In 1947, Kate Muldune was seven, old enough to start school, so she was transferred to the schoolgirls dormitory. The kindergarten had been her home since she was two years old. It cared for all the children aged six years and under and the conditions there were better than anywhere else on the Settlement. The food was adequate: pots of soups and stews, daily supply of milk, dried or tinned fruit and tinned vegetables. The children thrived on the loving care given by the white sister-in-charge and her dedicated staff. The children were doted on and cuddled often, no one missed out. Kate still remembers the smell of Lifebuoy Soap at bath-times.
The schoolgirls dormitory was an overcrowded, dilapidated, vermin-infested building. The beds were covered with mattresses filled with coconut hair or husks, no sheets, just government-issued rugs. At night the beds were pushed closely together, the older girls at the ends protecting their younger relatives in the middle. During the winter, spare mattresses were thrown over the blankets for extra warmth.
“The big girls told us that the dormitory was built on a cemetery or an old yard, and that every night ghosts wandered around the dormitory seeking revenge on the violators of sacred ground,” said Kate.
“If we wanted to go to the toilet bucket at night, a small fire of coconut husks or fibre was lit. Still you glanced nervously around before you sat down over the bucket,” she added.
The girls were locked in every evening at six o’clock and confined there until sunrise the next morning.
“The food was terrible. The watery stews were made from mutton or sausages that tasted slightly off, with unsliced cabbage leaves floating on top, potatoes and sometimes carrots,” said Kate pulling an ugly face. “Weevilly porridge was sweetened with molasses or sugar if it was available. There was at least one redeeming factor, and that was there was always plenty of hot fresh bread, baked daily at the bakehouse, and of course big mugs, or in our cases fruit or Nestles milk tins, of sweet tea. The same fare was served daily and seldom varied.
“You ate the food served to you or you starved, and you said grace before you sat down to eat a meal.
“It was always the same prayer, ‘For what we are about to receive may the Lord make us truly thankful. Amen.’
“What I hated most and it always makes me want to puke when I think about it, sometimes we had tinned fruit and custard. Custard indeed, it looked and tasted like lemon coloured glue. Yuk,” said Kate looking positively ill.
The girls were awakened at 5:30am rain, hail or shine. After breakfast they bathed and dressed for school. Most of the children enjoyed attending classes in the two-roomed school. The infant school (pre-primary) was attached to the kindergarten. Their teacher was Miss Chapman, a slightly built lass with short curly brown hair. Miss Hillman, a very large middle-aged woman with very short curly grey hair, was also the headmistress who taught upper levels (standards 3-8), while a sturdy, spry Yorkshire woman, a Mrs Brinkley, took the lower primary levels (standards 1-3). Mrs Brinkley’s class sat at long oaken desks—four to a desk—with individual inkwells.
“I had the most difficult time—I suppose the same as many of my classmates, trying to write with a pen and ink,” said Kate. “I don’t know how many times I got hit across the knuckles, with a command to ‘hold it straight’. They gave up in disgust. ‘Kate Muldune you’ll never learn,’ they said.
“I hated the bloody pens, I am glad we have biros now.”
The availability of a formal education was seen by inmates not as a privilege but as a right, one to replace the birthright that was taken away from them. All the children looked forward to school because it was a place where pupils could forget their degrading living conditions and their horrible meals and concentrate on more important and far more interesting subjects. Apart from the three Rs there were stories to be heard, stories not about Dreamtime heroes, but about the European heroes such as William Tell, Robin Hood, the Scarlet Pimpernel and others. There were tales of the adventures of “Black Beauty”, “Robinson Crusoe” and “Treasure Island” and more. Myths and legends of foreign countries replaced the mythical beings of their traditional culture.
Now their mythical beings had names like fairies, elves, witches, goblins and hobyahs. These appeared to be more real to the children because there were colourful pictures of them in many of the books available at the school. Kate’s education was constantly expanding.
The standard of education was equal to all other state or government schools in Western Australia. This was indicated by requests from the school inspector Mr Thornton for samples of work done by pupils at the Settlement school. The pupils were being groomed to become “model citizens” to be placed in positions of responsibility that would enable them to take their places in any level of society—or so they were told.
The school was the venue for all social functions, such as the monthly dances for the adults from the compound and the camps. The children watched on with delight as the old people danced around the floor. School concerts three times a year were very popular. The pupils enjoyed showing off their skills as performers as they sang, danced and acted out mini dramas. Despite the fact that these performances were solely European-oriented, the children always enjoyed the audiences.
Instruction on survival skills and bushcraft remained a recreational activity. Whilst the speaking of traditional language was forbidden, and the women would never observe or participate in religious ceremonies, rites and rituals, the myths and legends would always be in their hearts and stored away in the back of their minds, awaiting that special moment when they would be recalled and passed on to others. To ensure this, Kate’s substitute and surrogate mothers who gave her maternal protection became her tutors. The forbidden topics were whispered in hushed tones in the privacy of the dormitory in the evenings or discussed on the grassy banks near the river under the shade of the huge river gum.
Everyone was acquainted with all residents at the Settlement, so it was not uncommon to see groups of women and girls heading off in all directions to forage for berries, roots and tubers—this was a regular event every Saturday morning. It was almost a ritual when for at least once a week all females assumed their ancient roles as gatherers. The only difference now, however, was that women from the Kimberley, the Pilbaras and the Murchison were now gathering the traditional bush tucker of the Nyoongah people.
Every year between May and October djubak or karnoes were dug. These were highly prized as a food source, some were the size and shape of new potatoes. Bohn or borna, a small, red, sometimes hot root was plentiful, as were other smaller tubers and roots. Berries of all shapes and sizes grew in abundance—and had names like emu berries (their shape and colour were like emu eggs), gold swan, crown wooley and the largest of all, the sand-plain berries. They were the size of an oval-shaped grape. Nuts and seeds were gathered and shared amongst the inmates.
During the summer months there were plenty of fish in the river, lonkies or wheppies and buguinge mud fish, and cobblers, and gilgies.
The men and boys hunted for small game such as rabbits, porcupines and parrots and galahs. The camp people who lived some 300 yards from the compound kept kangaroo dogs bred specially for hunting kangaroos and emus.
Family picnics or “dinner outs” were held on Sundays. Adults were queued up outside the kitchen servery counter to be given cardboard boxes of food. The contents were nearly always the same, mutton chops, bread, jam or golden syrup, tea, sugar and tinned milk. The men “robbed” bee hives and collected the wild honey while the women and children fished, dug gilgies (small freshwater crayfish) or caught lizards and cardars (goannas).
Local bush foods were not the only things to be introduced to the people of the north by the traditional owners of this part of the country, the Nyoongahs. They also shared their myths and legends. There were warnings not to wander off in the bush alone or go too far away, for behind every Christmas or Moodgah tree a berrijal or a charnock may be lurking. Malevolent spirits such as mummaries or wood archies preyed on disobedient children who have not heeded warnings of the grown-ups and are caught wandering home at dusk or night fall.
“When we came to a Moodgah tree at dusk we’d join hands and run fast as we could. Don’t you worry, fear would boost your speed up one hundred percent,” said Kate.
“When we went on these Sunday ‘dinner outs’, it was better to take as many children as you can—you got more food. We enjoyed the weekends very much and looked forward to them. No child was an orphan then.
“But one thing I shall fear and remember always is the mournful cry of the curlew or weelow. We were told that the bird was imitating the cry of a tormented, demented woman searching for her lost children,” said Kate shivering slightly. “I never forgot that legend.”
Two years later the government decided that Kate and the other children would enter a new phase in their lives. It was time to abolish the protection policy and legislate a new policy—the assimilation policy. Basically the assimilation policy meant that Aborigines were expected to achieve and attain the same standards of living as their white counterparts, and they would eventually become absorbed into the mainstream Australian society and be treated equally as Australian citizens. The Settlements were closing down, becoming obsolete, and Christian missions were being established throughout the state under various denominations.