Mission Life The Hell of Carrolup for the Stolen Generations Edith DeGiambattista (nee Smith) was born in Kojonup in the Great Southern area of WA. Her family lived and worked on farms around the Kojonup District. In her short book, Mission Life: The Hell of Carrolup for the Stolen Generations (published in 2020), Edith writes of her early life: “We lived in tents and made open fires to cook our food, my Grandma did the cooking on open fires, we carried water in tin cans, we didn’t have a fridge. Grandad made one out of tin, we carried water from the dam to bathe. We had a good life growing up in the bush”. The kids attended a school called Lumeah on Albany Highway. When the family moved to a different farm, Edith recalls a ute pulling up one afternoon and taking them to Carrolup Native Settlement. “We were treated worse than animals”, Edith writes.
“We were locked in the dorm at night. The matron was a nasty person. She was a cruel woman. The only place I felt safe was at school”. When the Mission closed for girls, Edith was sent to a Girls Home in Perth. She wanted to do nursing but was told she had to be a housemaid, and was sent to work as a domestic in various towns around the Great Southern area. Later on, when she was living in Perth, Edith got a job with Children and Family Services, taking young kids from their foster homes to see their parents. It was a job that triggered memories of her early life. Edith writes: “Nobody cared for these children. It was happening all over again, the way we were treated in Carrolup. They were nobody’s children, pushed from one house to the next”. At the end of her book, Edith, now 86, makes the following plea: “If you have a family, please look after them yourself. No one can give children the love their mother can. Let our families stay together”. Copies of Mission Life are available At the Tuart Place Christmas gathering in 2020: (L-R) John & Edith DeGiambattista, from Tuart Place, and from the author. Dot Bagshaw, Senator Dean Smith, Peter Bagshaw, Norma Smith
The Carrolup Centre for Truth Telling
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The new Carrolup Centre at Curtin University, launched in November 2020, is intended as the permanent home for artworks created by stolen Aboriginal children at Carrolup Native Settlement in the 1940s. In 1956, New York art collector Herbert Mayer purchased a collection of Carrolup artworks, and later donated them to Colgate University, where they sat in storage for almost 50 years. A chance discovery of this unique historical collection in New York by a visiting Australian professor in 2004 created headlines around the world. Appreciating its cultural significance, Colgate University decided to repatriate the works back to Nyungar country, and after consulting with local Nyungar elders, entrusted the custodial responsibilities to Curtin University through its John Curtin Gallery. The artworks finally came home to Country in 2013. Curtin University is now embarking upon an ambitious project to create a permanent, protective home for these artworks that will become a centre for truth-telling, healing and reconciliation in perpetuity. Artwork on right: Barry Loo, On the Alert c1949, pastel on paper, 762mm x 587mm. The Herbert Mayer Collection of Carrolup Artwork, Curtin University Art Collection. Gift of Colgate University, USA, 2013.
