AustLit

Mathilda Hollingsworth may have been born near Wenlock Telegraph Station. She was roughly seven years old when she was taken from her family to Yarrabah mission. At the mission, she was locked up with the other girls in the dormitory every night. In the morning, the doors would be opened so they could attend the school and do their chores. There was not enough food and no clothes; children were clothed in hessian bags.

The only way to leave the dormintory was to get married. When Hollingsworth married Cuthbert Simpson they lived in a house in Yarrabah Mission. They had a son, Bert Hollingsworth (q.v.), but Simpson died soon after. Mathilda Hollingsworth was remarried three years later in 1931 to John Hollingsworth, who was not from Yarrabah, and she left the mission. Hollingsworth had four more sons and John Hollingsworth raised Bert as his own until John's death in the early 1940s.