Western Australia 1931. Four sisters (Rosie, Molly, Daisy and Gracie) have been sent to a settlement for Aboriginal children to be educated by white people. Martha, who has lived there for a year, shows them around.
“What is that place?” asked Rosie, doing the talking for the other three.
“That’s the boob, they lock anyone in there for punishment,” Martha explained.
“What did that girl do?” asked Rosie.
“She locked up for swearing at Miss Morgan, the teacher. She’s lucky, she’s only in there for two days,” Martha told them about the others who had been incarcerated in the boob.
“You should have seen the other ones who were locked up for running away,” she said. “They all got seven days punishment with just bread and water. Mr. Johnson shaved their heads bald and made them parade around the compound so that everyone could see them. They got the strap too. “
The boob was a place of detention once described as a small, detached concrete room with a sandy floor, with only a gleam of light and a little ventilation. Every inmate of the settlement dreaded being incarcerated in this place. Some children were forced to spend up to fourteen days in that horrible place.
One thing on which they could all agree was that this place was certainly different from what they envisaged.
Instead of a residential school, the Aboriginal children were placed in an overcrowded dormitory. The inmates, not students, slept on beds with government-issue blankets. There were no sheets or pillow slip except on special occasions when there was an inspection by prominent officials. Then they were removed as soon as the visitors left the settlement and stored away until the next visit. On the windows there were no colorful curtains, just wire screens and iron bars. It looked like a concentration camp than a residential school for Aboriginal children.
Back at the dormitory the girl were trying to snuggle down in their cold, uninviting beds. Molly, Daisy and Gracie began to talk normally amongst