Cootamundra

Cootamundra

Central Land Council
http://www.clc.org.au/

Alice Springs Town Council, Indigenous, Alice Springs Town Council
http://www.alicesprings.nt.gov.au/living/living-alice-springs/indigenous

Wiradjuri people Wiradjuri language Goori in northern coastal regions. Koori in some parts. Murri in north-west regions. NSW

Confidential evidence 8 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

Your family don't care about you anymore, they wouldn't have given you away. They don't love you. All they are, are just dirty, drunken blacks.' You heard this daily ... When I come out of the home and come to Redfern here looking for the girls, you see a Koori bloke coming towards you, you cross the street, you run for your life, you're terrified (p. 135).

I've seen girls naked, strapped to chairs and whipped. We've all been through the locking up period, locked in dark rooms. I had a problem of fainting when I was growing up and I got belted every time I fainted and this is belted, not just on the hands or nothing. I've seen my sister dragged by the hair into those block rooms and belted because she's trying to protect me ... How could this be for my own good? Please tell me (p. 139).

When people use the word 'coconut' in front of me I go right off the planet, because there are some of us that have no choice of being one (p. 210).

Confidential evidence 8, New South Wales: woman removed to Cootamundra Girls' Home in the 1940s.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

Unknown Confidential evidence 8

Confidential evidence 10 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

They were very cruel to us, very cruel. I've done things in that home that I don't think prisoners in a jail would do today ... I remember once, I must have been 8 or 9, and I was locked in the old morgue. The adults who worked there would tell us of the things that happened in there, so you can imagine what I went through. I screamed all night, but no one came to get me (p. 139).

I was being molested in the home by one of the staff there ... I didn't know what she was doing with me. I didn't know anything about sex or anything like that, we weren't told. I can remember a piece of wood shaped like a walking cane only on a smaller scale, like the candy striped lollipops they make today approximately 30cms long. She was telling me all about the time she was with my mother when she died and how my mother had told her how much she loved me. She also had a large bag of puffed wheat near the bed, because she knew how much I loved it. All this time she was inserting this cane into my vagina. I guess I was about 9 or 10. I know she did this to me many times over the years until she left the Home when I was about 14 years old. We were totally isolated in the Home. You never knew anything of the outside world. We didn't know if that was right or wrong. Every time I knew she was coming, when matron was going on holidays, I would beg to matron not to go, because I knew she'd be there. She was always there - in my life, in my life in the Home. Her bedroom used to open out onto the dormitory ... I'd hear my name being called ... It was always me ... One night I hid under the bed. I held onto the bed and she pulled me out and flogged me with the strap. She is my biggest memory of that home (p. 141).

I was there for 16 years and I was brainwashed every day of the week. You never go near Blacks. Your people don't want you anyway. They're just dirty. They don't want anything to do with you ... We were playing in the schoolyard and this old black man came to the fence. I could hear him singing out to me and my sister. I said to [my sister], 'Don't go. There's a black man'. And we took off. It was two years ago I found out that was my grandfather. He came looking for us. I don't know when I ever stopped being frightened of Aboriginal people. I don't know when I even realised I was Aboriginal. It's been a long hard fight for me (p. 184).

Confidential evidence 10, Queensland: NSW woman removed in the 1940s and placed in Cootamundra Girls' Home.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

Unknown Confidential evidence 10

Confidential evidence 11 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

They sent me when I was 16 from Parramatta Girls' Home out to M, a property 137 miles from Nyngan. We never had a holiday. We weren't allowed to go into town with them. If you did go in or go anywhere and you saw any Aboriginal people, you weren't allowed to speak to them. So you had to live that isolated life. We never, ever got our wages or anything like that. It was banked for us. And when we were 21 we were supposed to get this money, you see. We never got any of that money ever. And that's what I wonder: where could that money have went? Or why didn't we get it?

Confidential evidence 11, Queensland: NSW woman removed to Cootamundra at 2 or 3 years in the 1940s, spending the ages of 13-16 in Parramatta Girls' Home.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

2-3 years Confidential evidence 11

Confidential evidence 71 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

I had to relearn lots of things. I had to relearn humour, ways of sitting, ways of being which were another way totally to what I was actually brought up with. It was like having to re-do me, I suppose. The thing that people were denied in being removed from family was that they were denied being read as Aboriginal people, they were denied being educated in an Aboriginal way (p. 176).

For the first time I actually felt like I had roots that went down into the ground. But not only into the ground - that went through generations. And it was like I was connected through. And instead of being disconnected as the person that arrived earlier that week, by the end of the week I was connected (p. 210).

Confidential evidence 71, New South Wales: woman who lived from 5 months to 16 years in Cootamundra Girls' Home in the 1950s and 1960s.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

5 months Confidential evidence 71

Confidential evidence 405 Personal NSW Bomaderry Bomaderry Children's Home

I went with my sister to Redfern [aged 17]. I'm walking up the street and my cousin says, 'That's your mum over there'. I'm standing there against the wall ... I had no connection with her. None whatsoever. So that was it. Never bothered about it. Never said hello to her. I stayed against the wall. [Ten years later met her mother.] I didn't get close to her. I didn't do anything. But I spoke to her and I know who she was then. I didn't have any inkling for her. I didn't get near her.

Confidential evidence 405, Queensland: NSW woman removed in the 1940s at about 6 months to Bomaderry Children's Home; transferred to Cootamundra at 8 years; put out to work at 15.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

6 months Confidential evidence 405

Confidential evidence 450 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

My mother told us that the eldest daughter was a twin - it was a boy. And in those days, if Aboriginals had twins or triplets, they'd take the babies away. Mum swore black and blue that boy was alive. But they told her that he had died. I only found out a couple of years ago - that boy, the nursing sister took him. A lot of babies were not recorded (p. 5).

If we got letters, you'd end up with usually 'the weather's fine', 'we love you' and 'from your loving mother' or whatever. We didn't hear or see what was written in between. And that was one way they kept us away from our families. They'd turn around and say to you, 'See, they don't care about you'. Later on, when I left the home, I asked my mother, 'How come you didn't write letters?' She said, 'But we did'. I said, 'Well, we never got them'.

We were all rostered to do work and one of the girls was doing Matron's office, and there was all these letters that the girls had written back to the parents and family - the answers were all in the garbage bin. And they were wondering why we didn't write. That was one way they stopped us keeping in contact with our families. Then they had the hide to turn around and say, 'They don't love you. They don't care about you' (p. 134).

Confidential evidence 450, New South Wales: woman removed at 2 years in the 1940s, first to Bomaderry Children's Home, then to Cootamundra Girls' Home; now working to assist former Cootamundra inmates.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

2 years Confidential evidence 450

Confidential submission 332 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

I remember all we children being herded up, like a mob of cattle, and feeling the humiliation of being graded by the colour of our skins for the government records (p. 162).

Our home was out in the bush, many miles from Kempsey. It was an old wooden shack consisting of only two rooms. It may not sound like much but it was the only home I ever knew. We children were little free spirits, exploring the bush surrounding our home, building cubbie houses, and just being allowed to enjoy our childhood. Our big brothers were always our protectors, we could rely on them to look after us and not let us come to any harm (p. 366).

Confidential submission 332, Queensland: woman removed in the 1950s to Cootamundra Girls' Home.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

Unknown Confidential submission 332

Confidential submission 437 - Jennifer Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

My grandmother, Rebecca, was born around 1890. She lived with her tribal people, parents and relations around the Kempsey area. Rebecca was the youngest of a big family. One day some religious people came, they thought she was a pretty little girl. She was a full blood aborigine about five years old. Anyway those people took her to live with them.

Rebecca could not have been looked after too well. At the age of fourteen she gave birth to my mother Grace and later on Esther, Violet and May. She married my grandfather Laurie and at the age of twenty-three she died from TB.

Grandfather took the four girls to live with their Aunty and Uncle on their mother's side. Grandfather worked and supported the four girls.

Mum said in those days the aboriginals did not drink. She often recalled going to the river and her Uncle spearing fish and diving for cobbler. Mum had eaten kangaroo, koala bear, turtles and porcupine. She knew which berries were edible, we were shown by her how to dig for yams and how to find witchetty grubs. My mother also spoke in several aboriginal languages she knew as a small girl. The aboriginals had very strict laws and were decent people. They were kind and had respectable morals. Even though the girls fretted for their mother they felt secure with their own people.

Years later Grandfather told my mother a policeman came to his work with papers to sign. The girls were to be placed in Cootamundra Home where they would be trained to get a job when they grew up. If grandfather didn't sign the papers he would go to jail and never come out, this was around 1915.

My grandfather was told he was to take the four girls by boat to Sydney. The girls just cried and cried and the relations were wailing just like they did when Granny Rebecca had died.

In Sydney my mother and Esther were sent by coach to Cootamundra. Violet and May were sent to the babies' home at Rockdale. Grace and Esther never saw their sister Violet again. She died at Waterfall Hospital within two years from TB.

My mother was to wait twenty years before she was to see her baby sister May again.

Cootamundra in those days was very strict and cruel. The home was overcrowded. Girls were coming and going all the time. The girls were taught reading, writing and arithmetic. All the girls had to learn to scrub, launder and cook.

Mum remembered once a girl who did not move too quick. She was tied to the old bell post and belted continuously. She died that night, still tied to the post, no girl ever knew what happened to the body or where she was buried.

Aunty Esther was a big girl for her age, so she was sent out as a cook to work at twelve years of age. Mum being of smaller build was sent out as children's nurse at fourteen. She had responsibility for four young children; one only a baby for 24 hours a day. Mum said they used to put girls ages up if they were big for their age and send them out to work on properties. Some girls were belted and sexually abused by their masters and sent to the missions to have their babies. Some girls just disappeared never to be seen or heard of again.

Eventually after several years Mum was sent to Rose Bay to work. Whilst in Sydney she met her sister Esther who was working in the Chatswood area. As far as I know neither Mum or Aunt Esther ever got paid for those hard working years under the Board.

My mother often recalled the joyous time Aunty May came to Kempsey to see her sisters and father. The three young women hugged one another and cried with happiness and sadness for their sister and their mother.

Early one morning in November 1952 the manager from Burnt Bridge Mission came to our home with a policeman. I could hear him saying to Mum, 'I am taking the two girls and placing them in Cootamundra Home'. My father was saying, 'What right have you?'. The manager said he can do what he likes, they said my father had a bad character (I presume they said this as my father associated with Aboriginal people). They would not let us kiss our father goodbye, I will never forget the sad look on his face. He was unwell and he worked very hard all his life as a timber-cutter. That was the last time I saw my father, he died within two years after.

We were taken to the manager's house at Burnt Bridge. Next morning we were in court. I remember the judge saying, 'These girls don't look neglected to me'. The manager was saying all sorts of things. He wanted us placed in Cootamundra Home. So we were sent away not knowing that it would be five years before we came back to Kempsey again.

Mum used to write to us every week. Sometimes it would be 2 months before we received the letters, of course they were opened and read first. Sometimes parts would be torn out of the letters by matron or whoever was in charge.

Cootamundra was so different from the North Coast, it was cold and dry. I missed the tall timbers and all the time I was away there was this loneliness inside of me. I had often thought of running away but Kate was there and I was told to always look after her. I had just turned eleven and Kate was still only seven. I often think now of Cootamundra as a sad place, I think of thousands of girls who went through that home, some girls that knew what family love was and others that never knew; they were taken away as babies.

Some of the staff were cruel to the girls. Punishment was caning or belting and being locked in the box-room or the old morgue. Matron had her pets and so did some of the staff. I look back now and see we were all herded together like sheep and each had to defend themselves and if you didn't you would be picked on by somebody that didn't like you, your life would be made a misery. I cannot say from my memories Cootamundra was a happy place.

In the home on Sundays we often went to two different churches, hymns every Sunday night. The Seventh Day Adventist and Salvation Army came through the week. With all the different religions it was very confusing to find out my own personal and religious beliefs throughout my life.

My mother sent us a new outfit every change of season, we only received one parcel. The matron kept our clothes and distributed them to her pets. In winter it was icy cold and for the first time in my life I didn't have socks to wear to school.

One day the matron called me to her office. She said it was decided by the Board that Kate and myself were to go and live with a lady in a private house. The Board thought we were too 'white' for the home. We were to be used as an experiment and if everything worked out well, more girls would be sent later on.

We travelled all day long. We didn't know what place we were going to, all I knew was we were going further and further away from home. Late afternoon we stopped at this house in Narromine. There lived Mrs S., her son and at weekends her husband Lionel.

The twenty months Kate and I spent at Narromine were honestly the worst time of my childhood life. I often thought I would not survive long enough ever to see my mother again.

The Scottish woman hated me because I would not call her 'Mum'. She told everyone I was bad.

She made us stay up late sewing, knitting and darning that pillowcase full of endless socks. Often we weren't allowed to bed 'till after 11 p.m. I was always late for school, the headmaster used to greet me with 'Good afternoon Jennifer'. Mrs S. did not allow me to do homework, therefore my schoolwork suffered and myself - a nervous wreck.

When I was thirteen years old Mrs S. called this middle-aged male doctor to the house and said she wanted an internal examination of me. That was terribly shameful for me, I will not say anymore. During the time [with her] I was belted naked repeatedly, whenever she had the urge. She was quite mad. I had to cook, clean, attend to her customers' laundry. I was used and humiliated. The Board knew she was refused anymore white children yet they sent us there.

Near the end of our stay she got Mr F. from Dubbo to visit. She tried to have me put in Parramatta Girls' Home. By this time I knew other people had complained to the Board. Mr F. asked me if I wanted to go to a white home or back to Cootamundra. So a couple of days later we were back in the Home. It was hard to believe we had gotten away from that woman.

It wasn't long after we were back at the Home and Matron called me to her office. She wanted to know what had happened at Narromine. I told her everything. She said the experiment did not work and she would write to the Board for fear they would send more girls out. It did not do any good though because more than half the girls were fostered out over the next three years. Some of the girls were sexually abused, belted and called names by their foster parents. Of course the brainwashing continued about Aboriginals being lazy, dirty and of low intelligence going nowhere.

In December 1957 our mother finally got us home. She was the first Aboriginal to move into a Commission house. My mother died four years later, she suffered high blood pressure, she was 54 years old. It was fight all the way to survive because she was born an Aboriginal.

I still can't see why we were taken away from our home. We were not neglected, we wore nice clothes, we were not starving. Our father worked hard and provided for us and we came from a very close and loving family.

I feel our childhood has been taken away from us and it has left a big hole in our lives (p. 44-47).

Confidential submission 437, New South Wales.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

5 years Confidential submission 437 - Jennifer

Confidential submission 450 Personal NSW Bomaderry Bomaderry Children's Home

My mother told us that the eldest daughter was a twin - it was a boy. And in those days, if Aboriginals had twins or triplets, they'd take the babies away. Mum swore black and blue that boy was alive. But they told her that he had died. I only found out a couple of years ago - that boy, the nursing sister took him. A lot of babies were not recorded (p. 5).

If we got letters, you'd end up with usually 'the weather's fine', 'we love you' and 'from your loving mother' or whatever. We didn't hear or see what was written in between. And that was one way they kept us away from our families. They'd turn around and say to you, 'See, they don't care about you'. Later on, when I left the home, I asked my mother, 'How come you didn't write letters?' She said, 'But we did'. I said, 'Well, we never got them'.

We were all rostered to do work and one of the girls was doing Matron's office, and there was all these letters that the girls had written back to the parents and family - the answers were all in the garbage bin. And they were wondering why we didn't write. That was one way they stopped us keeping in contact with our families. Then they had the hide to turn around and say, 'They don't love you. They don't care about you' (p. 134).

Confidential evidence 450, New South Wales: woman removed at 2 years in the 1940s, first to Bomaderry Children's Home, then to Cootamundra Girls' Home; now working to assist former Cootamundra inmates.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

2 years Confidential submission 450

Confidential submission 617 Personal NSW Cootamundra Cootamundra Girls' Home

When the girls left the home, they were sent out to service to work in the homes and outlying farms of middle class white people as domestics ... On top of that you were lucky not to be sexually, physically and mentally abused, and all for a lousy sixpence that you didn't get to see anyway. Also, when the girls fell pregnant, their babies were taken from them and adopted out to white families, they never saw them again (p. 37).

Most of us girls were thinking white in the head but were feeling black inside. We weren't black or white. We were a very lonely, lost and sad displaced group of people. We were taught to think and act like a white person, but we didn't know how to think and act like an Aboriginal. We didn't know anything about our culture. We were completely brainwashed to think only like a white person. When they went to mix in white society, they found they were not accepted [because] they were Aboriginal. When they went and mixed with Aborigines, some found they couldn't identify with them either, because they had too much white ways in them. So that they were neither black nor white. They were simply a lost generation of children. I know. I was one of them (p. 131).

But a lot of girls didn't know where home was because their parents were moved and resettled miles away from their traditional homelands. They didn't know where their people were and it took them a long time to find them. Some of them are still searching down to this present day (p. 206).

Confidential submission 617, New South Wales: woman removed at 8 years with her 3 sisters in the 1940s; placed in Cootamundra Girls' Home.

Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Bringing them Home: National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander Children from Their Families (1997)

8 years Confidential submission 617

Coota Girls Corporation Personal NSW Cootamundra

The Coota Girls Corporation is a not-for-profit community organisation that was founded by the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander survivors of Cootamundra Girls' Home, to where children were taken after they had been forcibly removed from their families and communities:

"Children in the Cootamundra Girls Home were told their families had rejected them and were taught to fear and avoid Aboriginal people. They were neglected and abused and forcibly assimilated to 'think white, look white, act white'. The children were trained as domestics and when aged between 15 and 18yrs were sent on mandatory 'placements' as domestic servants in wealthy non-Aboriginal households, under harsh conditions, with their wages paid to the Boards. They remained under control of the Aborigines Protection Board (1912-1938) and the Aborigines Welfare Board (1939-1969) until they turned 18yrs old.

Coota Girls grew up together and see each other as 'sisters'. Coota Girls have adopted a collective approach to their healing since the 1980's, when the policies of forcible removal first began to emerge. Coota Girls have supported each other to find and reunite with their families and gain access to their unpaid wages held in trust accounts. They have donated a painting given to them by Albert Namatjira to the National Museum, gained heritage listing for the Cootamundra Girls Home, established memorials at the Home, and hosted a Centenary Commemoration event in 2012.

Coota Girls established their own corporation in 2013 to achieve the objectives they set out in the All One Statement. The objective of the Coota Girls Aboriginal Corporation is to 'ensure the social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of the Coota Girls, their families and subsequent generations."

Coota Girls Corporation and the Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation, Submission No 50 to the Legislative Council of NSW, Inquiry into Reparations for the Stolen Generations in New South Wales, 31 March 2016, 7-8.

Coota Girls Corporation