Wednesday nights at Darwin’s open-air Star Theatre is cowboy night and Roy Rodgers and Trigger were showing. I was not going to miss it for anything, regardless of what the bloody staff said. I was being punished for accidentally breaking three plates in the kitchen. All the other kids were going – I snuck out over the back fence, through the bush and ran the four miles into town! I missed the Mickey Mouse cartoons!
I knew I would get a walloping when I got back, but Wednesday nights were our only escape from the ‘welfare’ being meted out at Retta Dixon. Me and my little brother had been here for years. Half-caste kids, stolen from our Mum.
I have vague memories of Mum, coming to the fence, feeding little Timmy through the wire, as I held him up to her breast. When seen, she was often chased away by the staff, and by the time Timmy was walking, she stopped coming. I met her thirty years later, and she told me about the police who took her from Darwin down The Track a few hundred miles where she couldn’t interfere in our ‘welfare’.
Some of the older boys, and one or two of the staff used to come into the girl’s dormitory at night. I got cornered once or twice but after I kicked one of the blokes in the nuts, the authorities decided I was too much trouble. I was shipped off to a convent in Melbourne, where my educational needs continued.
Some of the Nuns were nice and were taking an interest in my welfare. Others were just as bad as the mob in Darwin! We kids were effectively slave labour; working in the laundry, the kitchen, serving meals, doing the dishes, digging in the gardens. Never any pay, although I found there were labourers who came to the convent and were willing to offer me a few bob for ‘services’.
I learnt quite a bit in Melbourne, but the system eventually broke me. I grabbed the cane that one of the nuns was using on my bare arse, and thrashed her across the head. The put me on a train to Sydney within the week, my next stormy foster home in a big flash place, overlooking the harbour.
More housework, but now I learnt to serve drinks at their parties. I got to wear a flash dress, an apron and low-heeled shoes. The clobber was always taken away at the end of the night and stored. More dishes, bed making and nighttime visits from their eldest son, and even the father, after one of the parties.
While I was cleaning, I saw a wallet on the sideboard. It had over twenty quid in it. My battered old case and I were out the door within minutes. I was caught trying to hitch a ride and taken to Long Bay gaol, to be ‘reformed’. A month later, another reassignment, this time back to Melbourne, another wealthy family, more slavery, more sexual mucking about from within the house. I had seen a lifetime of how the posh people lived, before I turned 21!
Again, I eventually ran away. I used my wits and managed to hitch-hike back to Darwin. I found Timmy, now a grown young bloke, a wispy beard, tattooed in singlet and shorts, working on the wharf. We shared a few laughs, a lot of tears. We also shared a house for the next ten years.
My educational upbringing had provided me with some typing skills, as well as a multitude of ‘shit’, and I applied and won a traineeship with the government’s Welfare mob. It sounded ironic, said like that, but it turned into one of the most rewarding career-moves of my life.
I found genuine friendship, a stable workplace, and eventually TAFE training certification and finally, a sense of purpose. I was working with trained social workers, assisting those in the community less fortunate, those fallen through the cracks, temporarily on hard times, able to access and distribute resources where they were needed.
I met and married. Our two boys remain the love of my life, but me and the bloke parted. But 40 years on, we are still friends.
I tracked Mum down. She was living in a small township, 500kms south of Darwin and had been there since her forced removal from Darwin, all those years ago. She was happy to move back to Darwin with me. We shared a precious few years together, before her death.
I worked in Welfare for nearly forty years. I am now retired. My sons have done well, one is a lawyer, the other a landscape gardener and they live and work close by. I have daughters-in-law, six grandchildren, two dogs and a crow who visits, most mornings.
My lawyer son wants me to register for the Stolen Generation class action, and the one seeking to recover the decades of foregone wages. I’m not too sure that the wounds opened by such restitution are worth it.
Life’s OK. Maybe it’s time to let dozing dogs lie.