“They need to learn about love, persistence,” Mrs Page said so quietly that her words are nearly lost. 

“If someone loved me I I feel good for the whole day. These are the things we have to teach them.

“That mum and dad do love you but they do things a different way.”

Mrs Page empathises with their difficulties not only as a health worker who worked at Yallambee for about 18 years, but also as someone who grew up as a fringe dweller in Cloncurry. 

Her eyes shine as she looks at another photograph, this one of a line-up of girls. 

“They are all mothers now,” Mrs Page says proudly. 

“All those kids you see there now are 18-19 now, still beautiful kids.” 

Any Yallambee resident or any worker who has been there enough times acknowledges the strong sense of community. 

Mrs Page said; “it’s probably a really good place because they are all living together to help look after each others’ children. 

“That was the style of living in the old days and that’s how they survived. Because aunties and uncles looked after each others.” 

Yallambee was administered by the Mount Isa City Council in the 1970s, according to Queensland Government documents.

Mrs Page’s husband, Kalkadoon elder Ron, said people first lived in tents and then in old buildings provided by the mines, but it was “rough and rugged” and with little opportunity. It’s a problem remaining today. 

After the referendum in 1967 people started to migrate from surrounding communities and needed accommodation, he said. 

“But it was pretty rough here and finally the (Yallambee) Aboriginal Corporation and different agencies were able to write cases for funding for housing and that was what they did.” 

Mr Page was the manager of the Department of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Partnerships (DATSIP) and was there when the current cottages and community centre were built. 

“But we still haven’t made much progress because I don’t think there’s been enough support from government from those early days, you know, even now today,” he said. 

“The thing that concerns me is we’ve got that many organisations providing services and we’re only just skimming over the top, we’re not getting into the real nitty gritty part of making things really happen.”