Perth Voice Interactive

THE unsavoury and mostly hidden history of WA’s missions is laid bare in the exhibition Kerosene Tins and Love Hearts, part of Perth Heritage Days this weekend.

The project came about when Robert Eggington and wife Selina from the Dumbartung Aboriginal Corporation took students from Clontarf Aboriginal College on a tour of the missions through the south west, documenting the old sites with photographs and telling them the stories of kids who were taken from their parents under the 1905 Native Welfare Act.

“These kids got a lot out of the experience…they got knowledge of a hidden history that belongs to them as young Aboriginal people, that is not spoken about in their families all that much because it’s too painful, it’s too brutal to talk about, and they don’t hear about it in school. It gave them an insight into their own history.”

The pair had become familiar with many of the stories when they helped survivors of the Stolen Generation, and other abused people, write their applications for the Redress WA compensation scheme about 10 years ago.

“At the time, I was totally unaware of the psychological and physical demand this would have on me,” Mr Eggington says.

“My wife and I did over 300 stories of people who as children were taken, and stolen, and put into missions or fostered.”

He says not many people know the full extent of the atrocities in those missions. From near starvation to widespread child sexual abuse, and siblings being split up and sent all over the state.

“We were privy to the most intricate, the most personal and the most traumatic aspects of how this particular policy, the 1905 Native Welfare Act, actually affected the children on a day-to-day basis, and how those little children in those missions survived, and the knowledge they needed,” he says.

“In New Norcia, they were suffering incredible atrocities in terms of being near starved to death. They were given sheep’s head broth almost every night of their lives. In the end their minds conditioned the body to accept the stench of this filthy sheep’s head in the broth. [But] with a lack of vitamins, they broke out in rashes and boils.”

Some of the resourceful older girls realised they needed more in their diets and worked out how to get it: they would wait for the nuns to throw veggie scraps to the chickens, then once the nuns went back inside, the girls would scavenge the scraps before the chooks ate everything.

“The older girls realised if they were able to feed that to the young kids, they noticed the rashes and boils started to disappear,” Mr Eggington says.

During the Carpenter government years, the amount of compensation people were given under Redress was between $5,000 and $80,000 for children who’d been sexually abused and tortured.

“There was one lady, who as a young girl of 10, was thrown into a boiling hot bath, and has still got the scars to this very day,” Mr Eggington says.

In 2009 the Barnett government cut the already modest compensation limit to $45,000.

Mr Eggington says it’s hard to see the the mission system as anything more than legalised kidnapping.

“We heard stories of these big black ‘native welfare’ cars rolling up as kids were leaving school, and the door would open and they’d call the kids over with a bag of lollies. The mums expecting their kids home that day would find out they’d be taken and they wouldn’t see them again.”

Two years after Mr Eggington started working with the survivors, he says he came to properly understand the pain of the parents who’d had their kids taken away forever.

“I lost my only boy in 2009,” he says. “I was never the same after that. I lost him to what we lose a lot of our young people to today: Depression, mental health…racism…brutality, and constant police harassment.”

“When I lost my boy, I started to really understand what it was like to be a woman or father, with the authorities ripping your child out of your hands to take them to a mission, and you’d never see them again.”

Splitting up the siblings compounded the damage. “What they did was raise people void of the most powerful human emotion that keeps families together…it was love…they took that all away.

“I saw the remnants of the last stolen generation. I saw them living homeless in fringe camps. I saw them so emotionally distraught. They never talked about the missions in those days. No one sat down and had discussions of this hell, they were still living in it. They were washing away this emotional and psychological pain with alcohol abuse, with substance abuse, and nearly everyone was dead before they were 35.”

The exhibition’s title, Kerosene Tins and Love Hearts, came from two of the images featured in the exhibition that gave little hints of humanity in the ruined missions. One was a tin of kerosene hidden in long grass, the other was an etching of a love heart made by one of the children.

The exhibition runs Saturday October 14, 11am to 4pm, and Sunday, 10am to 4pm at Trades Hall, 80 Beaufort Street. There’s a panel discussion on Sunday at 3.30pm, book via heritageperth.com

by DAVID BELL

MOUNT HAWTHORN locals are petitioning education minister Sue Ellery to save a 75-year-old tree due to be removed to make way for a new two-storey early childhood building at Mount Hawthorn primary school.

The back of the new $3.5 million building is along Scarborough Beach Road and along with making for a closed-off and unattractive street frontage, it’ll mean the big old Port Jackson fig will have to go.

Shelley Blechynden from Trees4Vincent wrote to the Voice, saying that when the School Master Plan was drawn up in 2013, Scarborough Beach Road was a speedy four-laner.

Now it’s two lanes and much calmer and they want the plan revisited.

Ms Blechynden says flipping the build would give more play space, save the tree, improve the view from the street, and improve security, since the grounds will be more visible (there’s been some trouble with skaters sneaking in and damaging stuff because they’re out of view at the moment).

Ms Ellery says “the member for Perth [John Carey] asked me to consider the relocation of the building suggested by Trees4Vincent, however the location they suggested is not suitable because:

• It would not meet fire separation requirements as the new building would be too close to existing buildings;

• It would create significant over-shadowing of other buildings during winter;

• It would require the removal of more trees; and

• It would amplify traffic noise from Scarborough Beach Road to the new classrooms.”

“The location of the new building was carefully considered to meet fire safety requirements, maximise the northern light, be protected from street noise and allow the sea breeze into the new courtyard,” notes Ms Ellery.

“All of the mature trees on the boundary along Scarborough Beach Road will be retained and new trees will be planted to ensure the school’s green canopy is maximised.”

The petition to save the tree at change.org has had 711 signatures in six days, with many leaving heartfelt messages calling for the Port Jackson fig to be kept.

by DAVID BELL

THE historic North Perth Bowling and Recreation Club Open Day is this Saturday October 14 from 12 noon.

The Voice caught up with super-friendly club secretary Dean Evans last week as he shovelled sand in preparation for the big day. He said the club was “the social hub of Vincent” set high on the hill in North Perth with “beautiful views and an air of tranquility”.

The only bowling club in Vincent, and the fourth oldest in WA, sits in Farmer Street, off Fitzgerald Street behind Woodville Park – and is next to a tennis club, croquet club, a Mens Shed and a community garden, all beaming out the joys of local engagement.

Mr Evans told the Voice with a chuckle, he has an ambitious plan to try to recapture the 1950’s heyday where the club once had over 500 members. It now stands at 50 bowlers with about 100 recreational members.

All prospective new members – bowling and recreation – are welcome for a cuppa or a drink to celebrate the first day of the new season and meet the sponsors. For more info call Dean on 0428 085 288 or club president Dean Camp on 0458 505 205.

ABOUT 60 years ago Perth council ordered verandahs on several grand old buildings be pulled down.

Traffic rules weren’t as codified back then and kerbs lower, so cars would occasionally clip the verandah poles and the city was worried they would collapse.

Perth councillor Reece Harley says he’ll introduce a policy to help owners reinstate their balconies if he’s re-elected on October 21.

“Where, by council order, balconies have been removed, we should encourage owners to reinstate them,” he says.

“It improves the integrity of the building, restoring them back to their original design,” and he says the balconies were a big part of the heritage aesthetics of a lot of these old places.

The council’s heritage policy currently allows rates concession for similar restoration projects; Cr Harley says the balcony restorations could be implemented in a similar way or subsidised via heritage grants.

He says the first step is to consult with property owners.

by DAVID BELL

“I GOT my first piece of hate mail,” Bayswater council candidate Greg Smith told the Voice—”And they paid a dollar to send it.”

Most of the campaign nark we’ve seen this election has been online, but this week Mr Smith got a genuine Australia Post-delivered envelope telling him he was a “conceited old man”.

It could have been sent from just about anyone: Mr Smith, a town planner, has taken a scattergun approach to telling people he reckons they’ve got it wrong on planning or environmental issues lately.

Online argument

He’s rubbed a few business owners the wrong way by posting pictures of their shopfronts online and reviewing how good they are for town amenity.

If they have covered windows and no passive surveillance of the street, he rates them “0/10”.

He also hasn’t won many friends at Future Bayswater, since he reckons they’ve “drunk the developer Kool-Aid”, because they want more density in the Bayswater town centre.

He even got into an online argument with former South Perth mayor James Best about the merits of density.

The hate mail contained a copy of Mr Smith’s flyer and called him “too lazy to shave or get a haircut” and it said he had “bogan sunnies” and was a “conceited old man”.

On the other side of the letter they wrote that he should “take the job as Santa”, on account of his snowy hair.

Mr Smith thought the handwriting looked a lot like a kid’s, or someone trying to make it look that way.

“Up until the point they said ‘bogan sunnies’ and ‘conceited old man’, I could’ve thought my own son had done it,” he laughed.

Over at the City of Perth they’ve kept their banter online: Lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi isn’t performing her mayoral duties at the moment while she awaits her appeal over Local Government Act breaches, but she did take some time out to get into an argument on councillor Reece Harley’s Facebook page about the old policy that banned any elected member, save the lord mayor, from publicly commenting their views.

Cr Harley had put up a post reminding voters he was the one who pushed to scrap the gag rule.

Meanwhile over at Stirling, retiring councillor Rod Willox says the flak flying around in the Hamersley and Osborne Wards is making for the dirtiest campaign he’s seen in 25 years on council.

South of the river, the online election abuse has been rough, with one potential Fremantle candidate withdrawing his candidacy in part due to cyber bullying, and other candidates at Cockburn council reporting a brutal reception online.

by DAVID BELL

DFES is offering a unique experience for anyone heading to its Perth Heritage Days event at the old Perth Fire Station on Murray Street: jump in an RAC helicopter and get whisked off to a crash site somewhere in the Wheatbelt. OK, you won’t actually leave the ground, as all the action takes place in a pair of 3D goggles, but it is in a real, decommissioned RAC chopper.

Ashleigh Easthope (pictured) is the club’s sponsorship co-ordinator and says the idea is to give people a first-hand experience of what the state’s emergency services get up to.

The event will also include rides in an old Bedford fire truck, vintage fire appliances and modern fire-fighters. It’s on Sunday, October 15 from 10am-4pm.