AustLit

'...As I was growing up, being abused was a natural thing in the home. I got into trouble because I tore me dress and I had to wear a potato bag dress for a week. The most abused that, in the home was mostly being whipped by – whipped with the wire, you know, the leather strap wrapped around it. They usually hit you with that. And then you'd be thrown into the box room. And then the deputy maiden, she was cruel, she used to hit me over the head a lot. I used to cop that a lot. As I was growing up. But then you know, you don't think of those sort of things as abuse. You think it’s just a natural that that’s life...' (Transcribed from the Stolen Generations' Testimonies website)

'...Still don't remember much about it personally. And the only way I found about it was from my sister and brother told me about what happened. I was told I was taken away from my mother when I was three and a half years old, going on four, going on four years old. Welfare came and got me, and just said to my mother that, just taking them down to see dad. And spend a couple of days with my father, for a couple of weeks or something. And from there I ended up in the mission...' (Transcribed from the Stolen Generations' Testimonies website)

'...And when he got there he said ‘Right you, you and you’ which was myself and two sisters, ‘you’re coming.’ Because possibly we were lighter skinned than the others. He said ‘Righto you, you and you.’ And away we went. Went to the Bruthen courthouse and the fellow that was there said ‘Who are you?’ We said ‘We’re the Harrisons.’ He looked at his piece of paper and he said ‘No, I don’t think that’s a name here. But anyway it doesn’t matter.’ Put his pen through the other name and just wrote Harrisons over it and said ‘Righto, you lot are gone.’...' (Transcribed from the Stolen Generations' Testimonies website)

'...I was taken away at a very young age. And I then nothing of where I was going to. I found myself in a place I knew nothing about...' (Transcribed from the Stolen Generations' Testimonies website)