Marribank to be transformed into site for healing as Stolen Generation survivors forge ahead with restoration

Children of the former Marribank mission are working to restore the buildings they grew up in to create a healing place for fellow Stolen Generations survivors and to ensure its history is not forgotten. Throughout much of the 1900s, Aboriginal children were removed from their families to live at Marribank Baptist Mission — formerly known as Carrolup — between Katanning and Kojonup. The mission was closed by the Baptist Church in 1988, with the State Government handing over freehold title to Southern Aboriginal Corporation in 1995. Among the children who grew up at Marribank were the seven directors of Marribank Aboriginal Corporation, who signed an agreement with SAC in 2018 to take over the crumbling site they once called home. Led by chairwoman Caron Wynne, the group has been planning the restoration and repurposing of the site as a place for survivors to heal, share their lived-experience and champion Noongar culture. On December 18, 1962, one week before Christmas, nine-month-old Ms Wynne and her three-year-old sister Denise Hansen were taken from their mother’s arms to Marribank. She would go on to spend 17 Christmases there — isolated from her culture, heritage and family — 30km away from her family home in Katanning. “I reflect back on that often and I think of the government going around and rallying and relocating Aboriginal kids and their families to missions and institutions, and then sort of locking up the government offices and going home for Christmas,” Ms Wynne said. She said her memories of Marribank were complex. It was where she formed an unbreakable bond with her fellow children, who were connected by devastating trauma. Ms Wynne said it was important for her to share her memories, both good and bad. “Some are traumatic, some are profound,” she said. “When you tell people some of the memories, it is not even in their realm of thinking. “But when you witness some of the terrible things that happened to the kids and what some of them were subjected to, it is confronting. “And I have those memories, now and again they come back.” Ms Wynne said one memory she shared with visitors to Marribank was children being made to run around a tree until they were exhausted because they missed lunch. “Some of the kids were treated very, very harshly .... some of them got treated by way of public humiliation, of which this picture never goes away,” she said. “As a form of their punishment, (the missionary) stood at the front of the tree on the circular driveway and she made the kids run around and around the tree ... and she was flogging them with a little sheoak stick. “If any of us kids witnessed any kids being treated harshly or unfairly or cruelly, we would all pack up our games and we would go and sit on the veranda of our house. “We weren’t going to be there in the audience and we weren’t going to look at that. “I tell people at the mission you didn’t have your parents’ and grandparents’ love but there was one thing you couldn’t take away from the kids — and that was their dignity.” Ms Wynne said the MAC directors aimed to capture the complex memories of Marribank through the restoration project. It would be a place to walk through history, while hearing it directly from survivors of the Stolen Generations. She said they had already taken groups of school and university students on walking tours through the site, including students from the US. The directors, all in their 50s and 60s, have held clean-ups at Marribank and recently had all the old asbestos removed from the buildings. Their plans have now been formalised in a business case outlining their aspirations to restore the site and conduct education and tourism programs centred around sharing the “authentic lived experience” of the directors. “We’d like it so that we can have some of the buildings restored to look similar to what they were when the kids grew up there so they are part of the tourist sites,” she said. “So people can go in and get a general sense of the idea of how the Aboriginal kids were raised and what the houses looked like ... and then other places, we want to be able to use.” Ms Wynne said MAC had already secured grants to fund some of their plans but were having to pour money into vandalism repairs. They will soon install a new gate and security cameras, and they plan to restore the caretaker’s cottage for someone to live in and oversee the site. That would be followed by restoration of the dining room. “The dining room is really important for us to get that done because it’s centrally located in the complex but it is also a place where we can meet,” Ms Wynne said. “There’s just so much potential. “We would love to see the river cleaned up, the opportunities for bird watching ... to go canoeing and kayaking and even the idea of having a small caravan park with up to 10 bays. “That is all being written up and developed through the business plan so we have got a range of phases that we will go through. “We actually see the next generation of Marribank kids’ own children joining our corporation within the next five years. “We need that next generation to keep carrying our dreams and goals forward when we are not around.” Southern Aboriginal Corporation chief executive Asha Bhat said SAC would continue to support MAC’s vision for the site. “With the very recent Social Housing Economic Recovery Package grant that we got there is some money for us to renovate the houses so we will continue to do that,” she said. “We will make every effort to make sure there is support for them in terms of renovating the houses and putting in the caretaker.”