‘I have heard both your arguments and I have studied the Amendment Act of 1915 and nowhere does it say that the law expressly forbids the parents of a mixed-blood child to visit it in an institution. I submit to you, Mr McDonald, that this is simply the declared policy of the two government departments you represent.’ The police magistrate looks over his pince-nez at Bruce McDonald. ‘I have therefore decided to make my decision in favour of the applicant. I find for Mrs Mary Simpson. Furthermore, -I direct that the Child Welfare Department as well as the Aborigines’ Protection Board immediately inform her of the whereabouts of her four children and that they grant her, together with any other members of her family, permission to visit the Simpson children once a month for a period of one hour.
‘Finally, I would like to add a personal observation off the record. It is that, if we can make this same accommodation for felons in His Majesty’s prisons, then we ought to be able to allow an innocent child to see its natural mother for a similar period of time without fear that the child’s mind will thereby become corrupted.’ With this, Magistrate Sneddon brings down his gavel. ‘This court is adjourned.’
Jessica hugs Mary and then Richard Runche KC.
‘We’ve won, we’ve won!’ she cries, clasping a sobbing Mary to her breast. ‘We’re gunna get your kids back, Mary, you’ll see!’
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
It’s almost a year since Mary was granted permission to see her children, Sarah and Polly, who have been placed into the Cootamundra Girls’ Home. During this time Moishe Goldberg has been harassing the Child Welfare Department to reveal the whereabouts of her three-year-old, Dulcie, and the baby, Katie, both of whom are light-skinned and were put into foster homes almost immediately after they arrived at the institution. The Child Welfare Department, however, refuses to reveal the names or whereabouts of the foster families, saying only that as the children are so young the families who have taken them think of themselves more as adoptive than foster parents.
Mary was inconsolable when she arrived with Jessica at the notorious Girls’ Home to find that two of her children were missing.
‘Where’s the baby and little Dulcie?’ she asked Polly moments after she’d tearfully embraced her two children. ‘Mama, they took them,’ Polly said, distressed. ‘They said they couldn’t stay with us ‘cause they almost white, they said plenty white families wanted kids like them two.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll find them,’ Jessica comforted her friend. ‘Moishe says they can’t be adopted, only fostered.’ But after a year even Moishe has become despondent about ever finding Mary’s two little ones and, in preparing the case for the restoration, he has been forced to eliminate the names of the two youngest, fearing it will complicate the case to the point where it stands very little chance of reaching a decision.
In the ensuing period it has become essential to prove that Mary is of good character and a Christian woman with some education, for it is obvious that the Aborigines’ Protection Board will try to discredit her in court, in an attempt to prove that she is an unfit mother.
Moishe writes to Jessica suggesting that she test Mary’s ability to read and write. If she can read a simple document and understand it, this will be sufficient for our needs, he writes. I have come to understand that literacy is relatively unusual in an Aboriginal woman of her age. Perhaps you can give Mary a test using the newspaper.
Jessica knows Mary can write her signature in a nice sloping hand and she’s confident that her friend will easily pass such a test until she actually tackles her with the task.
Mary shakes her head. ‘Jessie, I were taught on the Lutheran Mission to sign me name, that’s all. That was the first thing we done, even before the alphabet. They said, “Your name is a picture and you must draw it over and over until you can do it by heart. If you can’t draw the picture, you can’t be a person. If you don’t learn it good, your family can’t get no gubberment rations. It’s your fault if they don’t get no tucker.” So we learned that one thing real good, to draw the exact picture of our names. I can do it in me sleep, nice and smooth like people who can write proper.’
‘You never talk about the Lutheran Mission, Mary. Why is that?’
‘Yeah, well, not much to say about that place, Jessie.’
‘But there was a school there, wasn’t there?’
Mary is silent for a moment. ‘I was born in that stinking, rotten gubberment Mission. It was called the Lachlan River Mission, I dunno why they called it a Mission, God didn’t live in that place. I was one of thirteen children and me father worked for rations, for no pay. There was no work, so they divided the work up, me father worked one day a week and for that he gets gubberment rations. He took me along so I could sign for him, Chicka Simpson. That was the second picture I learned, to sign his name. You got rations of a Friday. It would be an all-in go, thirteen kids and everyone else who wants a feed — you know that’s the Aboriginal way, to share. By Sunday there would be no tucker, so you’d starve till Wednesday.’ Mary looks up at Jessica. ‘And I mean starve. I don’t mean miss a meal, I mean miss three days’ meals. Your guts’d be growling for want of food. Then Wednesdays I got to walk through the bush three miles to work at a slaughter yard, scrubbing the mess from the floors. They didn’t give me no pay neither. My reward was I was allowed to take all the guts home in a fifty-pound flour bag. It wasn’t for me, it was for everyone at the Mission, us kids and everyone. It was a matter of survival. That was before that big drought and when I was married to a Wongaibon man. We was starvin’ and went walkabout with that mob. We come down this way to your place and your old man give us tucker and says we can camp here.’ Mary smiles at her friend. ‘Jessie, that were the best day of me life, the day I met you.’
Jessica takes Mary’s hand and holds it against her cheek. ‘We’re best friends, Mary, ain’t we? I’ll teach yiz to read and write, if you like. I wasn’t too good me self until Moishe took me in hand when I was in the loony-bin.’
Mary laughs. ‘I reckon it might be too late, me brain’s fair gone, what with all me worries and havin’ them kids lost to me. I didn’t have much schoolin’ then. They advertised for a manager for the Mission and the shitcarter in Hillston applied for the job. The gubberment give it to him, and his wife become the schoolteacher ‘cause there was more pay in it for them. She couldn’t read nor write, and always had a headache. There was no schoolin’, just a schoolteacher who didn’t know how to write her name on the blackboard of that little tin schoolroom. It was a big laugh, because I taught her how to draw her name, same as the missionary taught us. Make it a picture and learn the picture. She
was that proud when she could do it. That was our fat teacher, Mrs Lily Murphy, our fat slug teacher, drawin’ pay and eatin’ good food.’
Despite Mary’s earlier protests Jessica, and sometimes Richard Runche, teach her how to read and write. She proves to be a good pupil and over the period of a year has mastered enough reading and writing techniques to pass Moishe’s test easy as pie.
Soon after the magistrate’s hearing at Narrandera, Moishe issued a writ against the Aborigines’ Protection Board, accusing them of conspiring to remove Mary’s four children and demanding that they be returned to her. In the ensuing year the Aborigines’ Protection Board tried every tactic in the book to frustrate Moishe’s attempts to bring the case to court. But Moishe Goldberg, Mr Detail himself, has met their every challenge and in the process learned a great deal about the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and the plight of the half-caste children within it.
A few months after Jessica and Mary visit the two girls in the home, Moishe discovers that the education they receive is of a most desultory nature. Education at the institution is not considered important beyond religious instruction. The girls are destined to become domestic servants and their schooling consists of work that will lead to them taking up a situation in a white home where reading and writing have no possible benefit and are genuinely thought to have no relevance to their lives.
Moishe also learns that Aboriginal children from government institutions are entitled to attend the local school and so he requests that Polly and Sarah Simpson be allowed to go to the government primary school in the town. He wants them to have an education, and his thinking is also that it might give the children an opportunity to be away from the influence of the home for a while each weekday.
However, he receives a letter from the Aborigines’ Protection Board stating that while this is indeed official policy it is subject to the approval of the parents of white pupils and that this approval has recently been withdrawn from the appropriate school in Cootamundra.
Moishe, who won’t take no for an answer, persists, demanding to know why they can’t attend the local school. Finally, unable to get any satisfaction from the Department of Education, he visits Cootamundra himself and interviews the schoolmaster, Mr Fred Burrows.
Burrows proves almost as reluctant to give any information to Moishe as the school authorities in Sydney, but he admits that the school had previously included several Aboriginal children.
‘They were removed at the insistence of the white parents. I’m afraid there is nothing I can do about it,’ he says, tight-lipped. ‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ the schoolmaster replies, leaning back on his chair and tapping his desk with the end of a pencil. ‘Did they give a reason?’
‘They don’t have to, Mr Goldberg, being Aboriginal is sufficient reason.’