At Cherbourg’s historic truth-telling day on 18 November 2024, elder Janelle Carlo was one of 11 to take to the podium and recount her story with the town.
I started saying [to my granddaughter] ‘Stand up, be black and be proud,’ and that’s what we have to do to encourage them.
My mum and dad were brought here and dumped here. It was very sad when I was studying and learned about the anthropologist Tom Blake, who did the studies and who wrote ‘A Dumping Ground: A history of the Cherbourg Aboriginal Settlement’.
I remember my dad had to go on the truck to go to town. They had to get a permit [to leave].
We belong to the land. Here, growing up with the girls’ and boys’ dormitories, they were controlled.
I can’t imagine how our sisters and brothers, our aunties and uncles, were sent away, to work for little money for the white man. And they were cruel.
My sister Pansy shared a story with me, because she got sent out I believe to Roma.
The husband would come home drunk and carry a shotgun around wanting to hurt his family. She’d walked to the train in the dark to run away.
I remember listening to stories like that going back. Thank you for understanding and thank you for listening.
