Tarita Atkinson

Intro: Hello, my name is Savannah Travia-Dann, and I’m a Nyul Nyul woman from Winawaal Country on the Dampier Peninsular. 

Welcome to a collection of stories shared by Indigenous and Non-Indigenous Australians in various locations across Walyalup. 

Walyalup is the Noongar name for Fremantle, located on the south-west coast of what is now known as Western Australia. Like the rest of the continent, Walyalup is ancient Country and home to one of the world’s oldest continuing cultures, the Noongar people. 

In this series, you will hear live recordings from people who have shared difficult truths, hidden histories and visions for the future. It was created as part of the First Stories collection and funded by Lotterywest – bringing First Nations truths and lived experiences to new audiences. These stories reflect personal experiences of colonisation, resilience, connection and belonging in Walyalup and across Australia. 

Produced by the Centre for Stories in partnership with the City of Fremantle, these recordings were captured on Noongar Boodja. We pay our deepest respects to Noongar Elders past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who since the beginning, have been the custodians, carers, knowledge holders and storytellers of this land. 

Before we begin, please be aware that this episode may contain references to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures, histories and experiences that belong to the storytellers. It may include themes and language that some listeners may find distressing. 

We acknowledge the ongoing impacts of colonisation and the importance of truth-telling in creating a more honest understanding of our shared history. We also recognise that these stories may be particularly challenging for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander listeners. 

If you’re feeling distressed or triggered while listening, please reach out to 13 YARN on 13 92 76, where you can speak with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander Crisis Support Worker.  

In this episode, you will hear from Tarita Aitkinson. Tarita is a non-Indigenous woman who has grown up in Western Australia since the age of 6. Tarita’s story reflects on her childhood at Mogumber Mission. A childhood that she remembered as fun and carefree, and how, over many years, she came to understand that others who shared the same experience, carried very different memories.  This is Tarita. 

TA: The good news is, as my story was 12, 15 minutes long during the week, as I trailed my daughter around today, I nailed it at 10 minutes. The bad news is she said I, I said it in a monotone voice. So I’m going to go off my notes.  

Could I have a show of hands for people who’ve heard of Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence? Yes, I thought most of us would. My story starts there at, well, it was the Moore River Native Settlement. I spent a year there when it was Mogumber Methodist Mission as a child. So for those of you who may not know, Moore River Native Settlement was started in 1918 and under the Aborigines Act of 1905, the government could and did remove children from all over the state and place them in institutions and missions and other settlements away from their families.  

Now, they handed over to, the Mogumber Methodist, to the Methodist Church. I ended up there. My mother brought my sister and I aged six and seven back from Fiji, and this was after a failed marriage. She brought us back to her family in Perth. And her first job was as a cottage mother at Mogumber Mission. Now, I don’t know how or why she got the job as the cottage mother because we weren’t religious. We weren’t connected to the Methodist church at all. But I can only guess that perhaps it was because she’d married a coloured man and had children with him.  

So when we arrived in 1971, the children were still being removed from their families. They kept the siblings together. So my Mum looked after two or three families of children. And they, and with my sister and I, it was about nine or 10 children all together. And my sister and I bunked in one room with the girls. And to me it felt as a six year old, a really large spacious house. , And down the corridor was the boys’ room. As a child, I was told that the children would go home when things got better and when their parents could look after them. So I didn’t question any of that because Mogumber for me was a full and busy social life. It was, there were always kids to play with and we moved between the cottages and there were about five or six cottages of children. We moved between it freely and we were rarely indoors. It was a wonderful outdoor life for me. We would do walks out the back and down the hill and that got us to the Moore River. , And that was exciting, although scary because of the vegetation was a bit spooky with all the saltbush and tamar shrubs. But I was with the big kids, so that made it all the better. And then towards the end of our time there in 1971, a pool got built. And it was a small pool. It was only about 10 meters by 10 meters. And it wasn’t even a meter deep. But as you can imagine, for any child, a pool is a pool is great excitement. I had a best friend there. His name was Ernie. And I was doing my first year of primary school at Mogumber Primary School. He wasn’t there with me, so he must have been a year younger, I put him at. He would have stayed behind with my mum, but the school bus would pick us up. We’d hop on with our lunches in grease proof paper bags. And then the bus would take us out the gates, down the track, and we’d turn left onto Moore River Road and, go down the gravel road for about half an hour to get us to the primary school. So the parents were allowed to visit every Sunday once a month. So one Sunday every month, it meant I lost my playmates for a day. I was told I didn’t really understand what was going on, but the kids would come back a bit unsettled because the parents could come, take them away for the day, and then they’d bring them back. I do remember a struggle between a teenage boy and my mum. That was one of my memories. And it was frightening for me to see my mum in that position. And it’s also a little bit awkward for me tonight because my mum is in the front row because she came late. <Laugh> But I think as a six year old child to sort of see that, and this, this is one of the only negative memories I have of Mogumber. And I think it probably heart back to, and again, I’ve, I’ve gotten my mom’s permission to mention this. There was a bit of domestic violence in Fiji that I witnessed. So I think that was what it brought up for me then. After a year, we returned to Perth. Mum had, met someone and she remarried. So we settled into a fairly typical white middle class life. Over the years though, I always remembered Mogumber fondly. And I always wondered about what happened to my mate Ernie. It was much, many, many years later. I’m in my 30s. I’m married. , Reasonably settled and I’m pregnant. And one of our trips, we went up to New Norcia, but on the way back, I wanted to drop in and see Mogumber for the very first time since we left in 1971. So this is now the year 2000. And in my hand, I clutched a couple of photographs. One of them was really special. It was us mission kids in the pool and we’re, and we’re, just everyone looked like they were having so much fun. I had the photographs because I’d heard that they were starting a museum to remember the mission by, to remember Mogumber Mission. So we went in there and it was interesting looking around and two women met us in the hall. And I handed over my photographs. And I mentioned, “Hey, I was here in Mogumber, 1971.” I mentioned the families that I lived with, the kids’ surnames. I mentioned my mate Ernie. I was hoping for a little bit of connection, but I kind of got the opposite. I kind of just got met with disinterest. Anyway, I handed over my photos and then they were gone. So that became the pattern over the years. Whenever I felt I had a sort of a tenuous connection with, with a Noongar person, I would find that my MO would be to sidle up and, hey, you know, mention the year 1971 that the families that I was, living with, the surnames. And I’d also always mention Ernie’s name. And I was always hoping for that spark, that little connection like, little bit of a reunion. Ah, really? But I never got it. And what stayed with me was not just the no answers, but the absolute lack of interest on their part. There was one particularly powerful moment, and this was in a Noongar language course that I did put on by one of the local councils. And I, on the fourth week again, what do I do? I siddle up. “Hey, Mogumber, 1971. This is me. Do you know these people? Do Ernie? “Wasn’t just the disinterest. I, I actually felt like there was a visible recoil. She had a physical reaction to me asking about it. So I’m a teacher and I teach in the Walyalup area. And in one of our, schools, they have a strong connection with the Steven Michael Foundation. And they’ll send people in to run Noongar games or Noongar cultural activities. And in 2024 was the first time I actually got a real lead about Ernie. And they’d just rung an afternoon of Noongar cultural activities in the classroom. It was led by, a man about my age, a Noongar man. And I did the old siddle up, hey, 1971 Mogumber. And for the first time, he actually knew of Ernie. And he was able to tell me that Ernie was living in a regional town in WA. So I sat with that, and I’ve sat with that knowledge for a couple of years. But things in my life are shifting. As an adult, I’ve been learning more about the history of child removal and the assimilation policies. And that’s unsettled my early understanding. Teaching for me in Perth, in certain Perth schools, and certainly remote communities has helped me understand that the stolen generations are not just history. The effects are still being lived. In applying for this storytelling session, I did a Google search on Mogumber Mission 1971. I was just looking for a few facts. But the first thing that came up that I read was in 1971, assimilation was still very much being practiced. That was a shock, to say the least.  

So what I’m understanding now, a couple of weeks ago, a couple of months ago, was that the parents, was it really that the parents needed to get their act together? Or was it that children had been taken away from them and it was going to be made really, really difficult for them to get back?  

So that meant that myself inadvertently, we were, I was part of the process that had a lot to answer for. Now, around the same time, getting ready for this storytelling session, a friend said, “Hey, watch this documentary. It’s really good. It’s about missions and it’s called Genocide in the Wildflower State. If anyone wants to watch it, it’s really good.”  

And in the first 10 minutes, someone popped up from Mogumber and I sat up. They looked about my vintage. I didn’t recognize them though. Didn’t know them. But his first three words were, “I survived Mogumber.”  

Just that word, survived.  

I guess the penny dropped. I just started to understand something that I hadn’t done before. All those people along the way that I’ve stopped to ask about Mogumber, about the families, about Ernie, no wonder there was no champagne corks popping or big reunions or big hugs. I just started to understand that I experienced Mogumber from a safer side of the system. That where I had freedom and friendship, others had separation and loss. And my happy memories weren’t necessarily shared. I’m almost embarrassed that it’s taken me so long to get to this place. And I’m not sure if I am going to look for Ernie. I will just always wonder how he is and how his life turned out after Mogumber. Thank you. 

Outro: Thank you for listening to the Backyard Truth Telling Series. This collection of stories was made possible through the generous support of the City of Fremantle and Lotterywest and was produced by the Centre for Stories. 

To learn more about the City of Fremantle’s commitment to reconciliation, visit fremantle.wa.gov.au. 

If you’d like to hear more stories from the Backyard Truth Telling Series, visit centreforstories.com. 

Centre for Stories is a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to uplifting diverse voices, fostering connection and creating spaces where stories can be shared and heard. If you’d like to support this work, please consider making a donation through our website: centreforstories.com. 

This podcast was produced by Savannah Travia-Dann, with storytelling training from Ron Bradfield Jnr and Mariela Espino Zuppa, and sound engineering by Mason Vellios and Cobie Mason. 

Thank you for joining us and thank you for supporting the storytellers who have generously shared their truths, experiences and visions for the future.