Soon as I opened the door all the chatter and laughter stopped. You could hear a pin drop as all eyes were on me… “Tracey dear, is this your little dark servant?”

I just stood there smiling. I thought it was wonderful that at last people were taking notice of me… I turned to the lady who did all the talking and said, “My name is Glenyse.” She was quite startled; she said, “Oh dear, I didn’t think you had a name.”

This could be a great start to a book it tells you so much about the nature of the relationship between Ward and the people she was working for but it isn’t. Glenyse Ward was born in Perth, Western Australia in 1949 and taken from her mother one year later when her mother dared to take her to the doctor for treatment. She was brought up on Wandering Mission until the age of 16 when she was sent away to be a servant to Mrs Bigelow and her family. All this because she had the audacity to be born an Aborigine. This is the story of that year she spent with the Bigelows.

I spent some time enjoying this book and much time cringing, there are times I am ashamed to be Australian and when I think of the Stolen Generation is one of those times. Ward somehow manages to make light of being taken from her mother and raised by nuns, even making the Mission seem like a good place to be…when she’s not talking about how hard the nuns were in raising her and her friends. She paints the picture of her life at the Mission in a few well chosen phrases and continues to paint her life and the Bigelows in some other well chosen phrases. We get to see the racism that abounded (unfortunately, it’s still around) and also see some very good people who aid and abet Ward.

Nicely written, Ward somehow manages to convey her naivety at not understanding about racism while still making it very clear this is what it was. I googled the book and found this interesting article which mentions this naivety and carefully debunks it while speculating as to why Ward might have considered it necessary to include in this book. Apparently Ward has written a ‘sequel’ to this book called Unna You Fullas which talks far more about the harsh treatment they all received at Wandering Mission.

I can’t say I loved this book, but I do feel it’s important to read. It would be a good book for a young teen to read to start getting some idea of what happened in that era and was even on the book syllabus for some years. Another book mentioned in the article in My Place by Sally Morgan, I still have to read this but it seems it looks at some of these issues from a different viewpoint.