At ten years of age, Annie McDonald, the daughter of a white pastoralist father was sent as a domestic servant to a family in Echuca, Victoria. After becoming pregnant to her white employer, Annie sought refuge at Lake Condah Mission Station, south-west Victoria, in 1880. Following the birth of her son, the Lake Condah Mission Superintendent, Rev. J. Heinrich Stahle detained Annie on the station by an Order in Council. Despite her own protestations, and a legal challenge to the order brought by the likely father of her son, Alexander Jeffrey, she was forced to remain at the mission. Annie eventually married Alf McDonald, also from the Lake Condah Mission.
See also Penny van Toorn, Writing Never Arrives Naked: Early Aboriginal Cultures of Writing in Australia (2006).
