1920s

1920

Elizabeth Dixon, born in Crown Street and living at La Perouse, is sent to Aboriginal Inland Mission Home, Bomaderry.

  • Wooloomooloo by Joseph Lycett, courtesy of the National Library of Australia

In the Central Police Court, Agnes Jones is sentenced to 14 days, ‘Unlawful assault’, and 1 month and three days, concurrent, ‘Indecent Language’ and ‘Drunk’.

1921

Anthony Fernando, in Switzerland, demands an international mandate for governing the reserve lands of all Indigenous peoples of the world. (Paisley, forthcoming)

1922

Agnes Jones is sentenced to 1 month and 14 days, concurrent, ‘Indecent language’ and ‘Assaulting a Constable’.

1923

Agnes Jones is sentenced, at Central, to two months and three months concurrent, ‘Stealing’ and ‘Indecent Language’. In the same year, at North Sydney Police Court, she is sentenced to 14 days, ‘Unlawful assault’.

Bessie Lock, born in Plumpton in 1907, is removed from her mother. She is sent to the Mittagong State Home, returned to Sydney in 1928, then to other employment positions as a domestic servant. One situation she is sent to is 115 Kurraba Road, Neutral Bay.

Iris Brindle, formerly of the Cootamundra Home, is a domestic servant in Double Bay (V2, ‘She never returned to her country’)

  • Cootamundra Girls Home

 

 

1924

The Australian Association for the Protection of Aborigines is founded, wanting to restore land to Koori people, to prevent the increasing removal of Koori children from their families, and to abolish the Aborigines Protection Board. This follows a more active role of Board officers and police in child removal (see entries for 1917, 1920, 1923). They form an alliance with a sympathetic white woman, Elizabeth McKenzie-Hatton, also known as "Mrs Mac" amongst the local Kooris. The group buys a house in Homebush as a hostel for Aboriginal girls who are ‘incorrigible’ that is, those who have run away or defied their employers. (Maynard 2008, pp. 44-5)

  • Pearl Gibbs

Agnes Jones is sentenced to seven days in prison, ‘Riotous behaviour’.

Kinchela Boys Home is established by the Aboriginal Protection Board. The Home is intended for Aboriginal boys removed from their families as part of the process of 'assimiliation'. The victims of this process eventually became known as the Stolen Generation. The Home houses between 40 and 60 boys until it is closed in 1970. Justice Hal Wootten’s Reports, for the Aboriginal Deaths in Custody Royal Commission, document the brutal punishment and sexual abuse suffered by these boys in the Kinchela Home, or later.

  • Kinchela Boys Home

 

Following strong criticism from the Association for the Protection of Aborigines, a Sydney newspaper accuse the Aborigines Protection Board of hastening the disappearance of the Aboriginal girls by isolating them in the city. The argument is that girls are unlikely to meet Aboriginal men and – it being apparently unthinkable that they should marry white men – the result will be necessarily fewer Koori people.

The Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) attracts many Koori members to it. Its founder is Marcus Garvey. The Koori activist Fred Maynard promises support from 10,000 Koori people in NSW towards this organisation.

1925

Alfred James White, an ex-serviceman, writes from 9 Pitt Street, Redfern in 1925: ‘Dear Sir, I now take the advantage of writing to you asking you could you oblige me by giving me some information concerning the canteen funds, how they’ve run out. Also … could you tell me if a soldier had any money stocked on the other side, could he draw that money here? And I would like you to help me if you could as I am in a very bad way just now. I have never had a penny from the military since I came home. So trusting you will try and help me for a quick return; so trusting you will oblige me. I am yours faithfully, AJ White, #2710, 7th Bn., Australian Light Horse.’ (Scarlett, p. 32)

Agnes Jones is sentenced to 3 months in prison, ‘Assault’, 7 days ‘Indecent Language’ and one month ‘Indecent Language’.

The Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association holds its first conference at St David’s Hall, Surry Hills. The newspapers report their aim as: ‘ON ABORIGINES’ ASPIRATIONS – FIRST AUSTRALIANS TO HELP THEMSELVES – SELF DETERMINATION,’ and ‘ABORIGINES IN CONFERENCE – SELF DETERMINATION IS THEIR AIM – TO HELP A PEOPLE.’ Its chief spokesman is Fred Maynard, a Hunter River Koori. Its letterhead carries the motto ‘One God, one Aim, one Destiny.’ In the early months, Fred Maynard and Elizabeth Mackenzie Hatton make a number of trips up and down the coast inspecting Koori living conditions, particularly on the reserves. (Maynard 2008, p. 53, Goodall, p. 152)

  • Aborigines mourn
  • ABO CALL collage
  • Railway employees at Eveleigh Street Railway workshop

Elsa Dixon born 1925. She goes on to live in Campbell St, Darlinghurst for 32 years and helps create many services for Aboriginal people.

1926

Agnes Jones is sentenced to 14 days in prison, Indecent Words’, and 14 days, ‘Malicious damage to Government Property’.

Ruth Clements, daughter of May Clements, is born in Sydney and removed from the care of her family.

1927

The AAPA program demands land as an economic base and compensation for dispossession. Fred Maynard, spokesman for the Association, writes to the Premier, ‘I wish to make it perfectly clear, on behalf of our people, that we accept no condition of inferiority as compared with European people. Two distinct civilisations are represented by their respective races… that the European people by the arts of war destroyed our more ancient civilisation is freely admitted, and that by their vices and diseases our people have also been decimated is also patent, but neither of these facts are evidence of superiority.’ (Goodall, pp. 163-4).

Agnes Jones is sentenced to 14 days in prison, ‘Drunk’, and one month, ‘Indecent Language’.

Fred Maynard leader of the AAPA, writes to a young Koori girl abused within the Aboriginal apprenticeship system: ‘My heart is filled with regret and disgust. First that you were taken down by those who were supposed to be your help and guide through life. What a wicked conception, what a fallacy. Under the so-called pretence and administration of the Board, government controlled etc. I say deliberately, the whole damnable thing has got to stop and by God's help it shall, make no mistake. No doubt, they are trying to exterminate the Noble and Ancient Race of southern Australia. Away with their damnable insulting methods’. Maynard 2008, p. 1.

  • John Maynard, grandson of activist Fred Maynard

Fred Maynard’s son Merv recalls how as a young boy, he is picked up along with another young Aboriginal boy and terrorised by the police at Canterbury police station: ‘I never realised at the time, only being a bit of a kid, I didn’t tell Mum or Dad for fear of getting into further trouble, but in retrospect the whole episode had been about getting the point across to my father, that they could pick up and take us kids anytime they liked. Naturally they had expected me to relate the details to my father but I had just clammed up’. (Maynard 2008 p. 132)

1928

As white women begin to leave domestic service to work in factories, their places are taken by Koori girls, often sent at 12 or 13 years of age, from the Cootamundra Home. There is factory work available for older Koori women growing up in Sydney, such as Lever Brothers, Colgate, Palmolive and Pearson’s Soap, but most girls and young women are sent to become housemaids and childminders.

  • Cootamundra Girls Home Memorial

Dennis Foley’s father is working in the White Bay flour mills. A skilled worker, he manages to keep his job during the depression.

According to John Maynard, Fred Maynard’s biographer, the most unsettling aspect of the AAPA to the Protection Board, is the fact that it is led by a self-educated and well-educated Aboriginal man with a great command of both the spoken and written word. ‘Maynard 1988 spoke and wrote passionately and insightfully about the injustices and atrocities committed against Aboriginal people. He spoke of things that many white people did not know or were not aware of, or simply did not want to know.’(Maynard 1988, p. 7)

Elsie Simms and Herbert Simms are removed from their home by the Aborigines Welfare Board officials. Herbert is sent to Kinchela Boys Home and Elsie to Cootamundra Aboriginal Girls Training Home. Their father is stated to be Joseph Ernest Simms.

  • Kinchela Boys Home
  • Bomaderry Infants Home
  • Cootamundra Girls Home

 

Fred Maynard argues that Aborigines do not have merely equal rights with Europeans but rather have overriding rights over and above the rights of others.

Evidence suggests the AAPA is still hounded and harassed by the NSW police, acting on behalf of the Aborigines Protection Board. Sometimes Fred is not allowed to enter reserves to talk to the communities.

Harold Maher, born in Drummoyne 1921, is living with his mother in domestic service in ’Kyoto’, Springdale Road, Killara. He is removed and sent to the Kinchela Boys Home. The official reason for removal is: ‘Mother unable to support him any longer’.

1929

Agnes Jones is sentenced to two years jail, ‘Maliciously Inflicting Grievous Bodily Harm’. She is now 61 and has been convicted 91 times. She disappears from the records at this point.

Paddy Simms is removed from La Perouse to Kinchela after his mother Molly dies.

  • Abo CALL, 1938