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back to Kingsley bereft of her most precious possessions, her beloved husband and her beautiful daughter, and spent the rest of her days living with her cousin Daisy. In the late afternoons on most days, someone would find her in the backyard, a tragic figure standing motionless, staring silently at the slope on the gravelled hillside, her dark eyes filled with sadness and despair. She seldom smiled.
    Some people even say that my grandmother gave up living when my mother and grandfather died. She was the epitome of sorrow and grief, until she passed awayone hot summer night, in her sleep. She was buried next to her husband, the Irishman who sang sentimental songs about his homeland, of “watching the sun go down in Galway Bay”, and of the sun “declining beneath the blue sea” and of “valleys hushed and white with snow”.
    It seemed so bizarre and yet so poignant. Tears welled up in my eyes and spilled down my cheeks, and through the veil of tears I could see the hillslope with its rows of white crosses and realised that there was just one thing left to do before I returned to Geraldton.
    Ten minutes later I stood alone once more beside their graves. This time it was to share an experience with them. And that was to watch the sun sink slowly behind the rugged Kingsley Ranges. I like to think that this is exactly where they want to be—this unlikely couple by divine intervention will remain side by side on this gravelled slope on the hillside watching all the beautiful sunsets for evermore.
    The togetherness they shared in life is continuing in death.

Book 3
Kate Muldune-Williamson 1940-

Moore River Native Settlement
    When the Moore River Native Settlement was opened in 1918, it was to have been the ideal environment where half-caste children would receive basic education and be trained in semi-skilled jobs. The inmates present at the beginning were brought down from stations in the north under ministerial warrants and confined against their will in this strange place amongst strangers. For these children—many just toddlers not yet weaned from their mothers’ breasts—this was no doubt the most traumatic experience in their young lives, and even more so for their bewildered mothers, grandmothers and other relatives left behind to grieve.
    The wailing and the mourning went on for a long time—until time and tears wiped out all memories of their lost children. Many mothers never saw their children again. They were discouraged from visiting them, in case these visits would disturb the children and interfere with their education. Even in the Settlement the mothers were segregated from their children. This government institution was a residential school for part-Aboriginal or half-caste children only. Non-Aboriginal staff were employed, as well as the older boys and girls who were later sent away to work on stations. The Settlement also housed unmarried mothers and their babies. About 300 yards away was the“camp” where Aboriginal families lived. Many were former inmates who had moved back to the area to send their children to the Settlement school.
    Mr A.O. Neville, Chief Protector of Aborigines (1915-1940) saw this scheme as a positive move towards a final solution of the part-Aboriginal “problem”. The inmates would be encouraged to seek marriage partners from white or near-white individuals. He envisaged that this policy, based on controlled racial inter-marriages, would eventually lead to a gradual “breeding out” of Aboriginal genes.
    However the administrators and indeed the government of the day overlooked one important factor, and that was that for an experiment of this kind to succeed an ideal environment for this new Aboriginal society must be created—one where total segregation was essential. The children had to have no physical contact with any Aboriginal adult if they were to become the clones or hybrids that Mr Neville and his policy