How Aunty Rhonda learnt to cry

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My guest on Conversations today was born where the West Australian desert meets the Indian Ocean. Aunty Rhonda Collard Spratt is a Yamitji Noongar elder and a Stolen Generation survivor. Her first job off the mission at 16 was as a hairdresser. She created some of the best beehives in Perth. Aunty Rhonda is now an artist and a writer, and she gives the kind of love and support...

to young Aboriginal kids that she was never given growing up. Hi, Aunty Rhonda. Hello, how are you? I'm very happy to be sitting here. with you. Thank you for having me. And in the Nyoongar language, because I'm Nyoongar as well, we say Kaya. Kaya means hello. Tell me about the place that you were born, Aunty Rhonda. What does it look like? It's a beautiful place. The land is flat, which I'm used to. I feel free because when I was sent to the city, I felt...

claustrophobic. I couldn't see the horizon. So it's very flat land. It's semi-desert and there is a river that runs through the town. It's called the Gascoyne River. It's the longest river in Western Australia. And a very special place holds lots of beautiful childhood memories. And Carnarvon really is called Gunyawardu.

Yeah, that's an ancient name, which we still call it today. That means where the river meets the sea. Isn't that beautiful? Tell me about that river. What's special about it and the way it runs? Well, that river... We call it the Upside Down River. We don't walk upside down. The water runs underneath. The sand, and the sand is like beach sand. It's beautiful and golden, but there are certain parts in the gas coin that never dries.

And one of those places is Rocky Pool, my favourite place on the whole planet. The whole planet? Not that I've been everywhere on the planet. But it's still number one. It's number one for me. What's Rocky Pool like? Beautiful river gums, beautiful red ochre rocks and beautiful stones you can find when you walk on the golden sand.

It's just spiritual. What are your earliest memories, Aunty Rhonda, of being in that part of the world with your family before you were taken? Do you have any memories? I have one memory of... Crawling past this, it was a well, but the well was low and full of water and I was scared of it. So I used to crawl past it to an old Aboriginal woman sitting on steps. And that was my step-pop's mother. So that's the only memory I have. Do you have any memories of being taken?

No, all I can remember was there was no mother anywhere. She had vanished. And I was in a place with hundreds of other children. We had 10 dormitories. Where was this? This was in Carnarvon. We were out of town, out of sight. We had kindergarten dormitory, little girls dormitory, junior girls dormitory, senior girls dormitory, teenagers dormitory, then home girls and the boys had the same and we were always separate.

I didn't grow up with my little sister because I'm older. Your little sister was taken at the same time as you. Yeah, she was nine months. So... We didn't play in the same yard. We didn't live in the same dormitory. So we grew up strangers, really. And what did the mission staff tell you about why you weren't with your mum or what had happened? Well... Down the track, we were told our parents were dead, but we had no understanding of why one moment we were with our loved ones the next minute.

They were nowhere to be seen. We just had white missionaries and all little Aboriginal children. And it was a place of chores, beatings. We grew up with no love, and I grew up not loving myself as a child because nobody showed us affection. So to receive my love, I used to...

Ask the missionaries when I got a bit older, could I go for a walk in the bush? And they'd say, no, you mustn't say that. You must say, may I go for a walk into the common? The common. They wanted you to call the bush the common. Yeah, very British, eh? And why would you want to go out there? What was it like for you to go out to the bush? That was my healing, to get away from all the other children, to get away from chores. I used to run flat out with my apron.

I was going to say apron. We always put Hs where they shouldn't be. We always wear aprons. So I ran flat out through the bush into this creek and I'd climbed as big as gum tree and I'd hugged the... the gum tree, the trunk, and I felt safe. I'd listened to the cicadas or cicadas. I'd look at the ladybugs and I'd look down at the creek, I'd see the big bullfrogs. They were the big bullfrog tadpoles.

coming up for air and you'd see their mouth opening and see freshwater turtles, the long-necked ones. And I remember vividly the beautiful... They were bright blue with a yellow dot in the middle. That's a beautiful image, and that was my special place. But what broke me out of that beautiful place of safety... was the ringing of the bell. We did everything to bells. Back at the mission when you had to get up and go to work. What jobs did you have as a little kid at the mission? From everything.

If you wet your bed, you had to wash your sheets. You had to stand on a bucket tipped upside down. And I used to help the little kids do that because they couldn't even reach the sink with those big concrete sinks, you know. One job I hated was going to the senior boys' dormitory and ironing. We had to starch their clothes because they had long trousers and long shirts.

We had to starch them and roll them up, then iron them. How do you feel about ironing these days? If my clothes wrinkly, I don't care. I don't even own an iron or an ironing board. I never want to see that again. But we also had to prepare meals. We had the biggest pot like this. We had to fill it up with potatoes. Potatoes. Sorry, I'm talking blackfella-style potatoes.

And pumpkin, we had to do all this work before school. First thing in the morning, we woke up at 6 o'clock. You had to have your beds made like hospital style. And you had to stand at attention by your bed and our beds were checked, see whether we had made them correctly. And then you went off to do your chores. The boys did the milking of the cows and worked in the orchards and in the chook yards. But we did all the domestics, like washing, ironing, sewing.

All that stuff, mopping, polishing. Did he get any time to play? Very rare, but when we did, we had good times. Your mum must have been so desperate.

to know what was happening with you, one year you got a Christmas card. Yes, one year I got a Christmas card from our mother. And I was racing around the dining room. We had been polishing the floor with those big polishes used to swing us around. And I was actually sitting on it and getting a ride. And the missionary came in with a letter.

They always read our letters. And I was running around, look, I've got a letter, you fellas, I've got a letter. And they were saying, well, open it. So I sat down on the shiny floor. and I opened it, it was a Christmas card from my mother, and it had a power note in it, and it said I had to share this money with my little sister Debbie, which I did. But from that letter...

I memorised the address because I knew I'd lose the envelope. And the address was Mrs A.E. Webb, Kerogogo Station, via Fitzroy Crossing, West Kimberley's, Western Australia. So after that, I kept writing every week. And did you hear anything back? And I'd give my letters to the missionaries. Never got a letter ever, but I kept writing.

Did you leave the mission to go to school, Aunty Rhonda? Well, when I went to school, we came under the Segregation Act, so we couldn't go to white schools. So we were just in... Two classrooms from grade one to grade six. And I never forgot my first school teacher and next birthday I'm 75. She's Scottish. She was so lovely and kind. And each time I hear a Scottish accent, it makes me emotional.

And she used to say to me, Rhonda, that's new how you write the letter R. And I used to say, Miss Glenn Denning, I cannae do that. She even got us singing all the Scottish songs in her accent because she said we had to sound like her. And she made us do the Highland fling. For two swords, we had to dance over two sticks. She taught us all the Scottish stuff. So I feel a connection to Scottish people. And when I hear this accent, it makes me...

emotional because she was a beautiful soul. I never forgot her at my age from grade one, two and three. So you were being taught the highland fling, Aunty Rhonda. Yes. But what about your own culture? What did the missionaries tell you about? the culture you'd come from? I was told I was rubbish. Our language was rubbish. Our culture's rubbish. And when you're a little child and you hear these words...

That's your most informative years, you know. You soak everything in that you hear. So even today I'm going to tell myself that's not true because that, like I said... You soak everything in that you hear around you. So as grown-ups, we need to be careful of our words and our actions because that will influence the little ones watching you.

For you as a little girl, though, as you say, you're just hearing, you're taken away from your family. You're just hearing all of this nonsense and cruelty about...

your own culture and people. And then one day when you were going to school, you heard something about your mum, that she was maybe in town. What happened? Yes, because this was when... Assimilation Act came in and we could go to the white school. So I was in grade five and all the kids that lived on the reserves, native reserves, and on the fringes of town...

they were called fringe dwellers because they weren't allowed to live in town, told me, come running up, Rhonda, Rhonda, your mother, they say her full name, Rhonda Spratt, your mother's in town. Even today when I go home, we call each other by our full names. Rhonda Spratt, your mother's in town. And my little sister said, no, our mother's dead. She wouldn't believe them. So when...

When I went into the class, I put my hand straight up and the teacher said, yes, Rhonda. I said, can I go downtown to find my mother? And normally we had to have a note. from the missionaries to say we could leave the school grounds, but he said yes. So I raced through the school gates, running flat out downtown. I used to be the fastest runner in the school, and I'm thinking, I hope nobody...

walking past me, I might run past her because I don't even know what she looks like. So I come running down and I came to the main street and I seen Uncle Paddy, Doka. I can see him now. He had white sand shoes on with no shoelaces. He had his hands behind his back, white shirt. And I come running up because I knew him because he stayed at my nana's house.

So I ran up, Uncle, where's my mother? He said, look, girl, she's not here, but see that man he pointed down the street? That's her husband, and he's over six foot. with red hair and the whitest skin I'd ever seen because he's English. And I looked back and I said to her uncle, my mother wouldn't marry an ugly man like that.

But I didn't mean in looks. I meant his skin to me at that time represented ugliness because of the sexual abuse, the floggings, and that's what it meant to me. So I had to hide from him. So I raced into a milk bar and hid under the table with a long tablecloth on and I was peeping at him and I was doing the shh sign to uncle and he's trying to give me side looks like shh, shh.

So then they walked away and then when I felt safe, I came out of my hiding place and then I saw the vehicle they got into. It was a Land Rover. And that evening after school, I was in the kitchen serving potatoes, or potatoes, and I saw that vehicle go past the louvers. The next minute the whole mission went mad. Rhonda Spratt, your mother's here, your mother's here. And I said to the missionary in the kitchen, can I go and see my mother? She said no.

You stay there until she comes to ask for you. The missionary said, you can go now. And it was, oh, Mother's here, she's going to take us. So I walked down the steps. Did you recognise her, Aunty Rhonda? No. Then I saw this lady that looked like me. I thought I'd run into her arms and she'd swing me around, but I stood there with my head down. I didn't know what to do or say. And so my mother kissed me on the cheek and she introduced me to her husband as uncle. That was the man I saw downtown.

I was waiting for her to say, go and get your things. You're coming home. But that didn't happen next minute. Rhonda, come back into the kitchen. Get back to work. And that was it.

After that awful pain of not being allowed to go with your mum when she came to see you at the mission, what kind of comfort was music to you, Aunty Rhonda? Oh, I love music. Every dormitory had a piano. And I could play by ear because I've got a good ear for music. And I didn't know all my family were musos. They all play the guitar. So to me, music is medicine for my soul.

And it is medicine for the world, even if you don't understand the language, because music speaks to your heart and soul. So it's a very important thing for me. And even back then in the mission? Even back then in the mission, I asked the kids to teach me traditional songs in secret. I still remember the songs today and I could play anything on the piano by ear. Clonk.

My ears sore now. And then when I got to teenagers' dormitory, every afternoon after school before our chores, I'd ask the missionary if she'd play me the piano. because she used to play in the silent movies. When it was beautiful and sweet, romantic, it'd be sweet and gentle, and then if the cops were chasing you, she was awesome.

She should have thought, this kid's into music, I'll teach her. But that never happened. But music is, I believe everyone needs music. It's food for your soul and it's very healing. When you were 16, you were sent out into the big world off to Perth. What job was lined up for you there? Well, I was always into hair. I owned one.

purple hair roller, my treasure. And every night I put this one roller in my hair. So I was sent to Perth to do hairdressing. It was five years back then. When I did hairdressing, everything was done. I could do your nails. I could do your eyebrows. Wax your moustache. We had all those skills. Top to toe. Yeah, top to toe. Remodel me. Yes. I love that. But now you've got to go over here for your eyebrows, here for your nails, but we were a one-stop shop and I had the most wonderful boss.

Her name was Miss Bull, and she gave me the opportunity even before she met me. That was organised through the Churches of Christ. But I had three different foster families because I was still under the Native Act. I had no choice. If it was my choice, I would have stayed in my hometown and got to know my family. Were you paid for all that? Well, I was... Earning $8 a week, I had to pay $8 board. So the native welfare stepped in. They paid the foster carers that money, but I was given...

50 cents for myself and 50 cents for Jesus. What were you supposed to do with the 50 cents for Jesus? Put it in the church plate, but I spent Jesus' money on lollies. I think Jesus would have approved of that. And I used to roll them down like the fantails, the jaffas down the church aisle. So it was a struggle because when I was sent to Perth.

There was nobody ever that looked like me. So were you doing white people's hair? Yeah. Nobody looked like me in Frio, Fremantle. And how did your customers behave with you? Oh. Some of them didn't want me to wash their hair and it was a big culture shock for me because I used to speak our way. And then when the phone rang, Rhonda, can you answer the phone? I'd say, hello.

What do you want your ear done? Hold on a minute. Yeah, I had to learn to talk proper English because we had our own talk and we're still Aboriginal English today. Like when I go back to Western Australia, like I'm going on Saturday, I'll click into their way of talking. It's automatic. When I'm here, I talk a different way. So we're living in so many different worlds.

How did life change when you turned 21? Well, I got married. I met this handsome Aboriginal man. He was a shearer. He worked hard on... on farms. His father was a hard-working man and he was a shearer but he used to use those clippers and he had the biggest arms like Popeye the Sailor Man, you know.

It was huge because probably when you use that, using those shearing clippers, your arms will get big. Yeah, so I met him at the Aboriginal ball. Do you remember what you were wearing? Yeah, I had a beautiful pink dress on. And how was your hair done? I didn't have a beehive then because they chopped it all off. So I had like a pixie haircut like Mia Farrow. Oh, you would have looked gorgeous. Yeah, so.

But we just locked eyes and that was it. And then we got married and he became a policeman then because he thought he needed a stable job and not a seasonal job. So he entered the police force. Him and Everett Kickett, rest in peace, were the first proper policemen, not police liaison officers or police aides. He was a proper policeman. What was it like being married to a policeman, a black policeman?

I'm scared of police. But he was good for our people. He always spoke up for them because when he's working with his non-Indigenous... fellow policemen, they would always make racist comments and he'd always stick up for our mob. And, yeah, he found it hard. being an Aboriginal policeman and all the racist tones of conversations and that. And we just want to be respected and be treated as human beings. And I say to people...

We come into the world the same way. We leave it the same way. We're born with time, whether it's short or long or medium, and it's how we spend our time on earth. If you want to leave a legacy of kindness. That's what you do. So think about it, Aunty Rhonda, the way that you'd grown up. You know, you'd been taken from your own family, so you grew up in this military-style mission.

It must have been hard to know how to be in a regular relationship with someone. Well, my husband used to say to me I had a heart of stone because I couldn't show affection or love. And... I actually rang him last week and I apologised to him because I was jealous of his connection with his mother and father. And I said, I'm sorry that I caused so much pain because...

I never had that with my family because we were taken away from it. And I used to do ridiculous things, even if it was negative attention, just so that he could focus on me. And so I've had that conversation with him last week and I asked for his forgiveness and he said yes. You're separated now but it sounds like you're still close. We're separated now and we're...

We still have joint accounts, but I don't touch his money. I have to make another phone call to him to say sorry if you do that. I never do. This is Conversations. with Sarah Kanovsky. Hear more conversations anytime on the ABC Listen app.

You moved to Perth at 16 and became a hairdresser and you got married to one of Western Australia's first black police officers. You did manage to get back into contact with your mum. What kind of person was she when you got to spend proper time with her? What was she like? Well, I had three years with her from age one, two and three. Then I had three months with her.

So that's three years and three months. She came to stay with me in the city and she was an artist as well. So me and her went on journeys into the bush. Not the common. And we gathered bark, paper bark, because she did bark paintings. But she also made bush jewellery, which I make as well. And it was about sitting there and listening to stories.

from my mother about me when I was young. What did she tell you? What kind of thing? She told me that when we lived on the fringes of town in East Carnarvon, my uncles, her brothers, they'd stack this tyre. And they put two tyres and they put me in the middle and they kept building a tyre, a tower of tyres. And I was screaming inside. But my younger uncle, he protected me and he wouldn't let those older...

Uncles get down till after sundown, he kept pelting them with stones because they made me cry. But these stories to me are precious. And that's the only story I... of God when I was with them. So, you know that song, The Old Mission Road? When I hear that, I... The R.T. Roach song. Yeah. Because I used to wonder where my mother was because some of the children used to walk down the old Mission Road hand in hand with their parents. They'd go for an afternoon on the weekend. But, see, my mother...

And my father, they became, they applied to be citizens. So you had to apply to the government and you had to turn your back on your family and your culture. So I never got any visits. You know, the white missionaries tried to take you away from all of that ancient culture, that learning that you're...

your family knew about. Could your mum tell you anything about your culture, your totem or part of that knowledge? She told me when she stayed with me for three months that my totem was the curlew. When I dance, I must have three marks on my body, my dreaming spirit, my guardian spirit, and this one I like, my mischievous spirit, the longest one. And when... You have a totem. You must care for that totem. You can't kill it. You can't eat it.

So I'm happy mine's not a kangaroo because I wouldn't be able to eat kangaroo. But luckily there are many types of kangaroos. We have the red kangaroo, the grey. We have the wallaroo. You know wallaroo? That's what I call my son.

He's a wallaroo, but it's bigger in my language because he's short and stocky. And then we have the wallabies and then we have the quokkas. In those months that you spent with her as an adult, How did she talk about your dad? Did you learn anything about your biological father from her? She said I was their love child and they actually wanted to get married.

My uncles and aunties said that my mother faked her mother's signature because she wasn't for it. But that was her first love. Did you ever get to meet him? No. I met him in his coffin. He was in the Black Destined Custody Royal Commission. He died from medical neglect. In custody? Yeah. I didn't have the honour of meeting him, but I was told by my mission brother who shared the cell, he was in jail for drunk driving. And he was a gun shearer.

He could do over 200 sheep and he was a top ringer. That means a top stockman. And, you know, he did wheel mills and fencing and he did all that hard work. and his name was Ronnie, and my family called me Ronnie or just Ron, and our birthday's the same day. I didn't know that because I was typing his name in.

I didn't know he died in jail and a few years ago put his name up and all the blackness and custody come up. So I learnt about him. I've read the first couple of lines and I never went back to it. What kind of connections do you have with your mission brothers and sisters these days? They're my true family. Since we had that reunion in 2017, we've kept contact.

I talked to them every day. When I lost my sister, they were the ones to ring me. So I see them as my true family because we shared the same history, same experience in the same place. So we understand each other. What brought you over here to the east coast, Aunty Rhonda? An Aboriginal man. I fell in love. When you're in love, you do some crazy things. Crazy as moving to Queensland. Oh, shivers. I don't know. It's a terrible illness. But, yeah.

And I feel sad that I hurt my family, but I did ask them, could they? I asked for their forgiveness because, and they said, we forgave you ages ago. And was in Queensland that you started?

Discovering yourself more as an artist. Oh, yes. I didn't even know I could do art. Yet all my family are artists. They paint. My uncle carbs emu eggs. make bush jewellery, they play music. And I was unemployed for the first time in my life in 94, so I went to, it wasn't called Centrelink there, it was Social Security. And they said, would you like to do an arts course? I said, yes. And all this art just flew out of me. And from there, I went to Griffith Uni. So I have a visual arts degree. Art.

It means everything to me. It's my connection to this land. It's a spiritual connection. It's connection to my family, to my ancestors. When I'm painting. I feel at peace and I paint outside so I can hear the wind through the gum trees, listen to all the different birds. And the other day I was painting and this beautiful little insect landed on my canvas.

It had the biggest beautiful eyes like liquid silver and its body was metallic green and the wings were beautiful and it looked up at me. I looked down at it and I wished I had my camera. It was a moment special because it just landed on that painting. So that's my special place in my backyard. It's not flash, it's... where I go to reconnect, to fill my body, my soul with healing. You've illustrated a series of children's books called The Spirit of the Dreaming series.

Where did that come from, the idea to do those? It was during COVID. Jackie Farrow, my dear friend, she's on this journey with me and I love her dearly. I call her Wanda Wandara. That means dragonfly in the Ingara language from Carnarvon, and that signifies when you see a dragonfly. It's a change in the seasons and the weather.

It could be a change in your personal life. But we're working together to bring change into Australians' hearts, minds and spirits of acceptance. So she's very special to me. And during COVID I was isolated and highly at risk being Aboriginal and we have all the different illnesses. So... It was something we needed, and initially I wanted to write about all my Aboriginal heroes, like Pemaway, like Albert Namajira.

All these people are my heroes, Mum Sherl and Doug Nicholls. But then I said to Jackie, maybe I shouldn't do that because I don't belong to that mob. for protocol reasons, then I suggested what about dreaming stories? So our first book was Grandfather Emu and How the Kangaroo Got Her Pouch.

I'm bringing back our language as well. In this book, it's the Noongar language because I'm Noongar on my father's side. That's the Perth area. And is that a language you spoke as a child? No, I learnt it from Geri. My husband, he speaks it fluently, and our kids know it too. Like the other day when it was hailstoning, I raced outside. I said, Aliwa kebi barringing. I said, look out, the rain's coming in, I'm scared. So he speaks it fluently.

But we need to hold on to our language. It's not our fault. I don't say our language is dead. It's in deep sleep. We need to wake it up.

As well as the books, you spend a lot of time with school kids at high school and primary school, kindies. Yeah, what's that like for you? Oh, that's awesome. I love it, eh? I've been teaching. art at Bremer High School in Epswich for 10 years now. It's to our children, Aboriginal kids. I do the girls, and the boys learn the didgeridoo, but they come together for the local language, which is Yagara. Then they do corroboree.

which is Aboriginal dancing. And it's the only school in Australia that has constant Aboriginal input every week. I wish other schools would do that because I've seen how it strengthens our kids. mentally, culturally, the identity. Because one young girl put her hands on my hands. Put your hand on my hand. She said, Auntie, do you think it's funny I'm a white black fella? I said, no, bub.

I said, you walk tall and proud and no matter what shade of black you're in, I said, you are a child of the dreaming. You belong to this land. You don't have to. Justify your identity to anyone. Know who you are. You are precious. You are our future. This land will always know you. Do you see yourself in some of those kids, some of those girls? Yes. Some of them are lost. Some of them struggle.

I helped one young girl. She's married now. She's been an adult all her life because her family's lost with drugs and alcohol. She was the first one to my class, the last one to leave. When she graduated, I made her special jewellery out of emu feathers and beautiful sparkly beads. And I made earrings to match because she couldn't afford flowers, so I made her this. I'll show you a photo later. And...

When she graduated, I gave her my car because she was getting up at four in the morning and walking to work to start at six. She had my car for six months. And then me and... Uncle Val, Valentine Brown, he grew up in Cherbourg. We went and bought her a little car. So we know what it's like to have nobody because we had nobody. He's stolen too. I had to grow myself up. I had to learn to do self-love and not self-harm. I actually tried suicide at 16, but I had to learn to love myself.

because we were told Jesus loved us, but we weren't nurtured. Our emotions weren't nurtured. We weren't validated. So from that upbringing, my heart and spirit is strong now. So that's why I can give to other people. And I've learned to cry now because when we were flogged, I couldn't cry. I hardened my heart and spirit that much.

But then I got sore from being beaten, so I put what we call gammon, pretend. I put gammon spit tears in my cheeks. I covered my eyes with my hands and put my finger in my mouth and did spit tears. from my eyes down and they thought they were real tears. So they stopped. But I was pretending. Yeah. I'm going to write a song called Spit Tears, I think. You know, I've got love for everyone.

Even as a little child, I couldn't even step on ants. I used to tiptoe over little ants going to school. So I was always the last one to arrive. Aunty Rhonda, after you moved to Queensland and were finding yourself as an artist...

You got news about your mother. What happened? She died of medical neglect. She was going to the doctors and they were giving her Panadol. And she was flown to Perth on the flying doctor on one blood test, advanced leukaemia. And she kept asking for me on her deathbed, where's my firstborn, where's Rhonda? And nobody told me. And then my uncle, the one that was saving me from those other uncles, he rang me and said, you better get over here, your mother's not well. I said, I can't afford it.

And he sent me the money. So I was a day too late. I didn't get to see her. But on a funeral day up in Derby, the sisters come to me and said, oh, yeah, Mother... Or they say, Mum, Mum was asking for you on a deathbed. I said, why didn't anyone tell me? And they said, oh, we were jealous of you. I said, jealous of me? But why? You've had mother all your life.

I had her from age one, two and three. Why be jealous of me? You had everything. So that relationship, it's pretty shaky. And your mum's English husband, that... You know, six foot tall man with the red hair that you spied for the first time on the street as a 12-year-old and went and hid under the tablecloth at the milk bar from. What kind of relationship did you end up having with him?

Well, when I went up to Derby, that's a town above Broome, to bury our mother, I always carry my guitar. I call it my friend or my twin because it's got a little waist and big hips. It comes everywhere with me. So, and my sister Debbie, rest in peace, she sang out, Sister, sing, Yowie, my brown-skinned baby, they take him away. So I grabbed the guitar and I started to sing it. And this song broke down barriers between me and him. And when I was singing, I looked at him and he was crying.

And for the first time in my life, I called someone Dad, and it was a white man. I said, Dad, I think it's time we spoke. So that song... was a gateway to us talking. Had he and your mum stayed together? Always. All that time. He saw her at a station, she was a servant, and fell in love with her straight away.

He never went back to England. He's from Bristol. What did he tell you about your mum and those letters that you'd written? Yeah, well, I said to him when I said, Dad, I think it's time we spoke, we talked. So I put the guitar down and went to him and he still had tears. And I said, Dad, can you please tell me what happened to those letters all those years ago? I wrote every week.

He said, Rhonda, we didn't receive any letters. They were just chucked in the bin, I presume. And then I said, was it your fault we were in the mission? He said, no. They had no control over that. And then he told me what it was like being married to an Aboriginal woman because he's an Englishman and he's a chippy or a carpenter. So he was invited to all the flash do's at all the...

big cattle stations to the homestead, and they'd say, leave your wife home. He'd say, if my wife can't come, I'm not coming. Or, okay, she can come, but she can't swim in the pool. If she can't swim in the pool, well, I won't be there. Oh, OK, yeah, she can come, but she can't use the toilets. My heart melted for him. And that moment, all this time, I laid the blame at his feet for why we were in the mission, but it wasn't true.

And I saw the goodness in this white man that now I call father. I call him dad. And he'd been a good husband to your mum. He's been a good husband. He's stuck by mum all this time. Is he still alive? No, he's passed. And me and my sister got the shock of our life. He left us $10,000 each in his will. That was a gift I didn't think. So that shows his heart. And, yeah, he was a very good man. I saw once all this blame was, you know, I didn't blame white Australia, I blamed him, that Englishman.

But then I realised that he had nothing to do with it. Was that system that put kids away? Yeah, it's that system because I'm part of four generations stolen. Me, my mother, her mother and her mother's mother and then on the other side.

You said earlier, Aunty Rhonda, that, you know, you had to learn how to cry after this strict childhood on the mission. Did you also have to learn how to become a loving mum given that? isn't something you experienced growing up on the mission? You've got to learn to be a mother because I was tending to do what the missionaries done to me because that's all I saw. And I thought, I'd better stop this. I've got to show love.

And now I go overboard with hugs. When I go to high school, all the kids rush me. And it's just, it's so beautiful. I love Thursdays or when I go to all these schools. On Friday I'm going to the kindergarten at Lowood. I bet those kindy kids really love you. Oh, yeah, and we love them too. And I took an emu egg there last time. last Monday. They couldn't believe how big it was. I said, we're going home to eat this.

Tell us about these different places that are special to you, like Rocky Pool and your backyard. Yep. There's another place at Ipswich called the Riverbank. You call the Riverbank? Oh, yes. What's that place, Aunty Rhonda? Well, me and my son and nephews, we call the Riverview, we call it Riverview Dreaming.

This is a shopping, the Red Bank Plaza. Yeah, we call our suburb Riverview Dreaming and we call the Red Bank Plaza the Riverbank. We're going to the Riverbank because rivers, banks are very important. And they provide everything you need. You can get food. You can have conversations with friends. You can just relax. So I love going to the riverbank, even though no water's there.

It's invisible, like the upside-down river. Yeah, the riverbank, that's a special place, and I know all the shopkeepers. I go and yarn up with them. They all know me. And one lady came up to me. She said, I always wanted to chat to you. There's something, you glow. And I thought, oh, thank you. I was thinking, so we're friends now. You know, it's good to have friendships based on respect, based on seeing each other, because many times we're invisible, many times we are voiceless.

So when the voice came through, I was so sad. I've lost nine young people since then, my blood family, to suicide. But... Everyone's got their reasons to why they voted which way. So, you know, we're on this journey together. We share this land together. We must acknowledge. Not to turn our backs on the true history. I think as a nation we need to face it and say, yes, this did happen. And not to carry any guilt. We're not guilting you or we're not blaming you.

Like I always say, our history is not about blame. It's about coming together with acceptance and it's about making a change within your personal journey. We can't change as a nation. But in your own life's journey, if you see a situation, have the courage. Speak out. Speak up, but not with anger, because people will close off if you speak with an angry heart.

So that's my wish for Australia, that we can accept each other as equals and to put that hatred aside because my heart's tight. I'm tired. And once you get to know us, we are beautiful people. You'll be family for life. I'll give you my last dollar, and I don't expect anything back. I give from my heart.

So I just wish people can treat us like that too. I'm getting emu bums talking to you now. Emu bums? Yeah, we need to say emu bums, you mob, make it Aussie. We never had that geese from England here.

I'm getting emu bumps too. Yeah, make it emu bumps, your mob. Only Rhonda. Yeah, so, you know, I'm proud to be who I am. Life has been hard. But I think... My ancestors, I have that inner strength, even though I was stolen, even though we were sexually abused, even though we were flogged. You know, my heart should be hardened, but I've learnt.

not to carry anger within my soul because that's like a cancer. Aunty Rhonda, I've got Emu Bump speaking to you. Thank you so much for sharing your story on Conversations. Thank you so much for having me. It's been an honour and a privilege. I wish everybody well. I wish you Aboriginal blessings. That means I wish you all you need in your life.

love in your spirit, clean air to breathe. I wish you clean water to drink. I wish you enough food to nurture your body. I wish you contentment and I wish you peace. Broadcast Conversations with Sarah Konosky. Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt was my guest on Conversations Today. Aunty Rhonda is an artist and an author of a series of children's books called The Spirit of the Dreaming Series. She also writes poems and recited this one in the Conversation Studio. It's called Lost Mother.

The land is my lost mother. I yearn to know and see. I slowly walk timidly into her arms. She caresses and nurtures me. Her beautiful fragrance and song wash over me. giving me fresh dreams, filling the emptiness, replacing my worth. Sadness and pain buried deep in the earth. She whispers and tells me that here I belong. Let your spirit be free. Let your spirit be strong. This land is yours as far as the eyes can see. It flows in your blood right down to the sea.

My spiritual totem she reveals to me. Emotions of peace, feelings of belonging. Her gentle soft tears drop from the sky. She is happy. for she has found her precious lost child. That's Aunty Rhonda Collard-Spratt sharing her poem Lost Mother. This episode of Conversations was produced on the lands of the Turrbal and Yagra peoples. The producer was Meggie Morris and our executive producer is Nicola Harrison. I'm Sarah Konosky. Thanks for listening.

You've been listening to a podcast of Conversations with Sarah Konosky. For more Conversations interviews, head to the website abc.net.au slash conversations.