by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011
Rachael Romero shares the map she drew at the age of 15 while living at the Convent of the Good Shepherd also known as “The Pines”. Rachael’s map includes the site of the laundry where the young female residents worked.
Interestingly, Senator Andrew Murray referred to The Pines in his speech to the federal Senate on 12 March 2008, in which he urged the Australian Government to make an apology to Forgotten Australians and former Child Migrants:
[There] were systemic floggings and beatings with a variety of weapons for the most minor misbehaviours. All these acts amounted to criminal assaults punishable by law at the time. And that is the important point. These things that were done to the children were not lawful at the time and yet there was a conspiracy of silence between churches, health authorities, police and others which mostly kept these incidences under cover.
This appalling treatment of vulnerable kids has its match in prisoner of war camps. Places like Bindoon in Western Australia; Goodwood and The Pines in South Australia; Westbrook in Queensland; Box Hill and Bayswater in Victoria; and Parramatta and Hay in New South Wales were akin to concentration camps that incarcerated and brutalised far too many young people in 20th century Australia. Some beatings even resulted in physical impairments later in life.
