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