Sorry Day

 

My Father’s family came to Australia for the Ballarat gold rush. My Mother’s family came after the Western District squatters and ended up at Penshurst, within sight of the Grampians. Penshurst has permanent water and good land and had been home to permanent aboriginal settlement. The Mt Rouse Protectorate was established at Penshurst in 1842 in an attempt to preserve the welfare of western Victoria’s indigenous people who had already been decimated by disease and conflict with the squatters. 210 indigenous people were brought from Terang and the addition of some local people boosted the numbers to 253. Sickness continued among the people and visits from the police eroded any confidence in the Protectorate. By 1849 no one was left and the Protectorate closed. The township of Penshurst was surveyed and allotments sold in 1851, the township was proclaimed in 1861.

 

 

My Mother’s Aunty and Uncle raised their family in western Victoria. Aunty had been raised in an orphanage and had no knowledge of her own family. She had tried to find out about her family without any success. Six years ago another relative saw an advertisement placed in a newspaper by a researcher in Sydney which named Aunty and asked her to contact the researcher. The researcher phoned, and to her great surprise Aunty learned that her mother was an indigenous person and that she was part of the stolen generation. Her Mother had died near Darwin just a few years earlier. Aunty met her brothers and sisters in Darwin and has developed a close friendship with one of her sisters in Adelaide.

Sorry Day gives me the opportunity to reflect on my connections to the past.

I am deeply sorry.

 
 

 

The native hibiscus has been adopted as a national emblem of the Stolen Generations.

 

© 2008 Epiphanist