Family

I was born at Mitchell but Dad took us away because he didn’t like the rules of the Mission. They didn’t suit us because Dad was white. We had a dray and a horse and we moved to New South Wales. My father’s family were Scottish – McBrides. His family was very prejudices against Mum and the Aboriginal people.

Childhood and School

I remember we had good times and bad times. We used to spend a lot of time at the tip and we’d get a lot of things there like shoes and clothes. One day we all went over to the tip, and the river was running. We had a raft and we used to cart all this old stuff backwards and forwards across the river. One day we picked up all these tins of condensed milk which were all blown up. We didn’t know how dangerous it was. One little fellow broke open a tin and ate some of the condensed milk. He dies that night.

I remember going to the pictures and these would be a big bulk chain between the blacks and the whites. Dad never went to the pictures because he couldn’t sit with us. The segregation was the same everywhere – Collarenebri, Walgett, Moree. The mothers in those days used to tell their kids not to mix with the blacks because they were lousy, and had this and that.

I remember when the doctors used to come around and check the kid’s eyes for ‘gummy eyes’. We used to walk across the river to the hospital two or three days a week to get some ointment put in our eyes.

I remember too when the welfare would come and throw lollies to the kids. The kids would scramble for the lollies and they would grab the kids and shove them in a van and drive off. They reckoned they could bring them up better and give them a better education. We had no rights in those days. If the parents were doing all right and getting a bit of work they didn’t take them away.

I didn’t liked school and only went for one year when I was thirteen years old. I wanted to work because we used to get three or four old dresses as payment. We thought it was wonderful. I taught myself to read.

Later Life

Later on I had children and later met up with Bill and we’ve been together for 32 years. We worked a t Merrimba Station which is near Haddon Rig, Mr Gemmel was the Manager and Richard, their son. He used to come over to our place all the time when he was a little boy. Now he is in Coonamble as manager of Elders. We stayed on at Merrimba for a long time then moved to Kaituna out on the Carinda Road as Manager. I used to cook for about 20-30 men, out on an open fire with camp ovens and buckets of boiled meat, in the middle of summer. We didn’t complain, I got $20 a day. Then Bill got sick and had to retire.

We are retired, living in Coonamble now. I get worried seeing a lot of young people drinking too much. In our young days Aboriginal people weren’t allowed to drink unless you had a licence. This was referred to as a ‘dog licence’. Women were not allowed to drink at all.