2011 - Theses - Flinders University

from the Aborigines Act in 1950 and made only rare visits to the mission, with permission bythe missionaries. 10Finally, I found an eyewitness visiting with her niece in Hawker, in thecentral Flinders Ranges. Sylvia Brady spoke directly, and her memories were sharp.I was at Mrs Forbes’s funeral. We had a little service around the graveside and then MrHathaway’s motor wouldn’t start. He was going to give us a lift down but the motorwouldn’t start so we walked. We thought, ‘Oh, she won’t let us go.’ I remember we sangThere’s a land that is fairer than day. 11‘Nyanga, the old girl,’ chimed in Vicki, Sylvia’s niece, sitting on the back verandah,listening. ‘She was a good old lady.’‘She got me,’ continued Sylvia. ‘She was the midwife. Mrs Forbes gave me my name,after her friends or relatives in England.’Melbourne, 2003During a trip to the Melbourne offices of the United Aborigines Ministries, when thebushfires in the Snowy Mountains filled the air with ash, I read and copied foolscap pageafter foolscap page of neatly typed reports from Brother Bill and Sister Florence Hathaway,the senior missionary and his wife at Nepabunna since 1955, and the equally neatly typedresponses sent on return mail from blind Pastor Samuels in the United Aborigines Mission(SA) office in Adelaide. On the first of August 1959, the Hathaways note that: ‘Mrs Forbeshas been ill with a heavy cold for a little more than a week and she is very far from well. Itreally looks to be the beginning of the end and we have brought her family into camp’. 12 Aweek later, on the eighth of August, they wrote:Mrs Forbes seems to be getting weaker, She eats almost nothing and would seem thatthe end is visibly closer. She is alone most of the time except for her son Raymond whohas been here all the week but who is going away again tomorrow. As we can’t justleave her there alone we are planning to bring her over here tomorrow if the doctor will13