When Aunty Fay was 10 years old she was stolen while walking along the train tracks.
She and her brothers were snatched and put on a train to Cootamundra.
“We were of school age,” she said.
“We were walking down the road and the welfare grabbed us... put us on a diesel train and brought us to Cootamundra.”
She then spent the next five years at the notorious Cootamundra Girls Home.
“We went out on different farms in the area, taken out by trains, to different areas to work as a domestic servant,” she said.
A photo of the Cootamundra Girls Home. Source: NITV / NITV News
Early life along the train tracks
While the train tracks are a reminder of pain for the Wiradjuri woman, they also hold special memories.
“When I was living in Leeton, we had a lot to do with train tracks because our uncles and my dad were actually involved in laying down the tracks... in the area out to Coolamon,” she explained.
“We actually came to Coolamon and stayed in one of the fettler’s huts at the weekend so that Dad could see us because sometimes he’d be away for more than two weeks and we wouldn’t see him.
“So we’d get in the horse and sulky and come over to Coolamon to spend the night there with Dad and then go home.”
Aunty Fay laughs when she tells the story, a funny memory from her early days.
Finally coming home
It was years later that she was finally reunited with her family.
She’d found herself in Sydney, and beginning a career as a nurse.
“I sat for a nursing entrance exam. I was working at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital,” she said.
“My brother found out where I was and he took me down and I met mum and it was strange.”
It was strange, and emotional explained Aunty Fay.
“It’s very emotional because you’ve still got that hurt. Even though you’ve grown up it’s something you can’t replace losing your parents you know,” she said.
“Losing contact with your parents and not being brought up by your parents.”
From Tribal Tracks to Train Tracks
For most of her life, Aunty Fay has painted.
It’s been a way to heal, and a way to tell her stories.
“It tends to take away a lot of the traumas, you know,” she said.
She was recently commissioned by Transport for NSW to create an artwork for a place close to her – Cootamundra Station.
It is comprised of five large-panelled artworks that tell part of her story, from the Riverina express train that took her away, to the wattles that bloom in the winter around Leeton and Cootamundra.
Aunty Fay called the creation, From Tribal Tracks to Train Tracks.
“It meant us... Aboriginal people walked across this land for millions or thousands of years. And then for trains to come along and go along running beside and across the tribal tracks that we planted on this land,” she said.
“The trains have planted their tracks on this land, the railway tracks. Now they’re picking up our people and taking them where they want to go.”
Uncle Bill and Aunty Fay beside her artwork for the railway. Source: Supplied / Transport for NSW
“Now, seeing the paintings up there, it just gives me back some of my identity as an Aboriginal person because that was taken away from us,” she said.
“The history of the homes and things like that. But to have the paintings in Coota railway station, it’s just amazing. It feels really good.
“Like the shackles are finally being released.”
