Tag: Sisters of the Good Shepherd

art, drawing, Forgotten Australians, memories

Those who never left

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 16 February, 2011

Rachael Romero remembers those women, admitted as children, to the Convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd, ‘The Pines’, Plympton, who had stayed on in the institution well into their adulthood. Why didn’t they leave? What became of them?

Gaylis
copyright Rachael Romero, 1973

A drawing of an old woman with an apron, copyright Rachael Romero 1973"
Gaylis
copyright Rachael Romero, 1973

Gaylis was a ‘lifer’, a sweet-hearted person left there by her family. She was made to slave in the kitchen with no idea how to be the cook, but she did her best.

I still remember the chunks of lard and the bubbles of powdery flour that had not been stirred together sufficiently before baking a crust for that terrible gravy pie with junks of leathery kidneys swimming in it. I want to retch.

Having once seen ‘Little Jo’ on Bonanza, Gaylis was forever besotted with him – it was all she spoke of. Oh Gaylis what became of you when the place closed and the nuns fled? Slaving was all you knew.

There was also a woman with Downs Syndrome who folded hankies in that thunderous laundry. She waited on a Sunday with her handbag for someone to take her out. No one ever did.

documents, Forgotten Australians, memories, objects

Don’t let me catch you back here

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011

A fellow resident gave Rachael this holy card  on her leaving The Pines.

Holy card depicting Mary and Jesus
Mary and Jesus

The message reads:

To dearest Rachael,

I am sorry to see you go.

I hope you make the most of everything, and that all goes well for you.
Wish things were a little better in the family situation, and for God’s sake don’t let me catch you back here.

All the best,
your friend

……… x

P.S. I hope you pass Inter[mediate], and go on to get good grades in Leaving.

As soon as I get out I will contact you, and I will come over and have some ‘Brandied Bananas’.

art, Forgotten Australians, memories, objects, painting

Art has always saved me

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011

Rachael Romero’s artistic talent enabled her to have time away from slaving in the laundry at The Pines. Here is one of the bookmarks that the Sisters of the Good Shepherd asked her to make.

Rachael recalls:

So here’s the rub. When the nuns found out I had talent I was asked to make book marks and cards for them to use.

This way I got out of the laundry for an hour or two a week. What relief they locked me in a room alone to paint!

Peace–quiet!

I feigned a religious conversion in order to escape their radar and plot my escape.

documents, Forgotten Australians, memories, objects

M’o’mento of slavery

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011

The Sisters of the Good Shepherd ran commercial laundries which serviced many businesses, including hopsitals, hotels and wealthy households. Doing all the unpaid, hard labour in hot conditions were teenage girls who were sent the convent because they were considered to be in ‘moral danger’.

The Good Shepherd laundries operated at the Mt Maria Centre, Mitchelton, Brisbane; Abbotsford Convent, Melbourne; The Pines, Plympton; Leederville, Perth and Mount Saint Canice in Hobart.

Rachael Romero, in 1968, aged 15, was an unpaid labourer in the laundry while resident at The Pines. Below is a laundry slip she kept – one of those used by the Good Shepherd Sisters to charge for their laundry services.

Laundry slip from the Home of the Good Sheperd, Plympton, South Australia

For more information on the commercial laundry services run in Catholic Children’s Homes, see Allan Gill’s 2003 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, Bad girls do the best sheets.

documents, Forgotten Australians, memories, objects

Map of The Pines

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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.

Hand-drawn plan of Children’s Home ‘The Pines’

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.

documents, Forgotten Australians, memories

I am free

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 14 February, 2011

Rachael Romero still has a drawing she made and a piece she wrote on freedom in 1968, aged 15, at the Convent of the Good Shepherd, alias The Pines, Plympton, South Australia.

Rachael wrote:

“I am free” : What does it mean to me?
Physically I am not free nor in some ways mentally. But on contemplating on this subject I have come to the conclusion that no-one is free. Some, however, are freer than others. But we must all conform to rules of society. Some have more rules and some less. Altho’ we may be forced to go here and there we cannot be forced to enjoy this, therefore in this small narrow way we have free will (in thinking).

I find it difficult to say what freedom means to me as I have never been truly free. Altho’ now I have less freedom than ever before. I think in the hereafter we may look forward to perfect freedom as this can be coupled with happiness. Until then however we must be content with the little freedom we have. Freedom of the mind. We can expand our mind or it shrivels to nothingness. So I hope that I may expand my knowledge and in doing so, expand my freedom. While seeking our freedom, we remember the Golden Rule – “Do unto others as you would have them do to you” and know that we must use our freedom not in a bad way by being malicious, insidious or sadistic.

art, film, Forgotten Australians, memories, photos

In the Shadow of Eden

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by Rachael Romero (guest author) on 10 February, 2011

In her short film In the Shadow of Eden, filmmaker Rachael Romero comes to grips with the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her religion-fixated father while growing up in rural South Australia. The film includes Romero’s memories of her time in the Good Shepherd Sisters’ laundry at The Pines in Plympton, Adelaide.

In the Shadow of Eden premiered at the Yale Center for British Art in September 2003 where it won a Short Film Prize from Film Fest New Haven. Since then it has screened at the Cleveland International Film Festival, the Santa Fe Film Festival, Moondance (where it won the Spirit Award for short documentary) Boulder, Colorado and The Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham, North Carolina where, with the help of The New York Times and a board that includes Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Ken Burns, and Barbara Kopple it was among six shorts chosen from over 100 ground-breaking documentaries available now on DVD – Full Frame Documentary Shorts, Volume 4, the best of the festival.

Ironically, given all these accolades in the United States, In the Shadow of Eden has been rejected for inclusion in the the Sydney, Adelaide and Victoria Film Festivals.

View In the Shadow of Eden on YouTube.