Bringing them Home - Peggy story

Peggy

My family went to Cherbourg. They volunteered to go there during the Depression. So I would have been about 6 months old when grandfather, who was, I mean, he was independent. He had eight kids all birthed out in the trees you know, under the stars. My mother spoke her own language. She had me with the promise to marry my father. And then when the Depression came they talked to the policeman. He said go to Buramba. When things get better come back out again. He was the Protector so he sent them there. The thing is though, when we got there you got caught up in the system. You weren't allowed out anymore.

The decision that my grandfather made at the time, he didn't know that would split his whole family up.

My Dad was away. He thought we had died. He didn't know what had happened. No-one else seemed to know where we had disappeared to. The whole family went to Cherbourg. Mum said when they got there they were immediately split up. Mum said the superintendent said, 'Agnes, you can't live in the camp with your small baby and you have to go into the dormitory'.

Mum thinks that's just ... She won't talk about it. She's in denial. She said they did it for our good because there was no room in the camp. But I said, 'You lived in Ayumba with your old people when you was outside. Why would it now be different that you didn't want to live with them?'

She said, 'Well, they offered the dormitory to me, so I took you there'. I was 6 months old. Because the dormitory is such a big place and it's made up, you know ... it's split that way [in half] downstairs with your women that side, your girls that side.

I stayed with my Mum for 4 years on that side with the other mothers. The boys went into the boys' home - my grandfather's sons. And he had Mum's younger sister and younger brother - they stayed with the old people. But the rest of them - the boys - were put in a home. Mum was put in the dormitory.

I stayed with her until I was 4 years of age. You slept with your mother because there was basically no room for a cot or anything and for the 4 years you're there living with her.

But when I turned 4, and because I was such an intelligent child, sneaking off to school because all the other kids are going .. matron made the decision that, 'Peggy has to go to school'. And so immediately that decision was made, I was transferred over to this section. I was taken away from her. Separating her from me was a grill. There was chicken wire across there. That was the extent of how far you could go to this [other] side.

Once you were separated from your Mum, you're not to go back to her again. Absolutely no interaction. You have a bed on your own. No contact during the day. I'm out of her control. She is no longer actually my mother type of thing. So you go under the care and control of the Government. That's what happened.

No-one said anything to me. No-one said anything to her but everybody else in that section knew that this is what happened. And most of those women, my mother tells me, kept their children on the breast for a long, long time, because that bonding was going to be broken at some stage and so keeping their children close to them was the only thing that they had. I've always been an angry child. Very angry. I don't remember much about this section with my mother. I remember nothing. It embarrasses me when she talks of me running to her for cuddles and she'll say, 'I fed you on my titties'. And I get rather embarrassed because I don't remember that time with her.

I can remember sitting here at this grill...

But I can remember sitting here at this grill on that side waiting for her to come out of the door of one of these wards here so that I can just see her. She wouldn't come out because it hurt her to see me over this side. I turned 5 around about July. I went to school, but then she had to go to work. So we had that removal from our grandparents, her family, then I was removed from her and I then became the victim.

She ate on this side and I ate on that side. Birthdays were arranged. No, I never saw her on birthdays. I got a cake every birthday that was arranged by the Government - only because she fought for it.

I didn't get to know her. To me she was just the woman who comes and goes. When I was 5 she went again. They sent her out to work. I remember the night the taxi pulled up to take her.

Again, there was nothing emotional because if you were a little girl on this side you got into trouble for crying. You couldn't show emotion. Here at this wire grill I could just hear the director of the management call out to me, 'Is that you Peggy?'. They could just see my little form there sitting at the wire grill.

'You don't get to bed, you'll be punished!' And so, go to bed. If I'm crying at night, 'Is that you Peggy, crying again?'. And so it just went on. You've got about 60 or 70 other kids there, so why cry for your mother because kids are going to look after you and think 'she's crying for her mother'. You got to show your anger some place.

I remember that night. We had to sing prayers at night, and I could catch up, I mean, it didn't take me long to know what the system is all about. You're better off living within that system rather than out of it. You go with it. I remember singing prayers that night:

Now the day is over

Night is drawing near

This always upsets me because at the end of singing that prayer, I couldn't remember the words. 'Cause I've got a very high voice - a lot higher than a lot of the kids - they'd hear me first.

Meadows of the evening

Creep across the sky

La la la la la la la la

Getting higher and higher

Four and twenty blackbirds

Baked in a pie.

That ended the prayer and the old lady called out, 'Is that you, Peggy? Get out here'. And I had to kneel on the floor till everyone went to sleep.

It was all about control, reform. The bald head was part of the dormitory system for punishment. If you had lice, you had your head shaved. But you could have your hair cut off for being naughty, doing anything naughty. It didn't matter what it was: speaking back, not doing your chores. Cold baths, getting your hair shaved off if you didn't go for wood in the afternoon so you could warm the baths up.

You also got the strap and you got put into jail. There was three components of the punishment that you got. You could even be left without any food. Go without your meal. Stand in the middle of the dining room there while everybody else finished. Many times I stood there. Humiliation, because when you got your head shaved we were not allowed to put a beret or anything on our heads. Not allowed.

So you walked to school like this and the camp kids made fun of you and that would bring us closer together as a group. As a group [dormitory kids] we were able to fight off the other kids and their insults to us.

We were called the dormitory girls. But the kids who slept out on the verandah - they break my heart and it still upsets me: they were the pee-the-beds. They were called nothing else but pee-the-beds. Maybe you'd pee the bed one night because you were upset tummy, fear, no electric light just a flickering light of an old hurricane lamp. It would scare you because old people have the habit of telling you there's people walking around here at night time. All these 'woop-woops' around the place. And you didn't want to go to the toilet and you may wet the bed. It may only have been a one night occurrence, but you transferred from your bed out onto the verandah. You slept on a mattress on the floor and all you were called was pee-the-beds. 'Tell the pee-the-beds they've gotta get their mattresses in off the line.' 'Tell the pee-the-beds they've gotta put their blankets out.' 'Tell the pee-the-beds it's time to get up.' No identity at all. Absolutely nothing. These kids were just grouped together.

I was talking to a young girl the other day. I said, 'Your mother never peed the bed but her sister did. She had to go down there to sleep with her sister because the kid was crying. She needed her sister with her'.

I could see them on a morning, a winter's morning. No ceiling. Just when the sun hit the tin roof. 'All you pee-the-beds gotta get up!.' And they would get up out of their wet clothing and all you see is steam coming off them. It was absolutely dreadful and I grieve for those kids, honestly. We were cruelly treated.

Confidential evidence 404, Queensland, 1930s. Peggy's story appears on page 82 of Bringing them home.

 

Last updated 2 December 2001.