‘Your Honour, as long as we have the right to reply when my learned colleague invokes the law in regard to my client’s suitability as a mother or the removal of her children by the Board, I am happy to move on.’
‘Permission granted,’ Judge Blackall says. ‘Counsel may continue to state his case for the plaintiff.’
‘Your Honour, my next statement is in relation to the safety of my client’s two eldest children. I charge that the State and its instrumentality, the Aborigines’ Protection Board, has conspired to place my client’s eldest children in a position where clearly their lives are in danger. I shall prove that the Board is not competent to protect the children under its care and I shall ask for them to be returned to their mother. I shall call as my first witness Mr Banjo Carter of the Grong Grong Aboriginal community.’
Banjo Carter is a small man, very black, almost certainly a full-blood. He is neatly dressed in a clean flannel shirt and moleskins and wears a pair of stockman’s boots which, though well worn, have received a liberal dose of dubbin. His hair is heavily greased back against his skull, though it threatens to spring away at any moment, and he looks thoroughly uncomfortable as he is sworn in.
‘Mr Carter, thank you for coming. I shall keep you only as long as I have to. Can you tell the judge what happened to your daughter Millie?’ ‘She was took by the authorities.’
‘Under what circumstances, Mr Carter?’
‘In the schoolroom of Mrs Cross, sir. They just came and took Millie and said she had to come with them. Then the police sergeant at Grong Grong come around and said we had to sign a paper, that they’d took Millie and we had to sign for her. He said it was the law and to read the paper. I told him I didn’t learn no reading, Gladys, me wife, neither. He said, “Never you mind, just sign.” So I signed me name, I learned that in the shearin’ shed.’
‘Can you tell us what happened next?’
‘Nothing, we didn’t hear no bloody thing, not where they took her — bugger-all. And then Mary Simpson come to see us, she said she’d seen Millie in Cootamundra, that she was in the same place as her two girls. We was happy just knowing they haven’t took her too far and that one day her mother and me, we might see her again.’
‘Is the woman, Mary Simpson, present in this court, Mr Carter?’
‘Yeah, that her over there,’ Carter says, pointing directly at Mary.
Moishe hands Richard Runche a photograph and Runche continues. ‘Mr Carter, I have here a photograph taken of the pupils at the Grong Grong Infants and Primary School. Will you please identify your daughter Millie among the children.’ The lanky barrister hands the photograph over to Carter, who immediately points out his daughter. ‘Ain’t too hard, she’s the blackest one,’ he says, grinning sadly.
Runche hands the photograph back to Moishe. ‘Can you tell us when next you heard of Millie?’ he asks Carter. ‘Mary, Mrs Simpson, she come over to tell us Millie’s dead.’ ‘Dead?’
‘Yes, she said that she was flogged and left tied up to a post all night and in the mornin’ she was found dead.’
Banjo Carter can’t go on and he sniffs back his tears. ‘Millie were a good little girlie,’ he chokes.
‘Mr Carter, I shan’t keep you much longer, but it is important that you tell the court what happened next.’ Banjo Carter sniffs and straightens up. ‘Mary, Mrs Simpson, she brought a lawyer,’ Banjo points to Moishe, ‘him. He come and seen Gladys and me and says we got to go to the police and make a statement of a suspicion of murder. We done that like he said and the sergeant says he’ll look into it, they’ll get onto the Coota police right off. I said to him, “Sergeant, you remember me daughter Millie, the one you took from the school?” He shakes his head. “Banjo, I’ve took that many black kids you can’t expect me to remember them all. I just drives them to the train and hands them over, mate.” , ‘Can you tell me what happened next, please, Mr Carter?’
‘Yeah well, three months ago the sergeant calls me and Gladys and says he’s got a report from the police at Coota. “Banjo, they’ve left no stone unturned, mate,” he says. “They done a big investigation and there’s even a letter from the Aborigine Board.” “What’s it say?” I ask. “Yiz’ll have to read it to us.’” Banjo Carter, now grown more accustomed to his surroundings, is relaxed and, like many people who have to rely on their memories, it is obvious he has a good head for detail. ‘Well, it was a long report orright, full of stuff they done and who they seen and lots of inquiries into, and sworn affy davies.’
‘Affy davies?’ the judge asks.
‘Affidavits, Your Honour,’ Runche explains. ‘Please will you continue, Mr Carter.’
‘Yeah well, in the end it don’t amount to much. The police report said that there was no record of a Millie Carter being in the Coota Girls’ Home. Then he reads the letter from the Aborigines’ Protection Board and it says the same. “There you go, Banjo,” the sergeant says. “Your daughter’s gorn walkabout, she must have escaped from the train.” “Sergeant,” I says, “she were seven years old!” , Tears now run down the Aboriginal stockman’s dark cheeks.
‘Your Honour, this is the letter received by Mr Carter from the Board. With your permission, I would like to read it.’
‘Permission granted,’ the judge says.
‘I shall submit it as evidence so I will skip the formal appendages. The main text of the letter is brief and to the point.
‘Dear Sgt McClymont,
‘I am charged with the task of informing you that we have no records which show that Millie, the daughter of Banjo and Gladys Carter, ever came under the jurisdiction of this Board.
‘Furthermore, we have examined the register of the Cootamundra Domestic Training Home for Aboriginal Girls and they similarly have no records of any trainee by the name of Millie Carter having entered the home, nor is there any member of the staff who can identify the girl in the photograph submitted to us by the’ Cootamundra police.
‘I am writing to you out of a sense of the obligation to all Aboriginal children by the Board and ask you to convey our sincerest hopes for the recovery of the Carter girl.
‘However, I regret we cannot help you further in this matter.
‘Yours faithfully,
‘Nathaniel Rose