Batchelor
Dr Linda Payi Ford, who was nearly forcibly removed from her mother as a baby, recounts her mother's actions:
I was born in Batchelor in 1962, March 20th, which is about 100 kilometres south of Darwin. And at that time the policeman had to then report me, because I was a half-caste baby, to the [department of] native affairs. We were then sent to Bagot Aboriginal Reserve on the Bagot Road just outside of the Darwin city. My mother overheard the matron in the hospital there that they were going to send the half-caste baby away from the full-blood mother. So my mother then told the matron that she had to go and get some nappies and safety pins from the Winnellie shops, and the matron thought that Mum had some but she had hidden them.
So we went down to the Winnellie shops. And my Mum got the nappy and safety pins, and she continued down the Stuart Highway to where the big white tank is. You have to remember that it's the middle of the wet season and the spear grass is ten foot tall and the rivers all raging, and creeks and streams are in flood. We got dropped off at the Blackmore River and my mother bundled me up in some paperbark and tied me to her head and swam across the river with all her belongings. That was the biggest river that we had to cross. Where she was heading was back to the Wagait Aboriginal Land Trust, which is our traditional Country. It belongs to the Mak Mak Marranunggu people. And Mum swam about five creeks with me bundled up on top of her.
I often think about my Mum what an amazing woman she was to have the strength to run away with me and escape from Bagot, and to face not only the dangers of what was going to happen to me being separated from her and taken away but the fact that she went across country through such harsh conditions to save me for Country. And the Country saved us in actual fact."
Dr Linda Payi Ford, Personal Stories: Transcripts - From Little Things Big Things Grow: Fighting for Indigenous Rights 1920-1970, National Museum of Australia
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