By KEIRA JENKINS
Elders have shared their experiences of being seperated from their family and growing up in dormitories, at Queensland’s Truth-telling and Healing Inquiry.
Wakka Wakka man David Wragge was born at Cherbourg in 1958.
When he was nine years old Mr Wragge and his siblings were removed from his family and moved to the dormitory area of the settlement.
Wakka Wakka man David Wragge gave evidence to Queensland’s truth telling and healing inquiry. (Darren England)
“It was a severe punishment, You’d get beatings and floggings, it could be a strap, it could be a switch, that was a daily routine, some boys copped it more than others but everyone got beatings and floggings,” Mr Wragge told the inquiry on Thursday.
During his time in the dormitory Mr Wragge said men who were visiting the community would sleep at the boys dormitory, which, unlike the girls dormitory, was accessible to anyone in the community overnight.
“We had people who could come into our buildings at a whim and we did,” he said.
“We had no secure lock down, anyone could have come in, cut our throats or whatever.”
Mr Wragge said he experience physical, sexual and mental abuse at Cherbourg, as did many of the other boys he lived with in the dormitory, but the trauma he lives with impacts his family too.
“I’ve had this trauma with me… it’s been handed down to my children, it’s been handed down to my wife,” he said.
“On this healing journey I’ve made sure my children and my grandchildren and my wife are part of the healing recovery with me as well.”
Aunty Ruth Hegarty went to Cherbourg when she was six months old with her mother and grandparents.
She said a local police officer had told her family Cherbourg – then known as Barambah – would be a good place for them for a little while.
But when they arrived, her family found they were not able to leave.
She was separated from her mother at four and half years old when she went to school.
Ms Hegarty remembers running up the stairs to see her mother at the women’s dormitory, but was told she was not allowed to go there any more and would not be able to see her mum.
“Who would do that to a child,” she said.
“They just take your mum, they took everybody’s mum, all of us. We had no mothers. Nothing at all.”
Ms Hegarty also experienced harsh punishments while living in the dormitory, being threatened with being locked in a dark room, having food withheld.
When Ms Hegarty was sent to do domestic work at 14, one of the older women told her to keep her dresser or wardrobe against the door, telling her it was “the safest thing to do”.
“A lot of girls came back pregnant, that’s why I came back pregnant,” Ms Hegarty said.
“Because you couldn’t say no, you couldn’t scream out because you’d get punished.”
The inquiry will continue to hear evidence from elders on Friday.
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