Remembered By Heart: An Anthology of Indigenous Writing Read Online Free PDF Page A

twice; I couldn’t stand what I saw there. The food for the compound was cooked by the girls. They’d have one of the nurses — well, they were all called nurses — up there instructing the girls. There were two coppers: one for the soup, and one for the tea. The water would be all boiled up in a copper, and they had this great big shearer’s teapot, with tea stewed and stewed up in it.
    For the soup they’d cook up these awful sheep heads. First they’d skin them, but never take the eyes out, then they’d split them down the middle, give them a quick rinse and throw them in the copper. Sometimes those sheep heads had bott-fly in their noses but they wouldn’t worry about that. They’d just throw it in and we’d see that in our soup.
    It was all so dirty. You’d think those nurses would have been more alert, could have done things properly. But they didn’t care. I suppose they were told, ‘Just anything will do those natives.’
    I couldn’t eat the soup before I worked there, but when I saw this I definitely couldn’t eat it. See, I wasn’t brought up like that. My mother was a beautiful cook and we atelovely meals back home. I think they did things like this to deliberately lower us; well, degrade us really.
    The girls’ dormitory was an old weatherboard place with a verandah halfway around. It had all different wings under the one main roof. The mothers’ wing was out on the verandah at the back, and around five or six of them would be there at a time. See, most of the older girls that went out to work were pregnant when they came back in.
    Inside the dormitory was the little kids’ dorm, the washroom, and the other two parts were for the rest of us girls. We were all locked in at night but the doors between each wing were left open.
    In the girls’ dormitory we had an old matron-mother, old dormitory mother they called her. We called her Nanna Leyland, and she was a beautiful old lady you know, but strict too.
    She’d be next door in a room to the side, and she wouldn’t yell at us if we made any noise, she’d use her stick. She had a big stick, and she’d hit the wall three times. I tell you what, you’d hear a pin drop. Then you’d hear her coming across the floor, walking stick going; toong toong toong.
    When she got to the door she’d say, ‘Galahs live outside — people live inside. I’m looking after little kids next door and they need their sleep. If I hear another word I won’t hit the wall, I’ll come in and crack every head in this room. So just keep quiet.’ And she would have done it too!
    Just off the side of our dormitory was the pan-room. In there they just had the one night pan for all of us, and wehad only enough room to wriggle our way in and sit down. It was in our part of the dorm and sometimes the girls used to come in a hurry and mess the floor trying to get there in the dark, poor things. It was usually the little ones, and for the rest of the night we’d have to walk on water.
    On the windows of the girls’ dormitory they had wire mesh to stop you from getting out, and a trellis around the verandah. Although they always locked the girls’ door, the boys were left free. The boys used to come and talk to the girls at night through the window, but if Matron or someone came along they’d run underneath the building to hide. When the superintendent woke up to what was happening, he had a stone wall put around the bottom of the girls’ dormitory to stop the boys from hiding underneath.
    Even though Nanna Leyland was really strict, she was a lovely lady to us too. When I got in favour with her I used to live like a queen. See, she used to give us her dog, Brindle, to go bush and get a kangaroo for her. There’d be me, Melba, Ruth and another Melba, and we’d go out along the river hunting, just us girls, taking the butcher’s knife and