Community Elder Aunty Jean Carter was taken away from her parents in La Perouse when she arrived home from school one day in 1948. Four members of her family were forcibly removed from their parents Robert and Lucy McKenzie on the same day.

‘I just remember coming home from school and Mum was at the door, and there was this car on the road outside. There was this white woman standing there and I can hear Mum saying, “Can’t you give me time to get the kids ready?” And she said “No, they’ve got to go now” … We were whisked away really quickly and there was only Mum there. We were never told why we were taken.’

Aunty Jean was taken to Cootamundra Girls’ Home and was trained to become a domestic worker. Girls were sent to Cootamundra Girls' Home until the age of 14 then assigned to work at rural properties where they “were lucky not to be sexually, physically and mentally abused”. Many girls became pregnant in domestic service, only to have their children in turn removed and institutionalised. Generations of Aboriginal women passed through Cootamundra Girls' Home until it closed in 1969. While at the home, Aunty Jean’s mother died and she was told that there was no need for her to attend the funeral because ‘she didn’t know her mother very well.’

After leaving the girls’ home Aunty Jean settled in Wreck Bay. During her life she has been Secretary of the Aborigines Progress Association, active in the Country Women’s Association, the Family Planning Association, and was the Director of the Jilimi Centre for Aboriginal women for which she received an award for service to the community. Aunty Jean also worked for Shoalhaven Women’s Resource Centre and World Vision’s Indigenous Program.

from the Photographic Memory exhibition, McGlade Gallery, 2019