AustLit

Of Kaurna and Ngarrindjeri heritage, Veronica Brodie grew up on the Aboriginal Mission at Raukkan (formerly Point McLeay). Her autobiography, My Side of the Bridge, tells of her childhood at Raukkan, her life at the UAM home, Tendarra, where she was sent by the Aborigines Protection Board to live while she upgraded her education, her marriage to Jim Brodie which labelled her a 'white' woman, her battle with alcoholism and her subsequent work helping others through the Aboriginal Sobriety Group.

It also tells how, in 1988, she visited India, an experience which profoundly affected her; and it tells of her involvement during the 1990s in the painful struggle to prevent the building of a bridge from Goolwa to Hindmarsh Island with its serious cultural implications for Ngarrindjeri women.

Kevin Butler was two weeks old when he was stolen from his family by the Aboriginal Protection Board. It was not until 1990 that Butler was reunited with his family through Linkup. Butler has a strong interest in arts, and has worked for Warrigal Arts at Windang. He also shares his culture and artwork with the wider community. Source: Indigenous Australia: Standing Strong (2001)

The Aborigines Progressive Association was founded on 27 June 1937 by William Ferguson. The aims of the organisation were full citizenship rights for Aborigines, parliamentary representation for Aborigines as a group, and abolition of the Aborigines Protection Board. From March 1938 The Australian Abo Call: The Voice of the Aborigines was published as the official journal of the Aborigines Progressive Association.

Source: Heroes of the Aboriginal Struggle.

Doris Kartinyeri was born to Ngarrindjeri parents at Raukkan, which was then known as Point McLeay, on Lake Alexandrina, South Australia. Her mother died when she was four weeks old, and Doris was taken by the Aboriginal Protection Board without her father's consent, a 'stolen child', to be brought up in Colebrook Home until at the age of fourteen she was put into domestic service.

As an adult, and after having three children of her own, Kartinyeri began to explore her family background, and became active on behalf of her community. The story of her struggle to find her identity is told in her biography Kick the Tin.

Her children's book, Bush Games and Knucklebones, gives an insight into what life was like growing up in a children's home in the 1950s, and celebrates the friendships she formed at Colebrook,with the children bonding to become their own special type of family.

Kartinyeri's story was recorded by the National Library of Australia for the Bringing Them Home oral history project and appeared in the associated publication Many Voices: Reflections on experiences of Indigenous child separation, edited by Doreen Mellor and Anna Haebich (2002).

Pearl Gibbs was a prominent political figure in the 1930s. She was a member of the Aborigines' Progression Association (APA). Alongside other members of the APA, she collected information against the Protection Board in NSW to have it closed down. In later years, Faith Bandler and Gibbs founded the Australian Aboriginal Fellowship.

Ivan Wellington grew up on a Government run mission under the Aboriginal Protection Board, New South Wales. He lived on the mission until he turned sixteen, then he began picking beans for a living until he earned enough money to move to Sydney, New South Wales.

Ivan Wellington strongly believes in his Aboriginal culture and heritage, which was strengthened by his parents and personal memories of knowing who his grandmother is. He is a respected Elder of the Campbelltown, New South Wales, community, and regularly visits the Juvenile Justice Centres to promote and encourage Aboriginal values and history to the youth who are in those centres.

Theresa Clements was born and raised on the station in Ulupna, New South Wales where her mother and father worked. At three years of age, Clements was taken with her mother to Maloga Mission near Cummeragunja by Rev. Daniel Mathews. Later the people of Maloga Mission were relocated to Cummeragunja. Theresa and her sisters moved from Cummeragunja to a station in Coonaya for work. While Theresa was at Warrenjesta (Warrengesda) Mission she married William Clements and had four daughters. Two of Clements daughters were taken from her by the Aborigines Protection Board. Theresa Clements is the mother of Margaret Tucker who penned If Everyone Cared.

Louisa Briggs was known as a vocal activist. In 1876, Louisa led a rebellion against government plans to sell Coranderrk and relocate its residents by writing numerous letters of protest to the Aborigines Protection Board. 

Founded in Sydney in 1924, the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association was Australia's first politically-organised Aboriginal activist group. Founder and President Fred Maynard, was joined by J. Johnstone (Vice President), Tom Lacey (Secretary), William Ridgeway, John Ridgeway, James Linwood, Joe Anderson and Jane Duren.

According to the National Museum of Australia, 

'The group was vehemently opposed to the involvement of the NSW Aborigines Protection Board in the lives of Aboriginal people, and called for its abolition. They demanded that Indigenous affairs be managed by Indigenous people.

'The AAPA also focussed on:

• stopping the removal of Aboriginal children from their families
• gaining equal citizenship for Aboriginal people
• protecting Aboriginal cultural identity
• ensuring Indigenous communities and families could provide for themselves and their future through land ownership

'In the first six months of its existence, the AAPA attracted about 500 members. Eventually there would be 13 branches and four sub branches across the state with more than 600 members, representing a high proportion of the Aboriginal population of NSW who were actually at liberty to join.'

Source: National Museum of Australia.

Maria Lock was an Aboriginal landowner. In 1814 she was admitted to the Native Institution, for tuition. It was rumoured that she won first prize in the anniversary school examination in 1819 (Australian Dictionary of Biography website). In 1822, Lock was living in Parramatta in the household of Rev Thomas Hassall where she married Thomas Bennelong, who was also known as Thomas Walker Coke. By February 1823, Thomas died from a short illness, Lock remarried in 1824 to Robert Lock. Robert being a convict carpenter, was assigned to Lock. They settled in the Liverpool district, New South Wales.

During the periods of 1831 to 1843 Lock had obtained several acres of land in Liverpool and Blacktown, after her death in 1878 was equally divided among her nine surviving children, and was occupied by her descendants until the 1920s, 'by which time the freehold land was considered to be an Aboriginal reserve and was revoked by the Aborigines Protection Board. (Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography website)

Victoria Archibald was eight when her mother placed her in the care of the Aborigines Protection Board [sic] due to her mother's ill health. Archibald's mother suffered from a lung condition that saw her hospitalised frequently. With no other family to care for her child, Archibald's mother surrendered her to the Board who sent her to Cootamundra Home.

At the Home, the emphasis was on training to be a domestic servant although some education was given. Archibald learned how to read and write, scrubbed floors, carried buckets of water for the Cootamundra staff baths and garden. Archibald was fifteen when she was sent out to work as a domestic for a family in Albury in 1930 and then later to another family in Moree. While she was twenty and working in Moree, Archibald learned that her mother was very ill and was given permission to visit her. This was only the second time Archibald had seen her mother since she was eight. Archibald spent two days with her mother before she passed away.

Archibald married Les Lang at the age of twenty-one. She moved to Boggabilla, New South Wales, and while there she met her brother for the first time. Her brother later introduced her to the rest of her older siblings she had never known.

During her second marriage, to an ex-serviceman named Dick, Archibald lived in Burnt Bridge, New South Wales. While there, Archibald was employed by the Welfare to help remove Indigenous children from their parents. Her eldest child was taken away from her and sent to Cootamundra Home, but Archibald was pleased that her daughter was given an education rather then trained to be a domestic like she was.

Anna Morgan was born on Ebenezer station, in north-western Victoria. By the age of 11, she was working in domestic service around the Wimmera region. In her twenties she moved near Cumeroogunga Aboriginal reserve in New South Wales where she met and married Caleb Morgan in 1899.

Caleb owned 12 hectares of land in the Cumeroogunga area but in 1907 the Aborigines Protection Board in New South Wales rescinded the land ownership agreement so that all profits would go to the board. Caleb protested this new arangement and was expelled from Cumeroogunga. Anna and her family moved to Wagga Wagga, where her husband found work as a farm labourer.

By 1927, the Morgan family travelled through Victoria, staying in Swan Hill, and then moving on to Coldstream. During the Depression in 1930, they applied for assistance from the Board of Protection of Aborigines but were rejected on the basis of their 'half-caste' classification. Then the Morgans tried for assistance from the Sustenance Department but were denied help. Anna resorted to applying for the Commonwealth pension but was refused because she was classified as an 'Aborigine'.

Drawing from her experiences with the Australian Government, she began to actively campaign for equal rights for Indigenous Australians. She wrote Under the Black Flag, published in Labour Call (1934), to highlight the difficulties she was put through. She joined the Australian Aborigines' League and in 1935 visited the Minister of Interior as part of a delegation that asked for education for Aboriginal Women.

While in Coldstream, Anna died from an acute renal infection, and her body was laid to rest in Melbourne.

Anne McDonalds' family and country were in South Australia. She was forced to leave them at the age of ten by her white pastoralist father, who sent her to do domestic service work. She became pregnant to her employer while working in Echuca. Anne was made to leave. With no place to go she went to the Lake Condah Mission Station run by Reverend J. Heinrich Stahle.

After Anne gave birth to a boy, Stahle received permission from the Aborigines Protection Board's Order in Council to detain her at Lake Condah because he believed she would become a victim to sexual predators. In 1881 Stalhe and the baby's father Alexander Jeffery (who also went by the alias Andrew Jackson) struggled for control of Anne. Jeffery and Anne began corresponding with each other which Stahle did not approve of . Stahle claimed Anne was illiterate and needed protection whereas Jeffery was trying to get Anne out of Lake Condah Mission and he made her write letters to the Order in Council to prove she wasn't illiterate .

The Order in Council denied Anne her independence despite her written letters.

'Aboriginal WW1 soldier William Castles came from Rooty Hill in the Parramatta district of New South Wales and was a great great grandson of Yarramundi, chief of the Boorooberongal clan of the Darug. His mother was Ada Locke and his father Thomas Castles.

He first volunteered for the AIF in December 1914 but was discharged a month later when he refused inoculation. He must have overcome his fears by May 1916 when he volunteered a second time. The existence of his two attestations shows an interesting difference in physical description. While his complexion is initially given the general and not uncommon description ‘dark’ this becomes complexion ‘brown’ in his second attestation. Despite this more specific reference to his Aboriginality he was accepted into the AIF.

William Castles’ service number 2507 was close to that of Percy Freeman 2509. Percy was the husband of William’s cousin Mary Jane Stubbings, a daughter of Mary Jane Castles and George Henry Stubbings. Like William, Mary Jane was a great grandchild of Maria Lock. Both men were carters who enlisted on the same day at Liverpool and became part of the 5th Reinforcements of the 54th Battalion. They served together in France in 1916 and 1917 from Fromelles to the Hindenberg line and became casualties within days of each other. Freeman was killed on 18 May and William Castles was wounded in both legs, his left hand and his arm three days earlier. After spending three months in hospital, suffering also from a kidney condition, he was discharged on 27 September but died at sea on 23 October 1917. He was 21. The distraught reaction of his aunt and next of kin is recorded in a post of 6 February 2013. His death triggered a series of letters from his family seeking custody of his medals which in the end were given to his brother Edward George Castles.

William Castles is mentioned five times in the Minutes of the New South Wales Aborigines Protection Board, between 1911 and 1913. The minutes show him at Bomaderry, Bolong, RosebyPark and indentured at Emu Plains – all locations on or near the NSW South coast.'