The Moore River Aboriginal Settlement: A journey into 'hell on Earth'

Updated

Hundreds of children lost their lives in brutal conditions at the Moore River Aboriginal camp, a dark period of Australia's history that Kevin Barron hopes new research will ensure no one ever forgets.

To some who lived there, it was known as "hell on Earth".

To others, it was simply "home" — a refuge from even worse living conditions elsewhere.

A former governor-general dismissed it as a "dump".

Over 100 years, the Moore River Native Settlement became notorious as a camp where Aboriginal people from across Western Australia were sent — often against their will and often as young children — for "integration" into western society.

Kevin Barron was born at the settlement, 135 kilometres north of Perth, in 1945 after his mother, Betty, was taken there from her home in the Gascoyne region because she was "a bit fair".

"They came from all points of the compass — if you put people together you can control them," he reflects.

Mr Barron grew up at Moore River after it changed from government hands to become a Methodist mission in 1951.

His memories are mostly positive, but his parents and others from previous generations carry scars from a much harsher time when it was a government-run settlement.

"Some called it home, some called it hell on Earth. It was that bad … the way they were treated," he says.

"They came down here. [The people] were forcibly removed from their own country. They never had a chance to go back to their own families to say goodbyes and be buried in their own country."

The truth of Moore River laid bare

A century after its inception, a project established to trawl through the history of Moore River — particularly the camp's cemetery — has shone a new light on the death and suffering that took place within.

The research, by the state's Aboriginal History WA unit, shows that most of the 374 people who died there were children and many succumbed to treatable respiratory and infectious diseases.

Pneumonia, heart failure, "senile decay", bronchitis, enteritis, influenza, tuberculosis and marasmus (or undernourishment) were among the most common causes of death.

More than half the people buried at Moore River were children — 203 in total. Of these, 149 were five years old or less and more than 100 were under the age of one when they died.

The data shows Carmel Clare Ellis was just eight days old when she died from bronchitis on August 17, 1924.

Pneumonia took Kenneth Morden's life when he was seven months old on January 9, 1932.

The number of deaths peaked during periods of the 1920s, during the Great Depression, and during World War II when funding was scarce, the data shows.

Deaths then reduced markedly after 1951, when the WA government ceded control and Moore River became the Mogumber Methodist Mission.

Mel Walley-Stack, co-director of Aboriginal History WA, whose grandmother was sent to Moore River as part of the Stolen Generations, says the new burial register is a confronting snapshot of life there.

"The conditions in some cases were quite appalling really," Ms Walley-Stack says.

"I think [the authorities] had good intentions originally, but because of a lack of funding and priorities changing and shifting, it didn't fulfil what they intended for it, which was to educate and train Aboriginal people.

"To think about all of these small children who weren't living in very good conditions and they weren't getting the proper nutrition.

"To see them all there listed, so many of them in patches, passing away of respiratory diseases. It's quite upsetting."

A brutal lifestyle

Archival photos give an insight into an unforgiving way of life at Moore River.

Many people lived in rudimentary tents and shacks, exposing them to the cold winters of the Wheatbelt region.

Sometimes the shelters consisted merely of tree branches with pieces of canvass flung over the top.

When the camp was first set up, this was the way of life for most residents. The rapid growth of the Moore River camp meant it was very difficult to keep up with accommodation and it rapidly became overcrowded.

Dorms were first built for young girls at the camp. This was followed by a single mens' quarters in 1937, and soon after by a set of married quarters. Researchers say these all quickly became overcrowded.

After the first of a series of daylight escapes from Moore River in 1923, a corrugated iron punishment shed — known by residents as "the Boob" — was built.

Thought to measure 3.5 metres square, and possibly surrounded by an exercise yard, newspaper reports from the time indicate several people could have been locked in there for days at a time.

It is not known if prisoners were allowed out during the day or if they remained locked in even during the height of summer, which would have seen temperatures in excess of 40 degrees Celsius turn the metal structure into a furnace.

The brainchild of 'Neville the Devil'

Moore River was established under the policies of the chief protector of Aborigines, AO Neville, and was originally intended to be a self-supporting farming community.

But it soon morphed into a combination of prison camp, welfare hostel and dumping ground for the elderly and destitute.

Throughout its existence, it contained a mix of people sent there under section 12 of the 1905 Aborigines Act — which allowed the government to forcibly remove people from their homes and gave rise to the Stolen Generations — and others who went there voluntarily looking for better living conditions.

"Neville saw the settlements as a means of integrating children of mixed descent into the non-Indigenous society," the 1997 Bringing Them Home report into the separation of Indigenous children from their families stated.

The children were trained to work as domestic servants or workers for farms and stations.

But education was also a high priority at Moore River, as part of Neville's plan to make children of mixed descent fit into white society.

Schooling was initially for three hours a day, and one photo shows children sitting outdoors behind a grass hut, using wooden boxes as desks. Later, a hall was used for schooling, and sports activities were set up for the children.

As part of the settlement's aim to be self-sufficient and to train girls to work as domestic labour, sewing classes were also provided. The garments were provided to people at Moore River and were also supplied to Fremantle prison, psychiatric hospitals and other Aboriginal institutions.

The Bringing Them Home report said Aboriginal people convicted of alcohol-related offences were also sent to Moore River to be "rehabilitated", and the numbers at the camp swelled from 19 in January 1919, to 330 in June 1927 and 500 by the 1930s.

As health and housing conditions deteriorated, many of the self-perceived good intentions that led to the establishment of the camp were lost on the people sent there.

"The police put them there, AO Neville put them there," Mr Barron states bluntly.

"They called him 'Neville the Devil'."

The chronic underfunding and living conditions at Moore River prompted this critique by former Governor-General and federal Liberal minister Sir Paul Hasluck, after visiting in the 1930s:

"I visited the Moore River Settlement several times. The setting was a poor one with no advantage for anyone except isolation. The facilities were limited and some of them were makeshift. The staff were inadequate both in numbers and qualification.



"The inmates disliked the place. It held no promise of a future for any of them and they had little or no satisfaction in the present. It was a dump."

A commemoration a century in the making

Little remains of the Moore River cemetery today. It lies in an overgrown part of the camp marked by a scattering of small, rusting iron crosses standing in the sandy ground and low scrub.

But the children and families who died at Moore River over the decades are now finally being remembered.

On Friday Mr Barron was among many with family connections to the camp who returned to commemorate 100 years since Jack and Maude Ranjal, from the Derby area in WA's Kimberley region, became the first people registered there on May 25, 1918.

He was joined by WA Treasurer Ben Wyatt — whose father, Cedric, was born at Moore River and whose great-grandmother, Mary Carmen Wyatt, was buried there — and his uncle and Federal Indigenous Health Minister Ken Wyatt.

"Looking at the records of my great-grandmother, she died of influenza, and was buried here," Ben Wyatt says.

"My great-uncle, he died of diarrhoea and was buried here, so the cause of deaths were almost things we don't think about [today], it's treated very easily.

In a haunting part of the ceremony, the sound of clapping sticks rang out 374 times for each of the people buried there, and once more for those who could not be identified.

Mr Barron says the centenary, and the new research, should be used to ensure people never forget what happened at Moore River.

"Let Australia know about it," he says.

"I'd like non-Aboriginal [people] to know as well, so people can come together and understand what those poor souls went through."

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Topics: aboriginal, indigenous-aboriginal-and-torres-strait-islander, community-and-society, history, stolen-generations, indigenous-culture, indigenous-policy, moore-river-national-park-6503, wa

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