At the senior campus students and staff gathered to recognise the importance of Sorry Day for reconciliation with Indigenous Australians.

Two women spoke about their experiences as Aboriginal children in the 50s, 60s, and 70s in Queensland.

Patricia Richards, born in 1972, was raised by her grandmother and remembers being beaten for speaking her native language.

“After I got flogged that night my grandmother came to me and whispered in my ear ‘You can’t do that, the bully van, the policeman will come get you, take you away to Palm Island’,” Ms Richards said.

“From that day on, my language was lost.” 

“I could not interpret why this happened. As young as we were, it was embedded in us,” she said.

Ms Richards also told the school about early policy affecting Aboriginal people, which has lasting impacts but is often forgotten.

“I was able to understand parts of government policies, acknowledge that they happened, and that they had a generational impact on my family, too.”

Ms Richards referenced the 1817 Aboriginal Protection and Restriction of Sale of Opium Act which had a the effect of giving government departments control over where Indigenous people lived in Queensland, and the removal of children from their families.

Paddy Lees also spoke to the school assembly about her experience, removed from her family in 1958, aged 11.

“The five of us were removed and put into an orphanage in Townsville, and then we were split up with some sent to Palm Island – on the grounds that we were too dark to be in the orphanage,” Ms Lees said.

“However I got to Palm Island, and found out we were too white to be there.

“So that’s the struggle – when you’re not black enough to be black and not white enough to be white,” she said.

Ms Lees told the school there was not enough time to tell the story of the stolen generation, and she was counting on students to read up on it.

Year 12 Indigenous students presented the assembly, which included an educational and moving video on the stolen generation.

Sorry Day was recognised nationally on Friday May 26 and National Reconciliation Week runs from May 27 to June 3.

These dates mark two milestones in Australia’s reconciliation journey; the 1967 referendum and the historic Mabo decision in 1992, respectively.