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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 1997 Week 8 Hansard (26 August) . . Page.. 2379 ..

Serjeant-at-Arms: Members, Mrs Maureen Bates-McKay, representing the ACT Government Public Sector Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Network.

MRS BATES-McKAY: Mr Speaker, I would like to share today a brief story of the stolen generation and the effects that had on my family. I come from a small town in the far north-west of New South Wales. Most country towns that are situated on the river have large Aboriginal populations. The inhabitants of the back country witnessed the part-destruction of their river, which has been an important facet for many Aboriginal people, as a result, in many cases, of what the wider community calls agricultural progress.

Another turmoil many people lived with is the memory of being taken away by the welfare and police authorities. My father and his two brothers were among them. They were all under the age of 10 when they were taken to a foreign institution. Their parents had died at White Cliffs, outside of Wilcannia, which is the land of the Barkindji. Their relatives were bringing them into town by horse and sulky when they were met on the road. Despite the protests of their family, the boys were taken by the police. The next day, the three were boarded onto a train and taken to Kinchela Boys Home, where they remained until their late teens. After leaving the home, the boys went their separate ways. Dad became a drover around Bourke, Uncle Batesy went to the Pilliga scrub near Walgett and the younger brother went to a small town in Queensland. No contact was ever made between them as they grew into men.

Yes, Dad did drink. Dad did go off the rails and muck up at home when on the grog - although 20 years prior to his death he did not touch alcohol. A memory sticks out in my mind. I do not ever remember him telling us kids that he loved us. So, I wonder whether it was a legacy from Kinchela that he did not know how to express that love, combined with the conditions we were made to live under at the Bourke common, sharing with several other families one tap which was located in the shire council's horse pound yard, or whether it was the result of the welfare constantly lurking around and the police spotlighting the houses during the night or the relocation to the reserve.

Dad, it seemed, never escaped the surveillance and control of the authorities. When I was about 12, Uncle Batesy, who was then a chronic alcoholic, came down from Walgett to see us. I remember clearly Dad slamming the door in his face and telling him never to come to our house again. His reaction took us kids by surprise, thinking that this was quite out of character for someone who had not seen his brother for many years. We heard only snippets of the family being taken from their home town and being put in Kinchela. So, it was difficult as kids to understand the emotional trauma that the boys would carry with them throughout their lives. What would we know of the fear and anxiety from the Kinchela home that our father expressed on that day as he fronted his only living sibling? We never knew, because Dad never lectured us from dawn to dusk on the experiences he had been exposed to, and he never would, even as we grew older. Uncle Batesy gave it another try after that, but gave up when the welcome was the same. But we as kids, and then later as adults, would catch up with him in either Walgett or Bourke.

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