My parents made their decision fairly quickly after that sermon, or rather she did. When I asked her why they wanted me, our mother revealed that her friend had a black doll when she was a kid and she had always wanted one too. She also thought their kind deed would take them nearer their God to thee. They’ve both passed away now so I hope that God gave them an extra gold star for their efforts, and I hope that getting a real black doll instead of a toy one helped her overcome her childhood jealousy.
They chose me from a photograph, so she said. One of the many that had been shown to them in the welfare office as they sipped their cups of tea. Each of those photographs represented a kid who had been removed from their family while strangers organised their fate and then sent them on to other strangers. They call it child-trafficking nowadays but back then it was the government’s attempt at turning Australia into another Britain. By assimilating the black minority into the white population they hoped that the pesky problem of the blacks would eventually take care of itself by them either dying out or doing as they were told and relinquishing their culture and ways forever. This obviously didn’t happen, but at the time there were lots of people like my foster parents eager to do their bit for the White Australia Policy.
And my parents had strict criteria for their new charge. The child had to be female, young enough to be ‘trained’, light-skinned, not physically or mentally disabled and possessing features that were not too ‘broad’ so as to facilitate a smoother integration into their white world. They ended up with three photographs but my age swung the odds in my favour because I was the youngest. When I look at that photograph I can tell I’m unsure of what’s happening because my smile is straight and my eyes are flat and watchful, but I’m surprised I could arrange my face in a smile at all after what I eventually found out about my circumstances. The photo was taken not long after I had been placed at the Garden Point Mission for half-caste kids on Melville Island. Garden Point is now called by its Tiwi name, Pirlangimpi. A lot of kids there came from places further down in the desert country like Tennant Creek and Elliott. This was a deliberate practice carried out all over Australia so the incarcerated kids wouldn’t have family living nearby to kick up a fuss and try to get them back.
But while the authorities were busily farming out black kids to all and sundry, I wonder what happened to the ones whose photos were put on the reject pile. The ones who didn’t pass muster, the unbecoming, the unwanted. How did they feel? Did they feel lucky or did they resent spending the rest of their childhoods in institutions, until they turned eighteen, the age when the government no longer had any responsibility for them? Were they then turfed out into the big world to fend for themselves? Were these the ones who, not having a family to teach them parenting and home and life skills, ended up in the parks broken and defeated with their flagons of goon? I could have been one of them if I’d been a boy or born too black or I’d had a big boong nose.
I think I spent about six months at Garden Point, and then at the tender age of three and a half boarded an old DC3 ‘Biscuit Bomber’ to fly from Garden Point to Darwin. I remember looking out of the round porthole windows and watching the islands falling away behind us. Taking the nuns literally that I would be meeting my new mum and dad I supposedly proceeded up the aisle to the pilot and flung my arms around him calling him dad. The very same pilot whose mother-in-law sat beside me on the plane after leaving Nguiu for the first time when I found my real mother.
I spent a few days in Darwin being looked after by a young couple with a golden cocker spaniel while the authorities sorted whatever else there was to sort out. The dog had a dreadful habit of running around in circles chasing its stump of a tail which terrified the shit out of me and caused me no end of misery because the woman would be constantly taking my hand and trying to make me pat the damned thing.
Finally on the twentieth of August 1963 I was put onto another plane. I remember very little of that journey or arriving at my destination but I do remember being led to a man, a woman and a small blonde-haired girl. After the faux pas with the pilot I was a bit warier this time. As the new woman reached forward to take me and the woman who was chaperoning me from Darwin extricated her hand from my sweaty little one to take her leave, I apparently let rip with a scream that nearly took off the terminal roof. My bet is that the chaperone then headed straight for the door. After the grief we kids had given her on the plane with our crying and pissing our pants and throwing up, who could blame her. In the car the screaming continued with my new mother and sister in tears by now as well while my new father drove on in silence. This was the beginning of my next life and I didn’t like it one bit.
2.
My parents were moody people who always seemed ill at ease with the world and were constantly at odds with each other. They weren’t terribly sociable either. At functions or public gatherings they usually stayed aloof and observed the happenings with looks of disdain on their faces like there was a bad smell in the air or they were mingling with peasants. If they were among friends or people they knew well, they were a bit more interactive and chatty, with our mother being the more extroverted. At home they also stayed aloof but this time it was from each other. If things were particularly tense he would sit in his favourite chair and shield himself behind his broadsheet newspaper from her poison darts while she would furiously crochet or stomp around the house, lips pursed and eyes flashing at anyone who dared to make eye contact with her.
But in church and the presence of God there was a transformation that was hard to believe unless you saw it for yourself. Any seething tempers dissolved the moment they passed the threshold of the church to carry out their heavenly devotions. Of course the moment they passed back over the threshold to the outside world they would pick up where they’d left off. But their love for God was irrefutable and intense and I have always wondered if this was because there was nothing left in their lives that had meaning anymore. God might have been their last hope in a world that had very little joy to offer them and in the loveless marriage that they chose to stay in for better or for worse. They spoke about going ‘home’ a number of times and although they returned to England regularly and our mother made a few attempts later on in her life to stay there for good, it was almost like they were doomed to live a lonely and miserable existence far from the places of their birth.
Her eyes were the colour of the ocean on a stormy day and she had a thick brown thatch of hair that despite her best efforts with hairspray, water, combs and clips would not be tamed. Maybe if she had grown it long it would have been easier to deal with but she insisted on an unruly bob which in the early years she would put into a hairnet when she went to bed. I couldn’t work out why she would want to keep her hair neat in bed when it was dark and nobody was going to see it but she obviously had her reasons. She was quite short and solid and reminded me of the stout little ponies that were sent into the Welsh coalmines to pull the carts. Not just because of her physical dimensions but also because the brisk clip-clopping when she walked sounded like horse hooves. Apart from crocheting she embroidered and tatted, making the most extraordinary lace that ended up on handkerchiefs and tablecloths and other bits and pieces and, much to my embarrassment, as collars on my sister’s and my dresses. Her family surname was Sherrif of which the earliest reference on record is to a William Sherrif who married a Lady Fairfax of Bolton Castle, Percy, in the 1500s. As the name suggests, he was a local magistrate or shire administrator. A branch of the Sherrifs headed off to America in the early 1800s and changed their name to Shreve. She revealed that there had been a big family scandal once and she might have Romany gypsy in her blood. From the hushed but wistful tone I think she might have been hoping that was true. Maybe this scandal is why the American Sherrifs emigrated and changed their name and why when I was in my early teens she took up the rustic arts of spinning and weaving. When hunched over her spinning wheel pedalling away in her long tweed skirt and crocheted shawl and seated in front of the cracklin
g fireplace in the family room, one could almost imagine her sitting at a hearth in medieval England. Eventually when the arthritis in her pedalling foot began to cause her some serious pain she had a sewing machine motor attached to the spinning wheel so all she had to do was push down on the pedal like a car accelerator. When she started wearing her ‘creations’ in public and foisting them onto other members of the family I knew that this was not a passing fad.
He was of average build and height and looked like a moose. His eyes were blue and in early photos he had dark wavy hair. When I arrived his hairline had already marched a fair distance back across the top of his scalp and sat on the crown of his head like bent seagrass in a receding wave. His beetling eyebrows made up for the lack of hair on his head. His father was born in Burma so I assume his grandfather must have been part of the British Raj or the British East India Company. A descendant of Lord Lovelace and his older brother Baron Wentworth on his maternal side, his mother was mortified when she learnt who his intended was. I understand that while his mother lived she never let him forget that he had married beneath himself. His christening gown was kept in the trunk in their bedroom and was wrapped in tissue paper. It was made of floor-length cream silk with seed pearls sewn onto the bodice and sleeves, and lace on the bottom and around the neck. Also wrapped up in the tissue paper was an old sepia photograph of him wearing the gown when he was around six months old. His mother was dark-haired and beautiful and dressed in a very stylish 1920s dress with a dropped waistline and cloche hat. She was holding him on her right arm with the gown cascading to the floor, while his father stood on the right side of his mum in what looked like a pin-striped morning suit and sporting a rakish moustache. Neither parent was smiling, as if it was all a very stiff and formal occasion, while the baby had a wide-eyed expression on his face like the camera flash had startled him and he was about to cry. In the trunk was also a small oil painting of his grandmother to whom his mum bore a very close likeness. Occasionally my sister and I would get to speak to his mother when she rang to thank us for our drawings or letters, and she had a lively and prim voice. I find it interesting that although she was concerned about him marrying beneath himself she had no qualms about a coloured child living in her son’s household.
Apart from reading his newspapers he enjoyed photography and would always bring his bag of cameras and lenses when we went on outings. The old laundry was the darkroom because it had running water and was separate from the house so no one would bother him. The photographs that he deigned to show us were usually out of focus or over-exposed but he was pleased with his efforts and it gave him something to do and us a break from the constant sniping between him and our mother. Although we went to some beautiful places he didn’t like photographing the scenery or the flora or fauna. He only liked photographing children. People didn’t seem to be so aware of perverts in those days, and his unnatural urge to hang around children didn’t seem to bother our mother either.
They had two sons, Keith and Aubrey, who were born in England. When the firstborn was a son they were overjoyed. When the second one turned out to be a son as well he marched out of the hospital in disgust leaving the poor woman to spend the rest of her confinement and alas the rest of her life, it seems, in misery. By the number of times that this was brought up in conversation out of his earshot it’s obvious that she must have blamed herself for not producing a girl and by her admission this is where things started to unravel between them. Apparently she was warned by her doctor that to have any more children would be fatal but although her child-bearing had come to an end her hope for a daughter didn’t. After moving from England to South Africa to live and then on to Australia they adopted a six-week-old baby girl and named her Julie.
Verbal exchanges between our parents were not common but when they did occur they were blistering tirades that were followed by days of frosty silence and even the warmest summer days couldn’t take away the coldness that lived in our house like an unwanted guest. There must have been something special between them once. There must have been magic and hope and light in their hearts, but they were definitely all out of love by the time I got there.
Although Aubrey was living at home when I arrived, he wasn’t there for long. It seems that the conflict between Mum and Dad wasn’t just a mutual thing, it was generously shared with the rest of the family too, and after some altercation with Mum, Aubrey was ripped out of school and sent off to the Flinders Ranges to live with Uncle George. Keith had already gone through a similar process and was living on another sheep station. I did get to see them on occasional visits, but because of the distance between us, both geographically and emotionally, I didn’t really get to know them until I was older.
Julie looked like an angel. Not the sort of angel that hangs around God looking all officious like a public servant or a politician but like an angel that sits on the top of a Christmas tree. She was seven months older than me and spent a lot of time indoors as she tired easily due to sickness as a baby. Small, frail and fair she could do no wrong in our mother’s eyes. But despite all the pampering Julie never once in my memory displayed any of the egotistical tendencies that usually come with being the centre of one parent’s universe.
Although Julie couldn’t get out and run around she did have a friend who kept her company and that was Dinky, her little brown dog with white paws and of indeterminate breed. Dinky was a treasure and would let us dress her up in baby’s clothes and carry her around wrapped up in a blanket. At times Dinky would come outside and play with me. She slept under Julie’s bed in her basket until I was fourteen, when I found her missing one day only to be coldly informed by mum that she had been put down. I still feel sad that I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye to our little mate Dinky.
3.
I don’t think many people knew what they were in for when they took on kids like me who were born into traditional Aboriginal families. We were accustomed to a completely different way of life and the expectation that we could walk out of one life and straight into another without experiencing trauma and grief at the loss of our families, our homes, and everything we had known was a travesty of our rights as human beings. My memories of being forcibly assimilated into a white family are ugly, and documentation unearthed a number of years ago in the Northern Territory Archives further indicates that the ‘better life’ the government had planned for me left a lot to be desired.
24th April 1964
From the Welfare Officer, Northern Territory Administration, to Director of Welfare, Northern Territory Administration, Darwin
The foster mother is finding Marie too much for her. Marie is destructive with toys, books, sheets etc., picks at the furniture, bites her toe and finger nails … Marie is very attention seeking at home and does not seem to be getting much from her foster mother who admitted that she is not a demonstrative sort of person and does not hug or kiss her children very much … She used to pick at her food but the foster mother ‘cured’ that by telling Marie she would send her back if she didn’t eat her food … The foster mother said that Marie was difficult to handle and would be returned if she ‘did not improve’ … Marie was very difficult when first placed … This appears to be a case of complete rejection. Marie is obviously very disturbed by her foster parents’ attitude. These various factors all appear to be contributing to the breakdown in this placement. It appears that Marie’s best interests may be served by her removal from this home.
This was the only time that the suitability of my placement was questioned. Even with five different welfare officers looking after my case over a five-year period, this issue was never brought up again despite the fact that things went from bad to worse.
1st May 1964
From the Welfare Officer, Northern Territory Administration, to the Director of Welfare, Northern Territory Administration, Darwin
An appointment has been made to take Marie back to the Adelaide Children’s Hospital again to see Dr __ … Marie’s next appointment is 2
1st May when she will be seen by the Psychiatric Social Worker and Psychologist …
August 1966, internal memo
Marie showing signs of acute disturbed behaviour. Referred to the Psychiatric Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital.
If those in whose care I had been charged had stopped fussing about my bad behaviour and investigated why I was not a happy child they might have discovered some disturbing facts. Apart from my foster mother’s admission that she wasn’t particularly affectionate towards her children, my foster father was a rampant paedophile who regularly terrorised me from the time I was placed in their care. He liked nothing better than shoving his hand up between my legs when our mother had her back turned, or poking his finger inside me when no one was around. The result of such attention was that between the ages of six and eight, I was hospitalised three times. The first hospitalisation was two-and-a-half years after my first appointment with the Psychiatric Clinic at the Adelaide Children’s Hospital. I was to have regular appointments at the clinic up to and beyond my hospital admittances, so how nobody picked up on the fact that something was severely amiss is beyond me.
14th November 1966
From Welfare Officer, Adelaide, to the Director
Marie has been admitted to the Adelaide Children’s Hospital on the 14th November 1966 with a vaginal discharge. After a small operation, to remove a suspected grass seed, Marie will go home tonight.
Of Ashes and Rivers that Run to the Sea Page 4