Speaker 1: From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM.
Speaker 1: This week, a group of Stolen Generation survivors visited a
Speaker 1: site from their childhood that holds a lot of painful memories,
Speaker 1: the notorious Kinchilla Boy's Home in New South Wales. The
Speaker 1: gathering marked one hundred years since the home was opened,
Speaker 1: a home that institutionalized hundreds of Indigenous boys and subjected
Speaker 1: them to torture, abuse and reprogramming in order to assimilate
Speaker 1: them into white society. Now, the survivors and their families
Speaker 1: want to take ownership of the site to make it
Speaker 1: a place of healing for future generations. Today, Gunner Kerney
Speaker 1: and watch a balloch writer and contributor to the Saturday Paper,
Speaker 1: Ben Abotangelo on the enduring legacy of the Kinchilla Boys Home.
Speaker 1: It's Wednesday, October twenty three and just a warning, today's
Speaker 1: episode discusses abuse and suicide. So then you've been looking
Speaker 1: into this home, this institution where Aboriginal children were sent
Speaker 1: for decades. It's called the Kinchilla Boys Home. Tell me
Speaker 1: about the place.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: Kinchilla is known as one of the most notorious homes.
Speaker 3: It was open in the nineteen twenties and closed down
Speaker 3: in the early nineteen seventies. Young boys from across New
Speaker 3: South Wales predominantly were taken from their families and institutionalized
Speaker 3: at that home and just went through some of the
Speaker 3: most torturous years of their lives. So the children were
Speaker 3: as young as six or seven up to fourteen, fifteen,
Speaker 3: sixteen years of age, and you know, across varying periods
Speaker 3: of time, were just subject to humiliation, to torture, to slavery,
Speaker 3: to sexual assault, to rapes, to indentioned servitude, to just
Speaker 3: the most brutal reprogramming and re engineering that I think
Speaker 3: this country has seen.
Speaker 2: So yeah, it's a really tough story to cover.
Speaker 3: There's now only forty nine of the six hundred survivors remaining.
Speaker 3: Four of those uncles have passed in the last four
Speaker 3: to six months. So there's a real sense of urgency
Speaker 3: around the fact that a lot of these young people
Speaker 3: who are now old that went through that home you
Speaker 3: are now coming towards the end of their lives.
Speaker 1: Okay, So these boys who made it out, who survived
Speaker 1: that torture that you described, can you tell me more
Speaker 1: about them about their stories.
Speaker 3: I was really humbled to get the opportunity to hold
Speaker 3: the stories of people like Uncle Roger Pigeon Jarrett. Can
Speaker 3: you just start with me by just telling me your
Speaker 3: name in full, Roger Sharrett. He speaks about June twenty five,
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty eight, when he was merely eleven years old,
Speaker 3: and he speaks with just vivid clarity about the day
Speaker 3: that the big black English riley rolled onto the mission
Speaker 3: and how the sergeant stepped out of the car, came
Speaker 3: up to the house, sat his mother down on the
Speaker 3: veranda outside of their little home.
Speaker 4: Down there, and.
Speaker 3: Just said to her, missus Jarrett, if you signed these papers,
Speaker 3: your kids will return within twelve months. Uncle Roger's mother
Speaker 3: didn't have a formal education, she knew that she was
Speaker 3: confronted with an ultimatum, and within the confluence of those circumstances,
Speaker 3: she signed those papers. Now, Uncle Roger reflects on, you know,
Speaker 3: only being eleven years of age.
Speaker 2: His other brother was only six, and he speaks.
Speaker 3: Again with just real clarity about the moment that the
Speaker 3: sergeant who was acting on behalf of the Aboriginal Welfare
Speaker 3: Board grabbed him.
Speaker 5: Was going.
Speaker 6: So mom's dress.
Speaker 3: He says that, you know, as they grabbed him he
Speaker 3: clutched his mother's dress, and you know, the sergeant just
Speaker 3: was wrangling like a piece of meat.
Speaker 6: And Mom's crying.
Speaker 5: After this day, I guess still free with on my arm.
Speaker 3: He said that the sergeant basically grabbed him, dragged him
Speaker 3: to the car, and threw him in the back. And
Speaker 3: you know, he can still remember sliding across those seats,
Speaker 3: hitting his head on the window wiper and basically splitting
Speaker 3: it open. And it was from there, within a matter
Speaker 3: of hours that he was at the front gates of
Speaker 3: the Kinchuler Boys Home. Another a survivor that I was
Speaker 3: fortunate to sit with was Uncle Richard Bare Campbell, and
Speaker 3: he was only eight or nine years old when he
Speaker 3: was stolen from his family in nineteen sixty six.
Speaker 5: My name is Richard Campbell. I'm a cool beat that
Speaker 5: gutty man from the back Obacker and the Thebezy Bellies
Speaker 5: off the north coast of wal So we have the
Speaker 5: back aheads cost Harbor.
Speaker 3: But his first memory of Kinchla was being wrestled out
Speaker 3: of the car and being separated from his three young sisters.
Speaker 3: And you know, he tols this really graphic story of
Speaker 3: you know, his his sister's screaming in the car and
Speaker 3: you know him being at the gates of Kinchler and
Speaker 3: the car driving off, and.
Speaker 5: Then we can eat a screaming as a car was
Speaker 5: going around the corner away from Kitchener. We can still
Speaker 5: hear him screaming, you don't fade away in the distance.
Speaker 3: You know, that was his first and most enduring memory
Speaker 3: from Kinchler, because it was also the last time that
Speaker 3: he saw his sister in approximately twenty years.
Speaker 1: And so these men, well they were children at the
Speaker 1: time they were taken from their families, taken to Kinchilla.
Speaker 1: So what did they tell you about what happened next,
Speaker 1: about what their life was like in the home?
Speaker 3: I think the first really significant point is that you know,
Speaker 3: Aboriginal families were stolen from their country and rounded up
Speaker 3: onto missions, and these young boys were then secondarily from that,
Speaker 3: you know, stolen from their communities. So they were stolen
Speaker 3: from their country, stolen from their communities, and sent to
Speaker 3: these institutions where they were then stolen from themselves. Uncle
Speaker 3: Roger Pigeon Jarrett basically says that you know, the moment
Speaker 3: that you get to those gates is where you lose
Speaker 3: your identity, your culture, and your name now for him
Speaker 3: when you walked in those gates, he was no longer
Speaker 3: Roger Jarrett.
Speaker 2: That's when he became number twelve.
Speaker 3: And it was a saying for Uncle Richard, who as
Speaker 3: soon as he walks into the gates, he says, the
Speaker 3: first thing that happened to him and his brothers was
Speaker 3: that they just started getting bashed.
Speaker 5: Just say, okay, Richard Cambll anymore, you're there number twenty
Speaker 5: eight to be older brother, but you were not Robert Cambell,
Speaker 5: and will you have the number twenty nine.
Speaker 3: They spoke about the minutes feeling like hours, and the
Speaker 3: hours feeling like days. The boys were humiliated, they were beaten,
Speaker 3: they were sexually assaulted and raped. They were staved, they
Speaker 3: were enslaved. They're indoctrinated and re engineered.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Uncle Witty Walsh, who is another one of the survivors
Speaker 3: that I spoke to, you know, reflected on the fact
Speaker 3: that boys would go missing that you know, they were
Speaker 3: classified as flora and fauna at the time.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: In one of the testimonies from Uncle Whitty, he spoke
Speaker 3: about basically the ex army men that ran the site,
Speaker 3: you know, would have animals that had names, but for
Speaker 3: the young Aboriginal boys that were on the site that
Speaker 3: were just subject to the most barbaric of treatment, they
Speaker 3: had numbers, right And.
Speaker 1: So then when survivors say that some of these boys
Speaker 1: went missing, do we know what happened to them?
Speaker 2: Yeah, we know that.
Speaker 3: Recently there was a report from experts who used ground
Speaker 3: penetrating radars at the homes and essentially what they found
Speaker 3: were readings consistent with clandestine burials in other places around
Speaker 3: the world and at Kinchla. Now there's approximately nine sites
Speaker 3: that could hold graves of young boys. Now that report
Speaker 3: has been tabled with the Minister, the New South Wales
Speaker 3: Premier Chris Means and his Minister for Abridge and All
Speaker 3: Affairs and Treaty, David Harris, have committed to further investigations
Speaker 3: at the site and to engage further specialists to explore
Speaker 3: in full, you know, the really serious question marks that
Speaker 3: are lingering over the place. But when I speak to
Speaker 3: the uncles around whether or not they are surprised about
Speaker 3: the prospect of their being potential burial grounds. There's not
Speaker 3: so life at Kinchla. From listening to these stories, the
Speaker 3: one thing that was a constant in all of these
Speaker 3: testimonies was that terror was just there at every moment
Speaker 3: of the day.
Speaker 1: After the break, the survivors on a mission to reclaim
Speaker 1: the Conchilla Boys Home, So ben Kinchilla Boy's Home. It
Speaker 1: closed down in nineteen seventy. Hundreds of boys were taken there.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit about what life was
Speaker 1: like for them once they were old enough to be
Speaker 1: able to leave.
Speaker 3: I think Uncle Richard summarized it really aptly by saying that,
Speaker 3: you know, most of he and the other survivors were
Speaker 3: basically on a suicide journey having stepped out of there.
Speaker 3: Now today there's only forty nine survivors remaining. Four survivors
Speaker 3: have passed away in the previous four to six months.
Speaker 3: You know, we really are getting towards that later chapter
Speaker 3: of the Stolen Generation survivors' lives, But the impacts from
Speaker 3: Kinchla have permeated every single aspect of these young boys' lives.
Speaker 3: Uncle Richard spoke about the story of him sort of
Speaker 3: being thrusted out of the gates of Kinchula and back
Speaker 3: into society thinking that he.
Speaker 2: Was a white fellaw.
Speaker 3: He speaks to how powerful the indoctrination the re engineering
Speaker 3: was that he was subjected to. But at the same time,
Speaker 3: you know, large sections of the Aboriginal community also turned
Speaker 3: their back on him because they didn't see these boys
Speaker 3: that went through Kinchula as one of them anymore. So
Speaker 3: they were stuck in this no man's land, not belonging anywhere,
Speaker 3: and just with these really deep wounds and no support
Speaker 3: to mend them. For Uncle Roger Jarrett, you know, he
Speaker 3: spoke about going out into the world and just not
Speaker 3: knowing how to love. You know, his words are that
Speaker 3: when you come out, you've got no idea of what
Speaker 3: love is. You can spell it, you can write it,
Speaker 3: but to feel what love is, it's been killed. Uncle
Speaker 3: Richard has had multiple kids to multiple women. He speaks
Speaker 3: about not having strong relationships with his children, about his
Speaker 3: children having challenges with substance abuse. For Uncle Witty Walsh,
Speaker 3: he talks about, you know, his children being removed from him,
Speaker 3: his grandchildren being removed from his sons and daughters.
Speaker 6: I put the gun in my mouth, but I was
Speaker 6: about I think I was about noidy at the time
Speaker 6: when I was going to shoot myself because they took
Speaker 6: us away from the woman that I married.
Speaker 3: We've seen Kinchler Act as this really fractuous moment in
Speaker 3: these people's lives, and that has continued to reverberate every day,
Speaker 3: every week, and every generation. We know that the number
Speaker 3: of First Nations children being removed from their families today.
Speaker 2: Is at record rates.
Speaker 3: The projections are for the years to come that those
Speaker 3: rates will continue to increase. They currently make up forty
Speaker 3: three point seven percent of the children in out of
Speaker 3: home care. We know that, you know, the pipeline of
Speaker 3: children from out of home care into youth juvenile detention
Speaker 3: centers is also ever expanding. So in the uncle's eyes, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's it's what's old remains new, and so been.
Speaker 1: One hundred years on from when Kinchella was opened, some
Speaker 1: of the survivors want to try and reclaim that site.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me a bit about that, because I
Speaker 1: imagine that it would be complicated trying to work out
Speaker 1: how you might mark a place where all of these
Speaker 1: horrors happened to you in a way that feels right.
Speaker 3: It's a great point, Ruby, and the first hurdle has
Speaker 3: been the survivors being able to reimagine what the site
Speaker 3: could be, that the place that was a catalyst for
Speaker 3: so much harm and heartbreak could be actually repositioned as
Speaker 3: a site for healing. So that first hurdle was one
Speaker 3: of the hardest I think for many of the now
Speaker 3: men to overcome. The second hurdle has been negotiating a
Speaker 3: just timely and fair agreement with the KEMPS Local Aboriginal
Speaker 3: Land Council, who is the owner of the Kinschula site. Now,
Speaker 3: a lot of the survivors believe that their own community
Speaker 3: continues to turn their back on them, and that that
Speaker 3: is playing out within these negotiations. You know, Uncle Richard
Speaker 3: spoke to me about the fact that when they first
Speaker 3: endeavored to put an offer forward to reclaim ownership of
Speaker 3: the land, a lot of people within the community saw
Speaker 3: that as a land grab and saw that the uncles
Speaker 3: were trying to take land from other members within the community.
Speaker 2: And I suppose what's really.
Speaker 3: Important from their perspective at what I've captured is that
Speaker 3: ownership matters absolutely, but it's an endeavor to have custodianship
Speaker 3: over the site. It's not ownership in as they would say,
Speaker 3: Whitefellow Way, its ownership in Blackfellow Way. And by having
Speaker 3: that it means that they cannot only repair themselves, importantly,
Speaker 3: ensure that that site remains standing until the end of
Speaker 3: time so people will never forget what went down there,
Speaker 3: and as importantly to ensure that it never happens again.
Speaker 1: Ben, Thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 4: Appreciate it. Thanks Ruby.
Speaker 1: Also in the news today, the British Prime Minister has
Speaker 1: defended King Charles after news of Senator Lydia Thorpe's protest
Speaker 1: against him made headline around the world. So Kia Stama
Speaker 1: said the King is doing a fantastic job, particularly in
Speaker 1: light of his recent treatment for cancer. The Monarch's trip
Speaker 1: to Australia was his first since the diagnosis, and students
Speaker 1: at the Australian Catholic University have staged a walkout during
Speaker 1: a speech by former union boss jo deah Bruin, The
Speaker 1: former National president of the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association,
Speaker 1: was accepting an honorary degree at the university and he
Speaker 1: began sharing his views on same sex marriage, IVF and abortion.
Speaker 1: Mister de Bruin said abortion was the single biggest killer
Speaker 1: of human beings in the world, before the majority of
Speaker 1: the audience left the auditorium while he was speaking. Tomorrow
Speaker 1: and seven am. We'll be looking at how abortion became
Speaker 1: a surprise issue in the run up to Queensland's state
Speaker 1: election this weekend.
Speaker 4: I'm Ruby Jones.
Speaker 1: This is seven AM. Thanks for listening.