspaper=The Weekend Australian |department=Review |pages=16–17}}</ref>
== Awards and honours == Shankleton was awarded a Member of the Order of the British Empire in June 1964 for her services to the Northern Territory.<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite web |title=Page 4975 {{!}} Supplement 43344, 5 June 1964 {{!}} London Gazette {{!}} The Gazette |url=https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/43344/supplement/4975 |access-date=2025-03-31 |website=www.thegazette.co.uk}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}} {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Shankleton, Amelia}} Category:Female Christian missionaries Category:Australian missionaries Category:People from the Northern Territory Category:1990 deaths Category:1902 births