Linda C. and the Terrors of the Rabbit-Proof Fence

Linda C. and theTerrors of the Rabbit-Proof Fence Cathryn McConaghy University of New England Postcolonial Repetitions Something is frightening Linda C. Linda C. is a non-Indigenous student teacher at an Australian university. The following episodes give some clues as to what this thing might be— and why we should care. In the 1920s near Deniliquin in rural New South Wales Mar­ garet Tucker was stolen from her mother by a policeman who came to take Margaret and several other children while they were at school. The head master’s wife tried to delay their theft by insisting that they eat before their journey, thus giv­ ing Margaret’s aproned mother time to run the one and a half mile distance from her home. She arrived in time and told the policeman that she would not allow him to take her daughter. The policeman patted the pouch on his belt and said if she refused he would have to use its contents. Margaret, fearing he would shoot her mother, said she would go willingly. Margaret heard years later that her mother had wandered off into the long grass after she left and had cried for days. In recounting the story in her book, If Everyone Cared, Margaret Tucker wrote that the policeman was probably only doing his duty. ESC 30.2 (June 2004): 13-20 Cathryn McConaghy lectures in Indigenous Studies and Sociology of Education at the University of New England in Australia. Her book, Rethinking Indigenous Education (2000, Post Pressed, Flaxton) examines the regimes of othering of colonial and postcolonial Australia. She is currently researching the dilemmas of ethical witnessing with rural teachers. In 1931 in Jigalong in Western Australia, thirteen-year-old Molly Craig was stolen from her mother and taken with her sister and cousin to a distant mission (Garimara 1996). The girls escaped the harsh regime and, although tracked by police, Molly carried her younger sister 1,500 miles through the des­ ert following the rabbit-proof fence— erected to prevent the spread of rabbits throughout the continent— to guide them home. Years later as a young mother Molly and her baby were once again forcibly taken to the same mission. As she had done years before Molly escaped and walked the same route home. The story of her incredible life journey was told by her daughter, Doris Pilkington Nugi Garimara, not the child who had been carried, for this child was once again taken back to the mission. In 2001 Garimara’s book was made into a film called Rabbit-ProofFence by Philip Noyce. Molly was present during the making of the film and kept inquiring of the crew if anyone had seen her stolen daughter. In 2004 Molly Craig died, never again having seen her stolen child. In the 1960s in Brisbane thirteen-year-old Veronica B. was stolen from her mother while her mother was in hospital with pneumonia. Veronica was taken before the courts and then spent three years in a juvenile detention centre for delinquent girls. As an adult she became the first law graduate at one of Australia’s universities. Unable to gain employment as a lawyer, she took up casual employment for several years as a lecturer in Indigenous Studies at a regional Australian university. On 15 February 2004, seventeen-year-old T. J. (Thomas) Hickey was riding his bicycle home from his aunty’s house on The Block in Redfern, Sydney when he was chased by a police car. The brakes on his bike were faulty and at high speed he crashed and became impaled through the neck on a metal fence. He died several hours later. On hearing this, in their grief and outrage at the persistent police interventions in their lives, residents of The Block took to the streets. John Pilger has estimated this police intervention at an average of sixty per day in the small inner city housing estate. Forty people were injured that night including members of the police. The Block is a 1970s housing complex in inner Sydney that is described variously as a ghetto of irreparable social decay that should be bulldozed {Canberra Times 10) and a significant cultural meet­ ing...