Between 1937 and 1968, the Northern Territory Administration set up a network of settlements in which to train Indigenous people for citizenship. Rationing, intended to hold Aboriginal people on the hinterland, had begun at Jay Creek (1937), Haasts Bluff (1941), Areyonga (1943), Yuendumu (1946) and Catfish (later Hooker Creek, 1948). Assimilation policy committed the Administration to making these ration depots sites of medical servicing and of various kinds of training for both children and adults. In Alice Springs, the old telegraph station was converted from a native labour camp to a settlement in 1945–6 and continued to be known as ‘the Bungalow’ settlement; in the late 1950s, the Bungalow was replaced by Amoonguna (opened officially in 1960), a little further out of Alice Springs. Three new settlements were created in the hinterland: Papunya was founded in 1959 near Haasts Bluff because of the inadequacy of that settlement's water supply; Warrabri was set up in 1958 as a successor to an undeveloped ration point which had functioned at Phillip Creek since 1944; and Docker River opened in 1968, an attempt by the Administration to sedentarise the Pitjantjatjara people who had not settled down at Areyonga.

These ration depots cum settlements combined government and missions' labour to provide the most basic services and the beginnings of training for citizenship. The growing numbers within the Central Australian settlement system, 1950 to 1971, are given in Table 10.