Katherine is an orphan whose story spans a lifetime
Katherine’s journey begins as a child in the unforgiving landscape of the Australian outback. Having been abandoned by her father after her mother is killed in a London air raid, Katherine finds little sympathy when she is consigned to an austere life in the care of Lachlan and Daisy Stuart on an isolated property beyond Broken Hill. There is little tenderness in the ten-year-old’s life until Aboriginal station hands offer their friendship, but love comes at a deadly price.
Now living an idyllic life in the north of England, for almost sixty years Katherine has hidden her past. But when an old letter is discovered, she is forced to relive her traumatic years under the Australian sun and explain who died and why she had to run. However, there’s a twist in the tale that will bring her once again to her knees. Will returning to Australia help her truly find peace?
A story of hope, love, sacrifice and resilience.
Black Bones, Red Earth was not only a journey for Katherine, my novel’s main character but for me as a writer. As a dedicated panster – no, nothing to do with wedgies (see Panster or plotter) – I started this book with a simple idea, hoping as usual that it would grow from there into a finished story. I had no idea where it would end.
The seed from which my story grew, was, in fact, a part of my mum’s own life story. Mum stunned everyone when well into her eighties, she revealed that she had been brought up in an orphanage, a secret she had kept for over 80 years. Apparently, my maternal grandmother had died of TB when Mum was just four years old. Mum and her sisters, aged two and seven, were sent away to an orphanage on the Cumbria coast, by my grandfather. He was serving in the army at the time, and it just wasn’t done for men to raise little girls. This was the thinking at the time.
It’s hard to imagine how traumatic it must have been for the three little ones to be uprooted, packed away after only just losing their mother, thinking their father didn’t want them anymore, and finding themselves amongst strangers. The orphanage in Whitehaven was run by the Waifs and Strays Society, later to become the Church of England Children’s Society.
But why had my mum hidden her past for so many years, and why had she invented a different childhood that omitted the orphanage altogether? She told us that she had been too ashamed to tell the truth. The stigma of being an orphan in a small English town had been difficult to bear, especially during school years, when children at the local school would make fun of the orphan kids who lived in the home for strays. I can only guess at the cruel taunts from those children. But Mum was a fighter, and she quickly learned to look after herself and her sisters.
Ashamed of being an orphan
Mum survived her time in the strict establishment, where children rose between three and four in the morning to begin chores before school. The home’s overriding mission was to prepare children for employment, and so they were put to work with a lengthy list of daily duties. Mum said that life was hard for the little girls in care. On her thirteenth birthday, she had to leave the home and was sent into service, shipped off in the goods department on a train to the coastal town of Hythe in Kent. “I had a name tag hanging around my neck, like a piece of baggage,” Mum told us. There she became the parlour maid for a doctor and his family, and was again singled out as ‘the orphan kid’. Mum vowed from then on that no one would ever know about her past. She joined the army when she was eighteen, her father’s regiment, the Green Howards, and served throughout the Second World War. Mum said she made peace with her father, but I’m not sure she ever forgave him. The orphanage closed it’s doors in 1938. There’s a video game called Whithaven. A psychological horror game where players are invited to uncover the mysteries of Whitehaven Orphanage. I suspect they are nothing compared to the horrors a little four-year-old felt when delivered into its care.
Mum’s revelation explained a lot about her character. At five-foot-one, she was as tough as they come. She took no-nonsense and would stand up for, and to, anyone. It also explained why she was so passionate about kids who needed help, working tirelessly for many years raising funds for children’s causes, especially the Church of England Children’s Society, and overseas charities, all while raising five kids of her own.
The idea for my book started with an English woman, like Mum, in the twilight of her years, her secret orphaned childhood revealed. That’s about where the similarities end, but it set me on a path that eventually led me to explore the traumas of child migrants, orphaned children shipped to Australia after the war. During this line of research, I also discovered the hardships suffered, under the name of child protection, by Aboriginal children – The Stolen Generation – who were separated from their families and placed in mission homes. These two stories came together to form the backbone of my novel.
Inspired by true characters and historical events
The next piece of inspiration came from my Uncle Chris, who came to Australia as a boy under the Big Brother sceme after WWII, only to be despatched to a sheep station where he struggled to make a life under the care of a cranky old station owner. His adventures brought real-life experiences to my story.
But it wasn’t until I started writing and set my tale in the 1950s that I came to realise the weight of such stories, and how they could be entwined with the true-life experiences of characters from the bush. I found the back-story had far-reaching consequences for my understanding of Australia and its past.
In the years between 1920 and 1970, 130,000 British children were despatched to other countries, mostly Canada and Australia, under the Child Migrant Program. Government policy was facilitated and implemented by churches and charities, ostensibly to give children a better life. In reality, they were little more than unpaid servants, labourers, and blood-stock for the expanding colonies. Sometimes separated from siblings, they were sent to remote farms, church missions and state-run institutes, where they were often subjected to sexual and physical abuse. These children were usually already in institutions in the UK, either orphaned or in many cases, the children of single parents who could no longer care for them. On arrival overseas, they were often told their parents were now dead, and many lost all contact with those left behind.
Before and including those periods above, the Australian government implemented various policies of assimilation. Indigenous Australian children were forcibly separated from their families and placed in institutions, where they were taught to reject their Aboriginal culture and adopt white culture. The government intended to allow the indigenous population of Australia to die out naturally, while those of Aboriginal and white parentage would be absorbed into white society. Speaking traditional languages and practising traditional ways was forbidden. Aboriginal Australians were denied the rights that white Australians took for granted.
Aboriginal Australians, denied the rights that white Australians took for granted.
The above practices tore families apart, destroyed communities and left a legacy of shame that affects those traumatised until this day. The stolen generations are a stain on our history.
I have to say, shamefully, that I knew little of the true story of First Australians and their struggle to survive since colonisation. I’m grateful for the generous time and help of Gundungurra Aboriginal Elders who guided me to the truth. My personal journey in writing this novel has brought me to learn and understand the real history of this land I now call home.
Black Bones, Red Earth, is a work of fiction, but the characters and stories are based on fact.
Lee Richie 