Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing (5 page)

The best thing about someone from the outside coming was we'd get to eat better food, something special, in case
whoever it was came into the dining room and had a look around. But this was only once in a blue moon. I remember hearing around the place that the Prince of Wales wanted to come up to the settlement but Mr Neville put him off. ‘No,' he said. ‘You don't want to go there. They're cannibals.' I don't know if this is true — it's just what I heard.

One time when Mr Neville came we were all in the sewing room, and he was standing talking to the sewing mistress. They were talking about education and other things, and I heard him say, ‘Ohh, it's all right, as long as they can write their name and count money … that's all the education they need.' Well, I think that tells you all he thought of us.

When I think back to the time I spent at Mogumber, I think about how they always had me working, never left me free. Every morning I'd get up and go to breakfast, then I'd go straight over to the office. A boy named Edward and I used to work in the store weighing up the rations — like sugar, tea, flour — and handing it out to the camp people.

When Nanna Leyland came to get her rations I'd always put a little extra in and hand it over myself. I gave her a tin of baking powder once, just a little tin. I stuck it in with the flour so you couldn't see it. Sometimes I'd give her a little bit extra rice or salt or whatever, because that's how we would work it. She'd have extra and then she'd cook something to bring into the dormitory and feed us at night.

After I'd finished up in the store in the mornings I'd go straight down to the sewing room. Then at about five
o'clock I'd be finished there, and I'd go up to the office to trim the lamps. I used to do the lamps for the girls' dormitory — they had to be trimmed every night and put in each wing before tea.

One night I finished trimming the lamps and I took them off to the dormitory. When I got there a girl was standing on the steps waiting for me. She was deliberately blocking my way, so I looked up at her and asked her to please get out of the road. She moved aside, but when I walked into the room she shoved me in the back. I didn't take any notice of that, I just walked into the dormitory and took all the lamps to their different places. But as I was walking out she stood in the doorway.

‘You've been talking about me,' she said.

‘You?' I was surprised.

‘Yeah me, and what have you got to say about it now?'

‘Oh,' I said, ‘tell me what I said about you then?'

‘I know what you said about me.'

‘Well then, you tell me.'

But she wouldn't tell me, so I told her to get out of the way, and she hit me. So I up and hit her back, I gave her the works. She was a bigger person than me, too, but I just lost my block.

There was another girl sitting there and she said, ‘Come on break it up, you two.' But I was angry and I wouldn't stop.

When I did let her go I said, ‘You tell me who told you I was talking about you?'

‘Ruby Windy told me,' she said.

‘All right,' I said, ‘I'll go and bring Ruby back.'

As I was walking down the steps to go and get Ruby I said to her, ‘Are you going to face Ruby?'

‘No,' she said.

‘Why?' I asked her, but I knew why. ‘Well,' I said, ‘you've got to face her,' and I walked off around the corner.

When I found Ruby and told her she was furious. She came back with me to the dormitory, walked up the steps and said to this girl, ‘When did I tell you this?' Well of course she couldn't answer, so Ruby lifted her too.

Then the girl who had told us to let off fighting butted in and it was a free-for-all. It ended up us telling them that if they wanted to find anything to make a fight over, they'd better make sure they knew what they were talking about. See Ruby was a Nor'wester — she came from Carnarvon — and all us North people stuck up for each other. It was that kind of a place, you just had to stick up for one another.

The North and the South would have many a fight you know, they were terrible. They'd fight rather than have a feed — just like the Irish and the English. The two sides were a very strong thing. Northies were anyone from Carnarvon up. See, someone would make up a story that wasn't even worth talking about and it'd spread and spread, until it was way out. Then that would be passed around and, before long, there'd be a fight over it.

One thing I was lucky about at Moore River was I never got a beating. Lots of girls got a thrashing but I never did.
They used to take them down to the storeroom and the superintendent would belt them until they weed all over the floor. They never spared them, and in the afternoons I'd have to go down with a mop and mop it up.

So for those that got punished, the punishment was harsh. If girls ran away they'd send the trackers after them and they'd be brought back and their hair would be cut off, then they'd do time in the boob.

At the sewing room we used to make clothes for Forrest River Mission, and for Moore River as well. They never had to buy clothing for us, we made it all. It was terrible material too. But if you were a good worker, at Christmas they'd give you a piece of good material and you could make yourself a frock. Me and another girl, Dorothy Nannup, were really favoured — we used to get a piece and we'd make ourselves something nice to wear.

One morning me and Dorothy stepped outside to get into line for church and all these boys looked across and wolf-whistled and shouted. We had our new dresses on and they reckoned I was a butterfly and goodness knows what else. My dress was a plain one, but Dorothy, she made a flarey, flouncey one. When she'd spin around it would twirl out. Mine was more of a plain Jane sort of thing, but still, I made a good job of it.

Although there were awful things that went on at the settlement, and once you were there you were there until it suited them, good things used to happen too. I used to
really enjoy going to church, and I loved swimming down at the river. Another one of the things I liked was going to the dances they held once a fortnight. The compound would have our dance on a Wednesday night, and the campies would have theirs on the Saturday.

Everybody looked forward to these dances. We'd wear the dresses we made, and get electric wires and do one another's hair. Olive Harris was a good friend of mine and we used to go off to Nanna Leyland's, or down to old Aunty Pat Rowe's, and sit by the fire warming up our electric wires. When the wire gets hot enough you curl your hair around it and you end up with ringlets or lots of curls. Matron used to give us some hair clips, and we'd all get dressed up for the dance.

These old fellas from New Norcia — Charlie Bullfrog and Ben Jedda — used to come over. Old Charlie played the piano accordion and Ben played the violin. Oh, Ben was beautiful, he used to make that violin talk, and we'd all just get stuck into it. We used to love square dancing too you know. Four here, two over there and two there, and you promenade, and do this that and the other. Oh, it was beautiful. We enjoyed it so much we'd be saying, ‘Oohh, come on Wednesday night.'

Abridged from
When the Pelican Laughed
Alice Nannup, Lauren Marsh and Stephen Kinnane, 1992.

The first children taken to the Carrolup Native Settlement from around Ongerup were Clem and Anna Miller, Lily and Fred Wynne, Fred Roberts. Would've been about 1914. They took 'em from Toompup; got Bonnie Jean Woods too. Their great-aunt was looking after them. Most of their mothers had died.

Fred Roberts and Fred Wynne ran away from the settlement in 1916. People there got terrible treatment, and the black trackers who did all the bossing of the inmates were really brutal. They used and abused most of the young girls, and the real fair girls nearly all took husbands just to get away. Sometimes the girls ran away, but they tracked 'em down and brought 'em back.

The old people lived in camps on the other side of the river, and the young boys and girls were locked up in
dormitories every night. People weren't fed properly, and the young people had to work, but pay or money was never heard of. They buried people wrapped up in chaff bags, and a lot of them died when they shouldn't have, because they didn't get medical treatment. Nearly all the babies were born in the camps.

The dead bodies were kept in the jail, a big mud and stone building with only one window with a thick wooden door and a big bolt and padlock. If you didn't do what they ordered, they locked you up in there, with the bodies.

My mother Nellie came with Maggie Williams, Daisy and May Dean. They were all taken from their mothers up in the Murchison area. My mother often told me how the girls were treated in Carrolup. She was unhappy and always afraid. They didn't always understand the ways and laws of Aboriginal people down here. Another five cousins joined them a few weeks later, and that was better. Better for her, anyway.

My mother was brought down from Carnarvon on a cattle boat. They kept them down in the bottom of the vessel and didn't let 'em come up top. It was a rough trip and they all got sick. From Fremantle they took 'em to Balladonia Mission, and then a few weeks later took 'em all the way to Carrolup. The white people musta thought they were gunna try to run away back to where they come from.

My mother did run away, but they caught her and made her marry my father, Fred Yiller Roberts. He had quite fair skin, they reckon. She was fifteen years old.

She died in 1975. She never ever saw her mother again. Most of the children sent down from the north married, and not many of them ever went back to their own people.

Different times now, they say.

When they were little, my kiddies were asked if they wanted to go there for the holidays. You know, Community Welfare ran a holiday place down there for children. But even though they've changed the name to Marribank …

Well, for the years they ran the Carrolup Settlement … well, just the name, it sickens you. They've changed the name, but none of us ever forgot that it was Carrolup. To us that was a concentration camp. And that was somewhere we had a fear of, and didn't ever want to be sent.

I remember Lionel Howard, who had been taken away from his own relations and didn't know why as he hadn't done anything bad. He came back to Borden, only to be caught again by the police and taken back to Carrolup.

He used to tell us many years later of the treatment he received there, and of the food they were given to eat, and how they were locked up in the night and flogged by the black police whenever they spoke up for their rights. He had a special hatred for these black police, and I remember one time telling us he was glad they were all dead.

Lionel was able to run away from Carrolup again and never ever let the police catch him after that. He was always very timid and frightened of the police and Native Affairs people.

Well, there was a lot of people like that … There was a lotta reasons to be frightened, for us to be careful, you know, back when I was young.

We moved around the Borden, Ongerup, Gnowangerup and Needilup area until I was about four years of age. Then we came back to Gnowangerup to live, about 1930. That's when Freddy Yiller died. My mother then had two children, so Fred Tjinjel Roberts — really the only father I've known — he married my mother.

They got legally married about two weeks after Fred Yiller Roberts died because that was Noongar way, you know. She was accepted Noongar way, and his brother died, and so he had to look after her. He had to care for her, and for us. And then about ten months after, my brother Stanley was born. We were living on a reserve, oh about half a mile from the township. Brother and Sister Wright had a mission house about two mile away.

On this reserve where we were living we had an old tin hut that served as a church and a school. And they had a hospital. It wouldn't have been half as big as this room, and I can remember it well, it had an open fire. My mother used to act as a midwife, and look after the women when they had babies.

If you lived in Gnowangerup you got what they called the government rations. The government gave the missionaries
flour, tea and sugar, and tobacco, to share out among Aboriginal people, see.

We stayed in Gnowangerup for a while, and then Daddy said, ‘Well, not worth staying here, we might as well go somewhere else to raise the kids and give them a better life.'

Daddy took us out to Needilup. Dad used to go around the district shearing in the season, but we stayed at Charlie Brown's farm, and Dad worked all through that district.

Daddy used to go out and set snares for kangaroo, 'cause you could sell the skins, you know. You used to get about one pound ten (they used to call it thirty shillings then) for one good skin.

He used to skin the joeys too, and peg 'em. Mummy used to scrape the skins and tan 'em and cut 'em into squares. She used to make blankets. Well, they ran out of cotton thread one day. We used to buy it in big reels.

‘Ah well,' I said, ‘can't do any more sewing.' We used to sit down and watch Mummy sew and sew. She used to make blankets and sell them to farmers and travellers, you know. That sort of helped us keep going.

But there came this time when the thread ran out.

So she used the sinew from a roo tail. They cut the tip of the tail off, and they pull it, and when the tail comes out this sinew comes out. You pull it all into pieces, make it like cotton, and dry it. Sometimes before you dry it, they twist it on a bone. When it's dried it's just like thread anyway.
And Mummy used to use that to sew the blanket.

She had one big needle like a darning needle. And Aunty Ellie said, ‘You know you can make that needle.'

‘How?'

They used to have oilstones, rasps, axes, three-cornered files.

‘Well,' Aunty Ellie said, ‘I'll show you how.'

Mummy didn't know how to do this, Daddy didn't bother to show her, and neither did anyone else. She didn't have to do it before she met my father.