Sort Of A Place Like Home: Remembering The Moore River Native Settlement

WEST AUSTRALIAN ABORIGINAL –

First Edition. Award-winning study of life within the Moore River Native Settlement. Part of the bold social experiment by the ‘Chief Protector of Aborigines’ A O Neville, the Western Australian settlement was for thirty years ‘sort of a place like home’ for thousands of indigenous people. Making extensive and imaginative use of oral sources and official documents, Sort of a Place Like Home creates a vivid and intimate picture of the life experience of Moore River inmates, while documenting the appalling bureaucratic incompetence, official indifference and occasional brutality that made Moore River notorious. Surprisingly, not all the memories are bad. In the midst of the institutional gloom, determination and optimism united inmates – a testament to the human durability that Neville’s experiment sought to destroy.

Set amongst the low scrub of the Mogumber sand plain north of Perth, the Moore River Native Settlement was, for thirty years, ‘sort of a place like home’ for thousands of Aboriginal people. Alternately sanctuary, work camp, orphanage, prison and rural idyll, the settlement was part of a bold social experiment by the Chief Protector of Aborigines A. O. Neville, the aim of which was nothing less than the total eradication of a race and a culture.Making extensive and imaginative use of oral resources and hitherto unseen documents, Sort of a Place Like Home paints a vivid and intimate picture of the life experience of Moore River inmates, while documenting the appalling bureaucratic incompetence, official indifference and occasional outright brutality that made Moore River notorious. While being a chapter of history many whites would rather forget, the Moore River years are vividly remembered by the Aborigines whose lives were irrevocably changed by the institution.

Interviews with; Hazel Anderson, Jim and Myrtle Brennan, Robert Bropho, Eric Conway, Ken Colbung, Doreen Dalgety, Elizabeth Dalgety, Ralph Dalgety, Jack Davis, Olive Hart , Vincent Lambadgee, Ned Mippy, Phyllis Mippy, Edie Moore , Alice Nannup, Angus Wallam and Bella Yappo – are the basis for this history of the Moore River Native Settlement; includes an annotated selection of articles from Western Australian newspapers; biography of Gladys Gilligan compiled from archival documents and a fictional account of A.O. Neville addressing a class of Aboriginal children.

#141214/0118/1219/211223/301224/050125/100625 First Edition

• • 351 p. : ill. ; 21 cm.

• (Probably) Signed by Author ” Susie” in gift inscription.
• Bibliography: p. 360-361.
• Later reprinted in 2003
• First Nations (AIATSIS) Subject:
  • Child welfare – Child / parent separation
  • Child welfare – Children’s homes
  • Child welfare – Child / parent separation – Stolen generations
  • Moore River (SW WA SH50-14)

  Subject:

  • Moore River Native Settlement (W.A.) — History
  • Children, Aboriginal Australian — Western Australia — Moore River Region — Institutional care
  • Children, Aboriginal Australian — Western Australia — Moore River Region — Social conditions
  • Child welfare — Western Australia — Moore River Region — History
  • Aboriginal Australians — Western Australia — Moore River Region — Government relations