Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence by Doris Pilkington Garimara

Author:Doris Pilkington Garimara
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Queensland Press
Published: 2023-03-30T06:06:09+00:00

8

The Escape

The conditions were so degrading and inhumane in the early years of the settlement that a staff member from that period later pronounced that anyone living there, children or staff, were doomed. Perhaps a huge sign warning of the perils that lay within should have been erected at the entrance gate. However, that sign would have had no effect on the boys and girls who were abducted with government approval from their traditional homelands – because they were illiterate. But Molly, Daisy and Gracie were going to be taught to read and write, this was to be their first day at school.

It was still dark, wet and cold on that morning in August 1931 when the girls were awakened at 5:30 am. The little ones protested loudly and strongly at being forced to rise at that ungodly hour to leave their warm beds. Molly got up reluctantly and walked out onto the verandah, peeped through the lattice and smiled secretly to herself. Gracie and Daisy joined her but they didn’t care for the grey, dismal day and said so in no uncertain terms.

The girls waited for Martha and the others to join them, then they made their way through the slushy mud near the stone wall of the staff quarters to the dining room. After a breakfast of weevily porridge, bread and tea, they returned to the dormitory to wait for the school bell.

Molly had decided the night before that she and her two sisters were not staying here. She had no desire to live in this strange place among people she didn’t know. Anyway, she was too big to go to school, they had no right to bring her here. She was a durn-durn, a young girl who had reached puberty, she thought, touching her small budding breasts. These government people didn’t know that she had been allocated a husband. But the man Burungu had passed her over for another Millungga sister and they had a four-year-old son. So, reasoned Molly, if she was old enough to be a co-wife she should be working on a station somewhere. Mr Johnson, manager of Ethel Creek Station, thought so too when he sent a telegram requesting permission to employ her and Gracie. The application was refused.

It was too early for school, so most of the smaller girls slipped back into bed. Molly, Gracie and Daisy did the same thing but they squashed into the one bed with two girls at the head and Molly at the end.

Molly finished combing her light brown hair and lay watching the movements of the others around her. At the other end of the bed Daisy and Gracie were whispering quietly to each other. Daisy, aged nine, had the same coloured hair and texture as her eldest sister, while Gracie had straight, black hair that hung down to her shoulders. It was very apparent that the three girls had inherited features from their white fathers. The only obvious Aboriginal characteristics were their dark brown eyes

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