Clip description
Historical footage is intercut with an interview with Flora Hoolihan, daughter of Leandro Illin and Kitty Clarke. She tells of her mother being pursued by the police. We also see historical footage of children eating at a table in a mission, Indigenous women sitting in a group and of an Aboriginal baby of mixed parentage – referred to by the whites as a 'burnt cork’.
Curator’s notes
The sexual liaisons between white men and Aboriginal women, especially on the frontier of emerging colonial Australia, became a common thing. Sometimes these liaisons were consensual, but most of the time they were not. The stealing of Aboriginal women from their families was the cause of many conflicts on the frontier. Henry Lawson described the sexual relations between white men and black women as ‘black velvet’. The babies of white fathers and black mothers were referred to as ‘burnt corks’. The sexual liaison between white men and black women was considered immoral and a threat to the state, and the growing population of so called half-castes deemed a threat to the white population.