Our Foremothers - 8. Running Free

"I have another duty, equally sacred, a duty to myself " Dora: A Doll's House, Henrik Ibsen,1879

9. Women Were Not Quiet - 'A Hospital run by women and for women ...'; The Victorian Lady Teachers' Association; The 1891 Women's Suffrage Petition

10. Building Peace at Home WW1:The War to end all Wars; Conscription; Coming Home to Where? Coranderrk Closure; Free Trade; The Zurich Women's Peace Conference

11. A World Not Fit For Heroes - The Great Depression; Evictions; The Australian Aborigines League - 26th January Day of Mourning; Coping

12. Another War - WW2 - Working Together; After the War; Mixed Feelings

13. Howard's Way - the 1950's - Conformity and Hidden Poverty; Camp Pell: The Lake Tyers Struggle; The Union of Australian Women; Cold Charity

14. A Life Well Spent - The End

Our Foremothers is published by
Women's Web Inc.
Telephone: 03 9486 1808
www.womensweb.com.au http://home.vicnet.net.au/~womenweb
womensweb@iprimus.com.au

OTHER SISTER SITES
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~wmnstime
http://home.vicnet.net.au/~codepink

© Geraldine Robertson except for study, social justice and feminist sharing.

Our Foremothers is published by
Women's Web Inc.
Telephone: 03 9486 1808
www.womensweb.com.au
womensweb@iprimus.com.au

© Geraldine Robertson except for study, social justice and feminist sharing.

Our Foremothers

8. RUNNING FREE

On this page:
OUR STORY: "NO DAUGHTER OF MINE ..."; Hard Yakka.
KOORIE STORY: Indigenous Exclusion.

OUR STORY: "NO DAUGHTER OF MINE ..."

When she was my Nana, Mary Daphne Ritchie told me stories about growing up.

Everyone worked very hard then. When children were not at school or working they often had no adults to look after them and the accident rate for children was horrendous.

There were a lot of stories of children lost in the bush. But when they didn’t hurt themselves or get lost they had a lot of fun and Nana’s family was lucky (or careful).

One adventure took place at home. The Methodist minister was visiting their mother, Sarah, again. Nana said their mother was always irritable when he came, so they didn’t like it, and Nana was bored.

This day Sarah was sitting in the parlour with her back to the window talking to the minister, who was sitting next to the fire looking out the window. There were some bales of hay stacked up on the grass outside the bay window.

It occurred to Nana that the hay would make a safe place to land if she climbed up on the roof and used the roof as a slide.

It also occurred to her that as she slid off the roof her skirts would billow out and the minister would get a view of the back of her bloomers. He would, she thought, be shocked. He would, she hoped, be so shocked he would leave and never come back again.

Why stop there? She had sisters who agreed to climb on the roof and slide down onto the hay then climb back up, slide down etc. It was brilliant! They climbed, helping each other, and slid down, climbed and slid down.

The only trouble was – nothing happened. Nothing happened then and nothing happened later.

The hay bales were moved the next day, the minister continued to come regularly, and their mother continued to look irritable when he came.

Nana was a young adult now.

Warracknabeal was small, the world was wide, and she wanted more independence. Was there to be no more to her existence than to be a mother, daughter and wife as her mother was and the women all around her were?

She dreamt of more.

She worked hard and passed the Pharmacy Board of Victoria Preliminary Examination, coming fourth.

The subjects were Latin grammar and translations from Caesar’s De Bello Gallico or Vergil’s Aenid; Arithmetic; English Grammar and Composition; Euclid (Geometry); and Algebra.

She approached her father with her plan for independence but it didn’t work - he was livid.

The scene was in the dining room and he stood at the head of the mahogany dining room table and bellowed:

“NO DAUGHTER OF MINE WILL WORK FOR HER LIVING.”

There was a lot more, he was so angry. He claimed she had a duty to obey him. She stood her ground. He didn’t relent and either did she.

I asked her why she didn’t give up there and then. “Well”, she said, “I wanted to and nearly did, but what about my duty to myself?”

In the end there was some compromise from Great Grandpa Cutts. Nana wasn’t allowed to do pharmacy but, with the support of her mother, the local doctor and local minister, she was allowed to do nursing.

At the time, though, it seemed a victory.

Hard Yakka

Nursing was hard. It was harder than anything Nana imagined a human being could live through.

The doctors, the patients, the matron, the nursing sisters, the kitchen staff, the deliverymen and the maintenance men ordered her around. It was run, run, run all day and still being yelled at, still not pleasing anyone.

Nana said she didn’t hear a kind, or even normal, word from one week to another.

She had hardly any sleep as she was woken up every time anyone needed anything. The food was insufficient so she was always hungry. She wasn’t allowed to use the only bathroom, which was for the patients.

The live-in staff, as she was, had to wash at the well outside. In winter the water froze in the well and the only privacy was a hedge surrounding the lawn.

Perverted and curious men would sometimes look through it. Local youths would climb the tree and tease the nurses trying to wash themselves under their clothes.

Everyone was ordering someone else (mainly her) around, or so she thought. But she wasn’t quite at the bottom. There was an aboriginal boy, a 'charity' patient who was treated even worse than she was.

They became friends and Nana made a vow to herself that she would never, ever judge people because they were poor, a different race or religion or culture, because they dressed differently or had different habits.

She didn’t give up and she graduated as a nurse.

KOORIE STORY: Indigenous Exclusion

Indigenous people did not share this comfort.

The Constitution and the men who drafted it guaranteed the exclusion of Indigenous people from the legislative program of Commonwealth Governments for most of the last century. What other Australians have taken for granted, we were excluded from, including:

the Commonwealth Franchise Act 1902 and the Electoral Act 1918;

a whole raft of social welfare legislation including:

- the Invalid and Old Age Pension Act 1908 (Cth);
- the Maternity Allowance Act 1912(Cth);
- the Child Endowment Act 1941(Cth);
- the Widows’ Pension Act 1942(Cth); and
- the Unemployment & Sickness Benefit Act 1944 (Cth).

Full access for Indigenous Australians to social security benefits did not occur until the late 1970s and, in some remote communities, not until the early 1980s. Prior to the 1967 referendum, Commonwealth expenditure on Indigenous Australians was zero. It is only as a result of the referendum that the Commonwealth was given legal power to intervene in Indigenous affairs.
http://www.austlii.edu.au/