Forgotten Australians, memories

‘You are the spawn of the devil’

by Rhonda Wardman (guest author) on 1 February, 2011

Rhonda Wardman remembers her experiences at St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst:

I went to St Michael’s Girls Anglican Home in Bathurst when it was very new. I went from a loving Nanna in a homely old terrace full of love, food, photos, furniture and family to nothing but bare emptiness, starvation, bullying from a Nun.

There was a large playroom with a red laminex table and six chairs and an empty bookcase – nothing, nothing but emptiness (and my tears).

In my time there I saw no toys – no books – heard no radio, emptiness everywhere, quiet – pain and crying.

In the dining room there were six red laminex tables and chairs, that’s all. Empty – no sound. In the dormitories there were chrome beds with pink chenille bedspreads and some bedside tables that were empty – emptiness everywhere.

53 years later I can remember each stick of furniture and the pain of emptiness.

Sister B told me constantly, ‘You are the spawn of the devil, Rhonda Wardman, put here by God to be punished, born bad, never wanted. You are the spawn of the devil!’